 | CHAPTER XXXVI.
A BRACE OF OFFERS. Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty |  |
36. CHAPTER XXXVI.
A BRACE OF OFFERS.
At last Colburne gave Mrs. Carter a bouquet. It was
a more significant act than the reader who loves flowers
will perceive without an explanation. Fond as he was
of pets and of most things which are, or stand as emblems
of innocence, he cared very little for flowers except as
features of a landscape. He was conscious of a gratification
in walking along a field path which ran through
dandelions, buttercups, etc.; but he never would have
thought of picking one of them for his own pleasure any
more than of picking a maple tree. In short, he was deficient
in that sense which makes so many people crave
their presence, and could probably have lived in a flowerless
land without any painful sentiment of barrenness.
Therefore it was only a profound and affectionate study
the point of buying and bringing to her a bouquet.
He was actually surprised at the flush of pleasure with
which she received it: a pleasure evidently caused in
great measure by the nature of the gift itself; and only in
small part, he thought, by a consciousness of the motives
of the giver. He watched her with great interest while
she gaily filled a vase with water, put the bouquet in it,
placed it on the mantel piece, stepped back to look at it,
then set it on her work-table, took in the effect once more,
drew a pleased sigh and resumed her seat. Her Diana-like,
graceful form showed to advantage in the plain black
dress, and her wavy blonde hair seemed to him specially
beautiful in its contrast with her plain widow's cap. Youth
with its health and hope had brought back the rounded
outlines which at one time had been a little wasted by
maternity and sorrow. Her white and singularly clear
skin had resumed its soft roseate tint and could show as
distinctly as ever the motions of the quickly-stirred blood.
Her blue eyes, if not as gay as they were four years ago
were more eloquent of experience, thought, and feeling.
Mr. Colburne must be pardoned for thinking that she was
more beautiful than the bouquet, and for wondering how
she could prize a loveliness so much inferior in grace and
expression to her own.
“Do you know?” she said, and then checked herself.
She was about to remind him that these were the first
flowers which he ever gave her, and to laugh at him good
humoredly for having been so slow in divining one of her
passions. But the idea struck her that the gift might be,
for the very reason of its novelty, too significant to be a
proper subject for her comments.
“Do you know,” she continued, after a scarcely perceptible
hesitation, “that I am not so fond of flowers as I
was once? They remind me of Louisiana, and I—don't
love Louisiana.”
“But this is thanking you very poorly for your present,”
know that I am obliged to you. Don't you?”
“I do,” said Colburne. He had been many times repaid
for his offering by seeing the pains which she took to
preserve it and place it to the best advantage.
“It is very odd to me, though, that you never seemed
to love them,” she observed, reverting to her first thought.
“It is my misfortune. I have a pleasure the less. It is
like not having an ear for music.”
“How can you love poetry without loving flowers?”
“I knew a sculptor once who couldn't find the slightest
charm or the slightest exhibition of capacity in an opera. I
had a soldier in my company who could see perfectly well
by daylight, but was stone blind by moonlight. That is
the way some of us are made. We are but partially developed
or, rather, not developed equally in all directions.
My æsthetic self seems to be lacking in button-holes for
bouquets. If I could carry a landscape about in my hand,
I think I would; but not a bunch of flowers.”
“But you love children; and they are flowers.”
“Ah! but they are so human! They make a noise;
they appreciate you comprehensibly; they go after a
fellow.”
So you like people who go after you? thought Mrs.
Carter, smiling to herself at the confession. Somehow she
was interested in and pleased with the minutest peculiarities
of Mr. Colburne.
