Pink and White Tyranny: Chapter 11

Chapter 11

NEWPORT; OR, THE PARADISE OF NOTHING TO DO.

Behold, now, our Lillie at the height of her heart's desire, installed
in fashionable apartments at Newport, under the placid chaperonship
of dear mamma, who never saw the least harm in any earthly thing her
Lillie chose to do.

All the dash and flash and furbelow of upper-tendom were there; and
Lillie now felt the full power and glory of being a rich, pretty,
young married woman, with oceans of money to spend, and nothing on
earth to do but follow the fancies of the passing hour.

This was Lillie's highest ideal of happiness; and didn't she enjoy it?

Wasn't it something to flame forth in wondrous toilets in the eyes of
Belle Trevors and Margy Silloway and Lottie Cavers, who were _not_
married; and before the Simpkinses and the Tomkinses and the
Jenkinses, who, last year, had said hateful things about her, and
intimated that she had gone off in her looks, and was on the way to be
an old maid?

And wasn't it a triumph when all her old beaux came flocking round
her, and her parlors became a daily resort and lounging-place for all
the idle swains, both of her former acquaintance and of the newcomers,
who drifted with the tide of fashion? Never had she been so much the
rage; never had she been declared so "stunning." The effect of all
this good fortune on her health was immediate. We all know how the
spirits affect the bodily welfare; and hence, my dear gentlemen, we
desire it to be solemnly impressed on you, that there is nothing so
good for a woman's health as to give her her own way.

Lillie now, from this simple cause, received enormous accessions of
vigor. While at home with plain, sober John, trying to walk in the
quiet paths of domesticity, how did her spirits droop! If you only
could have had a vision of her brain and spinal system, you would have
seen how there was no nervous fluid there, and how all the fine little
cords and fibres that string the muscles were wilting like flowers out
of water; but now she could bathe the longest and the strongest of any
one, could ride on the beach half the day, and dance the German into
the small hours of the night, with a degree of vigor which showed
conclusively what a fine thing for her the Newport air was. Her
dancing-list was always over-crowded with applicants; bouquets were
showered on her; and the most superb "turn-outs," with their masters
for charioteers, were at her daily disposal.

All this made talk. The world doesn't forgive success; and the
ancients informed us that even the gods were envious of happy people.
It is astonishing to see the quantity of very proper and rational
moral reflection that is excited in the breast of society, by any
sort of success in life. How it shows them the vanity of earthly
enjoyments, the impropriety of setting one's heart on it! How does
a successful married flirt impress all her friends with the gross
impropriety of having one's head set on gentlemen's attentions!

"I must say," said Belle Trevors, "that dear Lillie does astonish me.
Now, I shouldn't want to have that dissipated Danforth lounging in
my rooms every day, as he does in Lillie's: and then taking her out
driving day after day; for my part, I don't think it's respectable."

"Why don't you speak to her?" said Lottie Cavers.

"Oh, my dear! she wouldn't mind _me_. Lillie always was the most
imprudent creature; and, if she goes on so, she'll certainly get
awfully talked about. That Danforth is a horrid creature; I know all
about him."

As Miss Belle had herself been driving with the "horrid creature"
only the week before Lillie came, it must be confessed that her
opportunities for observation were of an authentic kind.

Lillie, as queen in her own parlor, was all grace and indulgence. Hers
was now to be the sisterly _r�le_, or, as she laughingly styled it,
the maternal. With a ravishing morning-dress, and with a killing
little cap of about three inches in extent on her head, she enacted
the young matron, and gave full permission to Tom, Dick, and Harry to
make themselves at home in her room, and smoke their cigars there in
peace. She "adored the smell;" in fact, she accepted the present of
a fancy box of cigarettes from Danforth with graciousness, and would
sometimes smoke one purely for good company. She also encouraged her
followers to unveil the tender secrets of their souls confidentially
to her, and offered gracious mediations on their behalf with any of
the flitting Newport fair ones. When they, as in duty bound, said that
they saw nobody whom they cared about now she was married, that she
was the only woman on earth for them,--she rapped their knuckles
briskly with her fan, and bid them mind their manners. All this mode
of proceeding gave her an immense success.

