Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty

by John William De Forest

  CHAPTER XXIX.

  LILLIE REACHES THE APOTHEOSIS OF WOMANHOOD.

  Woman is more intimately and irresponsibly a child of Nature than man.She comes oftener, more completely, and more evidently under the powerof influences which she can neither direct nor resist, and which makeuse of her without consulting her inclination. Her part then is passiveobedience and uncomplaining suffering, while through her the ends oflife are accomplished. She has no choice but to accept her beneficentmartyrdom. Like Jesus of Nazareth she agonizes that others may live; butunlike Him, she is impelled to it by a will higher than her own. At thesame time, a loving spirit is given to her, so that she is consoled inher own anguish, and does not seriously desire that the cup may passfrom her before she has drunk it to the dregs. She has the patience ofthe lower animals and of inanimate nature, ennobled by a heavenly joy ofself-sacrifice, a divine pleasure in suffering for those whom she loves.She is both lower and higher than man, by instinct rather than byreason, from necessity rather than from choice.

  There came a day to Lillie during which she lay between two worlds, notcaring which she entered, submissive to whatever might be, patientthough weeping with pain. Her father did not dare trust her to his owncare, but called in his old friend and colleague, Doctor Elderkin. Thesetwo, with Carter, Mrs. Larue, and a hired nurse, did not quit the housefor twenty-four hours, and all but the husband and father were almostconstantly in the room of the invalid. The struggle was so long andsevere that they thought it would end in death. Neither Mrs. Larue northe nurse slept during the whole night, but relieved each other at thebedside, holding by turns the quivering, clutching hand of Lillie, andfanning the crimson cheeks and the brow covered with a cold sweat as ofa death agony. The latent womanliness of Mrs. Larue, the tendernesswhich did actually exist in some small measure beneath her smoothsurface of amiability and coquetry, was profoundly stirred by herinstinctive sympathy for a suffering which was all feminine. Sheremembered that same anguish in her own life, and lived it over again.Every throe of the sick girl seemed to penetrate her own body. Shethought of the child which had been given and taken years ago, and thenshe wiped away a tear, lest Lillie might see it and fear for herself.When she was not by the bedside she stood at the window, now looking fora glimpse of dawn as if that could bring any hope, and then turning togaze at the tossing invalid.

  The Doctor only once allowed Carter to enter the room. The veryexpansion of Lillie at sight of him, the eagerness with which her soulreached out to him for help, pity, love, was perilous. There was dangerthat she might say, "My dear, good-bye;" and in the exaltation of suchan impulse she might have departed. As for him, he had never beforewitnessed a scene like this, and he never forgot it. His wife held bothhis hands, clasping them spasmodically, a broad spot of fever in eithercheek, the veins of her forehead swollen, and her neck suffused, hereyes preternaturally open and never removed from his, her wholeexpression radiant with agony. The mortal pain, the supernaturalexpectation, the light of that other world which was so near,spiritualized her face, and made it unhumanly beautiful. He seemed tohimself to be standing on earth and joining hands with her in heaven. Hehad never before reached so far; never so communed with another life.His own face was all of this world, stern with anxiety and perhapsremorse; for the moment was so agitating and imperious that he could notdirect his emotions nor veil his expression. Happy for her that she hadno suspicion of one thing which was in his heart. She believed that hewas solely tortured by fear that she would die; and if she could havethought to speak, she would have comforted him. On her own account shedid not desire to live; only for his sake, and for her father's, andperhaps a little for her child's. The old Doctor watched her, shook hishead, signed to the husband to leave the room, and took his wife's handsin his place. As Carter went out Mrs. Larue followed him a few stepsinto the passage.

  "What is between you and me must end," she whispered.

  "Yes," he replied in the same tone, and went to his room somewhatcomforted.

  At seven in the morning he was awakened by a tremulous knocking at hisdoor. Springing from the sofa, on which he had dozed for an hour or twowithout undressing, he opened, and encountered Mrs. Larue, pale withsleeplessness but smiling gaily.