From that day forward her work table rarely lacked a
bouquet, although her friend's means, after paying his
board bill, were not by any means ample. In fact there
soon came to be two bouquets, representing rival admirers
of the lady. Young Whitewood, who loved flowers, and
had a greenhouse full of them, but had never hitherto
dared present one to the pretty widow, took courage from
Colburne's example, and far exceeded him in the sumptuousness
of his offerings. By the way, I must not neglect
this shy gentleman's claims to a place in my narrative. He
and did a great deal of talking there on learned subjects
with the Doctor, sitting the while on the edge of his
chair, with his thin legs twisted around each other in such
a way as to exhibit with painful distinctness their bony
outlines. Each of these young men was considerably
afraid of the other. Colburne recognized the fact that a
fortune of eighty thousand dollars would be a very suitable
adjunct to Mrs. Carter's personal and social graces,
and that it would be perfectly proper in her to accept it if
offered, as it seemed likely to be. Whitewood bowed
modestly to Colburne's superior conversational cleverness,
and humbled himself in the dust before his honorable fame
as a soldier. What was he, a man of peace, a patriot who
had only talked and paid, in comparison with this other
man who had shed his blood and risked his life for their
common country and the cause of human progress? So
when the Captain talked to Mrs. Carter, the tutor contented
himself with Doctor Ravenel. He was painfully
conscious of his own stiffness and coldness of style, and
mourned over it, and envied the ease and warmth of these
southerners. To this subject he frequently alluded, driven
thereto by a sort of agony of conviction; for the objective
Whitewood imperfectly expressed the subjective, who
thought earnestly and felt ardently.
“I don't understand,” he said mournfully, “why people
of the same blood should be so different—in fact, so
opposed—in manner, as are the northerners and southerners.”
“The difference springs from a radical difference of purpose
in their lives,” said the Doctor. “The pro-slavery
South meant oligarchy, and imitated the manners of the
European nobility. The democratic North means equality
—every man standing on his own legs, and not bestriding
other men's shoulders—every man passing for just what
he is, and no more. It means honesty, sincerity, frankness,
in word as well as deed. It means general hard
cultivate the graces. The polish of the South is superficial
and semi-barbarous, like that of the Poles and all other
slaveholding oligarchies. I confess, however, that I should
like to see a little more sympathy and expansion in the
northern manners. A native, untravelled New Bostonian
is rather too much in the style of an iceberg. He is enough
to cause atmospheric condensation and changes of temperature.
It is a story that when a new Yankee arrives in
the warm air of Louisiana, there is always a shower. But
that, you know, is an exaggeration.”
Whitewood laughed in a disconcerted, consciencestricken
manner.
“Nevertheless, they do a vast deal of good,” continued
the Doctor. “They purify as well as disturb the atmosphere.
To me, a southerner, it is a humiliating reflection,
that, but for these Yankees and their cold moral purity,
we should have established a society upon the basis of
the most horrible slavery that the world has known
since the days of pagan Rome.”
Whitewood glanced at Mrs. Carter. She smiled acquiescence
and sympathy; her conversion from secession and
slavery was complete.
All this while Colburne boarded at the New Boston
House, and saw the Doctor and Mrs. Carter and Ravvie
every day. When they went down to the sea-shore for a
week during the hot weather, he could not leave his business
to accompany them, as he wished, but must stay in
New Boston, feeling miserably lonesome of evenings,
although he knew hundreds of people in the little city. It
was an aggravation of his troubles to learn that Mr.
Whitewood had followed the Ravenels to the watering-place.
When the family returned, still accompanied by
the eighty thousand dollar youth, Colburne looked very
searchingly into the eyes of Mrs. Carter to discover if possible
what she had been doing with herself. She noticed
it, and blushed deeply, which puzzled and troubled him
they would certainly tell me, thought he; but nevertheless
he was not entirely easy about the matter.
It happened the next evening that he lounged into one
of the small parlors of the hotel, intending to pass out
upon a little front balcony and look at the moonlit, elm-arched
glories of the Common. A murmur of two voices
—a male voice and a female—came in from the balcony
and checked his advance. As he hesitated young Whitewood
entered the room through the open window, hastily
followed a moment afterward by Mrs. Carter.
“Mr. Whitewood, please say nothing about this,” she
whispered. “Of course you will not. I never shall.”
“Certainly, not,” replied the young man. The tone in
which he spoke was so low that Colburne could detect no
expression in it, whether of despondency or triumph.
Entering as they did from the moonlight into a room
which had been left unlighted in order to keep out summer
insects, neither of them perceived the involuntary
listener. Whitewood went out by the door, and Mrs.
Carter returned to the balcony. In order that the reader
may be spared the trouble of turning over a few pages
here, I will state frankly that the young man had proposed
and been refused, and that Mrs. Carter had begged
him not to let the affair get abroad because—well, because
a sudden impulse came over her to do just that, whether
it concerned her or not to keep the secret.
