Everybody went. Even Mrs. Lennox, when she had sufficiently swallowed her moral principles, sent in all haste to New York for an elegant spick and span new dress from Madame de Tullegig’s, expressly for the occasion. Was she to be outshone by unprincipled upstarts? Perish the thought! It was treason to the cause of virtue, and the standing order of society. Of course, the best thing to be done is to put certain people down, if you can; but, if you cannot do that, the next best thing is to outshine them in their own way. It may be very naughty for them to be so dressy and extravagant, and very absurd, improper, immoral, unnecessary, and in bad taste; but still, if you cannot help it, you may as well try to do the same, and do a little more of it. Mrs. Lennox was in a feverish state till all her trappings came from New York. The bill was something stunning; but, then, it was voted by the young people that she had never looked so splendidly in her life; and she comforted herself with marking out a certain sublime distance and reserve of manner to be observed towards Mrs. Seymour and the Follingsbees.
The young people, however, came home delighted. Tom, aged twenty-two, instructed his mother that Follingsbee was a brick, and a real jolly fellow; and he had accepted an invitation to go on a yachting cruise with him the next month. Jane Lennox, moreover, began besetting her mother to have certain details in their house rearranged, with an eye to the Seymour glorification.
“Now, Jane dear, that’s just the result of allowing you to visit in this flash, vulgar genteel society,” said the troubled mamma.
“Bless your heart, mamma, the world moves on, you know; and we must move with it a little, or be left behind. For my part, I’m perfectly ashamed of the way we let things go at our house. It really is not respectable. Now, I like Mrs. Follingsbee, for my part: she’s clever and amusing. It was fun to hear all about the balls at the Tuileries, and the opera and things in Paris. Mamma, when are we going to Paris?”
“Oh! I don’t know, my dear; you must ask your father. He is very unwilling to go abroad.”
“Papa is so slow and conservative in his notions!” said the young lady. “For my part, I cannot see what is the use of all this talk about the Follingsbees. He is good-natured and funny; and, I am sure, I think she’s a splendid woman: and, by the way, she gave me the address of lots of places in New York where we can get French things. Did you notice her lace? It is superb; and she told me where lace just like it could be bought one-third less than they sell at Stewart’s.”
Thus we see how the starting-out of an old, respectable family in any new ebullition of fancy and fashion is like a dandelion going to seed. You have not only the airy, fairy globe; but every feathery particle thereof bears a germ which will cause similar feather bubbles all over the country; and thus old, respectable grass-plots become, in time, half dandelion. It is to be observed that, in all questions of life and fashion, “the world and the flesh,” to say nothing of the third partner of that ancient firm, have us at decided advantage. It is easy to see the flash of jewelry, the dazzle of color, the rush and glitter of equipage, and to be dizzied by the babble and gayety of fashionable life; while it is not easy to see justice, patience, temperance, self-denial. These are things belonging to the invisible and the eternal, and to be seen with other eyes than those of the body.
Then, again, there is no one thing in all the items which go to make up fashionable extravagance, which, taken separately and by itself, is not in some point of view a good or pretty or desirable thing; and so, whenever the forces of invisible morality begin an encounter with the troops of fashion and folly, the world and the flesh, as we have just said, generally have the best of it.
It may be very shocking and dreadful to get money by cheating and lying; but when the money thus got is put into the forms of yachts, operas, pictures, statues, and splendid entertainments, of which you are freely offered a share if you will only cultivate the acquaintance of a sharper, will you not then begin to say, “Everybody is going, why not I? As to countenancing Dives, why he is countenanced; and my holding out does no good. What is the use of my sitting in my corner and sulking? Nobody minds me.” Thus Dives gains one after another to follow his chariot, and make up his court.
Our friend John, simply by being a loving, indulgent husband, had come into the position, in some measure, of demoralizing the public conscience, of bringing in luxury and extravagance, and countenancing people who really ought not to be countenanced. He had a sort of uneasy perception of this fact; yet, at each particular step, he seemed to himself to be doing no more than was right or reasonable. It was a fact that, through all Springdale, people were beginning to be uneasy and uncomfortable in houses that used to seem to them nice enough, and ashamed of a style of dress and entertainment and living that used to content them perfectly, simply because of the changes of style and living in the John-Seymour mansion.
