girl under parasol“But I detest walking in the country.”
“But I detest walking in the country.”
“Well, Lillie dear, I am sorry; but we don’t live in New York, and are not likely to,” said John.
“Why can’t we? Mrs. Follingsbee said that a manin your profession, and with your talents, could command a fortune in New York.”
“If it would give me the mines of Golconda, I would not go there,” said John.
“How stupid of you! You know you would, though.”
“No, Lillie; I would not leave Springdale for any money.”
“That is because you think of nobody but yourself,” said Lillie. “Men are always selfish.”
“On the contrary, it is because I have so many here depending on me, of whom I am bound to think more than myself,” said John.
“That dreadful mission-work of yours, I suppose,” said Lillie; “that always stands in the way of having a good time.”
“Lillie,” said John, shutting his book, and looking at her, “what is your ideal of a good time?”
“Why, having something amusing going on all the time,—something bright and lively, to keep one in good spirits,” said Lillie.
“I thought that you would have enough of that with your party and all,” said John.
“Well, now it’s all over, and duller than ever,” said Lillie. “I think a little spirit of gayety makes it seem duller by contrast.”
“Yet, Lillie,” said John, “you see there are women, who live right here in Springdale, who are all the time busy, interested, and happy, with only such sources of enjoyment as are to be found here. Their time does not hang heavy on their hands; in fact, it is too short for all they wish to do.”
“They are different from me,” said Lillie.
“Then, since you must live here,” said John, “could you not learn to be like them? Could you not acquire some of these tastes that make simple country life agreeable?”
“No, I can’t; I never could,” said Lillie, pettishly.
“Then,” said John, “I don’t see that anybody can help your being unhappy.” And, opening his book, he sat down, and began to read.
Lillie pouted awhile, and then drew from under the sofa-pillow a copy of “Indiana;” and, establishing her feet on the fender, she began to read.
Lillie had acquired at school the doubtful talent of reading French with facility, and was soon deep in the fascinating pages, whose theme is the usual one of French novels,—a young wife, tired of domestic monotony, with an unappreciative husband, solacing herself with the devotion of a lover. Lillie felt a sort of pique with her husband. He was evidently unappreciative: he was thinking of all sorts of things more than of her, and growing stupid, as husbands in French romances generally do. She thought of her handsome Cousin Harry, the only man that she ever came anywhere near being in love with; and the image of his dark, handsome eyes and glossy curls gave a sort of piquancy to the story.
John got deeply interested in his book; and, looking up from time to time, was relieved to find that Lillie had something to employ her.
“I may as well make a beginning,” he said to himself.“I must have my time for reading; and she must learn to amuse herself.”
After a while, however, he peeped over her shoulder.
“Why, darling!” he said, “where did you get that?”
“It is Mrs. Follingsbee’s,” said Lillie.
“Dear, it is a bad book,” said John. “Don’t read it.”
“It amuses me, and helps pass away time,” said Lillie; “and I don’t think it is bad: it is beautiful. Besides, you read what amuses you; and it is a pity if I can’t read what amuses me.”
“I am glad to see you like to read French,” continued John; “and I can get you some delightful French stories, which are not only pretty and witty, but have nothing in them that tend to pull down one’s moral principles. Edmond About’s ‘Mariages de Paris’ and ‘Tolla’ are charming French things; and, as he says, they might be read aloud by a man between his mother and his sister, without a shade of offence.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Mrs. Lillie. “You had better go to Rose Ferguson, and get her to give you a list of the kinds of books she prefers.”
“Lillie!” said John, severely, “your remarks about Rose are in bad taste. I must beg you to discontinue them. There are subjects that never ought to be jested about.”
“Thank you, sir, for your moral lessons,” said Lillie, turning her back on him defiantly, putting her feet on the fender, and going on with her reading.
John seated himself, and went on with his book in silence.
Now, this mode of passing a domestic evening is certainly not agreeable to either party; but we sustain the thesis that in this sort of interior warfare the woman has generally the best of it. When it comes to the science of annoyance, commend us to the lovely sex! Their methods have afinesse, a suppleness, a universal adaptability, that does them infinite credit; and man, with all his strength, and all his majesty, and his commanding talent, is about as well off as a buffalo or a bison against a tiny, rainbow-winged gnat or mosquito, who bites, sings, and stings everywhere at once, with an infinite grace and facility.
A woman without magnanimity, without generosity, who has no love, and whom a man loves, is a terrible antagonist. To give up or to fight often seems equally impossible.
How is a man going to make a woman have a good time, who is determined not to have it? Lillie had sense enough to see, that, if she settled down into enjoyment of the little agreeablenesses and domesticities of the winter society in Springdale, she should lose her battle, and John would keep her there for life. The only way was to keep him as uncomfortable as possible without really breaking her power over him.
