_A CRISIS._
ONE of the shrewdest and most subtle modern French writers has given
his views of womankind in the following passage:—
“There are few women who have not found themselves, at least
once in their lives, in regard to some incontestable fact,
faced down by precise, keen, searching inquiry,—one of those
questions pitilessly put by their husbands, the very idea
of which gives a slight chill, and the first word of which
enters the heart like a stroke of a dagger. Hence comes the
maxim, _Every woman lies_—obliging lies—venial lies—sublime
lies—horrible lies—but always the obligation of lying.
“This obligation once admitted, must it not be a necessity
to know how to lie well? In France, the women lie admirably.
Our customs instruct them so well in imposture. And woman is
so naïvely impertinent, so pretty, so graceful, so true, in
her lying! They so well understand its usefulness in social
life for avoiding those violent shocks which would destroy
happiness,—it is like the cotton in which they pack their
jewelry.
“Lying is to them the very foundation of language, and
truth is only the exception; they speak it, as they are
virtuous, from caprice or for a purpose. According to their
character, some women laugh when they lie, and some cry;
some become grave, and others get angry. Having begun life
by pretending perfect insensibility to that homage which
flatters them most, they often finish by lying even to
themselves. Who has not admired their apparent superiority
and calm, at the moment when they were trembling for the
mysterious treasures of their love? Who has not studied
their ease and facility, their presence of mind in the midst
of the most critical embarrassments of social life? There is
nothing awkward about it; their deception flows as softly as
the snow falls from heaven.
“Yet there are men that have the presumption to expect to
get the better of the Parisian woman!—of the woman who
possesses thirty-seven thousand ways of saying ‘No,’ and
incommensurable variations in saying ‘Yes.’”
This is a Frenchman’s view of life in a country where women are trained
more systematically for the mere purposes of attraction than in any
other country, and where the pursuit of admiration and the excitement
of winning lovers are represented by its authors as constituting the
main staple of woman’s existence. France, unfortunately, is becoming
the great society-teacher of the world. What with French theatres,
French operas, French novels, and the universal rush of American women
for travel, France is becoming so powerful on American fashionable
society, that the things said of the Parisian woman begin in some cases
to apply to some women in America.
Lillie was as precisely the woman here described as if she had been
born and bred in Paris. She had all the thirty-seven thousand ways
of saying “No,” and the incommensurable variations in saying “Yes,”
as completely as the best French teaching could have given it. She
possessed, and had used, all that graceful facility, in the story of
herself that she had told John in the days of courtship. Her power over
him was based on a dangerous foundation of unreality. Hence, during the
first few weeks of her wedded life, came a critical scene, in which she
was brought in collision with one of those “pitiless questions” our
author speaks of.
Her wedding-presents, manifold and brilliant, had remained at home, in
the charge of her mother, during the wedding-journey. One bright day,
a few weeks after her arrival in Springdale, the boxes containing the
treasures were landed there; and John, with all enthusiasm, busied
himself with the work of unpacking these boxes, and drawing forth the
treasures.
Now, it so happened that Lillie’s maternal grandfather, a nice, pious
old gentleman, had taken the occasion to make her the edifying and
suggestive present of a large, elegantly bound family Bible.
The binding was unexceptionable; and Lillie assigned it a proper place
of honor among her wedding-gear. Alas! she had not looked into it, nor
seen what dangers to her power were lodged between its leaves.
[Illustration: “He found the date of the birth of ‘Lillie Ellis.’”]
But John, who was curious in the matter of books, sat quietly down in
a corner to examine it; and on the middle page, under the head “Family
Record,” he found, in a large, bold hand, the date of the birth of
“Lillie Ellis” in figures of the most uncompromising plainness; and
thence, with one flash of his well-trained arithmetical sense, came the
perception that, instead of being twenty years old, she was in fact
twenty-seven,—and that of course she had lied to him.
It was a horrid and a hard word for an American young man to have
suggested in relation to his wife. If we may believe the French
romancer, a Frenchman would simply have smiled in amusement on
detecting this petty feminine _ruse_ of his beloved. But American men
are in the habit of expecting the truth from respectable women as a
matter of course; and the want of it in the smallest degree strikes
them as shocking. Only an Englishman or an American can understand the
dreadful pain of that discovery to John.
The Anglo-Saxon race have, so to speak, a worship of truth; and they
hate and abhor lying with an energy which leaves no power of tolerance.