Of old, the Seymour family had always been a bulwark on the side of a temperate self-restraint and reticence in worldly indulgence; of a kind that parents find most useful to strengthen their hands when children are urging them on to expenses beyond their means: for they could say, “The Seymours are richer than we are, and you see they don’t change their carpets, nor get new sofas, nor give extravagant parties; and they give simple, reasonable, quiet entertainments, and do not go into any modern follies.” So the Seymours kept up the Fergusons, and the Fergusons the Seymours; and the Wilcoxes and the Lennoxes encouraged each other in a style of quiet, reasonable living, saving money for charity, and time for reading and self-cultivation, and by moderation and simplicity keeping up the courage of less wealthy neighbors to hold their own with them.
The John-Seymour party, therefore, was like the bursting of a great dam, which floods a whole region. There was not a family who had not some trouble with the inundation, even where, like Rose and Letitia Ferguson, they swept it out merrily, and thought no more of it.
“It was all very pretty and pleasant, and I’m glad it went off so well,” said Rose Ferguson the next day; “but I have not the smallest desire to repeat any thing of the kind. We who live in the country, and have such a world of beautiful things around us every day, and so many charming engagements in riding, walking, and rambling, and so much to do, cannot afford to go into this sort of thing: we really have not time for it.”
“That pretty creature,” said Mrs. Ferguson, speaking of Lillie, “is really a charming object. I hope she will settle down now to domestic life. She will soon find better things to care for, I trust: a baby would be her best teacher. I am sure I hope she will have one.”
“A baby is mamma’s infallible recipe for strengthening the character,” said Rose, laughing.
“Well, as the saying is, they bring love with them,” said Mrs.
Ferguson; “and love always brings wisdom.”
CHAPTER XVII.
AFTER THE BATTLE.
“Well, Grace, the Follingsbees are gone at last, I am thankful to say,” said John, as he stretched himself out on the sofa in Grace’s parlor with a sigh of relief. “If ever I am caught in such a scrape again, I shall know it.”
“Yes, it is all well over,” said Grace.
“Over! I wish you would look at the bills. Why, Gracie! I had not the least idea, when I gave Lillie leave to get what she chose, what it would come to, with those people at her elbow, to put things into her head. I could not interfere, you know, after the thing was started; and I thought I would not spoil Lillie’s pleasure, especially as I had to stand firm in not allowing wine. It was well I did; for if wine had been given, and taken with the reckless freedom that all the rest was, it might have ended in a general riot.”
“As some of the great fashionable parties do, where young women get merry with champagne, and young men get drunk,” said Grace.
“Well,” said John, “I don’t exactly like the whole turn of the way things have been going at our house lately. I don’t like the influence of it on others. It is not in the line of the life I want to lead, and that we have all been trying to lead.”<
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“Well,” said Gracie, “things will be settled now quietly, I hope.”
“I say,” said John, “could not we start our little reading sociables, that were so pleasant last year? You know we want to keep some little pleasant thing going, and draw Lillie in with us. When a girl has been used to lively society, she can’t come down to mere nothing; and I am afraid she will be wanting to rush off to New York, and visit the Follingsbees.”
“Well,” said Grace, “Letitia and Rose were speaking the other day of that, and wanting to begin. You know we were to read Froude together, as soon as the evenings got a little longer.”
“Oh, yes! that will be capital,” said John.
“Do you think Lillie will be interested in Froude?” asked Grace.
“I really can’t say,” said John, with some doubting of heart; “perhaps it would be well to begin with something a little lighter at first.”
“Any thing you please, John. What shall it be?”
“But I don’t want to hold you all back on my account,” said John.
“Well, then again, John, there’s our old study-club. The Fergusons and
Mr. Mathews were talking it over the other night, and wondering when
you would be ready to join us. We were going to take up Lecky’s
‘History of Morals,’ and have our sessions Tuesday evenings, — one
Tuesday at their house, and the other at mine, you know.”