Colburne remained alone, in such an agony of anxiety
as he had not believed himself capable of feeling. All the
stoicism which he had learned by forced marches, starvations,
and battles was insufficient, or was not of the proper
kind, to sustain him comfortably under the torture inflicted
by his supposed discovery. The Rachel whom he
had waited for more than four years was again lost to him.
But was she lost? asked the hope that never dies in us. It
was not positively certain; words and situations may
have different meanings; his rival did not seem much
and learn his fate at once. She would not keep the secret
from him when he should tell her the motives which induced
him to question her. Whether she refused him or
not, whether she was or was not engaged to another, he
would of course be entirely frank with her, only regretting
that he had not been so before. He was whole-souled
enough, he had learned at least this much of self-abnegation,
not to try to save his vanity in such a matter as loving
for life. As the most loveable woman that he had
ever known, it was due to her that she should be informed
that his heart was at her command, no matter what she
might do with it. The feeling of the moment was a
grand one, but not beyond the native power of his character,
although three years ago he had not been sufficiently
developed to be capable of it.
He stepped to the window, pushed apart the long
damask curtains and stood by her side.
“Oh! Is it you!” she exclaimed. “You quite startled
me.” Then, after a moment's hesitation, “When did you
come in?”
“I was in the room three minutes ago,” he answered,
and paused to draw a long breath. “Tell me, Mrs. Carter,”
he resumed, “what is it that Mr. Whitewood is to
keep secret?”
“Mr. Colburne!” she replied, full of astonishment that
he should put such a question.
“I did not overhear intentionally,” he went on. “I did
not hear much, and I wish to know more than I heard.”
Mr. Colburne was master of the situation, although he
was not aware of it. Surprise was the least of Lillie's
emotions; she was quite overwhelmed by her lover's
presence, and by the question which he put to her; she
could not have declared truly at the moment that her soul
was altogether her own.
“Oh, Mr. Colburne! I cannot tell you,” was all she
could say, and that in a whisper.
She would have told him all, if he had insisted, but he
did not. He had manliness enough, he was sufficiently
able to affront danger and suffering, to say what was in
his own heart, without knowing what had passed between
her and his rival. He stood silent a moment, pondering,
not over his purpose, but as to what his words should be.
Then flashed across him a suspicion of the truth, that
Whitewood had made his venture and met with shipwreck.
A wave of strong hope seemed to lift him over
reefs of doubt, and shook him so, like a ship trembling on
a billow, that for an instant longer he could not speak.
Just then Rosann's recognizable Irish voice was heard,
calling, “Mrs. Carter! Mrs. Carter! Might I spake t'
ye?”
“What is it?” asked Lillie, stepping by Colburne into
the parlor. Ravvie was cutting a double tooth, was
feverish and fretful, and she had been anxious about him.
“Ma'am, I'd like t' have ye see the baby. I'm thinkin'
he ought t' have somethin' done for 'm. He's mightily
worried.”
“Please excuse me, Mr. Colburne,” said the mother, and
ran up stairs. Thus it happened that Lillie unintentionally
evaded the somewhat remarkable and humiliating
circumstance of receiving two declarations of love, two
offers of marriage, in a single evening. She did not, however,
know precisely what it was that she had escaped;
and, moreover, she did not at first think much about it.
except in a very fragmentary and unsatisfactory manner;
for Ravvie soon went into convulsions and remained in a
precarious condition the whole night, absorbing all her
time and attention. Of course he had his gums lanced,
and his chubby feet put in hot water, and medicine poured
down his patient throat. In the morning he was so comfortable
that his mother went to bed and slept till noon.
When she awoke and found Ravvie quite recovered, and
had kissed his cheeks, his dimpled neck, and the fat collops
in his legs a hundred times or so, and called him her
man at every kiss, she began to dress herself and to think
of Mr. Colburne, and of his unexplained anxieties to say—
what? She went tremulously to dinner, blushing scarlet
after her sensitive manner as she entered the dining-room,
but quite unnecessarily, inasmuch as he was not at table.
She could not say whether she was most relieved or annoyed
by his unexpected absence. It is worthy of record
that before tea-time she had learned through some roundabout
medium, (Rosann and the porter, I fear,) that Mr.
