University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.
PREPARATION FOR MARRIAGE.

MISS LILLIE ELLIS was sitting upstairs in her
virgin bower, which was now converted into a
tumultuous, seething caldron of millinery and mantua-making,
such as usually precedes a wedding. To be sure,
orders had been forthwith despatched to Paris for the
bridal regimentals, and for a good part of the trousseau;
but that did not seem in the least to stand in the way
of the time-honored confusion of sewing preparations
at home, which is supposed to waste the strength and
exhaust the health of every bride elect.

Whether young women, while disengaged, do not
have proper under-clothing, or whether they contemplate
marriage as an awful gulf which swallows up all
future possibilities of replenishing a wardrobe, — certain
it is that no sooner is a girl engaged to be married
than there is a blind and distracting rush and
pressure and haste to make up for her immediately
a stock of articles, which, up to that hour, she has
managed to live very comfortably and respectably
without. It is astonishing to behold the number of

inexpressible things with French names which unmarried
young ladies never think of wanting, but which
there is a desperate push to supply, and have ranged in
order, the moment the matrimonial state is in contemplation.

Therefore it was that the virgin bower of Lillie
was knee-deep in a tangled mass of stuffs of various
hues and description; that the sharp sound of tearing
off breadths resounded there; that Miss Clippins and
Miss Snippings and Miss Nippins were sewing there
day and night; that a sewing-machine was busily rattling
in mamma's room; and that there were all sorts of
pinking and quilling, and braiding and hemming, and
whipping and ruffling, and over-sewing and cat-stitching
and hem-stitching, and other female mysteries,
going on.

As for Lillie, she lay in a loose negligé on the bed,
ready every five minutes to be called up to have something
measured, or tried on, or fitted; and to be consulted
whether there should be fifteen or sixteen tucks
and then an insertion, or sixteen tucks and a series of
puffs. Her labors wore upon her; and it was smilingly
observed by Miss Clippins across to Miss Nippins, that
Miss Lillie was beginning to show her “engagement
bones.” In the midst of these preoccupations, a letter
was handed to her by the giggling chambermaid. It
was a thick letter, directed in a bold honest hand.
Miss Lillie took it with a languid little yawn, finished
the last sentences in a chapter of the novel she was
reading, and then leisurely broke the seal and glanced

it over. It was the one that the enraptured John had
spent his morning in writing.

“Miss Ellis, now, if you 'll try on this jacket — oh! I
beg your pardon,” said Miss Clippins, observing the
letter, “we can wait, of course;” and then all three
laughed as if something very pleasant was in their
minds.

“No,” said Lillie, giving the letter a toss; “it 'll
keep;” and she stood up to have a jaunty little blue
jacket, with its pluffy bordering of swan's down, fitted
upon her.

“It 's too bad, now, to take you from your letter,”
said Miss Clippins, with a sly nod.

“I 'm sure you take it philosophically,” said Miss
Nippins, with a giggle.

“Why shouldn't I?” said the divine Lillie. “I get
one every day; and it 's all the old story. I 've heard
it ever since I was born.”

“Well, now, to be sure you have. Let 's see,” said
Miss Clippins, “this is the seventy-fourth or seventy-fifth
offer, was it?”

“Oh, you must ask mamma! she keeps the lists:
I 'm sure I don't trouble my head,” said the little
beauty; and she looked so natty and jaunty when she
said it, just arching her queenly white neck, and making
soft, downy dimples in her cheeks as she gave her
fresh little childlike laugh; turning round and round
before the looking-glass, and issuing her orders for the
fitting of the jacket with a precision and real interest
which showed that there were things in the world which

didn't become old stories, even if one had been used to
them ever since one was born.

Lillie never was caught napping when the point in
question was the fit of her clothes.

When released from the little blue jacket, there was
a rose-colored morning-dress to be tried on, and a grave
discussion as to whether the honiton lace was to be set
on plain or frilled.

So important was this case, that mamma was summoned
from the sewing-machine to give her opinion.
Mrs. Ellis was a fat, fair, rosy matron of most undisturbed
conscience and digestion, whose main business
in life had always been to see to her children's clothes.
She had brought up Lillie with faithful and religious
zeal; that is to say, she had always ruffled her under-clothes
with her own hands, and darned her stockings,
sick or well; and also, as before intimated, kept a list
of her offers, which she was ready in confidential moments
to tell off to any of her acquaintance. The
question of ruffled or plain honiton was of such vital
importance, that the whole four took some time in considering
it in its various points of view.

