There was a sound of stamping feet at the front door; and John came in, all ruddy and snow-powdered, but looking, on the whole, uncommonly cheerful.
“Well, Gracie,” he said, “the fact is, I shall have to let Lillie go to New York for a week or two, to see those Follingsbees. Hang them! But what’s the matter, Gracie? Have you been crying, or sitting up all night reading, or what?”
The fact was, that Gracie had for once been indulging in a good cry, rather pitying herself for her loneliness, now that the offer of relief had come. She laughed, though; and, handing John her letter, said, —
“Look here, John! here’s a letter I have just had from Walter
Sydenham.”
John broke out into a loud, hilarious laugh.
“The blessed old brick!” said he. “Has he turned up again?”
“Read the letter, John,” said Grace. “I don’t know exactly how to answer it.”
John read the letter, and seemed to grow more and more quiet as he read it. Then he came and stood by Grace, and stroked her hair gently.
“I wish, Gracie dear,” he said, “you had asked my advice about this matter years ago. You loved Walter, — I can see you did; and you sent him off on my account. It is just too bad! Of all the men I ever knew, he was the one I should have been best pleased to have you marry!”
“It was not wholly on your account, John. You know there was our father,” said Grace.
“Yes, yes, Gracie; but he would have preferred to see you well married. He would not have been so selfish, nor I either. It is your self-abnegation, you dear over-good women, that makes us men seem selfish. We should be as good as you are, if you would give us the chance. I think, Gracie, though you’re not aware of it, there is a spice of Pharisaism in the way in which you good girls allow us men to swallow you up without ever telling us what you are doing. I often wondered about your intimacy with Sydenham, and why it never came to any thing; and I can but half forgive you. How selfish I must have seemed!”
“Oh, no, John! indeed not.”
“Come, you needn’t put on these meek airs. I insist upon it, you have been feeling self-righteous and abused,” said John, laughing; “but ‘all’s well that ends well.’ Sit down, now, and write him a real sensible letter, like a nice honest woman as you are.”
“And say, ‘Yes, sir, and thank you too’?” said Grace, laughing.
“Well, something in that way,” said John. “You can fence it in with as many make-believes as is proper. And now, Gracie, this is deuced lucky! You see Sydenham will be down here at once; and it wouldn’t be exactly the thing for you to receive him at this house, and our only hotel is perfectly impracticable in winter; and that brings me to what I am here about. Lillie is going to New York to spend the holidays; and I wanted you to shut up, and come up and keep house for us. You see you have only one servant, and we have four to be looked after. You can bring your maid along, and then I will invite Walter to our house, where he will have a clear field; and you can settle all your matters between you.”
“So Lillie is going to the Follingsbees’?” said Grace.
“Yes: she had a long, desperately sentimental letter from Mrs. Follingsbee, urging, imploring, and entreating, and setting forth all the splendors and glories of New York. Between you and me, it strikes me that that Mrs. Follingsbee is an affected goose; but I couldn’t say so to Lillie, ‘by no manner of means.’ She professes an untold amount of admiration and friendship for Lillie, and sets such brilliant prospects before her, that I should be the most hard-hearted old Turk in existence if I were to raise any objections; and, in fact, Lillie is quite brilliant in anticipation, and makes herself so delightful that I am almost sorry that I agreed to let her go.”
“When shall you want me, John?”
“Well, this evening, say; and, by the way, couldn’t you come up and see Lillie a little while this morning? She sent her love to you, and said she was so hurried with packing, and all that, that she wanted you to excuse her not calling.”
“Oh, yes! I’ll come,” said Grace, good-naturedly, “as soon as I have had time to put things in a little order.”
“And write your letter,” said John, gayly, as he went out. “Don’t forget that.”
Grace did not forget the letter; but we shall not indulge our readers with any peep over her shoulder, only saying that, though written with an abundance of precaution, it was one with which Walter Sydenham was well satisfied.
Then she made her few arrangements in the house-keeping line, called in her grand vizier and prime minister from the kitchen, and held with her a counsel of ways and means; put on her india-rubbers and Polish boots, and walked up through the deep snow-drifts to the Springdale post-office, where she dropped the fateful letter with a good heart on the whole; and then she went on to John’s, the old home, to offer any parting services to Lillie that might be wanted.
It is rather amusing, in any family circle, to see how some one member, by dint of persistent exactions, comes to receive always, in all the exigencies of life, an amount of attention and devotion which is never rendered back. Lillie never thought of such a thing as offering any services of any sort to Grace. Grace might have packed her trunks to go to the moon, or the Pacific Ocean, quite alone for matter of any help Lillie would ever have thought of. If Grace had headache or tooth-ache or a bad cold, Lillie was always “so sorry;” but it never occurred to her to go and sit with her, to read to her, or offer any of a hundred little sisterly offices. When she was in similar case, John always summoned Grace to sit with Lillie during the hours that his business necessarily took him from her. It really seemed to be John’s impression that a tooth-ache or headache of Lillie’s was something entirely different from the same thing with Grace, or any other person in the world; and Lillie fully shared the impression.
