Pink and White Tyranny

CHAPTER XIV

“NOW, John dear, I have something very particular that I want you to promise me,” said Mrs. Lillie, a day or two after the scenes last recorded. Our Lillie had recovered her spirits, and got over her headache, and had come down and done her best to be delightful; and when a very pretty woman, who has all her life studied the art of pleasing, does that, she generally succeeds.

John thought to himself he “didn’t care what she was, he loved her;” and that she certainly was the prettiest, most bewitching little creature on earth. He flung his sighs and his doubts and fears to the wind, and suffered himself to be coaxed, and cajoled, and led captive, in the most amiable manner possible.

His fair one had a point to carry,—a point that instinct told her was to be managed with great adroitness.

“Well,” said John, over his newspaper, “what is this something so very particular?”

“First, sir, put down that paper, and listen to me,” said Mrs. Lillie, coming up and seating herself on his knee, and sweeping down the offending paper with an air of authority.

“Yes’m,” said John, submissively. “Let’s see,—how was that in the marriage service? I promised to obey, didn’t I?”

“Of course you did; that service is always interpreted by contraries,—ever since Eve made Adam mind her in the beginning,” said Mrs. Lillie, laughing.

“And got things into a pretty mess in that way,” said John; “but come, now, what is it?”

“Well, John, you know the Follingsbees are coming next week?”

“I know it,” said John, looking amiable and conciliatory.

“Well, dear, there are some things about our establishment that are not just as I should feel pleased to receive them to.”

“Ah!” said John; “why, Lillie, I thought we were fine as a fiddle, from the top of the house to the bottom.”

“Oh! it’s not the house; the house is splendid. I shouldn’t be in the least ashamed to show it to anybody; but about the table arrangements.”

“Now, really, Lillie, what can one have more than real old china and heavy silver plate? I rather pique myself on that; I think it has quite a good, rich, solid old air.”

“Well, John, to say the truth, why do we never have any wine? I don’t care for it,—I never drink it; but the decanters, and the different colored glasses, and all the apparatus, are such an adornment; and then the Follingsbees are such judges of wine. He imports his own from Spain.”

John’s face had been hardening down into a firm, decided look, while Lillie, stroking his whiskers and playing with his collar, went on with this address.

At last he said, “Lillie, I have done almost every thing you ever asked; but this one thing I cannot do,—it is a matter of principle. I never drink wine, never have it on my table, never give it, because I have pledged myself not to do it.”

“Now, John, here is some more of your Quixotism, isn’t it?”

“Well, Lillie, I suppose you will call it so,” said John; “but listen to me patiently. My father and I labored for a long time to root out drinking from our village at Spindlewood. It seemed, for the time, as if it would be the destruction of every thing there. The fact was, there was rum in every family; the parents took it daily, the children learned to love and long after it, by seeing the parents, and drinking little sweetened remains at the bottoms of tumblers. There were, every year, families broken up and destroyed, and fine fellows going to the very devil, with this thing; and so we made a movement to form a temperance society. I paid lecturers, and finally lectured myself. At last they said to me: ‘It’s all very well for you rich people, that have twice as fine houses and twice as many pleasures as we poor folks, to pick on us for having a little something comfortable to drink in our houses. If we could afford your fine nice wines, and all that, we wouldn’t drink whiskey. You must all have your wine on the table; whiskey is the poor man’s wine.’”

“I think,” said Lillie, “they were abominably impertinent to talk so to you. I should have told them so.”

“Perhaps they thought I was impertinent in talking to them about their private affairs,” said John; “but I will tell you what I said to them. I said, ‘My good fellows, I will clear my house and table of wine, if you will clear yours of rum.’ On this agreement I formed a temperance society; my father and I put our names at the head of the list, and we got every man and boy in Spindlewood. It was a complete victory; and, since then, there hasn’t been a more temperate, thrifty set of people in these United States.”

“Didn’t your mother object?”

“My mother! no, indeed; I wish you could have known my mother. It was no small sacrifice to her and father. Not that they cared a penny for the wine itself; but the poetry and hospitality of the thing, the fine old cheery associations connected with it, were a real sacrifice. But when we told my mother how it was, she never hesitated a moment. All our cellar of fine old wines was sent round as presents to hospitals, except a little that we keep for sickness.”