In the long-run, in these encounters of will, the woman has every advantage. The constant dropping that wears away the stone has passed into a proverb.
Lillie meant to go to New York, and have a long campaign at the Follingsbees. The thing had been all promised and arranged between them; and it wasnecessary that she should appear sufficiently miserable, and that John should be made sufficiently uncomfortable, to consent with effusion, at last, when her intentions were announced.
These purposes were not distinctly stated to herself; for, as we have before intimated, uncultivated natures, who have never thought for a serious moment on self-education, or the way their character is forming, act purely from a sort of instinct, and do not even in their own minds fairly and squarely face their own motives and purposes; if they only did, their good angel would wear a less dejected look than he generally must.
Lillie had power enough, in that small circle, to stop and interrupt almost all its comfortable literary culture. The reading of Froude was given up. John could not go to the study club; and, after an evening or two of trying to read up at home, he used to stay an hour later at his office. Lillie would go with him on Tuesday evening, after the readings were over; and then it was understood that all parties were to devote themselves to making the evening pass agreeable to her. She was to be put forward, kept in the foreground, and every thing arranged to make her appear the queen of thefête. They had tableaux, where Rose made Lillie into marvellous pictures, which all admired and praised. They had little dances, which Lillie thought rather stupid and humdrum, because they were noten grande toilette;yet Lillie always made a great merit of putting up with her life at Springdale. A pleasant English writer has a lively paper on the advantages of being a “cantankerousfool,” in which he goes to show that men or women of inferior moral parts, little self-control, and great selfishness, often acquire an absolute dominion over the circle in which they move, merely by the exercise of these traits. Every one being anxious to please and pacify them, and keep the peace with them, there is a constant succession of anxious compliances and compromises going on around them; by all of which they are benefited in getting their own will and way.
The one person who will not give up, and cannot be expected to be considerate or accommodating, comes at last to rule the whole circle. He is counted on like the fixed facts of nature; everybody else must turn out for him. So Lillie reigned in Springdale. In every little social gathering where she appeared, the one uneasy question was, would she have a good time, and anxious provision made to that end. Lillie had declared that reading aloud was a bore, which was definitive against reading-parties. She liked to play and sing; so that was always a part of the programme. Lillie sang well, but needed a great deal of urging. Her throat was apt to be sore; and she took pains to say that the harsh winter weather in Springdale was ruining her voice. A good part of an evening was often spent in supplications before she could be induced to make the endeavor.
Lillie had taken up the whim of being jealous of Rose. Jealousy is said to be a sign of love. We hold another theory, and consider it more properly a sign of selfishness. Look at noble-hearted, unselfish women, and ask if they are easily made jealous. Look, again,at a woman who in her whole life shows no disposition to deny herself for her husband, or to enter into his tastes and views and feelings: are not such as she the most frequently jealous?
Her husband, in her view, is a piece of her property; every look, word, and thought which he gives to any body or thing else is a part of her private possessions, unjustly withheld from her.
Independently of that, Lillie felt the instinctive jealousy which apasséequeen of beauty sometimes has for a young rival.
She had eyes to see that Rose was daily growing more and more beautiful; and not all that young girl’s considerateness, her self-forgetfulness, her persistent endeavors to put Lillie forward, and make her the queen of the hour, could disguise this fact. Lillie was a keen-sighted little body, and saw, at a glance, that, once launched into society together, Rose would carry the day; all the more that no thought of any day to be carried was in her head.
Rose Ferguson had one source of attraction which is as great a natural gift as beauty, and which, when it is found with beauty, makes it perfectly irresistible; to wit, perfect unconsciousness of self. This is a wholly different trait from unselfishness: it is not a moral virtue, attained by voluntary effort, but a constitutional gift, and a very great one. Fénelon praises it as a Christian grace, under the name of simplicity; but we incline to consider it only as an advantage of natural organization. There are many excellent Christianswho are haunted by themselves, and in some form or other are always busy with themselves; either conscientiously pondering the right and wrong of their actions, or approbatively sensitive to the opinions of others, or æsthetically comparing their appearance and manners with an interior standard; while there are others who have received the gift, beyond the artist’s eye or the musician’s ear, of perfect self-forgetfulness. Their religion lacks the element of conflict, and comes to them by simple impulse.
“Glad souls, without reproach or blot,Who do His will, and know it not.”
“Glad souls, without reproach or blot,Who do His will, and know it not.”
“Glad souls, without reproach or blot,Who do His will, and know it not.”
“Glad souls, without reproach or blot,
Who do His will, and know it not.”
