Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty Part 50

"Oh, I don't know," she replied with a weary air. She was thinking, not of his general consolations, but of his hope that she could endure her trial; for a trial it was, this sudden death of her husband, though she had thought of him of late only as separated from her forever. After a short silence she sobbed, "I am so sorry I quarreled with him. I wish I had written to him that I was not angry."

She went on crying, but not pa.s.sionately, nor with a show of unendurable sorrow. From that time, as he watched the patient tranquillity of her grief, the Doctor conceived a firm hope that she would not be permanently crushed by her afflictions. She kept the letter in her own writing desk, and read it many times when alone; sometimes laying it down with a start to take up the unconscious giggling comforter in the cradle; sometimes telling him what it all meant, and what her tears meant, saying, "Poor baby! Baby's papa is dead."

Only once did an expression savoring of anger at any one force its way through her lips.

"I don't see why I should have been made miserable because others are wicked," she said.

"It is one of the necessary consequences of living," answered the Doctor. "Other people's sins are sometimes brought to our doors, just as other people's infants are sometimes left there in baskets. G.o.d has ordained that we shall help bear the burdens of our fellow creatures, even down to the consequences of their crimes. It is one way of teaching us not to sin. I have had my small share of this unpleasant labor. I lost my home and my income because a few men wanted to found a slave-driving oligarchy on the ruins of their country."

"We have had nothing but trials," sighed Lillie.

"Oh yes," said the Doctor. "Life in the average is a ma.s.s of happiness, only dotted here and there by trials. Our pleasures are so many that they grow monotonous and are overlooked."

I must now include the history of eight months in a few pages. The Doctor, ignorant of the steamboat transaction, allowed his daughter to draw the money which she had left behind on deposit, considering that Carter's child unquestionably had a right to it. Through the good offices of that amiable sinner, Mrs. Larue (of which he was equally unaware), he was enabled to let his house in New Orleans as a Government office. Thus provided with ready money and a small quarterly payment, he resumed his literary and scientific labors, translating from a French Encyclopedia for a New York publisher, and occasionally securing a job of mineralogical discovery. The familiar life of former days, when father and daughter were all and all to each other, slowly revived, saddened by recollections, but made joyful also by the new affection which they shared. As out of the brazen vase of the Arabian Nights arose the malignant Jinn whose head touched the clouds, and whose voice made the earth tremble, so out of the cradle of Ravvie arose an influence, perhaps a veritable angel, whose crown was in the heavens, and whose power brought down consolation. There was no cause of inner estrangement; nothing on which father and child could not feel alike.

Ravenel had found some difficulty in liking his daughter's husband, but he had none at all in loving his daughter's baby. So, agreeing on all subjects of much importance to either, and disposed by affection and old habit to take a strong interest in each other's affairs, they easily returned to their former ways of much domestic small-talk. Happily for Lillie she was not taciturn, but a prattler, and by nature a light-hearted one. Now prattlers, like workers of all kinds, physical and moral, unconsciously dodge by their activity a great many shafts of suffering which hit their quieter brothers and sisters. A widow who orders her mourning, and waits for it with folded hand and closed lips, is likely to be more melancholy than a widow who must trim her gowns, and make up her caps with her own fingers, and who is thereby impelled to talk of them to her mother, sisters, and other born sympathisers. It was a symptom of returning health of mind when Lillie could linger before the gla.s.s, arrange her hair with the old taste, put on a new cap daintily and say, "Papa, how does that look?"

"Very well, my dear," answers papa, scratching away at his translation.

Then, remembering what his child had suffered, and transferring his thoughts to the subject which she proffers for consideration, he adds, "It seems to me that it is unnecessarily stiff and parchment like. It looks as if it was made of stearine."

"Why, that's the material," says Lillie. "Of course it looks stiff; it ought to."

"But why not have some other material?" queries the Doctor, who is as dull as men usually are in matters of the female toilet. "Why not use white silk, or something?"

"Silk, papa!" exclaims Lillie, and laughs heartily. "Who ever heard of using silk for mourning?"

Woe to women when they give up making their own dresses and take to female tailors! Five will then die of broken hearts, of ennui, of emptiness of life, where one dies now.

