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
a 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!”
“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.”