Pink and White Tyranny: Chapter 13

Chapter 13

JOHN'S BIRTHDAY.

"My dear Lillie," quoth John one morning, "next week Wednesday is my
birthday."

"Is it? How charming! What shall we do?"

"Well, Lillie, it has always been our custom--Grace's and mine--to
give a grand _f�te_ here to all our work-people. We invite them all
over _en masse_, and have the house and grounds all open, and devote
ourselves to giving them a good time."

Lillie's countenance fell.

"Now, really, John, how trying! what shall we do? You don't really
propose to bring all those low, dirty, little factory children in
Spindlewood through our elegant new house? Just look at that satin
furniture, and think what it will be when a whole parcel of freckled,
tow-headed, snubby-nosed children have eaten bread and butter and
doughnuts over it! Now, John, there is reason in all things; _this_
house is not made for a missionary asylum."

John, thus admonished, looked at his house, and was fain to admit that
there was the usual amount of that good, selfish, hard grit--called
common sense--in Lillie's remarks.

Rooms have their atmosphere, their necessities, their artistic
proprieties. Apartments _� la_ Louis Quatorze represent the ideas
and the sympathies of a period when the rich lived by themselves in
luxury, and the poor were trodden down in the gutter; when there was
only aristocratic contempt and domination on one side, and servility
and smothered curses on the other. With the change of the apartments
to the style of that past era, seemed to come its maxims and morals,
as artistically indicated for its completeness. So John walked up and
down in his Louis Quinze _salon_, and into his Pompadour _boudoir_,
and out again into the Louis Quatorze dining-rooms, and reflected.
He had had many reflections in those apartments before. Of all
ill-adapted and unsuitable pieces of furniture in them, he had always
felt himself the most unsuitable and ill-adapted. He had never felt
at home in them. He never felt like lolling at ease on any of those
elegant sofas, as of old he used to cast himself into the motherly
arms of the great chintz one that filled the recess. His Lillie, with
her smart paraphernalia of hoops and puffs and ruffles and pinkings
and bows, seemed a perfectly natural and indigenous production there;
but he himself seemed always to be out of place. His Lillie might have
been any of Balzac's charming duchesses, with their "thirty-seven
thousand ways of saying 'Yes;'" but, as to himself, he must have been
taken for her steward or gardener, who had accidentally strayed in,
and was fraying her satin surroundings with rough coats and heavy
boots. There was not, in fact, in all the reorganized house, a place
where he felt _himself_ to be at all the proper thing; nowhere
where he could lounge, and read his newspaper, without a feeling
of impropriety; nowhere that he could indulge in any of the slight
Hottentot-isms wherein unrenewed male nature delights,--without a
feeling of rebuke.

John had not philosophized on the causes of this. He knew, in a
general and unconfessed way, that he was not comfortable in his new
arrangements; but he supposed it was his own fault. He had fallen into
rusty, old-fashioned, bachelor ways; and, like other things that are
not agreeable to the natural man, he supposed his trim, resplendent,
genteel house was good for him, and that he ought to like it, and by
grace should attain to liking it, if he only tried long enough.

Only he took long rests every day while he went to Grace's, on Elm
Street, and stretched himself on the old sofa, and sat in his mother's
old arm-chair, and told Grace how very elegant their house was, and
how much taste the architect had shown, and how much Lillie was
delighted with it.

But this silent walk of John's, up and down his brilliant apartments,
opened his eyes to another troublesome prospect. He was a Christian
man, with a high aim and ideal in life. He believed in the Sermon on
the Mount, and other radical preaching of that nature; and he was
a very honest man, and hated humbug in every shape. Nothing seemed
meaner to him than to profess a sham. But it began in a cloudy way to
appear to him that there is a manner of arranging one's houses that
makes it difficult--yes, well-nigh impossible--to act out in them any
of the brotherhood principles of those discourses.

There are houses where the self-respecting poor, or the honest
laboring man and woman, cannot be made to enter or to feel at home.
They are made for the selfish luxury of the privileged few. Then John
reflected, uneasily, that this change in his house had absorbed that
whole balance which usually remained on his accounts to be devoted to
benevolent purposes, and with which this year he had proposed to erect
a reading-room for his work-people.