  "_Venez_," she said, speaking her mother tongue in her haste, andhastened noiselessly, like a swift sprite, back to the sick room. Carterfollowed, entered with a sense of awe, passed softly around the screenwhich half encircled the bed, and saw his wife and child lying side byside. Lillie was very pale; her face was still spiritualized by theGethsemane of the night; but her eyes were still radiant with a purelyhuman happiness. She was in eager haste to have him drink at thenewly-opened fountain of joy. Even as he stooped to kiss her she couldnot wait, but turned her head towards the infant with a smile ofexultation and said, "Look at him."

  "But how are _you_?" he asked, anxiously; for a man does not at onceforget his wife in his offspring; and Carter had a stain of remorse onhis soul which he needed to wash away with rivers of tenderness.

  "Oh, I am perfectly well," she answered. "Isn't he pretty?"

  At that moment the child sneezed; the air of this world was too pungent.

  "Oh, take him!" she exclaimed, looking for the nurse. "He is going todie."

  The black woman lifted the boy and handed him to the father.

  "Don't drop him," said Lillie. "Are you sure you can hold him? Iwouldn't dare to take him."

  As if she could have taken him! In her eagerness she forgot that she wassick, and talked as if she were in her full strength. Her eyes followedthe infant so uneasily about the room that Elderkin motioned Carter toreplace him on the bed.

  "Now he won't fall," she said, cheerfully.--"It was only a sneeze," sheadded presently, with a little laugh which was like a gurgle, a purr ofhappiness. "I thought something was the matter with him."--Shortlyafterward she asked, "How soon will he talk?"

  "I am afraid not for two or three weeks, unless the weather isfavorable," replied Elderkin, with a chuckle which under thecircumstances was almost blasphemous.

  "How strange that he can't talk!" she replied, without noticing the oldgentleman's joke. "He looks so intelligent!"

  "She wouldn't be a bit surprised to hear him sing an Italian opera,"said Ravenel. "She has seen a miracle to-day. Nothing could astonishher."

  Lillie did not laugh nor answer; nothing interested her which did notsay, Baby! Baby was for the time the whole thought, the whole life, ofthis girl, who a little previous existed through her husband, and beforethat through her father. Each passion had been stronger than itspredecessor; but now she had reached the culminating point of herwomanhood: higher than Baby it was impossible for her to go. Even herfather distressed and alarmed her a little by an affection for thenewly-arrived divinity which lacked what she felt to be the properreverence. Not content with worshiping afar off, he picked up the tinygod and carried him to the partial day of a curtained window, desiring,as he said, the honor of being the first to give him an idea.

  "The first to give him an idea!" laughed the father. "Why, he looks asif he had been thinking for centuries. He looks five thousand yearsold."

  Seeing that Lillie began to weary, the old Doctor replaced the deity onthe pillow which served him for an altar, and turned the male worshipersout of the room.

  "How delighted they are with him!" she said when the door had closedbehind them. "Doctor, isn't he an uncommonly handsome child?" she addedwith the adorable simplicity of perfect love. "I thought babies were notpretty at first."

  The room was now kept still. The mother and child lay side by side,reposing from their night-long struggle for life. The mother lookedsteadily at the infant; the infant looked with equal fixity at thewindow: each gazed and wondered at an unaccustomed glory. In a fewminutes both dropped to sleep, overcome by fatigue, and by novelemotions, or sensations. For three days a succession of long slumbers,and of waking intervals similar to tranquilly delightful dreams,composed their existence. When they were thus reposed they tasted lif
ewith a more complete and delicious zest. Lillie entertained her husbandand father for hours at a time with discoursing on the attributes of thebaby, pointing out the different elements of his glory, and showing howhe grew in graces. She was quite indifferent to their affectionateraillery; nothing could shake her faith in the illimitability of the newdeity. They two, dear as they were, were nevertheless human, and werenot so necessary as they had been to her faith in goodness, and herhappiness in loving. So long as she had the baby to look at, she couldpass the whole day without them, hardly wondering at their absence.

  "We are dethroned," said the Doctor to the Colonel. "We are a couple ofSaturns who have made way for the new-born Jupiter."

  "Nonsense!" smiled Lillie. "You think that you are going to spend allyour time with your minerals now. You are perfectly happy in the idea. Isha'n't allow it."

