At seventeen, Lillie graduated from Dr. Sibthorpes 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 semi-paternal 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 wasto be married; and Lillies 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 virgins 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 everybodys 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 camels-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! dont! Id 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 Lillies 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 wifes bills: he was the giver, bringer, and maintainer of all sorts of solid and appreciable comforts.
Lillies 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 Lillies 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.
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 havent 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 dont 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 dont mean he shall live at Springdale. Its 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 dont, said Lillie.
You dear, funny creature, you,how you do always ride on the top of the wave! said Belle.
Its 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 didnt want he should till its all over. Its 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. Ive 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 dont, and still persists that he means to marry me some day, spite of my screams.
Well, hell have to stop making love to you after youre married.
Oh, pshaw! I dont believe that old-fashioned talk. Lovers make a variety in life. I dont see why a married woman is to give up all the fun of having admirers. Of course, one isnt going to do any thing wrong, you know; but one doesnt 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 its too bad on us girls, though, said Belle. You ought to leave us our turn.
Oh! Ill turn over any of them to you, Belle, said Lillie. Theres Harry, to begin with. What do you say to him?
Thank you, I dont 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 dressmakers, resolved the conversation into a discussion so very minute and technical that it cannot be recorded in our pages.
CHAPTER V
WEDDING, AND WEDDING-TRIPWELL, and so they were married, with all the newest modern forms, ceremonies, and accessories.
Every possible thing was done to reflect lustre on the occasion. There were eight bridesmaids, and every one of them fair as the moon; and eight groomsmen, with white-satin ribbons and white rosebuds in their button-holes; and there was a bishop, assisted by a priest, to give the solemn benedictions of the church; and there was a marriage-bell of tuberoses and lilies, of enormous size, swinging over the heads of the pair at the altar; and there were voluntaries on the organ, and chantings, and what not, all solemn and impressive as possible. In the midst of all this, the fair Lillie promised, forsaking all others, to keep only unto him, so long as they both should live,to love, honor, and obey, until death did them part.
During the whole agitating scene, Lillie kept up her presence of mind, and was perfectly aware of what she was about; so that a very fresh, original, and crisp style of trimming, that had been invented in Paris specially for her wedding toilet, received no detriment from the least unguarded movement. We much regret that it is contrary to our literary principles to write half, or one third, in French; because the wedding-dress, by far the most important object on this occasion, and certainly one that most engrossed the thoughts of the bride, was one entirely indescribable in English. Just as there is no word in the Hottentot vocabulary for holiness, or purity, so there are no words in our savage English to describe a ladys dress; and, therefore, our fair friends must be recommended, on this point, to exercise their imagination in connection with the study of the finest French plates, and they may get some idea of Lillie in her wedding robe and train.
Then there was the wedding banquet, where everybody ate quantities of the most fashionable, indigestible horrors, with praiseworthy courage and enthusiasm; for what is to become of paté de fois gras if we dont eat it? What is to become of us if we do is entirely a secondary question.
On the whole, there was not one jot nor tittle of the most exorbitant requirements of fashion that was not fulfilled on this occasion. The house was a crush of wilting flowers, and smelt of tuberoses enough to give one a vertigo for a month. A band of music brayed and clashed every minute of the time; and a jam of people, in elegant dresses, shrieked to each other above the din, and several of Lillies former admirers got tipsy in the supper-room. In short, nothing could be finer; and it was agreed, on all hands, that it was stunning. Accounts of it, and of all the brides dresses, presents, and even wardrobe, went into the daily papers; and thus was the charming Lillie Ellis made into Mrs. John Seymour.
Then followed the approved wedding journey, the programme of which had been drawn up by Lillie herself, with carte blanche from John, and included every place where a brides new toilets could be seen in the most select fashionable circles. They went to Niagara and Trenton, they went to Newport and Saratoga, to the White Mountains and Montreal; and Mrs. John Seymour was a meteor of fashionable wonder and delight at all these places. Her dresses and her diamonds, her hats and her bonnets, were all wonderful to behold. The stir and excitement that she had created as simple Miss Ellis was nothing to the stir and excitement about Mrs. John Seymour. It was the mere grub compared with the full-blown butterfly,the bud compared with the rose. Wherever she appeared, her old admirers flocked in her train. The unmarried girls were, so to speak, nowhere. Marriage was a new lease of power and splendor, and she revelled in it like a humming-bird in the sunshine.
And was John equally happy? Well, to say the truth, Johns head was a little turned by the possession of this curious and manifold creature, that fluttered and flapped her wings about the eyes and ears of his understanding, and appeared before him every day in some new device of the toilet, fair and fresh; smiling and bewitching, kissing and coaxing, laughing and crying, and in all ways bewildering him, the once sober-minded John, till he scarce knew whether he stood on his head or his heels. He knew that this sort of rattling, scatter-brained life must come to an end some time. He knew there was a sober, serious life-work for him; something that must try his mind and soul and strength, and that would, by and by, leave him neither time nor strength to be the mere wandering attaché of a gay bird, whose string he held in hand, and who now seemed to pull him hither and thither at her will.