"Lillie," said John, as he walked uneasily up and down, "I wish you
would try to help me in this thing. I always have done it,--my father
and mother did it before me,--and I don't want all of a sudden to
depart from it. It may seem a little thing, but it does a great deal
of good. It produces kind feeling; it refines and educates and softens
them."

"Oh, well, John! if you say so, I must, I suppose," said Lillie, with
a sigh. "I can have the carpets and furniture all covered, I suppose;
it'll be no end of trouble, but I'll try. But I must say, I think all
this kind of petting of the working-classes does no sort of good; it
only makes them uppish and exacting: you never get any gratitude for
it."

"But you know, dearie, what is said about doing good, 'hoping for
nothing again,'" said John.

"Now, John, please don't preach, of all things. Haven't I told
you that I'll try my best? I am going to,--I'll work with all my
strength,--you know that isn't much,--but I shall exert myself to the
utmost if you say so."

"My dear, I don't want you to injure yourself!"

"Oh! I don't mind," said Lillie, with the air of a martyr. "The
servants, I suppose, will make a fuss about it; and I shouldn't wonder
if it was the means of sending them every one off in a body, and
leaving me without any help in the house, just as the Follingsbees and
the Simpkinses are coming to visit us."

"I didn't know that you had invited the Follingsbees and Simpkinses,"
said John.

"Didn't I tell you? I meant to," said Mrs. Lillie, innocently.

"I don't like those Follingsbees, Lillie. He is a man I have no
respect for; he is one of those shoddy upstarts, not at all our sort
of folks. I'm sorry you asked him."

"But his wife is my particular friend," said Lillie, "and they were
very polite to mamma and me at Newport; and we really owe them some
attention."

"Well, Lillie, since you have asked them, I will be polite to
them; and I will try and do every thing to save you care in this
entertainment. I'll speak to Bridget myself; she knows our ways, and
has been used to managing."

And so, as John was greatly beloved by Bridget, and as all the
domestic staff had the true Irish fealty to the man of the house, and
would run themselves off their feet in his service any day,--it came
to pass that the _f�te_ was holden, as of yore, in the grounds. Grace
was there and helped, and so were Letitia and Rose Ferguson; and all
passed off better than could be expected. But John did not enjoy it.
He felt all the while that he was dragging Lillie as a thousand-pound
weight after him; and he inly resolved that, once out of that day's
festival, he would never try to have it again.

Lillie went to bed with sick headache, and lay two days after it,
during which she cried and lamented incessantly. She "knew she was not
the wife for John;" she "always told him he wouldn't be satisfied with
her, and now she saw he wasn't; but she had tried her very best, and
now it was cruel to think she should not succeed any better."

"My dearest child," said John, who, to say the truth, was beginning to
find this thing less charming than it used to be, "I _am_ satisfied.
I am much obliged to you. I'm sure you have done all that could be
asked."

"Well, I'm sure I hope those folks of yours were pleased," quoth
Lillie, as she lay looking like a martyr, with a cloth wet in
ice-water bound round her head. "They ought to be; they have left
grease-spots all over the sofa in my boudoir, from one end to the
other; and cake and raisins have been trodden into the carpets; and
the turf around the oval is all cut up; and they have broken my little
Diana; and such a din as there was!--oh, me! it makes my head ache to
think of it."

"Never mind, Lillie, I'll see to it, and set it all right."

"No, you can't. One of the children broke that model of the Leaning
Tower too. I found it. You can't teach such children to let things
alone. Oh, dear me! my head!"

"There, there, pussy! only don't worry," said John, in soothing tones.

"Don't think me horrid, _please_ don't," said Lillie, piteously. "I
did try to have things go right; didn't I?"

"Certainly you did, dearie; so don't worry. I'll get all the spots
taken out, and all the things mended, and make every thing right."

So John called Rosa, on his way downstairs. "Show me the sofa that
they spoiled," said he.

"Sofa?" said Rosa.

"Yes; I understand the children greased the sofa in Mrs. Seymour's
boudoir."