  "No. We must remain and be converts to the new revelation. Well, Isuppose we sha'n't resist. We are ready to make our profession of faithat all times and in all places."

  "This is the place," said Lillie. "Isn't he sweet?"

  The grandfather knew a great deal better than either the father ormother how to handle the diminutive Jupiter. He took him from thepillow, carried him to the window, drew the curtain slowly, and laughedto see the solemn little eyes, after winking slowly, turn upward and fixthemselves steadily on the broad, mild effulgence of the sky.

  "He looks for the light, as plants and trees lean towards it," said he."He is trying to see the heavenly mansions which he may some dayinhabit. Nobody knows how soon. They get up their chariots very suddenlysometimes, these little Elijahs."

  "Oh, don't talk so," implored Lillie. "He sha'n't die."

  The Doctor was thinking of his own only boy, who had flown from thecradle to Heaven more than twenty years ago.

  Aside from tenderness for his wife, Carter's principal emotion all thiswhile was that of astonishment at his position. It cost him considerablemental effort, and stretch of imagination, to conceive himself arelative of the newcomer. He did not, like Lillie, love the child bypassionate instinct; and he had not yet learned to love him as he hadlearned to love her. He was tender of the infant, as a creature whoseweakness pleaded for his protection; but when it came to the question ofaffection, he had to confess that he loved him chiefly through hismother. He was a poor hand at fondling the boy, being always afraid ofdoing him some harm. He was better pleased to see him in Lillie's armsthan to feel him in his own; the little burden was curiously warm andsoft, but so evidently susceptible to injury as to be a terror.

  "I would rather lead a storming party," he said. "I have been beaten inthat sort of thing, and lived through it. But if I should drop thisfellow--"

  And here the warrior absolutely flinched at the thought of how he wouldfeel in such a horrible case.

  Now commenced a beautiful reciprocal education of mother and child. Eachdiscovered every day new mysteries, new causes of admiration and love,in the other. Long before a childless man or even woman would haveimagined signs of intelligence in the infant, the mother had not merelyimagined but had actually discovered them. You would have been wrong ifyou had laughed incredulously when she said, "He begins to take notice."Of course her fondness led her into errors: she mistook symptoms of meresensation for utterances of ideas; she perceived prophetically ratherthan by actual observation: but some things, some opening buds ofintellect, she saw truly. She deceived herself when she thought that atthe age of three weeks he knew his father; but at the same time she wasquite correct in believing that he recognized and cried for his mother.This delighted her; she would let him cry for a moment, merely for thepleasure of being so desired; then she would fold him to her breast andbe his comforter, his life. They were teachers, consolers, deities, theone to the other.

  Her love gave a fresh inspiration to her religious feeling. Here was anew object of thanksgiving and prayer: an object so nearly divine thatonly Heaven could have sent it: an object so delicate that only Heavencould preserve it. For her baby she prayed with an intelligence, afeeling, a faith, such as she had never known before, not even whenpraying for her husband during his times of battle. It seemed certain toher that the merciful All-Father and the Son who gave himself for theworld would sympathize compassionately with the innocence, andhelplessness of her little child. These sentiments were not violent: shewould have withered under the breath of any passionate emotion: theywere as gentle and comforting as summer breezes from orange groves. Onceonly, during a slight accession of fever, there came something like aphysical revelation; a room full of mysterious, dazzling light; acommunication of some surprising, unutterable joy; an impression as of adivine voice, saying, "Thy sins are forgiven thee."

  Forgiven of God, she wished also to be forgiven of man. The nextmorning, moved by the remembrance of the vision, although its exaltationhad nearly vanished with the fall of the fever, she beckoned her husbandto her, and with tears begged his pardon for some long since forgottenpetulance. This was the hardest trial that Carter had yet undergone. Tohave her plead for his forgiveness was a reproach that he could hardlybear with self-possession. He must not confess--no such relief was therefor his burdened spirit--but he sank on his knees in miserablepenitence.

  "Oh! forgive me," he said. "I am not half good enough for you. I am notworthy of your love. You must pray for me, my darling."

  For the time she was his religion: his loving, chastening, though notall-seeing deity: uplifting and purifying him, even as she was exaltedand sanctified by her child.

