_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 _fête_ 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 _à 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 _fête_ 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!”
[Illustration: “Oh, me! it makes my head ache to think of it.”]
“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 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.”