"Oh, dear, no! nothing of the sort; I've been putting every thing to
rights in all the rooms, and they look beautifully."

"Didn't they break something?"

"Oh, no, nothing! The little things were good as could be."

"That Leaning Tower, and that little Diana," suggested John.

"Oh, dear me, no! I broke those a month ago, and showed them to Mrs.
Seymour, and promised to mend them. Oh! she knows all about that."

"Ah!" said John, "I didn't know that. Well, Rosa, put every thing up
nicely, and divide this money among the girls for extra trouble," he
added, slipping a bill into her hand.

"I'm sure there's no trouble," said Rosa. "We all enjoyed it; and
I believe everybody did; only I'm sorry it was too much for Mrs.
Seymour; she is very delicate."

"Yes, she is," said John, as he turned away, drawing a long, slow
sigh.

That long, slow sigh had become a frequent and unconscious occurrence
with him of late. When our ideals are sick unto death; when they are
slowly dying and passing away from us, we sigh thus. John said to
himself softly,--no matter what; but he felt the pang of knowing again
what he had known so often of late, that his Lillie's word was not
golden. What she said would not bear close examination. Therefore, why
examine?

"Evidently, she is determined that this thing shall not go on," said
John. "Well, I shall never try again; it's of no use;" and John went
up to his sister's, and threw himself down upon the old chintz sofa as
if it had been his mother's bosom. His sister sat there, sewing. The
sun came twinkling through a rustic frame-work of ivy which it had
been the pride of her heart to arrange the week before. All the old
family pictures and heirlooms, and sketches and pencillings, were
arranged in the most charming way, so that her rooms seemed a
reproduction of the old home.

"Hang it all!" said John, with a great flounce as he turned over on
the sofa. "I'm not up to par this morning."

Now, Grace had that perfect intuitive knowledge of just what the
matter was with her brother, that women always have who have grown up
in intimacy with a man. These fine female eyes see farther between
the rough cracks and ridges of the oak bark of manhood than men
themselves. Nothing would have been easier, had Grace been a jealous
_exigeante_ woman, than to have passed a fine probe of sisterly
inquiry into the weak places where the ties between John and Lillie
were growing slack, and untied and loosened them more and more.
She could have done it so tenderly, so conscientiously, so
pityingly,--encouraging John to talk and to complain, and taking part
with him,--till there should come to be two parties in the family, the
brother and sister against the wife.

How strong the temptation was, those may feel who reflect that this
one subject caused an almost total eclipse of the life-long habit of
confidence which had existed between Grace and her brother, and that
her brother was her life and her world.

But Grace was one of those women formed under the kindly severe
discipline of Puritan New England, to act not from blind impulse or
instinct, but from high principle. The habit of self-examination and
self-inspection, for which the religious teaching of New England has
been peculiar, produced a race of women who rose superior to those
mere feminine caprices and impulses which often hurry very generous
and kindly-natured persons into ungenerous and dishonorable conduct.
Grace had been trained, by a father and mother whose marriage union
was an ideal of mutual love, honor, and respect, to feel that marriage
was the holiest and most awful of obligations. To her, the idea of
a husband or a wife betraying each other's weaknesses or faults by
complaints to a third party seemed something sacrilegious; and she
used all her womanly tact and skill to prevent any conversation that
might lead to such a result.

"Lillie is entirely knocked up by the affair yesterday; she had a
terrible headache this morning," said John.

"Poor child! She is a delicate little thing," said Grace.

"She couldn't have had any labor," continued John, "for I saw to every
thing and provided every thing myself; and Bridget and Rosa and all
the girls entered into it with real spirit, and Lillie did the best
she could, poor girl! but I could see all the time she was worrying
about her new fizgigs and folderols in the house. Hang it! I wish they
were all in the Red Sea!" burst out John, glad to find something to
vent himself upon. "If I had known that making the house over was
going to be such a restraint on a fellow, I would never have done it."

"Oh, well! never mind that now," said Grace. "Your house will get
rubbed down by and by, and the new gloss taken off; and so will
your wife, and you will all be cosey and easy as an old shoe. Young
mistresses, you see, have nerves all over their house at first. They
tremble at every dent in their furniture, and wink when you come near
it, as if you were going to hit it a blow; but that wears off in time,
and they learn to take it easy."