  Her sick-bed happiness was checkered by some troubles. It was hard notto stir; not to be able to help herself; not to tend the baby. When herface was washed for her by the nurse, there would be places where it wasnot thoroughly dried, and which she sought to wipe by rubbing againstthe pillow. After a few trials of this sort she forbade the nurse totouch her, and installed her husband in the duty. It was actually acomfort to him to seek to humiliate himself by these dressing-maidservices; and it seemed to him that he was thereby earning forgivenessfor the crime which he dared not confess. He washed her face, took hermeals in, and put them out, fed her with his own hands, fanned her bythe hour, and all, she thought, as no one else could.

  "How gentle you are!" she said, her eyes suddenly moistening withgratitude. "How nicely you wait on me! And to think that you have led astorming party! And I have seen men afraid of you! My dear, what did youever mean by saying that you are not good enough for me? You are ahundred times better than I deserve."

  Carter laid his forehead in her gently clasping hands without speaking.

  "What are you going to call him?" he asked presently.

  "Why, Ravenel;--didn't you know?" she answered with a smile.

  She had been calling him Ravenel to herself for several days, withouttelling any one of it. It was a pleasure to think that she alone knewhis name; that she had so much in him of an unshared, secret possession.

  "Ravenel Carter," she repeated. "We can make that into Ravvie. Don't youlike it?"

  "I do," he answered. "It is the best name possible. It contains the nameof at least one good man."

  "Of two good men," she insisted. "A good husband and a good father."

  Her first drive in the pony carriage was an ecstacy. By her side satthe nurse holding Ravvie, and opposite sat her husband and father.Presently she made the Colonel and the nurse change places.

  "I want my child where I can see him, and my husband where I can leanagainst him," she said.

  "I don't come in," observed the Doctor. "I am Monsieur De Trop--Mr. NoAccount."

  "No you are not. I want you to look at Ravvie and me."

  Soon she was anxious lest the child should catch cold by ridingbackwards.

  "No more danger one way than the other," said the Doctor. "The back ofhis head goes all around."

  "I dare say his hair will protect him; won't it?" she asked.

  "His hair is about as heavy as his whiskers," laughed the Doctor. "He isin no danger of Absalom's fate."


  The nurse having pulled up a shawl in rear of the little bobbing head,Lillie was satisfied, and could turn her attention to other things. Shelaid her slender hand on her husband's knee, nestled against his strongshoulder and said, "Isn't it lovely--isn't the whole world beautiful!"

  They had taken the nearest cut out of the city, and were passing asuburban mansion, the front yard of which was full of orange trees andflowers. A few weeks before she would have wanted to steal the flowers;now she eagerly asked her husband to get out and beg for some. When hereturned with a gorgeous bouquet she was full of gratitude, exclaiming,"Oh, how lovely! Did you thank the people? I am so obliged to them. Didthey see the child in the carriage?"

  "Yes," said the Colonel, smiling with pleasure at her naive delight."The lady saw the child, and said this rose was for him."

  Accordingly the rose, carefully stripped of all thorns, was put intothe dimpled fist of Ravvie, who of course proceeded to suck it.

  "He is smelling of it," cried Lillie, with a charming faith in thelittle god's precocity.

  "He is trying it by his universal test--his all-sufficient crucible,"said the Doctor. "Everything must go into that mouth. It is his onlymedium for acquiring knowledge at present. If it was large enough and hecould reach far enough, he would investigate the nature of the solarsystem by means of it. It is lucky for the world that he is notsufficiently big to put the sun in his mouth. We should certainly findourselves in darkness--not to mention that he might burn himself. Mydear, I am afraid he will swallow some of the leaves," he added. "Wemust interfere. This is one of the emergencies when a grandfather has aright to exercise authority."

  The rose was gently detached from Ravvie's fat grasp, and stuck in hislittle silk bonnet, his eyes following it till it disappeared.

  "You see he is an eating animal," continued the Doctor. "That is prettymuch all at present, and that is enough. He has no need of any morewisdom than what will enable him to demand nourishment and dispose ofit; and God, in his great kindness towards infants, has not troubled himwith any further revelations so far. God has provided us to do all thenecessary thinking in his case. The infant is a mere swallower,digestor, and assimilator. He knows how to convert other substances intohimself. He does it with energy, singleness of purpose, perseverance,and wonderful success. Nothing more is requisite. In eating he isperforming the whole duty of man at his age. So far as he goes he is amasterpiece."

