[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FOLLINGSBEES.]
Springdale stood astonished. The quiet, respectable old town had not seen any thing like it for many a long day; the ostlers at the hotel talked of it; the boys followed the carriage, and hung on the slats of the fence to see the party alight, and said to one another in their artless vocabulary, "Golly! ain"t it bully?"
There was Mr. d.i.c.k Follingsbee, with a pair of waxed, tow-colored moustaches like the French emperor"s, and ever so much longer. He was a little, thin, light-colored man, with a yellow complexion and sandy hair; who, with the appendages aforesaid, looked like some kind of large insect, with very long _antennae_. There was Mrs.
Follingsbee,--a tall, handsome, dark-eyed, dark-haired, dashing woman, French dressed from the tip of her lace parasol to the toe of her boot. There was Mademoiselle Therese, the French maid, an inexpressibly fine lady; and there was _la pet.i.te_ Marie, Mrs.
Follingsbee"s three-year-old hopeful, a lean, bright-eyed little thing, with a great scarlet bow on her back that made her look like a walking b.u.t.terfly. On the whole, the tableau of arrival was so impressive, that Bridget and Annie, Rosa and all the kitchen cabinet, were in a breathless state of excitement.
"How do I find you, _ma chere_?" said Mrs. Follingsbee, folding Lillie rapturously to her breast. "I"ve been just dying to see you! How lovely every thing looks! Oh, _ciel_! how like dear Paris!" she said, as she was conducted into the parlor, and sunk upon the sofa.
"Pretty well done, too, for America!" said Mr. Follingsbee, gazing round, and settling his collar. Mr. Follingsbee was one of the cla.s.s of returned travellers who always speak condescendingly of any thing American; as, "so-so," or "tolerable," or "pretty fair,"--a considerateness which goes a long way towards keeping up the spirits of the country.
"I say, d.i.c.k," said his lady, "have you seen to the bags and wraps?"
"All right, madam."
"And my basket of medicines and the books?"
"O.K.," replied d.i.c.k, sententiously.
"Oh! how often must I tell you not to use those odious slang terms?"
said his wife, reprovingly.
"Oh! Mrs. John Seymour knows _me_ of old," said Mr. Follingsbee, winking facetiously at Lillie. "We"ve had many a jolly lark together; haven"t we, Lill?"
"Certainly we have," said Lillie, affably. "But come, darling," she added to Mrs. Follingsbee, "don"t you want to be shown your room?"
"Go it, then, my dearie; and I"ll toddle up with the fol-de-rols and what-you-may-calls," said the incorrigible d.i.c.k. "There, wife, Mrs.
John Seymour shall go first, so that you shan"t be jealous of her and me. You know we came pretty near being in interesting relations ourselves at one time; didn"t we, now?" he said with another wink.
It is said that a thorough-paced naturalist can reconstruct a whole animal from one specimen bone. In like manner, we imagine that, from these few words of dialogue, our expert readers can reconstruct Mr.
and Mrs. Follingsbee: he, vulgar, shallow, sharp, keen at a bargain, and utterly without scruples; with a sort of hilarious, animal good nature that was in a state of constant ebullition. He was, as Richard Baxter said of a better man, "always in that state of hilarity that another would be in when he hath taken a cup too much."
d.i.c.k Follingsbee began life as a peddler. He was now reputed to be master of untold wealth, kept a yacht and race-horses, ran his own theatre, and patronized the whole world and creation in general with a jocular freedom. Mrs. Follingsbee had been a country girl, with small early advantages, but considerable ambition. She had married d.i.c.k Follingsbee, and helped him up in the world, as a clever, ambitious woman may. The last few years she had been spending in Paris, improving her mind and manners in reading Dumas" and Madame George Sand"s novels, and availing herself of such outskirt advantages of the court of the Tuileries as industrious, pains-taking Americans, not embarra.s.sed by self-respect, may command.
Mrs. Follingsbee, like many another of our republicans who besieged the purlieus of the late empire, felt that a residence near the court, at a time when every thing good and decent in France was hiding in obscure corners, and every thing _parvenu_ was wide awake and active, ent.i.tled her to speak as one having authority concerning French character, French manners and customs. This lady a.s.sumed the sentimental literary _role_. She was always cultivating herself in her own way; that is to say, she was a.s.siduous in what she called keeping up her French.
In the opinion of many of her cla.s.s of thinkers, French is the key of the kingdom of heaven; and, of course, it is worth one"s while to sell all that one has to be possessed of it. Mrs. Follingsbee had not been in the least backward to do this; but, as to getting the golden key, she had not succeeded. She had formed the acquaintance of many disreputable people; she had read French novels and French plays such as no well-bred French woman would suffer in her family; she had lost such innocence and purity of mind as she had to lose, and, after all, had _not_ got the French language.