Rose had a frank, open joyousness of nature, that shed around her a healthy charm, like fine, breezy weather, or a bright morning; making every one feel as if to be good were the most natural thing in the world. She seemed to be thinking always and directly of matters in hand, of things to be done, and subjects under discussion, as much as if she were an impersonal being.
She had been educated with every solid advantage which old Boston can give to her nicest girls; and that is saying a good deal. Returning to a country home at an early age, she had been made the companion of her father; entering into all his literary tastes, and receiving constantly, from association with him, that manly influence which a woman’s mind needs to develop its completeness. Living the whole year in the country, the Fergusons developed within themselves amultiplicity of resources. They read and studied, and discussed subjects with their father; for, as we all know, the discussion of moral and social questions has been from the first, and always will be, a prime source of amusement in New-England families; and many of them keep up, with great spirit, a family debating society, in which whoever hath a psalm, a doctrine, or an interpretation, has free course.
Rose had never been into fashionable life, technically so called. She had not been brought out: there never had been a mile-stone set up to mark the place where “her education was finished;” and so she had gone on unconsciously,—studying, reading, drawing, and cultivating herself from year to year, with her head and hands always so full of pleasurable schemes and plans, that there really seemed to be no room for any thing else. We have seen with what interest she co-operated with Grace in the various good works of the factory village in which her father held shares, where her activity found abundant scope, and her beauty and grace of manner made her a sort of idol.
Rose had once or twice in her life been awakened to self-consciousness, by applicants rapping at the front door of her heart; but she answered with such a kind, frank, earnest, “No, I thank you, sir,” as made friends of her lovers; and she entered at once into pleasant relations with them. Her nature was so healthy, and free from all morbid suggestion; her yes and no so perfectly frank and positive, that there seemed no possibility of any tragedy caused by her.
Why did not John fall in love with Rose? Why did not he, O most sapient senate of womanhood? Why did not your brother fall in love with that nice girl you know of, who grew up with you all at his very elbow, and was, as everybody else could see, just the proper person for him?
Well, why didn’t he? There is the doctrine of election. “The election hath obtained it; and the rest were blinded.” John was some six years older than Rose. He had romped with her as a little girl, drawn her on his sled, picked up her hair-pins, and worn her tippet, when they had skated together as girl and boy. They had made each other Christmas and New Year’s presents all their lives; and, to say the truth, loved each other honestly and truly: nevertheless, John fell in love with Lillie, and married her. Did you ever know a case like it?
THE snow had been all night falling silently over the long elm avenues of Springdale.
It was one of those soft, moist, dreamy snow-falls, which come down in great loose feathers, resting in magical frost-work on every tree, shrub, and plant, and seeming to bring down with it the purity and peace of upper worlds.
Grace’s little cottage on Elm Street was imbosomed, as New-England cottages are apt to be, in a tangle of shrubbery, evergreens, syringas, and lilacs; which, on such occasions, become bowers of enchantment when the morning sun looks through them.
Grace came into her parlor, which was cheery with the dazzling sunshine, and, running to the window, began to examine anxiously the state of her various greeneries, pausing from time to time to look out admiringly at the wonderful snow-landscape, with its many tremulous tints of rose, lilac, and amethyst.
The only thing wanting was some one to speak to about it; and, with a half sigh, she thought ofthe good old times when John would come to her chamber-door in the morning, to get her out to look on scenes like this.
“Positively,” she said to herself, “I must invite some one to visit me. One wants a friend to help one enjoy solitude.” The stock of social life in Springdale, in fact, was running low. The Lennoxes and the Wilcoxes had gone to their Boston homes, and Rose Ferguson was visiting in New York, and Letitia found so much to do to supply her place to her father and mother, that she had less time than usual to share with Grace. Then, again, the Elm-street cottage was a walk of some considerable distance; whereas, when Grace lived at the old homestead, the Fergusons were so near as to seem only one family, and were dropping in at all hours of the day and evening.
“Whom can I send for?” thought Grace to herself; and she ran over mentally, in a moment, the list of available friends and acquaintances. Reader, perhaps you have never really estimated your friends, till you have tried them by the question, which of them you could ask to come and spend a week or fortnight with you, alone in a country-house, in the depth of winter. Such an invitation supposes great faith in your friend, in yourself, or in human nature.
Grace, at the moment, was unable to think of anybody whom she could call from the approaching festivities of holiday life in the cities to share her snow Patmos with her; so she opened a book for company, and turned to where her dainty breakfast-table, with itshot coffee and crisp rolls, stood invitingly waiting for her before the cheerful open fire.
At this moment, she saw, what she had not noticed before, a letter lying on her breakfast plate. Grace took it up with an exclamation of surprise; which, however, was heard only by her canary birds and her plants.