“Sarah Selfridge had hers ruffled,” said Lillie.

“And the effect was perfectly sweet,” said Miss Clippins.

“Perhaps, Lillie, you had better have it ruffled,” said
mamma.

“But three rows laid on plain has such a lovely
effect,” said Miss Nippins.

“Perhaps, then, she had better have three rows laid
on plain,” said mamma.

“Or she might have one row ruffled on the edge,
with three rows laid on plain, with a satin fold,” said
Miss Clippins. “That 's the way I fixed Miss Elliott's.”

“That would be a nice way,” said mamma. “Perhaps,
Lillie, you 'd better have it so.”

“Oh! come now, all of you, just hush,” said Lillie.
“I know just how I want it done.”

The words may sound a little rude and dictatorial;
but Lillie had the advantage of always looking so
pretty, and saying dictatorial things in such a sweet
voice, that everybody was delighted with them; and
she took the matter of arranging the trimming in hand
with a clearness of head which showed that it was a
subject to which she had given mature consideration.
Mrs. Ellis shook her fat sides with a comfortable
motherly chuckle.

“Lillie always did know exactly what she wanted:
she 's a smart little thing.”

And, when all the trying on and arranging of folds
and frills and pinks and bows was over, Lillie threw
herself comfortably upon the bed, to finish her letter.

Shrewd Miss Clippins detected the yawn with which
she laid down the missive.

“Seems to me your letters don't meet a very warm
reception,” she said.

“Well! every day, and such long ones!” Lillie
answered, turning over the pages. “See there,” she
went on, opening a drawer, “What a heap of them!
I can't see, for my part, what any one can want to write
a letter every day to anybody for. John is such a goose
about me.”

[ILLUSTRATION] [Description: 706EAF. Page 044. In-line Illustration. Image of a woman seated, her arms are raised over her head and she is holding some sheets of paper in one hand. Her eyes are closed. The caption reads, "Shrewd Miss Clippins detected the yawn."]

“He 'll get over it after he 's been married six months,”
said Miss Clippins, nodding her head with the air of a
woman that has seen life.

“I 'm sure I shan't care,” said Lillie, with a toss of
her pretty head. “It 's borous any way.”

Our readers may perhaps imagine, from the story
thus far, that our little Lillie is by no means the person,
in reality, that John supposes her to be, when he sits
thinking of her with such devotion, and writing her
such long, “borous” letters.

She is not. John is in love not with the actual Lillie
Ellis, but with that ideal personage who looks like his
mother's picture, and is the embodiment of all his

mother's virtues. The feeling, as it exists in John's
mind, is not only a most respectable, but in fact a truly
divine one, and one that no mortal man ought to be
ashamed of. The love that quickens all the nature, that
makes a man twice manly, and makes him aspire to all
that is high, pure, sweet, and religious, — is a feeling so
sacred, that no unworthiness in its object can make it any
less beautiful. More often than not it is spent on an utter
vacancy. Men and women both pass through this
divine initiation, — this sacred inspiration of our nature,
— and find, when they have come into the innermost
shrine, where the divinity ought to be, that there
is no god or goddess there; nothing but the cold black
ashes of commonplace vulgarity and selfishness. Both
of them, when the grand discovery has been made, do
well to fold their robes decently about them, and make
the best of the matter. If they cannot love, they can at
least be friendly. They can tolerate, as philosophers;
pity, as Christians; and, finding just where and how the
burden of an ill-assorted union galls the least, can then
and there strap it on their backs, and walk on, not
only without complaint, but sometimes in a cheerful and
hilarious spirit.

Not a word of all this thinks our friend John, as he
sits longing, aspiring, and pouring out his heart, day after
day, in letters that interrupt Lillie in the all-important
responsibility of getting her wardrobe fitted.

