Pink and White Tyranny Part 10

"How can you say so, John? I'm a poor little creature,--no use to anybody."

Hereupon John told her that her only use in life was to be lovely and to be loved,--that a thing of beauty was a joy forever, &c., &c.

But Lillie was too much exhausted, on her return, to appear at the tea-table. She took to her bed at once with sick headache, to the poignant remorse of John. "You see how it is, Gracie," he said. "Poor dear little thing, she is willing enough, but there's nothing of her.

We mustn't allow her to exert herself; her feelings always carry her away."

The next Sunday, John sat at home with Lillie, who found herself too unwell to go to church, and was in a state of such low spirits as to require constant soothing to keep her quiet.

"It is fortunate that I have you and Rose to trust the school with,"

said John; "you see, it's my first duty to take care of Lillie."

CHAPTER IX.

_A CRISIS_.

One of the shrewdest and most subtle modern French writers has given his views of womankind in the following pa.s.sage:--

"There are few women who have not found themselves, at least once in their lives, in regard to some incontestable fact, faced down by precise, keen, searching inquiry,--one of those questions pitilessly put by their husbands, the very idea of which gives a slight chill, and the first word of which enters the heart like a stroke of a dagger. Hence comes the maxim, _Every woman lies_--obliging lies--venial lies--sublime lies--horrible lies--but always the obligation of lying.

"This obligation once admitted, must it not be a necessity to know how to lie well? In France, the women lie admirably. Our customs instruct them so well in imposture. And woman is so naively impertinent, so pretty, so graceful, so true, in her lying! They so well understand its usefulness in social life for avoiding those violent shocks which would destroy happiness,--it is like the cotton in which they pack their jewelry.

"Lying is to them the very foundation of language, and truth is only the exception; they speak it, as they are virtuous, from caprice or for a purpose. According to their character, some women laugh when they lie, and some cry; some become grave, and others get angry.

Having begun life by pretending perfect insensibility to that homage which flatters them most, they often finish by lying even to themselves. Who has not admired their apparent superiority and calm, at the moment when they were trembling for the mysterious treasures of their love? Who has not studied their ease and facility, their presence of mind in the midst of the most critical embarra.s.sments of social life? There is nothing awkward about it; their deception flows as softly as the snow falls from heaven.

"Yet there are men that have the presumption to expect to get the better of the Parisian woman!--of the woman who possesses thirty-seven thousand ways of saying 'No,' and incommensurable variations in saying 'Yes.'"

This is a Frenchman's view of life in a country where women are trained more systematically for the mere purposes of attraction than in any other country, and where the pursuit of admiration and the excitement of winning lovers are represented by its authors as const.i.tuting the main staple of woman's existence. France, unfortunately, is becoming the great society-teacher of the world.

What with French theatres, French operas, French novels, and the universal rush of American women for travel, France is becoming so powerful on American fas.h.i.+onable society, that the things said of the Parisian woman begin in some cases to apply to some women in America.

Lillie was as precisely the woman here described as if she had been born and bred in Paris. She had all the thirty-seven thousand ways of saying "No," and the incommensurable variations in saying "Yes,"

as completely as the best French teaching could have given it. She possessed, and had used, all that graceful facility, in the story of herself that she had told John in the days of courts.h.i.+p. Her power over him was based on a dangerous foundation of unreality. Hence, during the first few weeks of her wedded life, came a critical scene, in which she was brought in collision with one of those "pitiless questions" our author speaks of.

Her wedding-presents, manifold and brilliant, had remained at home, in the charge of her mother, during the wedding-journey. One bright day, a few weeks after her arrival in Springdale, the boxes containing the treasures were landed there; and John, with all enthusiasm, busied himself with the work of unpacking these boxes, and drawing forth the treasures.

Now, it so happened that Lillie's maternal grandfather, a nice, pious old gentleman, had taken the occasion to make her the edifying and suggestive present of a large, elegantly bound family Bible.

The binding was unexceptionable; and Lillie a.s.signed it a proper place of honor among her wedding-gear. Alas! she had not looked into it, nor seen what dangers to her power were lodged between its leaves.

But John, who was curious in the matter of books, sat quietly down in a corner to examine it; and on the middle page, under the head "Family Record," he found, in a large, bold hand, the date of the birth of "Lillie Ellis" in figures of the most uncompromising plainness; and thence, with one flash of his well-trained arithmetical sense, came the perception that, instead of being twenty years old, she was in fact twenty-seven,--and that of course she had lied to him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "He found the date of the birth of 'Lillie Ellis.'"]

It was a horrid and a hard word for an American young man to have suggested in relation to his wife. If we may believe the French romancer, a Frenchman would simply have smiled in amus.e.m.e.nt on detecting this petty feminine _ruse_ of his beloved. But American men are in the habit of expecting the truth from respectable women as a matter of course; and the want of it in the smallest degree strikes them as shocking. Only an Englishman or an American can understand the dreadful pain of that discovery to John.

The Anglo-Saxon race have, so to speak, a wors.h.i.+p of truth; and they hate and abhor lying with an energy which leaves no power of tolerance.