Years before, when Grace was in the first summer of her womanhood, she had been very intimate with Walter Sydenham, and thoroughly esteemed and liked him; but, as many another good girl has done, about those days she had conceived it her duty not to think of marriage, but to devote herself to making a home for her widowed father and her brother. There was a certain romance of self-abnegation in this disposition of herself which was rather pleasant to Grace, and in which both the gentlemen concerned found great advantage. As long as her father lived, and John was unmarried and devoted to her, she had never regretted it.
Sydenham had gone to seek his fortune in California. He had begged to keep up intercourse by correspondence; but Grace was not one of those women who are willing to drain the heart of the man they refuse to marry, by keeping up with him just that degree of intimacy which prevents his seeking another. Grace had meant her refusal to be final, and had sincerely hoped that he would find happiness with some other woman; and to that intent had rigorously denied herself and him a correspondence: yet, from time to time, she had heard of him through an occasional letterto John, or by a chance Californian newspaper. Since John’s marriage had so altered her course of life, Grace had thought of him more frequently, and with some questionings as to the wisdom of her course.
This letter was from him; and we shall give our readers the benefit of it:—
“Dear Grace,—You must pardon me this beginning,—in the old style of other days; for though many years have passed, in which I have been trying to walk in your ways, and keep all your commandments, I have never yet been able to do as you directed, and forget you: and here I am, beginning ‘Dear Grace,’—just where I left off on a certain evening long, long ago. I wonder if you remember it as plainly as I do. I am just the same fellow that I was then and there. If you remember, you admitted that, were it not for other duties, you might have considered my humble supplication. I gathered that it would not have been impossibleper se, as metaphysicians say, to look with favor on your humble servant.“Gracie, I have been living, I trust, not unworthily of you. Your photograph has been with me round the world,—in the miner’s tent, on shipboard, among scenes where barbarous men do congregate; and everywhere it has been a presence, ‘to warn, to comfort, to command;’ and if I have come out of many trials firmer, better, more established in right than before; if I am more believing in religion, and in every way grounded and settled in the way you wouldhave me,—it has been your spiritual presence and your power over me that has done it. Besides that, I may as well tell you, I have never given up the hope that by and by you would see all this, and in some hour give me a different answer.“When, therefore, I learned of your father’s death, and afterwards of John’s marriage, I thought it was time for me to return again. I have come to New York, and, if you do not forbid, shall come to Springdale.“Will you be a little glad to see me, Gracie? Why not? We are both alone now. Let us take hands, and walk the same path together. Shall we?“Yours till death, and after,”Walter Sydenham.“
“Dear Grace,—You must pardon me this beginning,—in the old style of other days; for though many years have passed, in which I have been trying to walk in your ways, and keep all your commandments, I have never yet been able to do as you directed, and forget you: and here I am, beginning ‘Dear Grace,’—just where I left off on a certain evening long, long ago. I wonder if you remember it as plainly as I do. I am just the same fellow that I was then and there. If you remember, you admitted that, were it not for other duties, you might have considered my humble supplication. I gathered that it would not have been impossibleper se, as metaphysicians say, to look with favor on your humble servant.
“Gracie, I have been living, I trust, not unworthily of you. Your photograph has been with me round the world,—in the miner’s tent, on shipboard, among scenes where barbarous men do congregate; and everywhere it has been a presence, ‘to warn, to comfort, to command;’ and if I have come out of many trials firmer, better, more established in right than before; if I am more believing in religion, and in every way grounded and settled in the way you wouldhave me,—it has been your spiritual presence and your power over me that has done it. Besides that, I may as well tell you, I have never given up the hope that by and by you would see all this, and in some hour give me a different answer.
“When, therefore, I learned of your father’s death, and afterwards of John’s marriage, I thought it was time for me to return again. I have come to New York, and, if you do not forbid, shall come to Springdale.
“Will you be a little glad to see me, Gracie? Why not? We are both alone now. Let us take hands, and walk the same path together. Shall we?
“Yours till death, and after,”Walter Sydenham.“
Would she? To say the truth, the question as asked now had a very different air from the question as asked years before, when, full of life and hope and enthusiasm, she had devoted herself to making an ideal home for her father and brother. What other sympathy or communion, she had asked herself then, should she ever need than these friends, so very dear: and, if she needed more, there, in the future, was John’s ideal wife, who, somehow, always came before her in the likeness of Rose Ferguson, and John’s ideal children, whom she was sure she should love and pet as if they were her own.