The Celtic races have a certain sympathy with deception. They have a
certain appreciation of the value of lying as a fine art, which has
never been more skilfully shown than in the passage from De Balzac we
have quoted. The woman who is described by him as lying so sweetly and
skilfully is represented as one of those women “qui ont je ne sais quoi
de saint et de sacré, qui inspirent tant de respect que l’amour,”—“a
woman who has an indescribable something of holiness and purity which
inspires respect as well as love.” It was no detraction from the
character of Jesus, according to the estimate of Renan, to represent
him as consenting to a benevolent fraud, and seeming to work miracles
when he did not work them, by way of increasing his good influence over
the multitude.
But John was the offspring of a generation of men for hundreds of
years, who would any of them have gone to the stake rather than have
told the smallest untruth; and for him who had been watched and guarded
and catechised against this sin from his cradle, till he was as true
and pure as a crystal rock, to have his faith shattered in the woman
he loved, was a terrible thing.
As he read the fatal figures, a mist swam before his eyes,—a sort of
faintness came over him. It seemed for a moment as if his very life was
sinking down through his boots into the carpet. He threw down the book
hastily, and, turning, stepped through an open window into the garden,
and walked quickly off.
“Where in the world is John going?” said Lillie, running to the door,
and calling after him in imperative tones.
“John, John, come back. I haven’t done with you yet;” but John never
turned his head.
“How very odd! what in the world is the matter with him?” she said to
herself.
John was gone all the afternoon. He took a long, long walk, all by
himself, and thought the matter over. He remembered that fresh,
childlike, almost infantine face, that looked up into his with such a
bewitching air of frankness and candor, as she professed to be telling
all about herself and her history; and now which or what of it was
true? It seemed as if he loathed her; and yet he couldn’t help loving
her, while he despised himself for doing it.
When he came home to supper, he was silent and morose. Lillie came
running to meet him; but he threw her off, saying he was tired. She was
frightened; she had never seen him look like that.
“John, what is the matter with you?” said Grace at the tea-table. “You
are upsetting every thing, and don’t drink your tea.”
“Nothing—only—I have some troublesome business to settle,” he said,
getting up to go out again. “You needn’t wait for me; I shall be out
late.”
“What can be the matter?”
Lillie, indeed, had not the remotest idea. Yet she remembered his
jumping up suddenly, and throwing down the Bible; and mechanically she
went to it, and opened it. She turned it over; and the record met her
eye.
“Provoking!” she said. “Stupid old creature! must needs go and put that
out in full.” Lillie took a paper-folder, and cut the leaf out quite
neatly; then folded and burned it.
She knew now what was the matter. John was angry at her; but she
couldn’t help wondering that he should be so angry. If he had laughed
at her, teased her, taxed her with the trick, she would have understood
what to do. But this terrible gloom, this awful commotion of the
elements, frightened her.
She went to her room, saying that she had a headache, and would go
to bed. But she did not. She took her French novel, and read till
she heard him coming; and then she threw down her book, and began to
cry. He came into the room, and saw her leaning like a little white
snow-wreath over the table, sobbing as if her heart would break. To
do her justice, Lillie’s sobs were not affected. She was lonesome and
thoroughly frightened; and, when she heard him coming, her nerves gave
out. John’s heart yearned towards her. His short-lived anger had burned
out; and he was perfectly longing for a reconciliation. He felt as if
he must have her to love, no matter what she was. He came up to her,
and stroked her hair. “O Lillie!” he said, “why couldn’t you have told
me the truth? What made you deceive me?”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t like me if I did,” said Lillie, in her sobs.
“O Lillie! I should have liked you, no matter how old you were,—only
you should have told me _the truth_.”
“I know it—I know it—oh, it _was_ wrong of me!” and Lillie sobbed, and
seemed in danger of falling into convulsions; and John’s heart gave
out. He gathered her in his arms. “I can’t help loving you; and I can’t
live without you,” he said, “be you what you may!”
Lillie’s little heart beat with triumph under all her sobs: she had got
him, and should hold him yet.
“There can be no confidence between husband and wife, Lillie,” said
John, gravely, “unless we are perfectly true with each other. Promise
me, dear, that you will never deceive me again.”
Lillie promised with ready fervor. “O John!” she said, “I never should
have done so wrong if I had only come under your influence earlier. The
fact is, I have been under the worst influences all my life. I never
had anybody like you to guide me.”
John may of course be excused for feeling that his flattering little
penitent was more to him than ever; and as to Lillie, she gave a sigh
of relief. _That_ was over, “anyway;” and she had him not only safe,
but more completely hers than before.
A generous man is entirely unnerved by a frank confession. If Lillie
had said one word in defence, if she had raised the slightest shadow
of an argument, John would have roused up all his moral principle to
oppose her; but this poor little white water-sprite, dissolving in a
rain of penitent tears, quite washed away all his anger and all his
heroism.
