University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.
NEWPORT; OR, THE PARADISE OF NOTHING
TO DO.

BEHOLD, now, our Lillie at the height of her
heart's desire, installed in fashionable apartments
at Newport, under the placid chaperonship of dear
mamma, who never saw the least harm in any earthly
thing her Lillie chose to do.

All the dash and flash and furbelow of upper-tendom
were there; and Lillie now felt the full power and glory
of being a rich, pretty, young married woman, with
oceans of money to spend, and nothing on earth to do
but follow the fancies of the passing hour.

This was Lillie's highest ideal of happiness; and
didn't she enjoy it?

Wasn't it something to flame forth in wondrous
toilets in the eyes of Belle Trevors and Margy Silloway
and Lottie Cavers, who were not married; and
before the Simpkinses and the Tomkinses and the
Jenkinses, who, last year, had said hateful things about
her, and intimated that she had gone off in her looks,
and was on the way to be an old maid?

And wasn't it a triumph when all her old beaux
came flocking round her, and her parlors became a

daily resort and lounging-place for all the idle swains,
both of her former acquaintance and of the newcomers,
who drifted with the tide of fashion? Never
had she been so much the rage; never had she been
declared so “stunning.” The effect of all this good
fortune on her health was immediate. We all know
how the spirits affect the bodily welfare; and hence,
my dear gentlemen, we desire it to be solemnly impressed
on you, that there is nothing so good for a
woman's health as to give her her own way.

Lillie now, from this simple cause, received enormous
accessions of vigor. While at home with plain,
sober John, trying to walk in the quiet paths of domesticity,
how did her spirits droop! If you only could have
had a vision of her brain and spinal system, you would
have seen how there was no nervous fluid there, and
how all the fine little cords and fibres that string the
muscles were wilting like flowers out of water; but
now she could bathe the longest and the strongest of any
one, could ride on the beach half the day, and dance
the German into the small hours of the night, with
a degree of vigor which showed conclusively what a
fine thing for her the Newport air was. Her dancing-list
was always over-crowded with applicants; bouquets
were showered on her; and the most superb
“turn-outs,” with their masters for charioteers, were
at her daily disposal.

All this made talk. The world doesn't forgive success;
and the ancients informed us that even the gods
were envious of happy people. It is astonishing to see

the quantity of very proper and rational moral reflection
that is excited in the breast of society, by any
sort of success in life. How it shows them the vanity
of earthly enjoyments, the impropriety of setting one's
heart on it! How does a successful married flirt
impress all her friends with the gross impropriety of
having one's head set on gentlemen's attentions!

“I must say,” said Belle Trevors, “that dear Lillie
does astonish me. Now, I shouldn't want to have that
dissipated Danforth lounging in my rooms every day,
as he does in Lillie's: and then taking her out driving
day after day; for my part, I don't think it 's respectable.”

“Why don't you speak to her?” said Lottie Cavers.

“Oh, my dear! she wouldn't mind me. Lillie always
was the most imprudent creature; and, if she goes on
so, she 'll certainly get awfully talked about. That
Danforth is a horrid creature; I know all about him.”

As Miss Belle had herself been driving with the
“horrid creature” only the week before Lillie came, it
must be confessed that her opportunities for observation
were of an authentic kind.

Lillie, as queen in her own parlor, was all grace and
indulgence. Hers was now to be the sisterly rôle,
or, as she laughingly styled it, the maternal. With a
ravishing morning-dress, and with a killing little cap
of about three inches in extent on her head, she
enacted the young matron, and gave full permission to
Tom, Dick, and Harry to make themselves at home in
her room, and smoke their cigars there in peace. She

[ILLUSTRATION] [Description: 706EAF. Page 115. In-line Illustration. Image of a woman sitting and smoking a ciggarette. The caption reads, "And would sometimes smoke one purely for good company."] “adored the smell;” in fact, she accepted the present
of a fancy box of cigarettes from Danforth with graciousness,
and would sometimes smoke one purely for
good company. She also encouraged her followers to
unveil the tender secrets of their souls confidentially
to her, and offered gracious mediations on their behalf
with any of the flitting Newport fair ones. When they,
as in duty bound, said that they saw nobody whom
they cared about now she was married, that she was
the only woman on earth for them, — she rapped
their knuckles briskly with her fan, and bid them
mind their manners. All this mode of proceeding
gave her an immense success.

But, as we said before, all this was talked about; and
ladies in their letters, chronicling the events of the
passing hour, sent the tidings up and down the country;
and so Miss Letitia Ferguson got a letter from
Mrs. Wilcox with full pictures and comments; and she
brought the same to Grace Seymour.

“I dare say,” said Letitia, “these things have been
exaggerated; they always are: still it does seem desirable
that your brother should go there, and be with
her.”

“He can't go and be with her,” said Grace, “without
neglecting his business, already too much neglected.
Then the house is all in confusion under the hands of
painters; and there is that young artist up there, —
a very elegant gentleman, — giving orders to right
and left, every one of which involves further confusion
and deeper expense; for my part, I see no end to it.
Poor John has got `the Old Man of the Sea' on his
back in the shape of this woman; and I expect she 'll
be the ruin of him yet. I can't want to break up his
illusion about her; because, what good will it do? He
has married her, and must live with her; and, for
Heaven's sake, let the illusion last while it can! I 'm
going to draw off, and leave them to each other;
there 's no other way.”

“You are, Gracie?”

“Yes; you see John came to me, all stammering and
embarrassment, about this making over of the old
place; but I put him at ease at once. `The most
natural thing in the world, John,' said I. `Of course

Lillie has her taste; and it 's her right to have the
house arranged to suit it.' And then I proposed to
take all the old family things, and furnish the house
that I own on Elm Street, and live there, and let John
and Lillie keep house by themselves. You see there is
no helping the thing. Married people must be left
to themselves; nobody can help them. They must
make their own discoveries, fight their own battles,
sink or swim, together; and I have determined that
not by the winking of an eye will I interfere between
them.”

“Well, but do you think John wants you to go?”

“He feels badly about it; and yet I have convinced
him that it 's best. Poor fellow! all these changes
are not a bit to his taste. He liked the old place as
it was, and the old ways; but John is so unselfish. He
has got it in his head that Lillie is very sensitive
and peculiar, and that her spirits require all these
changes, as well as Newport air.”

“Well,” said Letitia, “if a man begins to say A in
that line, he must say B.”

“Of course,” said Grace; “and also C and D, and
so on, down to X, Y, Z. A woman, armed with sick-headaches,
nervousness, debility, presentiments, fears,
horrors, and all sorts of imaginary and real diseases,
has an eternal armory of weapons of subjugation.
What can a man do? Can he tell her that she is lying
and shamming? Half the time she isn't; she can actually
work herself into about any physical state she
chooses. The fortnight before Lillie went to Newport,

she really looked pale, and ate next to nothing; and
she managed admirably to seem to be trying to keep
up, and not to complain, — yet you see how she can go
on at Newport.”

“It seems a pity John couldn't understand her.”

“My dear, I wouldn't have him for the world. Whenever
he does, he will despise her; and then he will be
wretched. For John is no hypocrite, any more than I
am. No, I earnestly pray that his soap-bubble may not
break.”

“Well, then,” said Letitia, “at least, he might go
down to Newport for a day or two; and his presence
there might set some things right: it might at least
check reports. You might just suggest to him that
unfriendly things were being said.”

“Well, I 'll see what I can do,” said Grace.

So, by a little feminine tact in suggestion, Grace despatched
her brother to spend a day or two in Newport.

His coming and presence interrupted the lounging
hours in Lillie's room; the introduction to “my husband”
shortened the interviews. John was courteous
and affable; but he neither smoked nor drank, and
there was a mutual repulsion between him and many
of Lillie's habitués.

“I say, Dan,” said Bill Sanders to Danforth, as they
were smoking on one end of the veranda, “you are
driven out of your lodgings since Seymour came.”

“No more than the rest of you,” said Danforth.