And now here she was, in a house all by herself, coming down to her meals, one after another, without the excitement of a cheerful face opposite to her, andwith all possibility of confidential intercourse with her brother entirely cut off. Lillie, in this matter, acted, with much grace and spirit, the part of the dog in the manger; and, while she resolutely refused to enter into any of John’s literary or intellectual tastes, seemed to consider her wifely rights infringed upon by any other woman who would. She would absolutely refuse to go up with her husband and spend an evening with Grace, alleging it was “pokey and stupid,” and that they always got talking about things that she didn’t care any thing about. If, then, John went without her to spend the evening, he was sure to be received, on his return, with a dead and gloomy silence, more fearful, sometimes, than the most violent of objurgations. That look of patient, heart-broken woe, those long-drawn sighs, were a reception that he dreaded, to say the truth, a great deal more than a direct attack, or any fault-finding to which he could have replied; and so, on the whole, John made up his mind that the best thing he could do was to stay at home and rock the cradle of this fretful baby, whose wisdom-teeth were so hard to cut, and so long in coming. It was a pretty baby; and when made the sole and undivided object of attention, when every thing possible was done for it by everybody in the house, condescended often to be very graceful and winning and playful, and had numberless charming little ways and tricks. The difference between Lillie in good humor and Lillie in bad humor was a thing which John soon learned to appreciate as one of the most powerful forces in his life. If youknew, my dear reader, that by pursuing a certain course you could bring upon yourself a drizzling, dreary, north-east rain-storm, and by taking heed to your ways you could secure sunshine, flowers, and bird-singing, you would be very careful, after a while, to keep about you the right atmospheric temperature; and, if going to see the very best friend you had on earth was sure to bring on a fit of rheumatism or tooth-ache, you would soon learn to be very sparing of your visits. For this reason it was that Grace saw very little of John; that she never now had a sisterly conversation with him; that she preferred arranging all those little business matters, in which it would be convenient to have a masculine appeal, solely and singly by herself. The thing was never referred to in any conversation between them. It was perfectly understood without words. There are friends between whom and us has shut the coffin-lid; and there are others between whom and us stand sacred duties, considerations never to be enough reverenced, which forbid us to seek their society, or to ask to lean on them either in joy or sorrow: the whole thing as regards them must be postponed until the future life. Such had been Grace’s conclusion with regard to her brother. She well knew that any attempt to restore their former intimacy would only diminish and destroy what little chance of happiness yet remained to him; and it may therefore be imagined with what changed eyes she read Walter Sydenham’s letter from those of years ago.
There was a sound of stamping feet at the front door;and John came in, all ruddy and snow-powdered, but looking, on the whole, uncommonly cheerful.
“Well, Gracie,” he said, “the fact is, I shall have to let Lillie go to New York for a week or two, to see those Follingsbees. Hang them! But what’s the matter, Gracie? Have you been crying, or sitting up all night reading, or what?”
The fact was, that Gracie had for once been indulging in a good cry, rather pitying herself for her loneliness, now that the offer of relief had come. She laughed, though; and, handing John her letter, said,—
“Look here, John! here’s a letter I have just had from Walter Sydenham.”
John broke out into a loud, hilarious laugh.
“The blessed old brick!” said he. “Has he turned up again?”
“Read the letter, John,” said Grace. “I don’t know exactly how to answer it.”
John read the letter, and seemed to grow more and more quiet as he read it. Then he came and stood by Grace, and stroked her hair gently.
“I wish, Gracie dear,” he said, “you had asked my advice about this matter years ago. You loved Walter,—I can see you did; and you sent him off on my account. It is just too bad! Of all the men I ever knew, he was the one I should have been best pleased to have you marry!”
“It was not wholly on your account, John. You know there was our father,” said Grace.
“Yes, yes, Gracie; but he would have preferred tosee you well married. He would not have been so selfish, nor I either. It is your self-abnegation, you dear over-good women, that makes us men seem selfish. We should be as good as you are, if you would give us the chance. I think, Gracie, though you’re not aware of it, there is a spice of Pharisaism in the way in which you good girls allow us men to swallow you up without ever telling us what you are doing. I often wondered about your intimacy with Sydenham, and why it never came to any thing; and I can but half forgive you. How selfish I must have seemed!”
“Oh, no, John! indeed not.”
“Come, you needn’t put on these meek airs. I insist upon it, you have been feeling self-righteous and abused,” said John, laughing; “but ‘all’s well that ends well.’ Sit down, now, and write him a real sensible letter, like a nice honest woman as you are.”
“And say, ‘Yes, sir, and thank you too’?” said Grace, laughing.
“Well, something in that way,” said John. “You can fence it in with as many make-believes as is proper. And now, Gracie, this is deuced lucky! You see Sydenham will be down here at once; and it wouldn’t be exactly the thing for you to receive him at this house, and our only hotel is perfectly impracticable in winter; and that brings me to what I am here about. Lillie is going to New York to spend the holidays; and I wanted you to shut up, and come up and keep house for us. You see you have only one servant, and we have four to be looked after. You can bring your maid along,and then I will invite Walter to our house, where he will have a clear field; and you can settle all your matters between you.”