“Well, really!” said Lillie, in a dry, cool tone, “I suppose it was very good of you, perfectly saintlike and all that; but it does seem a great pity. Why couldn’t these people take care of themselves? I don’t see why you should go on denying yourself just to keep them in the ways of virtue.”

“Oh, it’s no self-denial now! I’m quite used to it,” said John, cheerily. “I am young and strong, and just as well as I can be, and don’t need wine; in fact, I never think of it. The Fergusons, who are with us in the Spindlewood business, took just the same view of it, and did just as we did; and the Wilcoxes joined us; in fact, all the good old families of our set came into it.”

“Well, couldn’t you, just while the Follingsbees are here, do differently?”

“No, Lillie; there’s my pledge, you see. No: it’s really impossible.”

Lillie frowned and looked disconsolate.

“John, I really do think you are selfish; you don’t seem to have any consideration for me at all. It’s going to make it so disagreeable and uncomfortable for me. The Follingsbees are accustomed to wine every day. I’m perfectly ashamed not to give it to them.”

“Do ’em good to fast awhile, then,” said John, laughing like a hard-hearted monster. “You’ll see they won’t suffer materially. Bridget makes splendid coffee.”

“It’s a shame to laugh at what troubles me, John. The Follingsbees are my friends, and of course I want to treat them handsomely.”

“We will treat them just as handsomely as we treat ourselves,” said John, “and mortal man or woman ought not to ask more.”

“I don’t care,” said Lillie, after a pause. “I hate all these moral movements and society questions. They are always in the way of people’s having a good time; and I believe the world would wag just as well as it does, if nobody had ever thought of them. People will call you a real muff, John.”

“How very terrible!” said John, laughing. “What shall I do if I am called a muff? and what a jolly little Mrs. Muff you will be!” he said, pinching her cheek.

“You needn’t laugh, John,” said Lillie, pouting. “You don’t know how things look in fashionable circles. The Follingsbees are in the very highest circle. They have lived in Paris, and been invited by the Emperor.”

“I haven’t much opinion of Americans who live in Paris and are invited by the Emperor,” said John. “But, be that as it may, I shall do the best I can for them, and Mr. Young says, ‘angels could no more;’ so, good-by, puss: I must go to my office; and don’t let’s talk about this any more.”

And John put on his cap and squared his broad shoulders, and, marching off with a resolute stride, went to his office, and had a most uncomfortable morning of it. You see, my dear friends, that though Nature has set the seal of sovereignty on man, in broad shoulders and bushy beard; though he fortify and incase himself in rough overcoats and heavy boots, and walk with a dashing air, and whistle like a freeman, we all know it is not an easy thing to wage a warfare with a pretty little creature in lace cap and tiny slippers, who has a faculty of looking very pensive and grieved, and making up a sad little mouth, as if her heart were breaking.

John never doubted that he was right, and in the way of duty; and yet, though he braved it out so stoutly with Lillie, and though he marched out from her presence victoriously, as it were, with drums beating and colors flying, yet there was a dismal sinking of heart under it.

“I’m right; I know I am. Of course I can’t give up here; it’s a matter of principle, of honor,” he said over and over to himself. “Perhaps if Lillie had been here I never should have taken such a pledge; but as I have, there’s no help for it.”

Then he thought of what Lillie had suggested about it’s looking niggardly in hospitality, and was angry with himself for feeling uncomfortable. “What do I care what Dick Follingsbee thinks?” said he to himself: “a man that I despise; a cheat, and a swindler,—a man of no principle. Lillie doesn’t know the sacrifice it is to me to have such people in my house at all. Hang it all! I wish Lillie was a little more like the women I’ve been used to,—like Grace and Rose and my mother. But, poor thing, I oughtn’t to blame her, after all, for her unfortunate bringing up. But it’s so nice to be with women that can understand the grounds you go on. A man never wants to fight a woman. I’d rather give up, hook and line, and let Lillie have her own way in every thing. But then it won’t do; a fellow must stop somewhere. Well, I’ll make it up in being a model of civility to these confounded people that I wish were in the Red Sea. Let’s see, I’ll ask Lillie if she don’t want to give a party for them when they come. By George! she shall have every thing her own way there,—send to New York for the supper, turn the house topsy-turvy, illuminate the grounds, and do any thing else she can think of. Yes, yes, she shall have carte blanche for every thing!”