  "But you are making a machine of him--an oyster," protested Lillie.

  "Very like," said the Doctor. "Very like an oyster. His existence has asimplicity and unity very similar to that of the lower orders ofcreation. Of course I am not speaking of his possibilities. They arespiritual, grand, perhaps gigantic. If you could see the inferior faceof his brain, you would be able to perceive even now the magnificentcapacities of the as yet untuned instrument."

  "Oh don't, papa!" implored Lillie. "You trouble me. Do they ever dissectbabies?"

  "Not such lively ones as this," said the Doctor, and proceeded to changethe subject. "I never saw a healthier creature. I shouldn't wonder if hesurvived this war, which you used to say would last forty years. Perhapshe will be the man to finish it."

  "I don't say so now. I didn't think my husband would be on the Unionside when I said that. I think we shall beat them now."

  "Since the miracle all other things seem possible," philosophised theDoctor.

  I do not repeat the Colonel's talk. It was not so appropriate as that ofthe others to the occasion; for he knew little as yet of the profounderdepths of womanly and infantile nature; his first marriage had beenbrief and childless. In fact, Carter was rather a silent man in familyconclaves, unless the conversation turned on some branch of hisprofession, or the matters of ordinary existence. He occupied himselfwith watching alternately his wife and child; with wrapping up theformer, and occasionally fondling the latter.

  "How very warm he feels!--how amazingly he pulls hair!--I believe hewants to get my head in his mouth," are samples of his observations onthe infant wonder. He felt that the baby was either below him or abovehim, he really could not tell which. Of his wife's position he wascertain: she was far higher than his plane of existence: when she tookhis hand it was from the heavens.

  From Mrs. Larue he was thoroughly detached, and with a joyful sense ofrelief, freedom, betterment. They talked very little with each other,and only on indifferent subjects and in the presence of others. It ispossible that this separation would not have lasted if they had beenthrown together unguarded, as had been the case on board the Creole; buthere, caring for his infant and for the wife who had suffered so muchand so sweetly for his sake, the Colonel felt no puissance of passionatetemptation.

  Mrs. Larue had no conscience, no sense of honor; but like many coldblooded people, she valued herself on her firmness. In an unwonted burstof enthusiasm she had told him that all must be over between them, andshe meant to make her words good, no matter what he might desire. Shewas a little mortified to see how easily he had cut loose from her; butshe knew how to explain it so as not to wound her vanity, nor tempt herto break her resolution.

  "If he did not love his wife now, he would be a brute," she reflected."And if he had had the possibilities of a brute in him, I never shouldhave had a caprice for him. After all, I do not care much for the merelyphysical human being. _C'est par le cote morale qu 'on s'empare de moi.Apres tout je suis presque aussi pure dans les sentiments que ma petitecousine._"

  Meanwhile her self-restraint was something of a trial to her. At timesshe thought seriously of marrying again, with the idea of putting an endto these risky intrigues and harassing struggles. Perhaps it was underthis impression that she wrote a letter to Colburne, informing him ofthe birth of Ravvie, and sketching some few items of the scene with apicturesqueness and sympathy that quite touched the young gentleman,astonished as he was at the frankness of the language.

  "After all," she concluded, "married life has exquisite pleasures, aswell as terrific possibilities of sorrow. I do not really know whetherto advise a young man like you to take a wife or not. Whether you marryor remain single you will be sorry. I think that in either state thepains outweigh the pleasures. It follows that we are not to consider ourown happiness, but to do what we think is for the happiness of others.Is not this the true secret of life?"

  "Is it possible that I have been unjust?" queried Colburne. "Those arenot the teachings of a corrupted nature."

  He did not know and could not have conceived the unnatural conscience,the abnormal ideas of purity and duty, which this woman had created forher own use and comfort, out of elements that are beyond the ken of mostNew Englanders. He was the child of Puritanism, and she of Balzac'smoral philosophy.