Shall we think this smooth little fair-skinned Lillie is
a cold-hearted monster, because her heart does not beat
faster at these letters which she does not understand,

and which strike her as unnecessarily prolix and prosy?
Why should John insist on telling her his feelings and
opinions on a vast variety of subjects that she does
not care a button for? She doesn't know any thing
about ritualism and anti-ritualism; and, what 's more, she
doesn't care. She hates to hear so much about religion.
She thinks it 's pokey. John may go to any church he
pleases, for all her. As to all that about his favorite
poems, she don't like poetry, — never could, — don't see
any sense in it; and John will be quoting ever so much
in his letters. Then, as to the love parts, — it may be
all quite new and exciting to John; but she has, as she
said, heard that story over and over again, till it strikes
her as quite a matter of course. Without doubt the
whole world is a desert where she is not: the thing has
been asserted, over and over, by so many gentlemen of
credible character for truth and veracity, that she is
forced to believe it; and she cannot see why John is
particularly to be pitied on this account. He is in no
more desperate state about her than the rest of them;
and secretly Lillie has as little pity for lovers' pangs as
a nice little white cat has for mice. They amuse her;
they are her appropriate recreation; and she pats and
plays with each mouse in succession, without any comprehension
that it may be a serious thing for him.

When Lillie was a little girl, eight years old, she
used to sell her kisses through the slats of the fence for
papers of candy, and thus early acquired the idea that
her charms were a capital to be employed in trading for
the good things of life. She had the misfortune — and

a great one it is — to have been singularly beautiful
from the cradle, and so was praised and exclaimed over
and caressed as she walked through the streets. She
was sent for, far and near; borrowed to be looked at;
her picture taken by photographers. If one reflects how
many foolish and inconsiderate people there are in the
world, who have no scruple in making a pet and plaything
of a pretty child, one will see how this one unlucky
lot of being beautiful in childhood spoiled Lillie's
chances of an average share of good sense and goodness.
The only hope for such a case lies in the chance
of possessing judicious parents. Lillie had not these.
Her father was a shrewd grocer, and nothing more;
and her mother was a competent cook and seamstress.
While he traded in sugar and salt, and she made pickles
and embroided under-linen, the pretty Lillie was educated
as pleased Heaven.

Pretty girls, unless they have wise mothers, are more
educated by the opposite sex than by their own. Put
them where you will, there is always some man busying
himself in their instruction; and the burden of
masculine teaching is generally about the same, and
might be stereotyped as follows: “You don't need to
be or do any thing. Your business in life is to look
pretty, and amuse us. You don't need to study: you
know all by nature that a woman need to know. You
are, by virtue of being a pretty woman, superior to any
thing we can teach you; and we wouldn't, for the
world, have you any thing but what you are.” When
Lillie went to school, this was what her masters

whispered in her ear as they did her sums for her, and
helped her through her lessons and exercises, and
looked into her eyes. This was what her young gentlemen
friends, themselves delving in Latin and Greek
and mathematics, told her, when they came to recreate
from their severer studies in her smile. Men are held
to account for talking sense. Pretty women are told
that lively nonsense is their best sense. Now and then,
an admirer bolder than the rest ventured to take Lillie's
education more earnestly in hand, and recommended to
her just a little reading, — enough to enable her to
carry on conversation, and appear to know something
of the ordinary topics discussed in society, — but
informed her, by the by, that there was no sort of need
of being either profound or accurate in these matters,
as the mistakes of a pretty woman had a grace of their
own.

At seventeen, Lillie graduated from Dr. Sibthorpe's
school with a “finished education.” She had, somehow
or other, picked her way through various “ologies” and
exercises supposed to be necessary for a well-informed
young lady. She wrote a pretty hand, spoke French
with a good accent, and could turn a sentimental note
neatly; “and that, my dear,” said Dr. Sibthorpe to his
wife, “is all that a woman needs, who so evidently is
intended for wife and mother as our little Lillie.” Dr.
Sibthorpe, in fact, had amused himself with a semipaternal
flirtation with his pupil during the whole
course of her school exercises, and parted from her
with tears in his eyes, greatly to her amusement; for

Lillie, after all, estimated his devotion at just about
what it was worth. It amused her to see him make a
fool of himself.

Of course, the next thing was — to be married; and
Lillie's life now became a round of dressing, dancing,
going to watering-places, travelling, and in other ways
seeking the fulfilment of her destiny.