“So Lillie is going to the Follingsbees’?” said Grace.
“Yes: she had a long, desperately sentimental letter from Mrs. Follingsbee, urging, imploring, and entreating, and setting forth all the splendors and glories of New York. Between you and me, it strikes me that that Mrs. Follingsbee is an affected goose; but I couldn’t say so to Lillie, ‘by no manner of means.’ She professes an untold amount of admiration and friendship for Lillie, and sets such brilliant prospects before her, that I should be the most hard-hearted old Turk in existence if I were to raise any objections; and, in fact, Lillie is quite brilliant in anticipation, and makes herself so delightful that I am almost sorry that I agreed to let her go.”
“When shall you want me, John?”
“Well, this evening, say; and, by the way, couldn’t you come up and see Lillie a little while this morning? She sent her love to you, and said she was so hurried with packing, and all that, that she wanted you to excuse her not calling.”
“Oh, yes! I’ll come,” said Grace, good-naturedly, “as soon as I have had time to put things in a little order.”
“And write your letter,” said John, gayly, as he went out. “Don’t forget that.”
Grace did not forget the letter; but we shall not indulge our readers with any peep over her shoulder, only saying that, though written with an abundance of precaution,it was one with which Walter Sydenham was well satisfied.
Then she made her few arrangements in the housekeeping line, called in her grand vizier and prime minister from the kitchen, and held with her a counsel of ways and means; put on her india-rubbers and Polish boots, and walked up through the deep snow-drifts to the Springdale post-office, where she dropped the fateful letter with a good heart on the whole; and then she went on to John’s, the old home, to offer any parting services to Lillie that might be wanted.
It is rather amusing, in any family circle, to see how some one member, by dint of persistent exactions, comes to receive always, in all the exigencies of life, an amount of attention and devotion which is never rendered back. Lillie never thought of such a thing as offering any services of any sort to Grace. Grace might have packed her trunks to go to the moon, or the Pacific Ocean, quite alone for matter of any help Lillie would ever have thought of. If Grace had headache or toothache or a bad cold, Lillie was always “so sorry;” but it never occurred to her to go and sit with her, to read to her, or offer any of a hundred little sisterly offices. When she was in similar case, John always summoned Grace to sit with Lillie during the hours that his business necessarily took him from her. It really seemed to be John’s impression that a toothache or headache of Lillie’s was something entirely different from the same thing with Grace, or any other person in the world; and Lillie fully shared the impression.
Grace found the little empress quite bewildered in her multiplicity of preparations, and neglected details, all of which had been deferred to the last day; and Rosa and Anna and Bridget, in fact the whole staff, were all busy in getting her off.
“So good of you to come, Gracie!” and, “If you would do this;” and, “Won’t you see to that?” and, “If you could just do the other!” and Grace both could and would, and did what no other pair of hands could in the same time. John apologized for the lack of any dinner. “The fact is, Gracie, Bridget had to be getting up a lot of her things that were forgotten till the last moment; and I told her not to mind, we could do on a cold lunch.” Bridget herself had become so wholly accustomed to the ways of her little mistress, that it now seemed the most natural thing in the world that the whole house should be upset for her.
But, at last, every thing was ready and packed; the trunks and boxes shut and locked, and the keys sorted; and John and Lillie were on their way to the station.
“I shall find out Walter in New York, and bring him back with me,” said John, cheerily, as he parted from Grace in the hall. “I leave you to get things all to rights for us.”
It would not have been a very agreeable or cheerful piece of work to tidy the disordered house and take command of the domestic forces under any other circumstances; but now Grace found it a very nicediversion to prevent her thoughts from running too curiously on this future meeting. “After all,” she thought to herself, “he is just the same venturesome, imprudent creature that he always was, jumping to conclusions, and insisting on seeing every thing in his own way. How could he dare write me such a letter without seeing me? Ten years make great changes. How could he be sure he would like me?” And she examined herself somewhat critically in the looking-glass.
“Well,” she said, “he may thank me for it that we are not engaged, and that he comes only as an old friend, and perfectly free, for all he has said, to be nothing more, unless on seeing each other we are so agreed. I am so sorry the old place is all demolished and be-Frenchified. It won’t look natural to him; and I am not the kind of person to harmonize with these cold, polished, glistening, slippery surroundings, that have no home life or association in them.”
But Grace had to wake from these reflections to culinary counsels with Bridget, and to arrangements of apartments with Rosa. Her own exacting carefulness followed the careless footsteps of the untrained handmaids, and rearranged every plait and fold; so that by nightfall the next day she was thoroughly tired.