“I should enjoy that, of all things,” said John; “but I know it is of no use to ask Lillie: it would only be the most dreadful bore to her.”
“And you couldn’t come without her, of course,” said Grace.
“Of course not; that would be too cruel, to leave the poor little thing at home alone.”
“Lillie strikes me as being naturally clever,” said Grace; “if she only would bring her mind to enter into your tastes a little, I’m sure you would find her capable.”
“But, Gracie, you’ve no conception how very different her sphere of thought is, how entirely out of the line of our ways of thinking. I’ll tell you,” said John, “don’t wait for me. You have your Tuesdays, and go on with your Lecky; and I will keep a copy at home, and read up with you. And I will bring Lillie in the evening, after the reading is over; and we will have a little music and lively talk, and a dance or charade, you know: then perhaps her mind will wake up by degrees.”
SCENE. — After tea in the Seymour parlor. John at a table, reading. Lillie in a corner, embroidering.
Lillie. “Look here, John, I want to ask you something.”
John, — putting down his book, and crossing to her, “Well, dear?”
Lillie. “There, would you make a green leaf there, or a brown one?”
John, — endeavoring to look wise, “Well, a brown one.”
Lillie. “That’s just like you, John; now, don’t you see that a brown one would just spoil the effect?”
“Oh! would it?” said John, innocently. “Well, what did you ask me for?”
“Why, you tiresome creature! I wanted you to say something. What are you sitting moping over a book for? You don’t entertain me a bit.”
“Dear Lillie, I have been talking about every thing I could think of,” said John, apologetically.
“Well, I want you to keep on talking, and put up that great heavy book. What is it, any way?”
“Lecky’s ‘History of Morals,’” said John.
“How dreadful! do you really mean to read it?”
“Certainly; we are all reading it.”
“Who all?”
“Why, Gracie, and Letitia and Rose Ferguson.”
“Rose Ferguson? I don’t believe it. Why, Rose isn’t twenty yet! She cannot care about such stuff.”
“She does care, and enjoys it too,” said John, eagerly.
“It is a pity, then, you didn’t get her for a wife instead of me,” said Lillie, in a tone of pique.
Now, this sort of thing does well enough occasionally, said by a pretty woman, perfectly sure of her ground, in the early days of the honey-moon; but for steady domestic diet is not to be recommended. Husbands get tired of swearing allegiance over and over; and John returned to his book quietly, without reply. He did not like the suggestion; and he thought that it was in very poor taste. Lillie embroidered in silence a few minutes, and then threw down her work pettishly.
“How close this room is!”
John read on.
“John, do open the door!”
John rose, opened the door, and returned to his book.
“Now, there’s that draft from the hall-window. John, you’ll have to shut the door.”
John shut it, and read on.
“Oh, dear me!” said Lillie, throwing herself down with a portentous yawn. “I do think this is dreadful!”
“What is dreadful?” said John, looking up.
“It is dreadful to be buried alive here in this gloomy town of Springdale, where there is nothing to see, and nowhere to go, and nothing going on.”
“We have always flattered ourselves that Springdale was a most attractive place,” said John. “I don’t know of any place where there are more beautiful walks and rambles.”
“But I detest walking in the country. What is there to see? And you get your shoes muddy, and burrs on your clothes, and don’t meet a creature! I got so tired the other day when Grace and Rose Ferguson would drag me off to what they call ‘the glen.’ They kept oh-ing and ah-ing and exclaiming to each other about some stupid thing every step of the way, — old pokey nutgalls, bare twigs of trees, and red and yellow leaves, and ferns! I do wish you could have seen the armful of trash that those two girls carried into their respective houses. I would not have such stuff in mine for any thing. I am tired of all this talk about Nature. I am free to confess that I don’t like Nature, and do like art; and I wish we only lived in New York, where there is something to amuse one.”
“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 man in 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 spirt 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 poute
d 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.”
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 363