All which John told Mrs. Lillie when he returned to dinner and found her enacting the depressed wife in a most becoming lace cap and wrapper that made her look like a suffering angel; and the treaty was sealed with many kisses.

“You shall have carte blanche, dearest,” he said, “for every thing but what we were speaking of; and that will content you, won’t it?”

And Lillie, with lingering pensiveness, very graciously acknowledged that it would; and seemed so touchingly resigned, and made such a merit of her resignation, that John told her she was an angel; in fact, he had a sort of indistinct remorseful feeling that he was a sort of cruel monster to deny her any thing. Lillie had sense enough to see when she could do a thing, and when she couldn’t. She had given up the case when John went out in the morning, and so accepted the treaty of peace with a good degree of cheerfulness; and she was soon busy discussing the matter. “You see, we’ve been invited everywhere, and haven’t given any thing,” she said; “and this will do up our social obligations to everybody here. And then we can show off our rooms; they really are made to give parties in.”

“Yes, so they are,” said John, delighted to see her smile again; “they seem adapted to that, and I don’t doubt you’ll make a brilliant affair of it, Lillie.”

“Trust me for that, John,” said Lillie. “I’ll show the Follingsbees that something can be done here in Springdale as well as in New York.” And so the great question was settled.

CHAPTER XV

NEXT week the Follingsbees alighted, so to speak, from a cloud of glory. They came in their own carriage, and with their own horses; all in silk and silver, purple and fine linen, “with rings on their fingers and bells on their toes,” as the old song has it. We pause to caution our readers that this last clause is to be interpreted metaphorically.

Springdale stood astonished. The quiet, respectable old town had not seen any thing like it for many a long day; the ostlers at the hotel talked of it; the boys followed the carriage, and hung on the slats of the fence to see the party alight, and said to one another in their artless vocabulary, “Golly! ain’t it bully?”

There was Mr. Dick Follingsbee, with a pair of waxed, tow-colored moustaches like the French emperor’s, and ever so much longer. He was a little, thin, light-colored man, with a yellow complexion and sandy hair; who, with the appendages aforesaid, looked like some kind of large insect, with very long antennæ. There was Mrs. Follingsbee,—a tall, handsome, dark-eyed, dark-haired, dashing woman, French dressed from the tip of her lace parasol to the toe of her boot. There was Mademoiselle Thérèse, the French maid, an inexpressibly fine lady; and there was la petite Marie, Mrs. Follingsbee’s three-year-old hopeful, a lean, bright-eyed little thing, with a great scarlet bow on her back that made her look like a walking butterfly. On the whole, the tableau of arrival was so impressive, that Bridget and Annie, Rosa and all the kitchen cabinet, were in a breathless state of excitement.

“How do I find you, ma chère?” said Mrs. Follingsbee, folding Lillie rapturously to her breast. “I’ve been just dying to see you! How lovely every thing looks! Oh, ciel! how like dear Paris!” she said, as she was conducted into the parlor, and sunk upon the sofa.

“Pretty well done, too, for America!” said Mr. Follingsbee, gazing round, and settling his collar. Mr. Follingsbee was one of the class of returned travellers who always speak condescendingly of any thing American; as, “so-so,” or “tolerable,” or “pretty fair,”—a considerateness which goes a long way towards keeping up the spirits of the country.

“I say, Dick,” said his lady, “have you seen to the bags and wraps?”

“All right, madam.”

“And my basket of medicines and the books?”

“O. K.,” replied Dick, sententiously.

“Oh! how often must I tell you not to use those odious slang terms?” said his wife, reprovingly.

“Oh! Mrs. John Seymour knows me of old,” said Mr. Follingsbee, winking facetiously at Lillie. “We’ve had many a jolly lark together; haven’t we, Lill?”

“Certainly we have,” said Lillie, affably. “But come, darling,” she added to Mrs. Follingsbee, “don’t you want to be shown your room?”