The next morning, Lillie, all fresh in a ravishing toilet, with
field-daisies in her hair, was in a condition to laugh gently at John
for his emotion of yesterday. She triumphed softly, not too obviously,
in her power. He couldn’t do without her,—do what she might,—that was
plain.
“Now, John,” she said, “don’t you think we poor women are judged
rather hardly? Men, you know, tell all sorts of lies to carry on their
great politics and their ambition, and nobody thinks it so dreadful of
_them_.”
“I _do_—I should,” interposed John.
“Oh, well! _you_—you are an exception. It is not one man in a hundred
that is so good as you are. Now, we women have only one poor little
ambition,—to be pretty, to please you men; and, as soon as you know
we are getting old, you don’t like us. And can you think it’s so very
shocking if we don’t come square up to the dreadful truth about our
age? Youth and beauty is all there is to us, you know.”
“O Lillie! don’t say so,” said John, who felt the necessity of being
instructive, and of improving the occasion to elevate the moral tone of
his little elf. “Goodness lasts, my dear, when beauty fades.”
“Oh, nonsense! Now, John, don’t talk humbug. I’d like to see _you_
following goodness when beauty is gone. I’ve known lots of plain old
maids that were perfect saints and angels; and yet men crowded and
jostled by them to get the pretty sinners. I dare say now,” she added,
with a bewitching look over her shoulder at him, “you’d rather have me
than Miss Almira Carraway,—hadn’t you, now?”
And Lillie put her white arm round his neck, and her downy cheek to
his, and said archly, “Come, now, confess.”
Then John told her that she was a bad, naughty girl; and she laughed;
and, on the whole, the pair were more hilarious and loving than usual.
But yet, when John was away at his office, he thought of it again, and
found there was still a sore spot in his heart.
She had cheated him once; would she cheat him again? And she could
cheat so prettily, so serenely, and with such a candid face, it was a
dangerous talent.
No: she wasn’t like his mother, he thought with a sigh. The “je ne sais
quoi de saint et de sacré,” which had so captivated his imagination,
did not cover the saintly and sacred nature; it was a mere outward
purity of complexion and outline. And then Grace,—she must not be
left to find out what he knew about Lillie. He had told Grace that
she was only twenty,—told it on her authority; and now must he become
an accomplice? If called on to speak of his wife’s age, must he
accommodate the truth to her story, or must he palter and evade? Here
was another brick laid on the wall of separation between his sister
and himself. It was rising daily. Here was another subject on which he
could never speak frankly with Grace; for he must defend Lillie,—every
impulse of his heart rushed to protect her.
But it is a terrible truth, and one that it will not hurt any of us to
bear in mind, that our judgments of our friends are involuntary.
We may long with all our hearts to confide; we may be fascinated,
entangled, and wish to be blinded; but blind we cannot be. The friend
that has lied to us once, we may long to believe; but we cannot. Nay,
more; it is the worse for us, if, in our desire to hold the dear
deceiver in our hearts, we begin to chip and hammer on the great
foundations of right and honor, and to say within ourselves, “After
all, why be so particular?” Then, when we have searched about for
all the reasons and apologies and extenuations for wrong-doing, are
we sure that in our human weakness we shall not be pulling down the
moral barriers in ourselves? The habit of excusing evil, and finding
apologies, and wishing to stand with one who stands on a lower moral
plane, is not a wholesome one for the soul.
As fate would have it, the very next day after this little scene,
who should walk into the parlor where Lillie, John, and Grace were
sitting, but that terror of American democracy, the census-taker. Armed
with the whole power of the republic, this official steps with elegant
ease into the most sacred privacies of the family. Flutterings and
denials are in vain. Bridget and Katy and Anne, no less than Seraphina
and Isabella, must give up the critical secrets of their lives.
John took the paper into the kitchen. Honest old Bridget gave in her
age with effrontery as “twinty-five.” Anne giggled and flounced, and
declared on her word she didn’t know,—they could put it down as they
liked. “But, Anne, you _must_ tell, or you may be sent to jail, you
know.”
Anne giggled still harder, and tossed her head: “Then it’s to jail I’ll
have to go; for I don’t know.”
“Dear me,” said Lillie, with an air of edifying candor, “what a fuss
they make! Set down my age ‘twenty-seven,’ John,” she added.
Grace started, and looked at John; he met her eye, and blushed to the
roots of his hair.
“Why, what’s the matter?” said Lillie, “are you embarrassed at telling
your age?”
“Oh, nothing!” said John, writing down the numbers hastily; and then,
finding a sudden occasion to give directions in the garden, he darted
out. “It’s so silly to be ashamed of our age!” said Lillie, as the
census-taker withdrew.
“Of course,” said Grace; and she had the humanity never to allude to
the subject with her brother.