But her great diverter and comforter was still her child. Like most women she was born for maternity more distinctly and positively even than for love. She had not given up her dolls until she was fourteen; and then she had put them reverentially and tenderly away in a trunk where she could occasionally go and look at them; and less than seven years later she had a living doll, her own, her soul's doll, to care for and wors.h.i.+p. It was charming to see this slender, Diana-like form, overloaded and leaning, but still bearing, with an affection which was careless of fatigue, the disproportionate weight of that healthy, succulent, ponderous Ravvie. His pink face, and short flaxen hair bobbed about her shoulders, and his chubby hands played with her nose, lips, hair, and white collars. When he went out on an airing she almost always went with him, and sometimes took the sole charge of his wicker wagon, proud to drag it because of its ill.u.s.trious burden. Ravvie had a promenade in the morning with mamma and nurse, and another late in the afternoon with mamma and grandpapa. Lillie meant to make him healthy by keeping him constantly in the open air, and burning him brown in the suns.h.i.+ne, after the sensible fas.h.i.+on of southern nurseries, and in consonance with the teaching of her father. The old Irish nurse, a veteran and enthusiast in her profession, had more than one contest with this provokingly devoted mother. Not that Rosann objected to the child being out; she would have been glad to have him in the wicker wagon from breakfast to dinner, and from dinner to sundown; but she wanted to be the sole guide and companion of his wanderings. When, therefore she was ordered to stay at home and do the small was.h.i.+ng and ironing, while the mistress went off with the baby, she set up an indignant ullaloo, and threatened departure without warning. Sometimes Lillie was satirical and said, "Rosann, since you can't nurse the baby, I hope you will allow me to do so."

To which Rosann, with Irish readiness, and with an apologetic t.i.tter, would reply, "An' since G.o.d allows ye to do it, ma'am, I don't see as I can make an objection."

"I would turn her away if she wasn't so fond of Ravvie," affirmed Lillie in a pet. "She is the most selfish creature that I ever saw. She wants him the whole time. I declare, papa, I only keep her out of pity. I believe it would break her heart to deprive her of the child."

"It's a very odd sort of selfishness," observed the Doctor. "Most people would call it devotion, self-abnegation, or something of that sort."

"But he isn't her child," answered Lillie, half vexed, half smiling.

"She thinks he is. I actually believe she thinks that she had him. But she didn't. I did."

She tossed her head with a pretty air of defiance, which was as much as to say that she was not ashamed of the feat.

Long before Master Ravvie could say a word in any language, she had commenced the practice of talking to him only in French. He should be a linguist from his cradle; and she herself would be his teacher. When he got old enough her father should instruct him in the sciences, and, if he chose to be a doctor, in the theory and practice of medicine. They would never send him to school, nor to college: thus they would save money, have him always by them and keep him from evil. Concerning this project she had long arguments with her father, who thought a boy should be with boys, learn to rough it away from home, study human nature as well as languages and sciences, and grow up with a circle of emulators and life comrades.

"You will give up this little plan of yours," he said, "when he gets old enough to make it necessary. When he is fifteen he won't wear the sh.e.l.l that fits him now, and meantime we must let another one grow on his back against he needs it."

But Lillie could not yet see that her child ought even to be separated from her. She was constantly arranging, and re-arranging her imaginary future in such ways as seemed best fitted to make him a permanent feature of it. In every cloud-castle that she built he occupied a central throne, with her father sitting on the right hand and she on the left. Of course, however, she was chiefly occupied with his present, desiring to make it as delightful to him as possible.

"I wonder if Ravvie would like the sea-sh.o.r.e," she said, on one of the first warm days of summer.

"Why so?" asks papa.

"Oh, it would be so pleasant to spend a week or so on the sea-sh.o.r.e. I think I could get a little fatter and stronger if I might have the sea-breeze and sea-bathing. I am tired of being so thin. Besides, it would be such fun to take Ravvie down to the beach and see him stare at the waves rolling in. How round his eyes would be! Do you remember how he used to turn his head up when he was a month old, and stare at the sky with his eyes set like a doll-baby's. I wish I knew what he used to think of it."

"I presume he thought just about as much as the hollyhocks do when they turn their faces toward the sun," says the Doctor.

"For shame, papa! Do you compare him to a vegetable?"

"Not now. But in those days he was only a grade above one. There wasn't much in him but possibilities. Well; he may have perceived that the sky was very fine; but then the hollyhocks perceive as much."

"What! don't you suppose he had a soul?"

"Oh yes. He had a tongue too, but he hadn't learned to talk with it. I doubt whether his soul was of much use to him in that stage of his existence."

"Papa, it seems to me that you talk like an infidel. Now if Ravvie had died when he was a month old, I should have expected to meet him in Heaven--that is, if I am ever fit to go there."

