University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.
HONEY-MOON, AND AFTER.

WE left Mr. and Mrs. John Seymour honey-mooning.
The honey-moon, dear ladies, is supposed
to be the period of male subjection. The young queen
is enthroned; and the first of her slaves walks obediently
in her train, carries her fan, her parasol, runs of
her errands, packs her trunk, writes her letters, buys
her any thing she cries for, and is ready to do the
impossible for her, on every suitable occasion.

A great strong man sometimes feels awkwardly, when
thus led captive; but the greatest, strongest, and most
boastful, often go most obediently under woman-rule;
for which, see Shakspeare, concerning Cleopatra and
Julius Cæsar and Mark Antony.

But then all kingdoms, and all sway, and all authority
must come to an end. Nothing lasts, you see.
The plain prose of life must have its turn, after the
poetry and honey-moons —stretch them out to their
utmost limit — have their terminus.

So, at the end of six weeks, John and Lillie, somewhat
dusty and travel-worn, were received by Grace
into the old family-mansion at Springdale.

Grace had read her Bible and Fénelon to such purpose,
that she had accepted her cross with open arms.

Dear reader, Grace was not a severe, angular, old-maid
sister, ready to snarl at the advent of a young
beauty; but an elegant and accomplished woman, with
a wide culture, a trained and disciplined mind, a charming
taste, and polished manners; and, above all, a
thorough self-understanding and discipline. Though
past thirty, she still had admirers and lovers; yet, till
now, her brother, insensibly to herself, had blocked up
the doorway of her heart; and the perfectness of the
fraternal friendship had prevented the wish and the
longing by which some fortunate man might have found
and given happiness.

Grace had resolved she would love her new sister;
that she would look upon all her past faults and errors
with eyes of indulgence; that she would put out of her
head every story she ever had heard against her, and
unite with her brother to make her lot a happy one.

“John is so good a man,” she said to Miss Letitia
Ferguson, “that I am sure Lillie cannot but become a
good woman.”

So Grace adorned the wedding with her presence, in
an elegant Parisian dress, ordered for the occasion, and
presented the young bride with a set of pearl and
amethyst that were perfectly bewitching, and kisses
and notes of affection had been exchanged between
them; and during various intervals, and for weeks past,
Grace had been pleasantly employed in preparing the
family-mansion to receive the new mistress.

John's bachelor apartments had been new furnished,
and furbished, and made into a perfect bower of roses.

The rest of the house, after the usual household process
of purification, had been rearranged, as John and
his sister had always kept it since their mother's death
in the way that she loved to see it. There was something
quaint and sweet and antique about it, that suited
Grace. Its unfashionable difference from the smart, flippant,
stereotyped rooms of to-day had a charm in her
eyes.

Lillie, however, surveyed the scene, the first night
that she took possession, with a quiet determination to
re-modernize on the very earliest opportunity. What
would Mrs. Frippit and Mrs. Nippit say to such rooms,
she thought. But then there was time enough to
attend to that. Not a shade of these internal reflections
was visible in her manner. She said, “Oh,
how sweet! How perfectly charming! How splendid!”
in all proper places; and John was delighted.

She also fell into the arms of Grace, and kissed her
with effusion; and John saw the sisterly union, which
he had anticipated, auspiciously commencing.

The only trouble in Grace's mind was from a terrible
sort of clairvoyance that seems to beset very sincere
people, and makes them sensitive to the presence of
any thing unreal or untrue. Fair and soft and caressing
as the new sister was, and determined as Grace
was to believe in her, and trust her, and like her, — she
found an invisible, chilly barrier between her heart and
Lillie. She scolded herself, and, in the effort to confide,

became unnaturally demonstrative, and said and did
more than was her wont to show affection; and yet,
to her own mortification, she found herself, after all,
seeming to herself to be hypocritical, and professing
more than she felt.

As to the fair Lillie, who, as we have remarked, was
no fool, she took the measure of her new sister with
that instinctive knowledge of character which is the
essence of womanhood. Lillie was not in love with
John, because that was an experience she was not capable
of. But she had married him, and now considered
him as her property, her subject, — hers, with an intensity
of ownership that should shut out all former proprietors.

We have heard much talk, of late, concerning the
husband's ownership of the wife. But, dear ladies, is that
any more pronounced a fact than every wife's ownership
of her husband? — an ownership so intense and pervading
that it may be said to be the controlling nerve of
womanhood. Let any one touch your right to the first
place in your husband's regard, and see!

