LITTLE LOUIS.
It is just one year since the summer morning when Matty Kennedy took
upon herself a second time the duties of a wife, and now she lies in
a darkened room, her face white as the winter snow, and her breath
scarcely perceptible to the touch, as it comes faintly from her
parted lips. In dignified silence the doctor sits by, counting her
feeble pulse, while an expression of pride and almost perfect
happiness breaks over his face as he glances toward the cradle which
Hannah has brought from the garret, and where now slept the child
born to him that day. His oft-repeated maxim that if the first were
not a boy the second ought to be, had prevailed at last, and Dombey
had a son. It was a puny thing, but the father said it looked as
Nellie did when she first rested there, and Nellie, holding back her
breath and pushing aside her curls, bent down to see the red-faced
infant.
"I was never as ugly as that, and I don't love him a bit!" she
exclaimed, turning away in disgust; while Maude approached on tip-toe,
and kneeling by the cradle side kissed the unconscious sleeper,
whispering as she did so, "I love you, poor little brother."
Darling Maude--blessed Maude--in all your after life you proved the
truth of those low spoken words, "I love you, poor little brother."
For many days did Mrs. Kennedy hover between life and death, never
asking for her baby, and seldom noticing her husband, who, while
declaring there was no danger, still deemed it necessary, in case
anything should happen, to send for his sister, Mrs. Kelsey, who had
not visited him since his last marriage. She was a proud,
fashionable woman, who saw nothing attractive in the desolate old
house, and who had conceived an idea that her brother's second wife
was a sort of nobody whom he had picked up among the New England
hills. But the news of her illness softened her feelings in a
measure, and she started for Laurel Hill, thinking that if Matty
died she hoped a certain dashing, brilliant woman, called Maude
Glendower, might go there, and govern the tyrannical doctor, even as
he had governed others.
It was late in the afternoon when she reached her brother's house,
from which Nellie came running out to meet her, accompanied by
Maude. From the latter the lady at first turned disdainfully away,
but ere long stole another look at the brown-faced girl, about whom
there was something very attractive.
"Curtains, as I live!" she exclaimed, as she entered the parlor. "A
piano, and marble table, too. Where did these come from?"
"They are ma's, and she's got a baby upstairs," answered Maude, and
the lady's hand rested for an instant on the little curly head, for
strange as it may seem, she esteemed more highly a woman who owned a
piano and handsome table than she did one whose worldly possessions
were more limited.
After making some changes in her dress, she went up to the sick-room,
and as Matty was asleep, she had ample time to examine her
face, and also to inspect the room, which showed in someone a
refined and delicate taste.
"She must be more of a lady than I supposed," she thought, and when
at last her sister-in-law awoke she greeted her kindly, and during
her visit, which lasted nearly two weeks, she exerted herself to be
agreeable, succeeding so far that Matty parted from her at last with
genuine regret.
"Poor thing--she'll never see another winter," was Mrs. Kelsey's
mental comment, as she bade the invalid good-by; but in this she was
mistaken, for with the falling of the leaf Matty began to improve,
and though she never fully regained her health, she was able again
to be about the house, doing far more than she ought to have done,
but never uttering a word of complaint, however heavy was the burden
imposed upon her.
With Maude and her baby, who bore the name of Louis, she found her
greatest comfort. He was a sweet, playful child, and sure never
before was father so foolishly proud of his son as was Dr. Kennedy
of his. For hours would he sit watching him while he slept, and
building castles of the future, when "Louis Kennedy, only son of Dr.
Kennedy," should be honored among men. Toward the mother, too, who
had borne him such a prodigy he became a little more indulgent,
occasionally suffering her wishes to prevail over his maxims, and on
three several occasions giving her a dollar to spend as she pleased.
Surely such generosity did not deserve so severe a punishment as was
in store for the proud father.