But, as we said before, all this was talked about; and ladies in their
letters, chronicling the events of the passing hour, sent the tidings
up and down the country; and so Miss Letitia Ferguson got a letter
from Mrs. Wilcox with full pictures and comments; and she brought the
same to Grace Seymour.

"I dare say," said Letitia, "these things have been exaggerated; they
always are: still it does seem desirable that your brother should go
there, and be with her."

"He can't go and be with her," said Grace, "without neglecting his
business, already too much neglected. Then the house is all in
confusion under the hands of painters; and there is that young artist
up there,--very elegant gentleman,--giving orders to right and left,
every one of which involves further confusion and deeper expense; for
my part, I see no end to it. Poor John has got 'the Old Man of the
Sea' on his back in the shape of this woman; and I expect she'll be
the ruin of him yet. I can't want to break up his illusion about her;
because, what good will it do? He has married her, and must live with
her; and, for Heaven's sake, let the illusion last while it can! I'm
going to draw off, and leave them to each other; there's no other
way."

"You are, Gracie?"

"Yes; you see John came to me, all stammering and embarrassment, about
this making over of the old place; but I put him at ease at once. 'The
most natural thing in the world, John,' said I. 'Of course Lillie has
her taste; and it's her right to have the house arranged to suit it.'
And then I proposed to take all the old family things, and furnish
the house that I own on Elm Street, and live there, and let John and
Lillie keep house by themselves. You see there is no helping the
thing. Married people must be left to themselves; nobody can help
them. They must make their own discoveries, fight their own battles,
sink or swim, together; and I have determined that not by the winking
of an eye will I interfere between them."

"Well, but do you think John wants you to go?"

"He feels badly about it; and yet I have convinced him that it's best.
Poor fellow! all these changes are not a bit to his taste. He liked
the old place as it was, and the old ways; but John is so unselfish.
He has got it in his head that Lillie is very sensitive and peculiar,
and that her spirits require all these changes, as well as Newport
air."

"Well," said Letitia, "if a man begins to say A in that line, he must
say B."

"Of course," said Grace; "and also C and D, and so on, down to X,
Y, Z. A woman, armed with sick-headaches, nervousness, debility,
presentiments, fears, horrors, and all sorts of imaginary and real
diseases, has an eternal armory of weapons of subjugation. What can a
man do? Can he tell her that she is lying and shamming? Half the time
she isn't; she can actually work herself into about any physical state
she chooses. The fortnight before Lillie went to Newport, she really
looked pale, and ate next to nothing; and she managed admirably to
seem to be trying to keep up, and not to complain,--yet you see how
she can go on at Newport."

"It seems a pity John couldn't understand her."

"My dear, I wouldn't have him for the world. Whenever he does, he will
despise her; and then he will be wretched. For John is no hypocrite,
any more than I am. No, I earnestly pray that his soap-bubble may not
break."

"Well, then," said Letitia, "at least, he might go down to Newport for
a day or two; and his presence there might set some things right:
it might at least check reports. You might just suggest to him that
unfriendly things were being said."

"Well, I'll see what I can do," said Grace.

So, by a little feminine tact in suggestion, Grace despatched her
brother to spend a day or two in Newport.

His coming and presence interrupted the lounging hours in Lillie's
room; the introduction to "my husband" shortened the interviews. John
was courteous and affable; but he neither smoked nor drank, and there
was a mutual repulsion between him and many of Lillie's _habitu�s_.

"I say, Dan," said Bill Sanders to Danforth, as they were smoking on
one end of the veranda, "you are driven out of your lodgings since
Seymour came."

"No more than the rest of you," said Danforth.

"I don't know about that, Dan. I think _you_ might have been taken for
master of those premises. Look here now, Dan, why didn't you _take_
little Lill yourself? Everybody thought you were going to last year."

"Didn't want her; knew too much," said Danforth. "Didn't want to keep
her; she's too cursedly extravagant. It's jolly to have this sort of
concern on hand; but I'd rather Seymour'd pay her bills than I."

"Who thought you were so practical, Dan?"

"Practical! that I am; I'm an old bird. Take my advice, boys, now:
keep shy of the girls, and flirt with the married ones,--then you
don't get roped in."

"I say, boys," said Tom Nichols, "isn't she a case, now? What a head
she has! I bet she can smoke equal to any of us."

"Yes; I keep her in cigarettes," said Danforth; "she's got a box of
them somewhere under her ruffles now."

"What if Seymour should find them?" said Tom.

"Seymour? pooh! he's a muff and a prig. I bet you he won't find her
out; she's the jolliest little humbugger there is going. She'd cheat a
fellow out of the sight of his eyes. It's perfectly wonderful."

"How came Seymour to marry her?"

"He? Why, he's a pious youth, green as grass itself; and I suppose she
talked religion to him. Did you ever hear her talk religion?"

A roar of laughter followed this, out of which Danforth went on. "By
George, boys, she gave me a prayer-book once! I've got it yet."

"Well, if that isn't the best thing I ever heard!" said Nichols.

"It was at the time she was laying siege to me, you see. She undertook
the part of guardian angel, and used to talk lots of sentiment.
The girls get lots of that out of George Sand's novels about the
_holiness_ of doing just as you've a mind to, and all that," said
Danforth.

"By George, Dan, you oughtn't to laugh. She may have more good in her
than you think."

"Oh, humbug! don't I know her?"

"Well, at any rate she's a wonderful creature to hold her looks. By
George! how she _does_ hold out! You'd say, now, she wasn't more than
twenty."

"Yes; she understands getting herself up," said Danforth, "and touches
up her cheeks a bit now and then."

"She don't paint, though?"

"Don't paint! _Don't_ she? I'd like to know if she don't; but she does
it like an artist, like an old master, in fact."

"Or like a young mistress," said Tom, and then laughed at his own wit.

Now, it so happened that John was sitting at an open window above, and
heard occasional snatches of this conversation quite sufficient to
impress him disagreeably. He had not heard enough to know exactly what
had been said, but enough to feel that a set of coarse, low-minded men
were making quite free with the name and reputation of his Lillie; and
he was indignant.

"She is so pretty, so frank, and so impulsive," he said. "Such women
are always misconstrued. I'm resolved to caution her."

"Lillie," he said, "who is this Danforth?"

"Charlie Danforth--oh! he's a millionnaire that I refused. He was wild
about me,--is now, for that matter. He perfectly haunts my rooms, and
is always teasing me to ride with him."

"Well, Lillie, if I were you, I wouldn't have any thing to do with
him."

"John, I don't mean to, any more than I can help. I try to keep him
off all I can; but one doesn't want to be rude, you know."

"My darling," said John, "you little know the wickedness of the world,
and the cruel things that men will allow themselves to say of women
who are meaning no harm. You can't be too careful, Lillie."

"Oh! I am careful. Mamma is here, you know, all the while; and I never
receive except she is present."

John sat abstractedly fingering the various objects on the table; then
he opened a drawer in the same mechanical manner.

"Why, Lillie! what's this? what in the world are these?"

"O John! sure enough! well, there is something I was going to ask you
about. Danforth used always to be sending me things, you know, before
we were married,--flowers and confectionery, and one thing or other;
and, since I have been here now, he has done the same, and I really
didn't know what to do about it. You know I didn't want to quarrel
with him, or get his ill-will; he's a high-spirited fellow, and a man
one doesn't want for an enemy; so I have just passed it over easy as I
could."

"But, Lillie, a box of cigarettes!--of course, they can be of no use
to you."

"Of course: they are only a sort of curiosity that he imports from
Spain with his cigars."

"I've a great mind to send them back to him myself," said John.

"Oh, don't, John! why, how it would look! as if you were angry, or
thought he meant something wrong. No; I'll contrive a way to give 'em
back without offending him. I am up to all such little ways."

"Come, now," she added, "don't let's be cross just the little time you
have to stay with me. I do wish our house were not all torn up, so
that I could go home with you, and leave Newport and all its bothers
behind."

"Well, Lillie, you could go, and stay with me at Gracie's," said John,
brightening at this proposition.

"Dear Gracie,--so she has got a house all to herself; how I shall miss
her! but, really, John, I think she will be happier. Since you would
insist on revolutionizing our house, you know"--

"But, Lillie, it was to please you."

"Oh, I know it! but you know I begged you not to. Well, John, I don't
think I should like to go in and settle down on Grace; perhaps, as I
am here, and the sea-air and bathing strengthens me so, we may as well
put it through. I will come home as soon as the house is done."

"But perhaps you would want to go with me to New York to select the
furniture?"

"Oh, the artist does all that! Charlie Ferrola will give his orders to
Simon & Sauls, and they will do every thing up complete. It's the way
they all do--saves lots of trouble."

John went home, after three days spent in Newport, feeling that Lillie
was somehow an injured fair one, and that the envious world bore down
always on beauty and prosperity.

But incidentally he heard and overheard much that made him uneasy. He
heard her admired as a "bully" girl, a "fast one;" he heard of her
smoking, he overheard something about "painting."

The time was that John thought Lillie an embryo angel,--an angel a
little bewildered and gone astray, and with wings a trifle the worse
for the world's wear,--but essentially an angel of the same nature
with his own revered mother.

Gradually the mercury had been falling in the tube of his estimation.
He had given up the angel; and now to himself he called her "a silly
little pussy," but he did it with a smile. It was such a neat, white,
graceful pussy; and all his own pussy too, and purred and rubbed its
little head on no coat-sleeve but his,--of that he was certain. Only
a bit silly. She would still _fib_ a little, John feared, especially
when he looked back to the chapter about her age,--and then, perhaps,
about the cigarettes.

Well, she might, perhaps, in a wild, excited hour, have smoked _one
or two_, just for fun, and the thing had been exaggerated. She had
promised fairly to return those cigarettes,--he dared not say to
himself that he feared she would not. He kept saying to himself that
she would. It was necessary to say this often to make himself believe
it.

As to painting--well, John didn't like to ask her, because, what if
she shouldn't tell him the truth? And, if she did paint, was it so
great a sin, poor little thing? he would watch, and bring her out of
it. After all, when the house was all finished and arranged, and he
got her back from Newport, there would be a long, quiet, domestic
winter at Springdale; and they would get up their reading-circles, and
he would set her to improving her mind, and gradually the vision of
this empty, fashionable life would die out of her horizon, and she
would come into his ways of thinking and doing.

But, after all, John managed to be proud of her. When he read in the
columns of "The Herald" the account of the Splandangerous ball in
Newport, and of the entrancingly beautiful Mrs. J.S., who appeared in
a radiant dress of silvery gauze made _� la nuage_, &c., &c., John was
rather pleased than otherwise. Lillie danced till daylight,--it showed
that she must be getting back her strength,--and she was voted the
belle of the scene. Who wouldn't take the comfort that is to be got
in any thing? John owned this fashionable meteor,--why shouldn't he
rejoice in it?

Two years ago, had anybody told him that one day he should have a wife
that told fibs, and painted, and smoked cigarettes, and danced all
night at Newport, and yet that he should love her, and be proud
of her, he would have said, Is thy servant a dog? He was then a
considerate, thoughtful John, serious and careful in his life-plans;
and the wife that was to be his companion was something celestial.
But so it is. By degrees, we accommodate ourselves to the actual and
existing. To all intents and purposes, for us it is the inevitable.

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