However, there are losses that do not trouble the subject of them, because they bring insensibility. Just as Mrs. Follingsbee"s ear was not delicate enough to perceive that her rapid and confident French was not Parisian, so also her conscience and moral sense were not delicate enough to know that she had spent her labor for "that which was not bread." She had only succeeded in acquiring such an air that, on a careless survey, she might have been taken for one of the _demi-monde_ of Paris; while secretly she imagined herself the fascinating heroine of a French romance.
The friendship between Mrs. Follingsbee and Lillie was of the most impa.s.sioned nature; though, as both of them were women of a good solid perception in regard to their own material interests, there were excellent reasons on both sides for this enthusiasm.
Notwithstanding the immense wealth of the Follingsbees, there were circles to which Mrs. Follingsbee found it difficult to be admitted.
With the usual human perversity, these, of course, became exactly the ones, and the only ones, she particularly cared for. Her ambition was to pa.s.s beyond the ranks of the "shoddy" aristocracy to those of the old-established families. Now, the Seymours, the Fergusons, and the Wilc.o.xes were families of this sort; and none of them had ever cared to conceal the fact, that they did not intend to know the Follingsbees. The marriage of Lillie into the Seymour family was the opening of a door; and Mrs. Follingsbee had been at Lillie"s feet during her Newport campaign. On the other hand, Lillie, having taken the sense of the situation at Springdale, had cast her thoughts forward like a discreet young woman, and perceived in advance of her a very dull domestic winter, enlivened only by reading-circles and such slow tea-parties as unsophisticated Springdale found agreeable. The idea of a long visit to the New-York alhambra of the Follingsbees in the winter, with b.a.l.l.s, parties, unlimited opera-boxes, was not a thing to be disregarded; and so, when Mrs. Follingsbee "_ma chered_"
Lillie, Lillie "my deared" Mrs. Follingsbee: and the pair are to be seen at this blessed moment sitting with their arms tenderly round each other"s waists on a _causeuse_ in Mrs. Follingsbee"s dressing-room.
"You don"t know, _mignonne_," said Mrs. Follingsbee, "how perfectly _ravissante_ these apartments are! I"m so glad poor Charlie did them so well for you. I laid my commands on him, poor fellow!"
"Pray, how does your affair with him get on?" said Lillie.
"O dearest! you"ve no conception what a trial it is to me to keep him in the bounds of reason. He has such struggles of mind about that stupid wife of his. Think of it, my dear! a man like Charlie Ferrola, all poetry, romance, ideality, tied to a woman who thinks of nothing but her children"s teeth and bowels, and turns the whole house into a nursery! Oh, I"ve no patience with such people."
"Well, poor fellow! it"s a pity he ever got married," said Lillie.
"Well, it would be all well enough if this sort of woman ever would be reasonable; but they won"t. They don"t in the least comprehend the necessities of genius. They want to yoke Pegasus to a cart, you see.
Now, I understand Charlie perfectly. I could give him that which he needs. I appreciate him. I make a bower of peace and enjoyment for him, where his artistic nature finds the repose it craves."
"And she pitches into him about you," said Lillie, not slow to perceive the true literal rendering of all this.
"Of course, _ma chere_,--tears him, rends him, lacerates his soul; sometimes he comes to me in the most dreadful states. Really, dear, I have apprehended something quite awful! I shouldn"t in the least be surprised if he should blow his brains out!"
And Mrs. Follingsbee sighed deeply, gave a glance at herself in an opposite mirror, and smoothed down a bow pensively, as the prima donna at the grand opera generally does when her lover is getting ready to stab himself.
"Oh! I don"t think he"s going to kill himself," said Mrs. Lillie, who, it must be understood, was secretly somewhat sceptical about the power of her friend"s charms, and looked on this little French romance with the eye of an outsider: "never you believe that, dearest. These men make dreadful tearings, and shocking eyes and mouths; but they take pretty good care to keep in the world, after all. You see, if a man"s dead, there"s an end of all things; and I fancy they think of that before they quite come to any thing decisive."
"_Chere etourdie_," said Mrs. Follingsbee, regarding Lillie with a pensive smile: "you are just your old self, I see; you are now at the height of your power,--"_jeune Madame, un mari qui vous adore_," ready to put all things under your feet. How can you feel for a worn, lonely heart like mine, that sighs for congeniality?"
"Bless me, now," said Lillie, briskly; "you don"t tell me that you"re going to be so silly as to get in love with Charlie yourself! It"s all well enough to keep these fellows on the tragic high ropes; but, if a woman falls in love herself, there"s an end of her power. And, darling, just think of it: you wouldn"t have married that creature if you could; he"s poor as a rat, and always will be; these desperately interesting fellows always are. Now you have money without end; and of course you have position; and your husband is a man you can get any thing in the world out of."