Louis had a most beautiful face, and in his soft, brown eyes there
was a "look like the angels," as Maude once said to her mother, who
seldom spoke of him without a sigh, for on her mind a terrible fear
was fastening itself. Although mentally as forward as other
children, Louis' body did not keep pace with the growth of his
intellect, and when he was two years of age he could not bear his
weight upon his feet, but in creeping dragged his limbs slowly, as
if in them there was no life--no strength.
"Ma, why don't Louis walk?" asked Maude, one evening when she saw
how long it took him to cross the room.
"Loui' tant walk," answered the child, who talked with perfect ease.
The tears came instantly to Mrs. Kennedy's eyes, for, availing
herself of her husband's absence, she had that morning consulted
another physician, who, after carefully examining Louis' body, had
whispered in the poor woman's ear that which made every nerve quiver
with pain, while at the same time it made dearer a thousand-fold her
baby-boy; for a mother's pity increases a mother's love.
"Say, ma, what is it?" persisted Maude. "Will Louis ever walk?"
"Loui'll never walk," answered the little fellow, shaking his brown
curls, and tearing in twain a picture-book which his father had
bought him the day before.
"Maude," said Mrs. Kennedy, drawing her daughter to her side, "I
must tell somebody or my heart will burst," and laying her head upon
the table she wept aloud.
"Don't try, ma, Loui' good," lisped the infant on the floor, while
Mrs. Kennedy, drying at last her tears, told to the wondering Maude
that Louis was not like other children--that he would probably never
have the use of his feet--that a hunch was growing on his back--and
he in time would be--she could not say "deformed," and so she said
at last--"he'll be forever lame."
Poor little Maude! How all her childish dreams were blasted! She had
anticipated so much pleasure in guiding her brother's tottering
footsteps, in leading him to school, to church, and everywhere, and
she could not have him lame.
"Oh, Louis, Louis!" she cried, winding her arms around his neck, as
if she would thus avert the dreaded evil.
Very wonderfully the child looked up into her eyes, and raising his
waxen hand he wiped her tears away, saying as he did so, "Loui' love
Maude."
With a choking sob Maude kissed her baby brother, then going back to
her mother, whose head still lay upon the table, she whispered, "We
will love poor Louis all the more, you and I."
Blessed Maude, we say again, for these were no idle words, and the
clinging, tender love with which she cherished her unfortunate
brother ought to have shamed the heartless man who, when he heard of
his affliction, refused to be comforted, and almost cursed the day
when his only son was born. He had been absent for a week or more,
and with the exception of the time when he first knew he had a son
he did not remember of having experienced a moment of greater
happiness than that in which he reached his home where dwelt his
boy--his pride--his idol. Louis was not in the room, and on the
mother's face there was an expression of sadness, which at once
awakened the father's fears lest something had befallen his child.
"Where is Louis?" he asked. "Has anything happened to him that you
look so pale?"
"Louis is well," answered Matty, and then, unable longer to control
her feelings, she burst into tears, while the doctor looked on in
amazement, wondering if all women were as nervous and foolish as the
two it had been his fortune to marry.
"Oh, husband," she cried, feeling sure of his sympathy, and thinking
it better to tell the truth at once; "has it never occurred to you
that Louis was not like other children?"
"Of course it has," he answered quickly. "He is a thousand times
brighter than any child I have ever known."
"'Tisn't that, 'tisn't that," said Matty. "He'll never walk--he's
lame--deformed!"
"What do you mean?" thundered the doctor, reeling for an instant
like a drunken man; then, recovering his composure, he listened
while Matty told him what she meant.
At that moment Maude drew Louis into the room, and, taking the child
in his arms, the doctor examined him for himself, wondering he had
never observed before how small and seemingly destitute of life were
his lower limbs. The bunch upon the back, though slight as yet, was
really there, and Matty, when questioned, said it had been there for
weeks, but she did not tell of it, for she hoped it would go away.