Grace found the little empress quite bewildered in her multiplicity of preparations, and neglected details, all of which had been deferred to the last day; and Rosa and Anna and Bridget, in fact the whole staff, were all busy in getting her off.
“So good of you to come, Gracie!” and, “If you would do this;” and, “Won’t you see to that?” and, “If you could just do the other!” and Grace both could and would, and did what no other pair of hands could in the same time. John apologized for the lack of any dinner. “The fact is, Gracie, Bridget had to be getting up a lot of her things that were forgotten till the last moment; and I told her not to mind, we could do on a cold lunch.” Bridget herself had become so wholly accustomed to the ways of her little mistress, that it now seemed the most natural thing in the world that the whole house should be upset for her.
But, at last, every thing was ready and packed; the trunks and boxes shut and locked, and the keys sorted; and John and Lillie were on their way to the station.
“I shall find out Walter in New York, and bring him back with me,” said John, cheerily, as he parted from Grace in the hall. “I leave you to get things all to rights for us.”
It would not have been a very agreeable or cheerful piece of work to tidy the disordered house and take command of the domestic forces under any other circumstances; but now Grace found it a very nice diversion to prevent her thoughts from running too curiously on this future meeting. “After all,” she thought to herself, “he is just the same venturesome, imprudent creature that he always was, jumping to conclusions, and insisting on seeing every thing in his own way. How could he dare write me such a letter without seeing me? Ten years make great changes. How could he be sure he would like me?” And she examined herself somewhat critically in the looking-glass.
“Well,” she said, “he may thank me for it that we are not engaged, and that he comes only as an old friend, and perfectly free, for all he has said, to be nothing more, unless on seeing each other we are so agreed. I am so sorry the old place is all demolished and be-Frenchified. It won’t look natural to him; and I am not the kind of person to harmonize with these cold, polished, glistening, slippery surrounding
s, that have no home life or association in them.”
But Grace had to wake from these reflections to culinary counsels with Bridget, and to arrangements of apartments with Rosa. Her own exacting carefulness followed the careless footsteps of the untrained handmaids, and rearranged every plait and fold; so that by nightfall the next day she was thoroughly tired.
She beguiled the last moments, while waiting for the coming of the cars, in arranging her hair, and putting on one of those wonderful Parisian dresses, which adapt themselves so precisely to the air of the wearer that they seem to be in themselves works of art. Then she stood with a fluttering color to see the carriage drive up to the door, and the two get out of it.
It is almost too bad to spy out such meetings, and certainly one has no business to describe them; but Walter Sydenham carried all before him, by an old habit which he had of taking all and every thing for granted, as, from the first moment, he did with Grace. He had no idea of hesitations or holdings off, and would have none; and met Gracie as if they had parted only yesterday, and as if her word to him always had been yes, instead of no.
In fact, they had not been together five minutes before the whole life of youth returned to them both, — that indestructible youth which belongs to warm hearts and buoyant spirits.
Such a merry evening as they had of it! When John, as the wood fire burned low on the hearth, with some excuse of letters to write in his library, left them alone together, Walter put on her finger a diamond ring, saying, —
“There, Gracie! now, when shall it be? You see you’ve kept me waiting so long that I can’t spare you much time. I have an engagement to be in Montreal the first of February, and I couldn’t think of going alone. They have merry times there in midwinter; and I’m sure it will be ever so much nicer for you than keeping house alone here.”
Grace said, of course, that it was impossible; but Walter declared that doing the impossible was precisely in his line, and pushed on his various advantages with such spirit and energy that, when they parted for the night, Grace said she would think of it: which promise, at the breakfast-table next morning, was interpreted by the unblushing Walter, and reported to John, as a full consent. Before noon that day, Walter had walked up with John and Grace to take a survey of the cottage, and had given John indefinite power to engage workmen and artificers to rearrange and enlarge and beautify it for their return after the wedding journey. For the rest of the visit, all the three were busy with pencil and paper, projecting balconies, bow-windows, pantries, library, and dining-room, till the old cottage so blossomed out in imagination as to leave only a germ of its former self.
Walter’s visit brought back to John a deal of the warmth and freedom which he had not known since he married. We often live under an insensible pressure of which we are made aware only by its removal. John had been so much in the habit lately of watching to please Lillie, of measuring and checking his words or actions, that he now bubbled over with a wild, free delight in finding himself alone with Grace and Walter. He laughed, sang, whistled, skipped upstairs two at a time, and scarcely dared to say even to himself why he was so happy. He did not face himself with that question, and went dutifully to the library at stated times to write to Lillie, and made much of her little letters.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE.