She had precisely the accessible, easy softness of
manner that leads every man to believe that he may
prove a favorite, and her run of offers became quite a
source of amusement. Her arrival at watering-places
was noted in initials in the papers; her dress on every
public occasion was described; and, as acknowledged
queen of love and beauty, she had everywhere her
little court of men and women flatterers. The women
flatterers around a belle are as much a part of the
cortége as the men. They repeat the compliments they
hear, and burn incense in the virgin's bower at hours
when the profaner sex may not enter.

The life of a petted creature consists essentially in
being deferred to, for being pretty and useless. A
petted child runs a great risk, if it is ever to outgrow
childhood; but a pet woman is a perpetual child. The
pet woman of society is everybody's toy. Everybody
looks at her, admires her, praises and flatters her, stirs
her up to play off her little airs and graces for their
entertainment; and passes on. Men of profound sense
encourage her to chatter nonsense for their amusement,
just as we delight in the tottering steps and stammering
mispronunciations of a golden-haired child. When

Lillie has been in Washington, she has had judges of
the supreme court and secretaries of state delighted to
have her give her opinions in their respective departments.
Scholars and literary men flocked around her,
to the neglect of many a more instructed woman,
satisfied that she knew enough to blunder agreeably on
every subject.

Nor is there any thing in the Christian civilization
of our present century that condemns the kind of life
we are describing, as in any respect unwomanly or unbecoming.
Something very like it is in a measure
considered as the appointed rule of attractive young
girls till they are married.

Lillie had numbered among her admirers many lights
of the Church. She had flirted with bishops, priests,
and deacons, — who, none of them, would, for the
world, have been so ungallant as to quote to her such
dreadful professional passages as, “She that liveth in
pleasure is dead while she liveth.”

In fact, the clergy, when off duty, are no safer guides
of attractive young women than other mortal men;
and Lillie had so often seen their spiritual attentions
degenerate into downright, temporal love-making, that
she held them in as small reverence as the rest of their
sex. Only one dreadful John the Baptist of her acquaintance,
one of the camel's-hair-girdle and locust-and-wild-honey
species, once encountering Lillie at
Saratoga, and observing the ways and manners of the
court which she kept there, took it upon him to give
her a spiritual admonition.

“Miss Lillie,” he said, “I see no chance for the salvation
of your soul, unless it should please God to send
the small-pox upon you. I think I shall pray for
that.”

“Oh, horrors! don't! I 'd rather never be saved,”
Lillie answered with a fervent sincerity.

The story was repeated afterwards as an amusing
bon mot, and a specimen of the barbarity to which
religious fanaticism may lead; and yet we question
whether John the Baptist had not the right of it.

For it must at once appear, that, had the small-pox
made the above-mentioned change in Lillie's complexion
at sixteen, the entire course of her life would have
taken another turn. The whole world then would
have united in letting her know that she must live
to some useful purpose, or be nobody and nothing.
Schoolmasters would have scolded her if she idled over
her lessons; and her breaking down in arithmetic, and
mistakes in history, would no longer have been regarded
as interesting. Clergymen, consulted on her spiritual
state, would have told her freely that she was a miserable
sinner, who, except she repented, must likewise
perish. In short, all those bitter and wholesome truths,
which strengthen and invigorate the virtues of plain
people, might possibly have led her a long way on
towards saintship.

As it was, little Lillie was confessedly no saint; and
yet, if much of a sinner, society has as much to answer
for as she. She was the daughter and flower of the
Christian civilization of the nineteenth century, and

the kind of woman, that, on the whole, men of quite
distinguished sense have been fond of choosing for
wives, and will go on seeking to the end of the chapter.

Did she love John? Well, she was quite pleased to
be loved by him, and she liked the prospect of being
his wife. She was sure he would always let her have
her own way, and that he had a plenty of worldly
means to do it with.

Lillie, if not very clever in a literary or scientific
point of view, was no fool. She had, in fact, under all
her softness of manner, a great deal of that real hard
grit which shrewd, worldly people call common sense.
She saw through all the illusions of fancy and feeling,
right to the tough material core of things. However
soft and tender and sentimental her habits of speech
and action were in her professional capacity of a charming
woman, still the fair Lillie, had she been a man,
would have been respected in the business world, as
one that had cut her eye-teeth, and knew on which side
her bread was buttered.