She beguiled the last moments, while waiting for the coming of the cars, in arranging her hair, and putting on one of those wonderful Parisian dresses, which adapt themselves so precisely to the air of the wearer that they seem to be in themselves works of art. Thenshe stood with a fluttering color to see the carriage drive up to the door, and the two get out of it.
It is almost too bad to spy out such meetings, and certainly one has no business to describe them; but Walter Sydenham carried all before him, by an old habit which he had of taking all and every thing for granted, as, from the first moment, he did with Grace. He had no idea of hesitations or holdings off, and would have none; and met Gracie as if they had parted only yesterday, and as if her word to him always had been yes, instead of no.
In fact, they had not been together five minutes before the whole life of youth returned to them both,—that indestructible youth which belongs to warm hearts and buoyant spirits.
Such a merry evening as they had of it! When John, as the wood fire burned low on the hearth, with some excuse of letters to write in his library, left them alone together, Walter put on her finger a diamond ring, saying,—
“There, Gracie! now, when shall it be? You see you’ve kept me waiting so long that I can’t spare you much time. I have an engagement to be in Montreal the first of February, and I couldn’t think of going alone. They have merry times there in mid-winter; and I’m sure it will be ever so much nicer for you than keeping house alone here.”
Grace said, of course, that it was impossible; but Walter declared that doing the impossible was precisely in his line, and pushed on his various advantages withsuch spirit and energy that, when they parted for the night, Grace said she would think of it: which promise, at the breakfast-table next morning, was interpreted by the unblushing Walter, and reported to John, as a full consent. Before noon that day, Walter had walked up with John and Grace to take a survey of the cottage, and had given John indefinite power to engage workmen and artificers to rearrange and enlarge and beautify it for their return after the wedding journey. For the rest of the visit, all the three were busy with pencil and paper, projecting balconies, bow-windows, pantries, library, and dining-room, till the old cottage so blossomed out in imagination as to leave only a germ of its former self.
Walter’s visit brought back to John a deal of the warmth and freedom which he had not known since he married. We often live under an insensible pressure of which we are made aware only by its removal. John had been so much in the habit lately of watching to please Lillie, of measuring and checking his words or actions, that he now bubbled over with a wild, free delight in finding himself alone with Grace and Walter. He laughed, sang, whistled, skipped upstairs two at a time, and scarcely dared to say even to himself why he was so happy. He did not face himself with that question, and went dutifully to the library at stated times to write to Lillie, and made much of her little letters.
IF John managed to be happy without Lillie in Springdale, Lillie managed to be blissful without him in New York.
“The bird let loose in Eastern skies” never hastened more fondly home than she to its glitter and gayety, its life and motion, dash and sensation. She rustled in all her bravery of curls and frills, pinkings and quillings,—a marvellous specimen of Parisian frostwork, without one breath of reason or philosophy or conscience to melt it.
The Follingsbees’ house might stand for the original of the Castle of Indolence.
“Halls where who can tellWhat elegance and grandeur wide expand,—The pride of Turkey and of Persia’s land?Soft quilts on quilts; on carpets, carpets spread;And couches stretched around in seemly band;And endless pillows rise to prop the head:So that each spacious room was one full swelling bed.”
“Halls where who can tellWhat elegance and grandeur wide expand,—The pride of Turkey and of Persia’s land?Soft quilts on quilts; on carpets, carpets spread;And couches stretched around in seemly band;And endless pillows rise to prop the head:So that each spacious room was one full swelling bed.”
“Halls where who can tellWhat elegance and grandeur wide expand,—The pride of Turkey and of Persia’s land?Soft quilts on quilts; on carpets, carpets spread;And couches stretched around in seemly band;And endless pillows rise to prop the head:So that each spacious room was one full swelling bed.”
“Halls where who can tell
What elegance and grandeur wide expand,—
The pride of Turkey and of Persia’s land?
Soft quilts on quilts; on carpets, carpets spread;
And couches stretched around in seemly band;
And endless pillows rise to prop the head:
So that each spacious room was one full swelling bed.”
It was not without some considerable profit that Mrs. Follingsbee had read Balzac and Dumas, and hadCharlie Ferrola for master of arts in her establishment. The effect of the whole was perfect; it transported one, bodily, back to the times of Montespan and Pompadour, when life was all one glittering upper-crust, and pretty women were never troubled with even the shadow of a duty.
It was with a rebound of joyousness that Lillie found herself once more with a crowded list of invitations, calls, operas, dancing, and shopping, that kept her pretty little head in a perfect whirl of excitement, and gave her not one moment for thought.
