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 into Mrs. Carter's ways and tastes which brought him
to 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," she added,
after another and longer pause. "You 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 was a
prominent figure of evenings in the Ravenel parlor, 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 work, too, in consequence of which there is less
chance to 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, conscience-stricken 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 through hours of subsequent meditation. If they were engaged, 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
elated. He would ask Mrs. Carter what the scene meant, 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 own precious, and her dearest
darling, and her sweet little 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 adore him. And then, as she thought of his perfections, 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 at eight o'clock
that evening. She knew it was his by instinct; 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 return as quickly as
possible to her which had constituted 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 of joy. The man whom she ought always to
have loved, 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. She seemed with
amazement to see herself in double: the 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.