Well, then, Lillie saw at a glance just what Grace
was, and what her influence with her brother must be;
and also that, in order to live the life she meditated,
John must act under her sway, and not under his
sister's; and so the resolve had gone forth, in her
mind, that Grace's dominion in the family should come
to an end, and that she would, as sole empress, reconstruct
the state. But, of course, she was too wise to
say a word about it.

“Dear me!” she said, the next morning, when Grace
proposed showing her through the house and delivering
up the keys, “I 'm sure I don't see why you want to show
things to me. I 'm nothing of a housekeeper, you know:
all I know is what I want, and I 've always had what I
wanted, you know; but, you see, I haven't the least
idea how it 's to be done. Why, at home I 've been
everybody's baby. Mamma laughs at the idea of my
knowing any thing. So, Grace dear, you must just be
prime minister; and I 'll be the good-for-nothing Queen,
and just sign the papers, and all that, you know.”

Grace found, the first week, that to be housekeeper
to a young duchess, in an American village and with
American servants, was no sinecure.

The young mistress, the next week, tumbled into the
wash an amount of muslin and lace and French puffing
and fluting sufficient to employ two artists for two or
three days, and by which honest Bridget, as she stood
at her family wash-tub, was sorely perplexed.

But, in America, no woman ever dies for want of
speaking her mind; and the lower orders have their turn
in teaching the catechism to their superiors, which they
do with an effectiveness that does credit to democracy.

“And would ye be plased to step here, Miss Saymour,”
said Bridget to Grace, in a voice of suppressed
emotion, and pointing oratorically, with her soapy right
arm, to a snow-wreath of French finery and puffing on
the floor. “What I asks, Miss Grace, is, Who is to do
all this? I 'm sure it would take me and Katy a week,
workin' day and night, let alone the cookin' and the silver

[ILLUSTRATION] [Description: 706EAF. Page 068. In-line Illustration. Image of a woman with a cloth tied over her hair pointing at a pile of something on the floor and talking to a genteel woman next to her. The caption reads,"Who is to do all this?"] and the beds, and all them. It 's a pity, now, somebody
shouldn't spake to that young crather; fur she 's nothin'
but a baby, and likely don't know any thing, as ladies
mostly don't, about what 's right and proper.” Bridget's
Christian charity and condescension in this last sentence
was some mitigation of the crisis; but still Grace
was appalled. We all of us, my dear sisters, have stood
appalled at the tribunal of good Bridgets rising in their
majesty and declaring their ultimatum.

Bridget was a treasure in the town of Springdale,
where servants were scarce and poor; and, what was
more, she was a treasure that knew her own worth.
Grace knew very well how she had been beset with applications
and offers of higher wages to draw her to various
hotels and boarding-houses in the vicinity, but had
preferred the comparative dignity and tranquillity of a
private gentleman's family.

But the family had been small, orderly, and systematic,
and Grace the most considerate of housekeepers.
Still it was not to be denied, that, though an indulgent
and considerate mistress, Bridget was, in fact, mistress
of the Seymour mansion, and that her mind and will
concerning the washing must be made known to the
young queen.

It was a sore trial to speak to Lillie; but it would be
sorer to be left at once desolate in the kitchen department,
and exposed to the marauding inroads of unskilled
Hibernians.

In the most delicate way, Grace made Lillie acquainted
with the domestic crisis; as, in old times, a
prime minister might have carried to one of the
Charleses the remonstrance and protest of the House
of Commons.

“Oh! I 'm sure I don't know how it 's to be done,”
said Lillie, gayly. “Mamma always got my things done
somehow. They always were done, and always must
be: you just tell her so. I think it 's always best to
be decided with servants. Face 'em down in the beginning.”

“But you see, Lillie dear, it 's almost impossible to get
servants at all in Springdale; and such servants as ours
everybody says are an exception. If we talk to Bridget
in that way, she 'll just go off and leave us; and then
what shall we do?”

“What in the world does John want to live in such
a place for?” said Lillie, peevishly. “There are plenty
of servants to be got in New York; and that 's the only
place fit to live in. Well, it 's no affair of mine! Tell
John he married me, and must take care of me. He
must settle it some way: I shan't trouble my head
about it.”

The idea of living in New York, and uprooting the
old time-honored establishment in Springdale, struck
Grace as a sort of sacrilege; yet she could not help
feeling, with a kind of fear, that the young mistress had
power to do it.