“I don't know about that, Dan. I think you might

have been taken for master of those premises. Look
here now, Dan, why didn't you take little Lill yourself?
Everybody thought you were going to last
year.”

“Didn't want her; knew too much,” said Danforth.
“Didn't want to keep her; she 's too cursedly extravagant.
It 's jolly to have this sort of concern on hand;
but I 'd rather Seymour 'd pay her bills than I.”

“Who thought you were so practical, Dan?”

“Practical! that I am; I 'm an old bird. Take my
advice, boys, now: keep shy of the girls, and flirt with
the married ones, — then you don't get roped in.”

“I say, boys,” said Tom Nichols, “isn't she a case,
now? What a head she has! I bet she can smoke
equal to any of us.”

“Yes; I keep her in cigarettes,” said Danforth;
“she 's got a box of them somewhere under her ruffles
now.”

“What if Seymour should find them?” said Tom.

“Seymour? pooh! he 's a muff and a prig. I bet
you he won't find her out; she 's the jolliest little humbugger
there is going. She 'd cheat a fellow out of
the sight of his eyes. It 's perfectly wonderful.”

“How came Seymour to marry her?”

“He? Why, he 's a pious youth, green as grass
itself; and I suppose she talked religion to him. Did
you ever hear her talk religion?”

A roar of laughter followed this, out of which Danforth
went on. “By George, boys, she gave me a
prayer-book once! I 've got it yet.”

“Well, if that isn't the best thing I ever heard!”
said Nichols.

“It was at the time she was laying siege to me, you
see. She undertook the part of guardian angel, and
used to talk lots of sentiment. The girls get lots of
that out of George Sand's novels about the holiness
of doing just as you 've a mind to, and all that,” said
Danforth.

“By George, Dan, you oughtn't to laugh. She may
have more good in her than you think.”

“Oh, humbug! don't I know her?”

“Well, at any rate she 's a wonderful creature to
hold her looks. By George! how she does hold out!
You'd say, now, she wasn't more than twenty.”

“Yes; she understands getting herself up,” said Danforth,
“and touches up her cheeks a bit now and then.”

“She don't paint, though?”

“Don't paint! Don't she? I 'd like to know if she
don't; but she does it like an artist, like an old master,
in fact.”

“Or like a young mistress,” said Tom, and then
laughed at his own wit.

Now, it so happened that John was sitting at an
open window above, and heard occasional snatches of
this conversation quite sufficient to impress him disagreeably.
He had not heard enough to know exactly
what had been said, but enough to feel that a set of
coarse, low-minded men were making quite free with
the name and reputation of his Lillie; and he was
indignant.

“She is so pretty, so frank, and so impulsive,” he
said. “Such women are always misconstrued. I 'm
resolved to caution her.”

“Lillie,” he said, “who is this Danforth?”

“Charlie Danforth — oh! he 's a millionnaire that I
refused. He was wild about me, — is now, for that
matter. He perfectly haunts my rooms, and is always
teasing me to ride with him.”

“Well, Lillie, if I were you, I wouldn't have any
thing to do with him.”

“John, I don't mean to, any more than I can help.
I try to keep him off all I can; but one doesn't want
to be rude, you know.”

“My darling,” said John, “you little know the
wickedness of the world, and the cruel things that men
will allow themselves to say of women who are meaning
no harm. You can't be too careful, Lillie.”

“Oh! I am careful. Mamma is here, you know, all
the while; and I never receive except she is present.”

John sat abstractedly fingering the various objects
on the table; then he opened a drawer in the same
mechanical manner.

“Why, Lillie! what 's this? what in the world are
these?”

“O John! sure enough! well, there is something I
was going to ask you about. Danforth used always to
be sending me things, you know, before we were married,
— flowers and confectionery, and one thing or
other; and, since I have been here now, he has done
the same, and I really didn't know what to do about

it. You know I didn't want to quarrel with him, or
get his ill-will; he 's a high-spirited fellow, and a man
one doesn't want for an enemy; so I have just passed it
over easy as I could.”

“But, Lillie, a box of cigarettes! — of course, they
can be of no use to you.”