“Go it, then, my dearie; and I’ll toddle up with the fol-de-rols and what-you-may-calls,” said the incorrigible Dick. “There, wife, Mrs. John Seymour shall go first, so that you shan’t be jealous of her and me. You know we came pretty near being in interesting relations ourselves at one time; didn’t we, now?” he said with another wink.

It is said that a thorough-paced naturalist can reconstruct a whole animal from one specimen bone. In like manner, we imagine that, from these few words of dialogue, our expert readers can reconstruct Mr. and Mrs. Follingsbee: he, vulgar, shallow, sharp, keen at a bargain, and utterly without scruples; with a sort of hilarious, animal good nature that was in a state of constant ebullition. He was, as Richard Baxter said of a better man, “always in that state of hilarity that another would be in when he hath taken a cup too much.”

Dick Follingsbee began life as a peddler. He was now reputed to be master of untold wealth, kept a yacht and race-horses, ran his own theatre, and patronized the whole world and creation in general with a jocular freedom. Mrs. Follingsbee had been a country girl, with small early advantages, but considerable ambition. She had married Dick Follingsbee, and helped him up in the world, as a clever, ambitious woman may. The last few years she had been spending in Paris, improving her mind and manners in reading Dumas’ and Madame George Sand’s novels, and availing herself of such outskirt advantages of the court of the Tuileries as industrious, pains-taking Americans, not embarrassed by self-respect, may command.

Mrs. Follingsbee, like many another of our republicans who besieged the purlieus of the late empire, felt that a residence near the court, at a time when every thing good and decent in France was hiding in obscure corners, and every thing parvenu was wide awake and active, entitled her to speak as one having authority concerning French character, French manners and customs. This lady assumed the sentimental literary rôle. She was always cultivating herself in her own way; that is to say, she was assiduous in what she called keeping up her French.

In the opinion of many of her class of thinkers, French is the key of the kingdom of heaven; and, of course, it is worth one’s while to sell all that one has to be possessed of it. Mrs. Follingsbee had not been in the least backward to do this; but, as to getting the golden key, she had not succeeded. She had formed the acquaintance of many disreputable people; she had read French novels and French plays such as no well-bred French woman would suffer in her family; she had lost such innocence and purity of mind as she had to lose, and, after all, had not got the French language.

However, there are losses that do not trouble the subject of them, because they bring insensibility. Just as Mrs. Follingsbee’s ear was not delicate enough to perceive that her rapid and confident French was not Parisian, so also her conscience and moral sense were not delicate enough to know that she had spent her labor for “that which was not bread.” She had only succeeded in acquiring such an air that, on a careless survey, she might have been taken for one of the demi-monde of Paris; while secretly she imagined herself the fascinating heroine of a French romance.

The friendship between Mrs. Follingsbee and Lillie was of the most impassioned nature; though, as both of them were women of a good solid perception in regard to their own material interests, there were excellent reasons on both sides for this enthusiasm.

Notwithstanding the immense wealth of the Follingsbees, there were circles to which Mrs. Follingsbee found it difficult to be admitted. With the usual human perversity, these, of course, became exactly the ones, and the only ones, she particularly cared for. Her ambition was to pass beyond the ranks of the “shoddy” aristocracy to those of the old-established families. Now, the Seymours, the Fergusons, and the Wilcoxes were families of this sort; and none of them had ever cared to conceal the fact, that they did not intend to know the Follingsbees. The marriage of Lillie into the Seymour family was the opening of a door; and Mrs. Follingsbee had been at Lillie’s feet during her Newport campaign. On the other hand, Lillie, having taken the sense of the situation at Springdale, had cast her thoughts forward like a discreet young woman, and perceived in advance of her a very dull domestic winter, enlivened only by reading-circles and such slow tea-parties as unsophisticated Springdale found agreeable. The idea of a long visit to the New-York alhambra of the Follingsbees in the winter, with balls, parties, unlimited opera-boxes, was not a thing to be disregarded; and so, when Mrs. Follingsbee “ma chèred” Lillie, Lillie “my deared” Mrs. Follingsbee: and the pair are to be seen at this blessed moment sitting with their arms tenderly round each other’s waists on a causeuse in Mrs. Follingsbee’s dressing-room.