If John managed to be happy without Lillie in Springdale, Lillie managed to be blissful without him in New York.
“The bird let loose in Eastern skies” never hastened more fondly home than she to its glitter and gayety, its life and motion, dash and sensation. She rustled in all her bravery of curls and frills, pinkings and quillings, — a marvellous specimen of Parisian frostwork, without one breath of reason or philosophy or conscience to melt it.
The Follingsbees’ house might stand for the original of the Castle of
Indolence.
”Halls where who can tell
What elegance and grandeur wide expand, —
The pride of Turkey and of Persia’s land?
Soft quilts on quilts; on carpets, carpets spread;
And couches stretched around in seemly band;
And endless pillows rise to prop the head:
So that each spacious room was one full swelling bed.”
It was not without some considerable profit that Mrs. Follingsbee had read Balzac and Dumas, and had Charlie Ferrola for master of arts in her establishment. The effect of the whole was perfect; it transported one, bodily, back to the times of Montespan and Pompadour, when life was all one glittering upper-crust, and pretty women were never troubled with even the shadow of a duty.
It was with a rebound of joyousness that Lillie found herself once more with a crowded list of invitations, calls, operas, dancing, and shopping, that kept her pretty little head in a perfect whirl of excitement, and gave her not one moment for thought.
Mrs. Follingsbee, to say the truth, would have been a little careful about inviting a rival queen of beauty into the circle, were it not that Charlie Ferrola, after an attentive consideration of the subject, had assured her that a golden-haired blonde would form a most complete and effective tableau, in contrast with her own dark rich style of beauty. Neither would lose by it, so he said; and the impression, as they rode together in an elegant open barouche, with ermine carriage robes, would be “stunning.” So they called each other ma soeur, and drove out in the park in a ravishing little pony-phaeton all foamed over with ermine, drawn by a lovely pair of cream-colored horses, whose harness glittered with gold and silver, after the fashion of the Count of Monte Cristo. In truth, if Dick Follingsbee did not remind one of Solomon in all particulars, he was like him in one, that he “made silver and gold as the stones of the street” in New York.
Lillie’s presence, however, was all desirable; because it would draw the calls of two or three old New York families who had hitherto stood upon their dignity, and refused to acknowledge the shoddy aristocracy. The beautiful Mrs. John Seymour, therefore, was no less useful than ornamental, and advanced Mrs. Follingsbee’s purposes in her “Excelsior” movements.
“Now, I suppose,” said Mrs. Follingsbee to Lillie one day, when they had been out making fashionable calls together, “we really must call on Charlie’s wife, just to keep her quiet.”
“I thought you didn’t like her,” said Lillie.
“I don’t; I think she is dreadfully common,” said Mrs. Follingsbee: “she is one of those women who can’t talk any thing but baby, and bores Charlie half to death. But then, you know, when there is a liaison like mine with Charlie, one can’t be too careful to cultivate the wives. Les convenances, you know, are the all-important things. I send her presents constantly, and send my carriage around to take her to church or opera, or any thing that is going on, and have her children at my fancy parties: yet, for all that, the creature has not a particle of gratitude; those narrow-minded women never have. You know I am very susceptible to people’s atmospheres; and I always feel that that creature is just as full of spite and jealousy as she can stick in her skin.”
It will be remarked that this was one of those idiomatic phrases which got lodged in Mrs. Follingsbee’s head in a less cultivated period of her life, as a rusty needle sometimes hides in a cushion, coming out unexpectedly when excitement gives it an honest squeeze.
“Now, I should think,” pursued Mrs. Follingsbee, “that a woman who really loved her husband would be thankful to have him have such a rest from the disturbing family cares which smother a man’s genius, as a house like ours offers him. How can the artistic nature exercise itself in the very grind of the thing, when this child has a cold, and the other the croup; and there is fussing with mustard-paste and ipecac and paregoric, — all those realities, you know? Why, Charlie tells me he feels a great deal more affection for his children when he is all calm and tranquil in the little boudoir at our house; and he writes such lovely little poems about them, I must show you some of them. But this creature doesn’t appreciate them a bit: she ha
s no poetry in her.”
“Well, I must say, I don’t think I should have,” said Lillie, honestly. “I should be just as mad as I could be, if John acted so.”
“Oh, my dear! the cases are different: Charlie has such peculiarities of genius. The artistic nature, you know, requires soothing.” Here they stopped, and rang at the door of a neat little house, and were ushered into a pair of those characteristic parlors which show that they have been arranged by a home-worshipper, and a mother. There were plants and birds and flowers, and little genre pictures of children, animals, and household interiors, arranged with a loving eye and hand.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 365