"Oh! as to that, I don"t complain of d.i.c.k," said Mrs. Follingsbee: "he"s coa.r.s.e and vulgar, to be sure, but he never stands in my way, and I never stand in his; and, as you say, he"s free about money. But still, darling, sometimes it seems to me such a weary thing to live without sympathy of soul! A marriage without congeniality, _mon Dieu_, what is it? And then the harsh, cold laws of human society prevent any relief. They forbid natures that are made for each other from being to each other what they can be."
"You mean that people will talk about you," said Lillie. "Well, I a.s.sure you, dearest, they _will_ talk awfully, if you are not very careful. I say this to you frankly, as your friend, you know."
"Ah, _ma pet.i.te_! you don"t need to tell me that. I _am_ careful,"
said Mrs. Follingsbee. "I am always lecturing Charlie, and showing him that we must keep up _les convenances_; but is it not hard on us poor women to lead always this repressed, secretive life?"
"What made you marry Mr. Follingsbee?" said Lillie, with apparent artlessness.
"Darling, I was but a child. I was ignorant of the mysteries of my own nature, of my capabilities. As Charlie said to me the other day, we never learn what we are till some congenial soul unlocks the secret door of our hearts. The fact is, dearest, that American society, with its strait-laced, puritanical notions, bears terribly hard on woman"s heart. Poor Charlie! he is no less one of the victims of society."
"Oh, nonsense!" said Lillie. "You take it too much to heart. You mustn"t mind all these men say. They are always being desperate and tragic. Charlie has talked just so to me, time and time again. I understand it all. He talked exactly so to me when he came to Newport last summer. You must take matters easy, my dear,--you, with your beauty, and your style, and your money. Why, you can lead all New York captive! Forty fellows like Charlie are not worth spoiling one"s dinner for. Come, cheer up; positively I shan"t let you be blue, _ma reine_. Let me ring for your maid to dress you for dinner. _Au revoir_."
The fact was, that Mrs. Lillie, having formerly set down this lovely Charlie on the list of her own adorers, had small sympathy with the sentimental romance of her friend.
"What a fool she makes of herself!" she thought, as she contemplated her own sylph-like figure and wonderful freshness of complexion in the gla.s.s. "Don"t I know Charlie Ferrola? he wants her to get him into fashionable life, and knows the way to do it. To think of that stout, middle-aged party imagining that Charlie Ferrola"s going to die for her charms! it"s too funny! How stout the dear old thing does get, to be sure!"
[Ill.u.s.tration: MR. CHARLIE FERROLA.]
It will be observed here that our dear Lillie did not want for perspicacity. There is nothing so absolutely clear-sighted, in certain directions, as selfishness. Entire want of sympathy with others clears up one"s vision astonishingly, and enables us to see all the weak points and ridiculous places of our neighbors in the most accurate manner possible.
As to Mr. Charlie Ferrola, our Lillie was certainly in the right in respect to him. He was one of those blossoms of male humanity that seem as expressly designed by nature for the ornamentation of ladies"
boudoirs, as an Italian greyhound: he had precisely the same graceful, shivery adaptation to live by petting and caresses. His tastes were all so exquisite that it was the most difficult thing in the world to keep him out of misery a moment. He was in a chronic state of disgust with something or other in our lower world from morning till night.
His profession was nominally that of architecture and landscape gardening; but, in point of fact, consisted in telling certain rich, _blase_, stupid, fashionable people how they could quickest get rid of their money. He ruled despotically in the Follingsbee halls: he bought and rejected pictures and jewelry, ordered and sent off furniture, with the air of an absolute master; amusing himself meanwhile with running a French romance with the handsome mistress of the establishment. As a consequence, he had not only opportunities for much quiet feathering of his own nest, but the _eclat_ of always having the use of the Follingsbees" carriages, horses, and opera-boxes, and being the acknowledged and supreme head of fashionable dictation. Ladies sometimes pull caps for such charming individuals, as we have seen in the case of Mrs. Follingsbee and Lillie.
For it is not to be supposed that Mrs. Follingsbee, though she had a.s.sumed the gushing style with her young friend, wanted spirit or perception on her part. Her darling Lillie had left a nettle in her bosom which rankled there.
"The vanity of these thin, light, watery blondes!" she said to herself, as she looked into her own great dark eyes in the mirror,--"thinking Charlie Ferrola cares for her! I know just what he thinks of _her_, thank heaven! Poor thing! Don"t you think Mrs. John Seymour has gone off astonishingly since her marriage?" she said to Therese.