“You don’t know, mignonne,” said Mrs. Follingsbee, “how perfectly ravissante these apartments are! I’m so glad poor Charlie did them so well for you. I laid my commands on him, poor fellow!”

“Pray, how does your affair with him get on?” said Lillie.

“O dearest! you’ve no conception what a trial it is to me to keep him in the bounds of reason. He has such struggles of mind about that stupid wife of his. Think of it, my dear! a man like Charlie Ferrola, all poetry, romance, ideality, tied to a woman who thinks of nothing but her children’s teeth and bowels, and turns the whole house into a nursery! Oh, I’ve no patience with such people.”

“Well, poor fellow! it’s a pity he ever got married,” said Lillie.

“Well, it would be all well enough if this sort of woman ever would be reasonable; but they won’t. They don’t in the least comprehend the necessities of genius. They want to yoke Pegasus to a cart, you see. Now, I understand Charlie perfectly. I could give him that which he needs. I appreciate him. I make a bower of peace and enjoyment for him, where his artistic nature finds the repose it craves.”

“And she pitches into him about you,” said Lillie, not slow to perceive the true literal rendering of all this.

“Of course, ma chère,—tears him, rends him, lacerates his soul; sometimes he comes to me in the most dreadful states. Really, dear, I have apprehended something quite awful! I shouldn’t in the least be surprised if he should blow his brains out!”

And Mrs. Follingsbee sighed deeply, gave a glance at herself in an opposite mirror, and smoothed down a bow pensively, as the prima donna at the grand opera generally does when her lover is getting ready to stab himself.

“Oh! I don’t think he’s going to kill himself,” said Mrs. Lillie, who, it must be understood, was secretly somewhat sceptical about the power of her friend’s charms, and looked on this little French romance with the eye of an outsider: “never you believe that, dearest. These men make dreadful tearings, and shocking eyes and mouths; but they take pretty good care to keep in the world, after all. You see, if a man’s dead, there’s an end of all things; and I fancy they think of that before they quite come to any thing decisive.”

“Chère étourdie,” said Mrs. Follingsbee, regarding Lillie with a pensive smile: “you are just your old self, I see; you are now at the height of your power,—‘jeune Madame, un mari qui vous adore,’ ready to put all things under your feet. How can you feel for a worn, lonely heart like mine, that sighs for congeniality?”

“Bless me, now,” said Lillie, briskly; “you don’t tell me that you’re going to be so silly as to get in love with Charlie yourself! It’s all well enough to keep these fellows on the tragic high ropes; but, if a woman falls in love herself, there’s an end of her power. And, darling, just think of it: you wouldn’t have married that creature if you could; he’s poor as a rat, and always will be; these desperately interesting fellows always are. Now you have money without end; and of course you have position; and your husband is a man you can get any thing in the world out of.”

“Oh! as to that, I don’t complain of Dick,” said Mrs. Follingsbee: “he’s coarse and vulgar, to be sure, but he never stands in my way, and I never stand in his; and, as you say, he’s free about money. But still, darling, sometimes it seems to me such a weary thing to live without sympathy of soul! A marriage without congeniality, mon Dieu, what is it? And then the harsh, cold laws of human society prevent any relief. They forbid natures that are made for each other from being to each other what they can be.”

“You mean that people will talk about you,” said Lillie. “Well, I assure you, dearest, they will talk awfully, if you are not very careful. I say this to you frankly, as your friend, you know.”

“Ah, ma petite! you don’t need to tell me that. I am careful,” said Mrs. Follingsbee. “I am always lecturing Charlie, and showing him that we must keep up les convenances; but is it not hard on us poor women to lead always this repressed, secretive life?”

“What made you marry Mr. Follingsbee?” said Lillie, with apparent artlessness.

“Darling, I was but a child. I was ignorant of the mysteries of my own nature, of my capabilities. As Charlie said to me the other day, we never learn what we are till some congenial soul unlocks the secret door of our hearts. The fact is, dearest, that American society, with its strait-laced, puritanical notions, bears terribly hard on woman’s heart. Poor Charlie! he is no less one of the victims of society.”