"I have no doubt you would--no doubt of it," affirmed the Doctor with animation. "I never intended to dispute the little man's immortality."

"Then why did you call him a hollyhock?"

"My dear, I take it all back. He isn't a hollyhock and never was."

"If we can hire a house I want it in the suburbs," said Lillie, after a meditation. "I want it outside the city so that Ravvie can have plenty of air. His room must be on the sunny side, papa--hear?"

"Yes," answered papa, who had also had his revery, probably concerning Smithites and Brownites.

"You don't hear at all," said Lillie. "You don't pay any attention."

"Well, my child, there is plenty of time. We sha'n't have a house for the next five minutes."

"I know it. Not for five years perhaps. But I want you to pay attention when I am talking about Ravvie."

Meantime the two were very popular in New Boston. As southern refugees, as martyrs in the cause of loyalty, as an organizer of free black labor, as the widow of a distinguished Union officer, both and each were personages whom the fervent Federalists of the little city delighted to honor. As soon as they would receive calls or accept of new acquaintances they had all that they wanted. Professor Whitewood had been killed at Chancellorsville, although bodily more than three hundred miles from the field of battle; and his son was now worth eighty thousand dollars, besides seven hundred dollars yearly from a tutors.h.i.+p, and the prospect of succeeding to his father's position. This well-to-do, virtuous, amiable, and intelligent young gentleman was more than suspected of being in love with the penniless widow. His sister made the affair a subject of much meditation, and even of prayer, being anxious above all things on earth, that her brother should be happy.

Whitewood was more than once observed to drop his Hindustani, sidle out upon the green and beg the privilege of drawing Ravvie's baby-wagon; and what was particularly suspicious about the matter was, that he never attempted to join Rosann in this manner, but only Mrs. Carter. Lillie colored at the significance of the shyly-preferred request, and would not consent to it, but nevertheless was not angry. Her bookish admirer's interest in her increased when he found that she aided her father in his translations; for from his childhood he had been taught to like people very much in proportion to their intellectuality and education. Of evenings he was frequently to be seen in the little parlor of the Ravenels on the fourth floor of the New Boston House. Lillie would have been glad to have him bring his sister, so that they four could make up a game of whist; but since the dawn of history no Whitewoods had ever handled a pack of cards, and the capacity of learning to do so was not in them. Moreover they still retained some of the old New England scruples of conscience on the subject. Whitewood talked quite as much with the Doctor as with Lillie; quite as much about minerals and chemistry as about subjects with which she was familiar; but it was easy to see that, if he had known how, he would have made his conversation altogether feminine. At precisely ten o'clock he rose with a start and sidled to the door; stuck there a few moments to add a postscript concerning science or cla.s.sic literature; then with another start opened the door, and said, "Good evening" after he was in the pa.s.sage.

"How awkward he is!" Lillie would sometimes observe.

"Yes--physically," was the Doctor's answer. "But not morally. I don't see that he tramples on any one's feelings, or breaks any one's heart."

The visitor gone, father and daughter walked in the hall while Rosann opened the windows for ventilation. After that the baby's cradle was dragged into the parlor with much ceremony, the whole family either directing or a.s.sisting; a mattress and blankets were produced from a closet and made up on the floor into a bed for the nurse; grandpapa kissed both his children and went to his own room next door; and Lillie proceeded to undress, talking to Rosann about Ravvie.

"An' do ye know, ma'am, what the little crater did to me to-day?" says the doting Irishwoman. "He jist pulled me spectacles off me nose an'

stuck 'em in his own little mouth. He thought, mebbe, he could see with his mouth. An' thin he lucked me full in the face as cunnin as could be, an' give the biggest jump that iver was. I tell ye, ma'am, babies is smarter now than they used to be."

This remarkable anecdote, with the nurse's commentary, being repeated to the Doctor in the morning, he philosophised as follows.

"There may be something in Rosann's statement. It is not impossible that the babies of a civilized age are more exquisitely sensitive beings than the babies of antique barbarism. It may be that at my birth I was a little ahead of my Gallic ancestor at his birth. Perhaps I was able to compare two sensations as early in life as he was able to perceive a single sensation. It might be something like this. He at the age of ten days would be capable of thinking, 'Milk is good.' I at the same age could perhaps go so far as to think, 'Milk is better than Dally's Mixture.' Babies now-a-days have need of being cleverer than they used to be. They have more dangers to evade, more medicines to spit out."

"I know what you mean," said Lillie. "You always did rebel against Dally. But what was I to do? He _would_ have the colic."