“Don't, darling, talk so, for pity's sake,” she said.
“I will go to John, and we will arrange it somehow.”

A long consultation with faithful John, in the evening,
revealed to him the perplexing nature of the material
processes necessary to get up his fair puff of thistle-down
in all that wonderful whiteness and fancifulness
of costume which had so entranced him.

Lillie cried, and said she never had any trouble before
about “getting her things done.” She was sure mamma
or Trixie or somebody did them, or got them done, —
she never knew how or when. With many tears and
sobs, she protested her ardent desire to realize the
Scriptural idea of the fowls of the air and the lilies of

the field, which were fed and clothed, “like Solomon in
all his glory,” without ever giving a moment's care to
the matter.

John kissed and embraced, and wiped away her tears,
and declared she should have every thing just as she
desired it, if it took the half of his kingdom.

After consoling his fair one, he burst into Grace's
room in the evening, just at the hour when they used to
have their old brotherly and sisterly confidential talks.

“You see, Grace, — poor Lillie, dear little thing, —
you don't know how distressed she is; and, Grace, we
must find somebody to do up all her fol-de-rols and fizgigs
for her, you know. You see, she 's been used to
this kind of thing; can't do without it.”

“Well, I'll try to-morrow, John,” said Grace, patiently.
“There is Mrs. Atkins, — she is a very nice woman.”

“Oh, exactly! just the thing,” said John. “Yes,
we 'll get her to take all Lillie's things every week.
That settles it.”

“Do you know, John, at the prices that Mrs. Atkins
asks, you will have to pay more than for all your family
service together? What we have this week would be
twenty dollars, at the least computation; and it is
worth it too, — the work of getting up is so elaborate.”

John opened his eyes, and looked grave. Like all
stable New-England families, the Seymours, while they
practised the broadest liberality, had instincts of great
sobriety in expense. Needless profusion shocked them
as out of taste; and a quiet and decent reticence in
matters of self-indulgence was habitual with them.

Such a price for the fine linen of his little angel
rather staggered him; but he gulped it down.

“Well, well, Gracie,” he said, “cost what it may, she
must have it as she likes it. The little creature, you
see, has never been accustomed to calculate or reflect in
these matters; and it is trial enough to come down
to our stupid way of living, — so different, you know,
from the gay life she has been leading.”

Miss Seymour's saintship was somewhat rudely tested
by this remark. That anybody should think it a sacrifice
to be John's wife, and a trial to accept the homestead
at Springdale, with all its tranquillity and comforts,
— that John, under her influence, should speak of the
Springdale life as stupid, — was a little drop too much
in her cup. A bright streak appeared in either cheek, as
she said, —

“Well, John, I never knew you found Springdale
stupid before. I 'm sure, we have been happy here,” —
and her voice quavered.

“Pshaw, Gracie! you know what I mean. I don't
mean that I find it stupid. I don't like the kind of rattle-brained
life we 've been leading this six weeks. But,
then, it just suits Lillie; and it 's so sweet and patient
of her to come here and give it all up, and say not
a word of regret; and then, you see, I shall be just up
to my ears in business now, and can't give up all my
time to her, as I have. There 's ever so much law
business coming on, and all the factory matters at
Spindlewood; and I can see that Lillie will have rather
a hard time of it. You must devote yourself to her,

Gracie, like a dear, good soul, as you always were, and
try to get her interested in our kind of life. Of course,
all our set will call, and that will be something; and
then — there will be some invitations out.”

“Oh, yes, John! we 'll manage it,” said Grace, who
had by this time swallowed her anger, and shouldered
her cross once more with a womanly perseverance.
“Oh, yes! the Fergusons, and the Wilcoxes, and the
Lennoxes, will all call; and we shall have picnics, and
lawn teas, and musicals, and parties.”

“Yes, yes, I see,” said John. “Gracie, isn't she a
dear little thing? Didn't she look cunning in that
white wrapper this morning? How do women do
those things, I wonder?” said John. “Don't you
think her manners are lovely?”

“They are very sweet, and she is charmingly pretty,”
said Grace; “and I love her dearly.”

“And so affectionate! Don't you think so?” continued
John. “She 's a person that you can do any thing
with through her heart. She 's all heart, and very little
head. I ought not to say that, either. I think she has
fair natural abilities, had they ever been cultivated.”

“My dear John,” said Grace, “you forget what time
it is. Good-night!”