Mrs. Follingsbee, to say the truth, would have been a little careful about inviting a rival queen of beauty into the circle, were it not that Charlie Ferrola, after an attentive consideration of the subject, had assured her that a golden-haired blonde would form a most complete and effective tableau, in contrast with her own dark rich style of beauty. Neither would lose by it, so he said; and the impression, as they rode together in an elegant open barouche, with ermine carriage robes, would be “stunning.” So they called each otherma sœur, and drove out in the park in a ravishing little pony-phaeton all foamed over with ermine, drawn by a lovely pair of cream-colored horses, whose harness glittered with gold and silver, after the fashion of the Count of Monte Cristo. In truth, if Dick Follingsbee did not remind one of Solomon in all particulars, he was like him in one, that he “made silver and gold as the stones of the street” in New York.
Lillie’s presence, however, was all desirable; becauseit would draw the calls of two or three old New York families who had hitherto stood upon their dignity, and refused to acknowledge the shoddy aristocracy. The beautiful Mrs. John Seymour, therefore, was no less useful than ornamental, and advanced Mrs. Follingsbee’s purposes in her “Excelsior” movements.
“Now, I suppose,” said Mrs. Follingsbee to Lillie one day, when they had been out making fashionable calls together, “we really must call on Charlie’s wife, just to keep her quiet.”
“I thought you didn’t like her,” said Lillie.
“I don’t; I think she is dreadfully common,” said Mrs. Follingsbee: “she is one of those women who can’t talk any thing but baby, and bores Charlie half to death. But then, you know, when there is aliaisonlike mine with Charlie, one can’t be too careful to cultivate the wives.Les convenances, you know, are the all-important things. I send her presents constantly, and send my carriage around to take her to church or opera, or any thing that is going on, and have her children at my fancy parties: yet, for all that, the creature has not a particle of gratitude; those narrow-minded women never have. You know I am very susceptible to people’s atmospheres; and I always feel that that creature is just as full of spite and jealousy as she can stick in her skin.”
It will be remarked that this was one of those idiomatic phrases which got lodged in Mrs. Follingsbee’s head in a less cultivated period of her life, as a rusty needle sometimes hides in a cushion, coming out unexpectedly, when excitement gives it an honest squeeze.
“Now, I should think,” pursued Mrs. Follingsbee, “that a woman who really loved her husband would be thankful to have him have such a rest from the disturbing family cares which smother a man’s genius, as a house like ours offers him. How can the artistic nature exercise itself in the very grind of the thing, when this child has a cold, and the other the croup; and there is fussing with mustard-paste and ipecac and paregoric,—all those realities, you know? Why, Charlie tells me he feels a great deal more affection for his children when he is all calm and tranquil in the little boudoir at our house; and he writes such lovely little poems about them, I must show you some of them. But this creature doesn’t appreciate them a bit: she has no poetry in her.”
“Well, I must say, I don’t think I should have,” said Lillie, honestly. “I should be just as mad as I could be, if John acted so.”
“Oh, my dear! the cases are different: Charlie has such peculiarities of genius. The artistic nature, you know, requires soothing.” Here they stopped, and rang at the door of a neat little house, and were ushered into a pair of those characteristic parlors which show that they have been arranged by a home-worshipper, and a mother. There were plants and birds and flowers, and littlegenrepictures of children, animals, and household interiors, arranged with a loving eye and hand.
“Did you ever see any thing so perfectly characteristic?” said Mrs. Follingsbee, looking around her as if she were going to faint.
“This woman drives Charlie perfectly wild, because she has no appreciation of high art. Now, I sent her photographs of Michel Angelo’s ‘Moses,’ and ‘Night and Morning;’ and I really wish you would see where she hung them,—away in yonder dark corner!”
“I think myself they are enough to scare the owls,” said Lillie, after a moment’s contemplation.
“But, my dear, you know they are the thing,” said Mrs. Follingsbee: “people never like such things at first, and one must get used to high art before one forms a taste for it. The thing with her is, she has no docility. She does not try to enter into Charlie’s tastes.”
The woman with “no docility” entered at this moment,—a little snow-drop of a creature, with a pale, pure, Madonna face, and that sad air of hopeless firmness which is seen unhappily in the faces of so many women.
“I had to bring baby down,” she said. “I have no nurse to-day, and he has been threatened with croup.”
“The dear little fellow!” said Mrs. Follingsbee, with officious graciousness. “So glad you brought him down; come to his aunty?” she inquired lovingly, as the little fellow shrank away, and regarded her with round, astonished eyes. “Why will you not come to my next reception, Mrs. Ferrola?” she added. “You make yourself quite a stranger to us. You ought to give yourself some variety.”
“The fact is, Mrs. Follingsbee,” said Mrs. Ferrola, “receptions in New York generally begin about mybed-time; and, if I should spend the night out, I should have no strength to give to my children the next day.”