Colburne had been summoned to New York by a telegram
and was not expected back for a day or two. Her
father was away on a mineralogical hunt, unearthing burrows
and warrens of Smithites and Brownites. Thus she
had plenty of opportunity for reflection, and she probably
employed it as well as most young women would under
similar circumstances, but, of course, to no purpose at all
so far as concerned taking any action. In such matters a
woman can do little more than sit still while others transact
her history. She was under the spell: it was not she
who would control her own fate: it was Mr. Colburne.
She was ashamed and almost angry to find that she was
so weak; she declared that it was disgraceful to fall in
love with a man who had not yet told her plainly that he
loved her; but all her shame, and anger, and declarations
could not alter the stubborn fact. She would never own
it to any one else, but she was obliged to confess it to herself,
although the avowal made her cry with vexation.
She had to remember, too, that it was not quite two years
and a half since she was married, and not quite eighteen
months since she had become a widow. She walked
through a valley of humiliation, very meek in spirit, and
yet, it must be confessed, not very unhappy. At times
she defended herself, asking the honest and rational question,
How could she help loving this man? He had been
so faithful and delicate, he was so brave and noble, that
she wondered that every woman who knew him did not
she went tremblingly back to the inquiry, Did he love her?
He had not gone so far as to say it, or anything approaching
to it; and yet he surely would not have asked her
what had passed between another man and herself unless
he meant to lay bare to her his inmost heart; she knew
that he was too generously delicate to demand such a
confidence except with a most serious and tender purpose.
She did not indeed suppose that he would have gone on
then to say everything that he felt for her; for it did not
seem to her that any one moment which she could fix
upon would be great enough for such a revelation. But
it would have come in time, if she had answered him suitably;
it might come yet, if she had not offended him, and
if he did not meet some one whom he should see to be
more desirable. Had she offended him by her manner, or
by what she had said, or failed to say? Oh, how easy it
is to suspect that those whom we love are vexed with us!
If it should be so that she had given him cause of anger,
how could she make peace with him without demeaning
herself? Well, let the worst come to the worst, there
was her boy who would always be faithful and loving.
She kissed him violently and repeatedly, but could not
keep a tear or two from falling on him, although why they
were shed the child could have explained as rationally as
she.
Of all these struggles Colburne knew nothing and
guessed nothing. He too had his yearnings and anxieties,
although he did not express them by kissing anything or
crying upon anything. He was sternly fearful lest he was
losing all-important moments, and he attended to his business
in New York as energetically as he would have stormed
a battery. Had he offended Mrs. Carter? Had Whitewood
succeeded, or failed, or not tried? He could not answer
any of these questions, but he was in a fury to get back
to New Boston.
Lillie trembled when she heard his knock upon the door
she had known it two or three times during the
day when it was only a servant's; but at last she was
right in her divination. She was trying at the moment
to write a letter to her father, with the door open into her
bed-room, where Ravvie sat under the benign spectacles
of Rosann. In answer to her “Come in,” Colburne entered,
looking pale with want of sleep, for he had worked
nights and travelled days.
“I am so glad you have come back,” she said in her
frank way.
“And I am so glad to get back,” he replied, dropping
wearily into an easy chair. “When does your father return?”
“I don't know. He told me to write to him at Springfield
until I got word to stop.”
Colburne was pleased; the Doctor would not be at home
for a day or two; that would give him other opportunities
in case this one should result in a failure. The little parlor
looked more formidable than the balcony, and the glare of the
gas was not so encouraging as the mellow moonlight. He
did not feel sure how he should be able to speak here,
where she could see every working of his countenance.
He did not know that from the moment he began to speak
of the subject which filled his heart she would not be able
to look him in the face until after she had promised to be
his altogether and forever.
Women always will talk at such times. They seem to
dread to be caught, and to know that silence is a dangerous
trap for the feelings; and consequently they prattle
about anything, no matter what, provided the prattle will
prolong the time during which the hunter is in chase.
“You look quite worn out with your journey,” she said.
“I should think you had made a forced march to New
York and back on foot.”
“I have been under the necessity of working nights,”
he answered, without telling her that it was the desire to
the forcing power.
“You shouldn't do it. You will wear yourself down
again, as you did in field service.”