John looked relieved; but after a minute broke out again:--

"I say, Gracie, Lillie has gone and invited the Simpkinses and the
Follingsbees here this fall. Just think of it!"

"Well, I suppose you expect your wife to have the right of inviting
her company," said Grace.

"But, you know, Gracie, they are not at all our sort of folks," said
John. "None of our set would ever think of visiting them, and it'll
seem so odd to see them here. Follingsbee is a vulgar sharper, who has
made his money out of our country by dishonest contracts during the
war. I don't know much about his wife. Lillie says she is her intimate
friend."

"Oh, well, John! we must get over it in the quietest way possible. It
wouldn't be handsome not to make the agreeable to your wife's company;
and if you don't like the quality of it, why, you are a good deal
nearer to her than any one else can be,--you can gradually detach her
from them."

"Then you think I ought to put a good face on their coming?" said
John, with a sigh of relief.

"Oh, certainly! of course. What else can you do? It's one of the
things to be expected with a young wife."

"And do you think the Wilcoxes and the Fergusons and the rest of our
set will be civil?"

"Why, of course they will," said Grace. "Rose and Letitia will,
certainly; and the others will follow suit. After all, John, perhaps
we old families, as we call ourselves, are a little bit pharisaical
and self-righteous, and too apt to thank God that we are not as other
men are. It'll do us good to be obliged to come a little out of our
crinkles."

"It isn't any old family feeling about Follingsbee," said John. "But
I feel that that man deserves to be in State's prison much more than
many a poor dog that is there now."

"And that may be true of many another, even in the selectest circles
of good society," said Grace; "but we are not called on to play
Providence, nor pronounce judgments. The common courtesies of life do
not commit us one way or the other. The Lord himself does not express
his opinion of the wicked, but allows all an equal share in his
kindliness."

"Well, Gracie, you are right; and I'll constrain myself to do the
thing handsomely," said John.

"The thing with you men," said Grace, "is, that you want your wives to
see with your eyes, all in a minute, what has got to come with years
and intimacy, and the gradual growing closer and closer together.
The husband and wife, of themselves, drop many friendships and
associations that at first were mutually distasteful, simply because
their tastes have grown insensibly to be the same."

John hoped it would be so with himself and Lillie; for he was still
very much in love with her; and it comforted him to have Grace speak
so cheerfully, as if it were possible.

"You think Lillie will grow into our ways by and by?"--he said
inquiringly.

"Well, if we have patience, and give her time. You know, John, that
you knew when you took her that she had not been brought up in our
ways of living and thinking. Lillie comes from an entirely different
set of people from any we are accustomed to; but a man must face all
the consequences of his marriage honestly and honorably."

"I know it," said John, with a sigh. "I say, Gracie, do you think the
Fergusons like Lillie? I want her to be intimate with them."

"Well, I think they admire her," said Grace, evasively, "and feel
disposed to be as intimate as she will let them."

"Because," said John, "Rose Ferguson is such a splendid girl; she is
so strong, and so generous, and so perfectly true and reliable,--it
would be the joy of my heart if Lillie would choose her for a friend."

"Then, pray don't tell her so," said Grace, earnestly; "and don't
praise her to Lillie,--and, above all things, never hold her up as a
pattern, unless you want your wife to hate her."

John opened his eyes very wide.

"So!" said he, slowly, "I never thought of that. You think she would
be jealous?" and John smiled, as men do at the idea that their wives
may be jealous, not disliking it on the whole.

"I know _I_ shouldn't be in much charity with a woman my husband
proposed to me as a model; that is to say, supposing I had one," said
Grace.

"That reminds me," said John, suddenly rising up from the sofa.
"Do you know, Gracie, that Colonel Sydenham has come back from his
cruise?"

"I had heard of it," said Grace, quietly. "Now, John, don't interrupt
me. I'm just going to turn this corner, and must count,--'one, two,
three, four, five, six,'"--

John looked at his sister. "How handsome she looks when her cheeks
have that color!" he thought. "I wonder if there ever was any thing in
that affair between them."

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