The Celtic races have a certain sympathy with deception. They have a certain appreciation of the value of lying as a fine art, which has never been more skilfully shown than in the pa.s.sage from De Balzac we have quoted. The woman who is described by him as lying so sweetly and skilfully is represented as one of those women "qui ont je ne sais quoi de saint et de sacre, qui inspirent tant de respect que l'amour,"--"a woman who has an indescribable something of holiness and purity which inspires respect as well as love." It was no detraction from the character of Jesus, according to the estimate of Renan, to represent him as consenting to a benevolent fraud, and seeming to work miracles when he did not work them, by way of increasing his good influence over the mult.i.tude.

But John was the offspring of a generation of men for hundreds of years, who would any of them have gone to the stake rather than have told the smallest untruth; and for him who had been watched and guarded and catechised against this sin from his cradle, till he was as true and pure as a crystal rock, to have his faith shattered in the woman he loved, was a terrible thing.

As he read the fatal figures, a mist swam before his eyes,--a sort of faintness came over him. It seemed for a moment as if his very life was sinking down through his boots into the carpet. He threw down the book hastily, and, turning, stepped through an open window into the garden, and walked quickly off.

"Where in the world is John going?" said Lillie, running to the door, and calling after him in imperative tones.

"John, John, come back. I haven't done with you yet;" but John never turned his head.

"How very odd! what in the world is the matter with him?" she said to herself.

John was gone all the afternoon. He took a long, long walk, all by himself, and thought the matter over. He remembered that fresh, childlike, almost infantine face, that looked up into his with such a bewitching air of frankness and candor, as she professed to be telling all about herself and her history; and now which or what of it was true? It seemed as if he loathed her; and yet he couldn't help loving her, while he despised himself for doing it.

When he came home to supper, he was silent and morose. Lillie came running to meet him; but he threw her off, saying he was tired. She was frightened; she had never seen him look like that.

"John, what is the matter with you?" said Grace at the tea-table. "You are upsetting every thing, and don't drink your tea."

"Nothing--only--I have some troublesome business to settle," he said, getting up to go out again. "You needn't wait for me; I shall be out late."

"What can be the matter?"

Lillie, indeed, had not the remotest idea. Yet she remembered his jumping up suddenly, and throwing down the Bible; and mechanically she went to it, and opened it. She turned it over; and the record met her eye.

"Provoking!" she said. "Stupid old creature! must needs go and put that out in full." Lillie took a paper-folder, and cut the leaf out quite neatly; then folded and burned it.

She knew now what was the matter. John was angry at her; but she couldn't help wondering that he should be so angry. If he had laughed at her, teased her, taxed her with the trick, she would have understood what to do. But this terrible gloom, this awful commotion of the elements, frightened her.

She went to her room, saying that she had a headache, and would go to bed. But she did not. She took her French novel, and read till she heard him coming; and then she threw down her book, and began to cry. He came into the room, and saw her leaning like a little white snow-wreath over the table, sobbing as if her heart would break. To do her justice, Lillie's sobs were not affected. She was lonesome and thoroughly frightened; and, when she heard him coming, her nerves gave out. John's heart yearned towards her. His short-lived anger had burned out; and he was perfectly longing for a reconciliation. He felt as if he must have her to love, no matter what she was. He came up to her, and stroked her hair. "O Lillie!" he said, "why couldn't you have told me the truth? What made you deceive me?"

"I was afraid you wouldn't like me if I did," said Lillie, in her sobs.

"O Lillie! I should have liked you, no matter how old you were,--only you should have told me _the truth_."

"I know it--I know it--oh, it _was_ wrong of me!" and Lillie sobbed, and seemed in danger of falling into convulsions; and John's heart gave out. He gathered her in his arms. "I can't help loving you; and I can't live without you," he said, "be you what you may!"

Lillie's little heart beat with triumph under all her sobs: she had got him, and should hold him yet.

"There can be no confidence between husband and wife, Lillie," said John, gravely, "unless we are perfectly true with each other. Promise me, dear, that you will never deceive me again."

Lillie promised with ready fervor. "O John!" she said, "I never should have done so wrong if I had only come under your influence earlier.

The fact is, I have been under the worst influences all my life. I never had anybody like you to guide me."

John may of course be excused for feeling that his flattering little penitent was more to him than ever; and as to Lillie, she gave a sigh of relief. _That_ was over, "anyway;" and she had him not only safe, but more completely hers than before.

A generous man is entirely unnerved by a frank confession. If Lillie had said one word in defence, if she had raised the slightest shadow of an argument, John would have roused up all his moral principle to oppose her; but this poor little white water-sprite, dissolving in a rain of penitent tears, quite washed away all his anger and all his heroism.

The next morning, Lillie, all fresh in a ravis.h.i.+ng toilet, with field-daisies in her hair, was in a condition to laugh gently at John for his emotion of yesterday. She triumphed softly, not too obviously, in her power. He couldn't do without her,--do what she might,--that was plain.