“No. There are no privations here; no hunger, and no
food more unwholesome than hunger; no suffering with
cold; no malaria. If I fall sick here, it will only be with
living too well, and having too easy a time. Somebody
says that death is a disgrace; that man ought to be ashamed
of himself for dying. I am inclined to admit it, unless the
man is in field service. In field service I have suffered
keenly now and then, so as to become babyish about it,
and think of you and how glad you would be to give me
something to eat.”
She made no reply, except to look at him steadily for a
moment, admiring what seemed to her the heroism of
speaking so lightly of hardships.
“You see I confided strongly in your kindness,” he resumed.
“I do so still.”
The color flooded her face and neck as she divined from
his manner that he was about to resume the conversation
of the balcony. He rose, walked to the door which led
into the bed-room, closed it gently and came back. She
could not speak nor raise her eyes to his face as he stood
before her. If he had kept silence for a few moments she
would probably have recovered herself and said, “Won't
you sit down,” or some such insanity. But he did not
give her time for that; he took one of her hands in both
of his and said, “Lillie!”
There was a question in the tone, but she could not answer
it except by suddenly raising her other hand to her
face, as if to hide the confession which was glowing there.
“You know that I have loved you four years,” he went
on, bending down to her and whispering.
She never knew how it was that she found herself a
moment afterwards on her feet, leaning against his breast,
with her head on his shoulder, sobbing, trembling, but full
the man whom she now did love with the whole strength
of her being, whom she could trust perfectly and forever,
had claimed her as his, and she had resigned herself to
him, not desiring to reserve a drop of her blood or a
thought of her soul. Nothing could separate them but
death; nothing could make them unhappy but losing each
other: for the moment there was nothing in the world
but they two and their love. After a time—it might have
been five minutes, or half an hour—she remembered—
positively recollected with a start—that she had a child.
“Come and see him,” she said. “Come and look at
our boy.”
She caught him by the arm, and dragged him, willing
to go, into the room where Ravvie lay asleep. She never
thought of her flushed face and disordered hair, although
Rosann's spectacles were fixed upon her with an astonishment
which seemed to enlarge their silver-bound orbits.
“Isn't he beautiful!” she whispered. “He is yours—
mine—ours.”
Rosann gave her head a toss of comprehension and satisfaction
in which I heartily join her, as does also, I hope,
the reader.
Colburne and then Lillie kissed the child—all unconscious
of the love which was lavished on him, which filled
the room, and was copious enough to fill lives.
It had all come like a great surprise to Lillie. As much
as she may have desired it, as much as she may have
hoped it in moments for which she reproached herself at
the time as absurd and almost immodest, it nevertheless descended
upon her, this revelation, with wings of dazzling
astonishment. In the night she awoke to disbelieve, and
then to remember all with a joyful faith. And while thinking
it over, in a delicious reverie which could not justly
be called thought, but rather a thrilling succession of
recollections and sentiments, there came to her among the
multitude of impressions a wonder at her own happiness.
one figure widowed and weeping, seated amid the tombs
of perished hopes: the other also widowed in garb, but
about to put on garments of bridal white, and with a
face which lit up the darkness.
“How can it be!” she exclaimed aloud, as she remembered
the despair of eighteen months ago. Then she
added, smiling with a delicious consciousness of justification,
“Oh! I love him better than I ever loved any other.
I am right in loving him.”
After that she commended the once-loved one, who was
dead, to Heaven's pity—and then prayed long and fervently
for the newly loved one who was living—but
brokenly, too, and stopping now and then to smile at his
bright image painted on the night. Last came a prayer
for her child, whom she might have forgotten in these
passionate emotions, only that she could hear his gentle
breathing through the quiet midnight.
“I wonder how you can love me so, when I kept you
so long away from me,” she said to Colburne at their next
meeting.
“You are all the dearer for it,” he answered. “Yes,
even because another stood for a long time between us,
you are all the dearer. Perhaps it ought not to be so;
but so it is, my darling.”
Her gratitude was uttered in a silent, fervent pressure
of her lips against his cheek. These were the only words
that passed between them concerning her first marriage.
“Where are we to live?” he asked. “Do you want to
go back to New Orleans?”
“Oh, never!” she replied. “Always at the North! I
like it so much better!”
She was willing at all times now to make confession of
her conversion.
| CHAPTER XXXVI.
A BRACE OF OFFERS. Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty | |