University of Virginia Library

13. CHAPTER XIII.
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 à 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.

“Lille,” 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.”

[ILLUSTRATION] [Description: 706EAF. Page 143. In-line Illustration. Image of a woman lying in bed with a cloth on her head. She is talking to a man standing next to the bed. The caption reads, "Oh, me! it makes my head ache to think of it."]

“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
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.”