“Of course: they are only a sort of curiosity that he
imports from Spain with his cigars.”

“I 've a great mind to send them back to him myself,”
said John.

“Oh, don't, John! why, how it would look! as if
you were angry, or thought he meant something
wrong. No; I 'll contrive a way to give 'em back
without offending him. I am up to all such little
ways.”

“Come, now,” she added, “don't let 's be cross just
the little time you have to stay with me. I do wish
our house were not all torn up, so that I could go home
with you, and leave Newport and all its bothers behind.”

“Well, Lillie, you could go, and stay with me at
Gracie's,” said John, brightening at this proposition.

“Dear Gracie, — so she has got a house all to herself;
how I shall miss her! but, really, John, I think she
will be happier. Since you would insist on revolutionizing
our house, you know” —

“But, Lillie, it was to please you.”

“Oh, I know it! but you know I begged you not to.
Well, John, I don't think I should like to go in and
settle down on Grace; perhaps, as I am here, and the

sea-air and bathing strengthens me so, we may as well
put it through. I will come home as soon as the house
is done.”

“But perhaps you would want to go with me to
New York to select the furniture?”

“Oh, the artist does all that! Charlie Ferrola will
give his orders to Simon & Sauls, and they will do
every thing up complete. It 's the way they all do —
saves lots of trouble.”

John went home, after three days spent in Newport,
feeling that Lillie was somehow an injured fair one, and
that the envious world bore down always on beauty
and prosperity.

But incidentally he heard and overheard much that
made him uneasy. He heard her admired as a “bully”
girl, a “fast one;” he heard of her smoking, he overheard
something about “painting.”

The time was that John thought Lillie an embryo
angel, — an angel a little bewildered and gone astray,
and with wings a trifle the worse for the world's wear,
— but essentially an angel of the same nature with his
own revered mother.

Gradually the mercury had been falling in the tube
of his estimation. He had given up the angel; and
now to himself he called her “a silly little pussy,” but
he did it with a smile. It was such a neat, white,
graceful pussy; and all his own pussy too, and purred
and rubbed its little head on no coat-sleeve but
his, — of that he was certain. Only a bit silly. She
would still fib a little, John feared, especially when he

looked back to the chapter about her age, — and then,
perhaps, about the cigarettes.

Well, she might, perhaps, in a wild, excited hour,
have smoked one or two, just for fun, and the thing had
been exaggerated. She had promised fairly to return
those cigarettes, — he dared not say to himself that he
feared she would not. He kept saying to himself that
she would. It was necessary to say this often to make
himself believe it.

As to painting — well, John didn't like to ask her,
because, what if she shouldn't tell him the truth?
And, if she did paint, was it so great a sin, poor little
thing? he would watch, and bring her out of it. After
all, when the house was all finished and arranged, and
he got her back from Newport, there would be a long,
quiet, domestic winter at Springdale; and they would
get up their reading-circles, and he would set her to
improving her mind, and gradually the vision of this
empty, fashionable life would die out of her horizon,
and she would come into his ways of thinking and
doing.

But, after all, John managed to be proud of her.
When he read in the columns of “The Herald” the
account of the Splandangerous ball in Newport, and of
the entrancingly beautiful Mrs. J. S., who appeared in
a radiant dress of silvery gauze made à la nuage, &c.,
&c., John was rather pleased than otherwise. Lillie
danced till daylight, — it showed that she must be getting
back her strength, — and she was voted the belle
of the scene. Who wouldn't take the comfort that is

to be got in any thing? John owned this fashionable
meteor, — why shouldn't he rejoice in it?

Two years ago, had anybody told him that one day
he should have a wife that told fibs, and painted, and
smoked cigarettes, and danced all night at Newport,
and yet that he should love her, and be proud of
her, he would have said, Is thy servant a dog? He
was then a considerate, thoughtful John, serious and
careful in his life-plans; and the wife that was to be
his companion was something celestial. But so it is.
By degrees, we accommodate ourselves to the actual
and existing. To all intents and purposes, for us it is
the inevitable.