A husband, she knew very well, was the man who
undertook to be responsible for his wife's bills: he was
the giver, bringer, and maintainer of all sorts of solid
and appreciable comforts.

Lillie's bills had hitherto been sore places in the
domestic history of her family. The career of a fashionable
belle is not to be supported without something
of an outlay; and that innocence of arithmetical combinations,
over which she was wont to laugh bewitchingly
among her adorers, sometimes led to results quite

astounding to the prosaic, hard-working papa, who
stood financially responsible for all her finery.

Mamma had often been called in to calm the tumult
of his feelings on such semi-annual developments; and
she did it by pointing out to him that this heavy present
expense was an investment by which Lillie was,
in the end, to make her own fortune and that of her
family.

When Lillie contemplated the marriage-service with
a view to going through it with John, there was one
clause that stood out in consoling distinctness, — “With
all my worldly goods I thee endow.”

As to the other clause, which contains the dreadful
word “OBEY,” about which our modern women have
such fearful apprehensions, Lillie was ready to swallow
it without even a grimace.

“Obey John!” Her face wore a pretty air of droll
assurance at the thought. It was too funny.

“My dear,” said Belle Trevors, who was one of Lillie's
incense-burners and a bridesmaid elect, “have you the
least idea how rich he is?”

“He is well enough off to do about any thing I want,”
said Lillie.

“Well, you know he owns the whole village of Spindlewood,
with all those great factories, besides law business,”
said Belle. “But then they live in a dreadfully
slow, pokey way down there in Springdale. They
haven't the remotest idea how to use money.”

“I can show him how to use it,” said Lillie.

“He and his sister keep a nice sort of old-fashioned

place there, and jog about in an old countrified carriage,
picking up poor children and visiting schools. She is
a very superior woman, that sister.”

“I don't like superior women,” said Lillie.

“But you must like her, you know. John is perfectly
devoted to her, and I suppose she is to be a fixture
in the establishment.”

“We shall see about that,” said Lillie. “One thing
at a time. I don't mean he shall live at Springdale.
It 's horridly pokey to live in those little country towns.
He must have a house in New York.”

“And a place at Newport for the summer,” said Belle
Trevors.

“Yes,” said Lillie, “a cottage in Newport does very
well in the season; and then a country place well
fitted up to invite company to in the other months of
summer.”

“Delightful,” said Belle, “if you can make him do
it.”

“See if I don't,” said Lillie.

“You dear, funny creature, you, — how you do
always ride on the top of the wave!” said Belle.

“It 's what I was born for,” said Lillie. “By the by,
Belle, I got a letter from Harry last night.”

“Poor fellow, had he heard” —

“Why, of course not. I didn't want he should till
it 's all over. It 's best, you know.”

“He is such a good fellow, and so devoted, — it does
seem a pity.”

“Devoted! well, I should rather think he was,” said

Lillie. “I believe he would cut off his right hand for
me, any day. But I never gave him any encouragement.
I 've always told him I could be to him only as
a sister, you know.”

“You ought not to write to him,” said Belle.

“What can I do? He is perfectly desperate if I
don't, and still persists that he means to marry me
some day, spite of my screams.”

“Well, he 'll have to stop making love to you after
you 're married.”

“Oh, pshaw! I don't believe that old-fashioned talk.
Lovers make a variety in life. I don't see why a married
woman is to give up all the fun of having admirers.
Of course, one isn't going to do any thing wrong, you
know; but one doesn't want to settle down into Darby
and Joan at once. Why, some of the young married
women, the most stunning belles at Newport last year,
got a great deal more attention after they were married
than they did before. You see the fellows like it,
because they are so sure not to be drawn in.”

“I think it 's too bad on us girls, though,” said Belle.
“You ought to leave us our turn.”

“Oh! I 'll turn over any of them to you, Belle,” said
Lillie. “There 's Harry, to begin with. What do you
say to him?”

“Thank you, I don't think I shall take up with
second-hand articles,” said Belle, with some spirit.

But here the entrance of the chamber-maid, with a
fresh dress from the dressmaker's, resolved the conversation
into a discussion so very minute and technical
that it cannot be recorded in our pages.