"It will stay until his dying day," he muttered, as he ordered Maude
to take the child away. "Louis deformed! Louis a cripple! What have
I done that I should be thus sorely punished?" he exclaimed, when he
was alone with his wife; and then, as he dared not blame the
Almighty, he charged it to her, until at last his thoughts took
another channel. Maude had dropped him--he knew she had, and Matty
was to blame for letting her handle him so much, when she knew 'twas
a maxim of his that children should not take care of children.
He had forgotten the time when his worn-out wife had asked him to
hire a nurse girl for Louis, and he had answered that "Maude was
large enough for that." On some points his memory was treacherous,
and for days he continued to repine at his hard fate, wishing once
in Matty's presence that Louis had never been born.
"Oh, husband," she cried, "how can you say that! Do you hate our
poor boy because he is a cripple?"
"A cripple!" roared the doctor. "Never use that word again in my
presence. My son a cripple! I can't have it so! I won't have it so!
for 'tis a max--"
Here he stopped, being for a second time in his life at a loss what
to say.
"Sarve 'em right, sarve 'em right," muttered John, whose quick eye
saw everything. "Ole Sam payin' him off good. He think he'll be in
the seventh heaven when he got a boy, and he mighty nigh torment
that little gal's life out with his mexens and things; but now he
got a boy, he feel a heap like the bad place."
Still much as John rejoiced that his master was so punished, his
heart went out in pity toward the helpless child whom he almost
worshiped, carrying him often to the fields, where, seeking out the
shadiest spot and the softest grass for a throne, he would place the
child upon it, and then pay him obeisance by bobbing up and down his
wooly head in a manner quite as satisfactory to Louis as if he
indeed had been a king and John his loyal subject. Old Hannah, too,
was greatly softened, and many a little cake and pie she baked in
secret for the child, while even Nellie gave up to him her favorite
playthings, and her blue eyes wore a pitying look whenever they
rested on the poor unfortunate. All loved him seemingly the more--all,
save the cruel father, who, as the months and years rolled on,
seemed to acquire a positive dislike to the little boy, seldom
noticing him in any way except to frown if he were brought into his
sight. And Louis, with the quick instinct of childhood, learned to
expect nothing from his father, whose attention he never tried to
attract.
As if to make amends for his physical deformity, he possessed an
uncommon mind, and when he was nearly six years of age accident
revealed to him the reason of his father's continued coldness, and
wrung from him the first tears he had ever shed for his misfortune.
He heard one day his mother praying that God would soften her
husband's heart toward his poor hunchback boy, who was not to blame
for his misfortune--and laying his head upon the broad arm of the
chair which had been made for him, he wept bitterly, for he knew now
why he was not loved. That night, as in his crib he lay, watching
the stars which shone upon him through the window, and wondering if
in heaven there were hunchback boys like him, he overheard his
father talking to his mother, and the words that his father said
were never forgotten to his dying day. There were, "Don't ask me to
be reconciled to a cripple! What good can he do me? He will never
earn his own living, lame as he is, and will only be in the way."
"Oh, father, father," the cripple essayed to say, but he could not
speak, so full of pain was his little, bursting heart, and that
night he lay awake, praying that he might die and so be out of the
way.
The next morning he asked Maude to draw him to the churchyard where
"his other mother," as he called her, was buried. Maude complied,
and when they were there, placed him at his request upon the ground,
where stretching himself out at his full length, he said: "Look,
Maude, won't mine be a little grave?" then, ere she could answer the
strange question, he continued, "I want to die so bad; and if you
leave me lying here in the long grass maybe God's angel will take me
up to heaven. Will I be lame, there, think you?"
"Oh, Louis, Louis, what do you mean?" cried Maude, and as well as he
could, for the tears he shed, Louis told her what he meant.
"Father don't love me because I'm lame, and he called me a cripple,
too. What is a cripple, Maude? Is it anything very bad?" and his
beautiful brown eyes turned anxiously toward his sister.
He had never heard that word before, and to him it had a fearful
significance, even worse than lameness. In an instant Maude knelt by
his side--his head was pillowed on her bosom, and in the silent
graveyard, with the quiet dead around them, she spoke blessed words
of comfort to her brother, telling him what a cripple was, and that
because he bore that name he was dearer far to her.
"Your father will love you, too," she said, "when he learns how good
you are. He loves Nellie, and--"
Ere she could say more she was interrupted by Louis, on whose mind
another truth had dawned, and who now said, "But he don't love you
as he does Nellie. Why not? Are you a cripple, too?"
Folding him still closer in her arms, and kissing his fair, white
brow, Maude answered: "Your father, Louis, is not mine--for mine is
dead, and his grave is far away. I came here to live when I was a
little girl, not quite as old as you, and Nellie is not my sister,
though you are my darling brother."
"And do you love father?" asked Louis, his eyes still fixed upon her
face as if he would read the truth.
Every feeling of Maude Remington's heart answered, "No," to that
question, but she could not say so to the boy, and she replied, "Not
as I could love my own father--neither does he love me, for I am not
his child."
This explanation was not then wholly clear to Louis, but he
understood that there was a barrier between his father and Maude,
and this of itself was sufficient to draw him more closely to the
latter, who, after that day, cherished him, if possible, more
tenderly than she had done before, keeping him out of his father's
way, and cushioning his little crutches so they could not be heard,
for she rightly guessed that the sound of them was hateful to the
harsh man's ears.
Maude was far older than her years, and during the period of time
over which we have passed so briefly she had matured both in mind
and body, until now at the age of twelve she was a self-reliant
little woman on whom her mother wholly depended for comfort and
counsel. Very rapidly was Mrs. Kennedy passing from the world, and
as she felt the approach of death she leaned more and more upon her
daughter, talking to her often of the future and commending Louis to
her care, when with her he would be motherless. Maude's position was
now a trying one, for, when her mother became too ill to leave her
room, and the doctor refused to hire extra help, saying, "two great
girls were help enough," it was necessary for her to go into the
kitchen, where she vainly tried to conciliate old Hannah, who
"wouldn't mind a chit of a girl, and wouldn't fret herself either if
things were not half done."
From the first Nellie resolutely refused to work--"it would black
her hands," she said, and as her father never remonstrated she spent
her time in reading, admiring her pretty face, and drumming upon the
piano, which Maude, who was fonder even than Nellie of music, seldom
found time to touch. One there was, however, who gave to Maude every
possible assistance, and this was John. "Having tried his hand," as
he said, "at everything in Marster Norton's school," he proved of
invaluable service--sweeping, dusting, washing dishes, cleaning
knives, and once ironing Dr. Kennedy's shirts, when old Hannah was
in what he called her "tantrums." But alas for John! the entire
print of the iron upon the bosom of one, to say nothing of the piles
of starch upon another, and more than all, the tremendous scolding
which he received from the owner of said shirt, warned him never to
turn laundress again, and in disgust he gave up his new vocation,
devoting his leisure moments to the cultivation of flowers, which he
carried to his mistress, who smiled gratefully upon him, saying they
were the sweetest she had ever smelled. And so each morning a fresh
bouquet was laid upon her pillow, and as she inhaled their perfume
she thought of her New England home, which she would never see
again--thought, too, of Janet, whose cheering words and motherly
acts would be so grateful to her now when she so much needed care.
"'Tis a long time since I've heard from her," she said one day to
Maude. "Suppose you write tomorrow, and tell her I am sick--tell
her, too, that the sight of her would almost make me well, and maybe
she will come," and on the sick woman's face there was a joyous
expression as she thought how pleasant it would be to see once more
one who had breathed the air of her native hills--had looked upon
her Harry's grave--nay, had known her Harry when in life, and wept
over him in death.
Poor, lonesome, homesick woman! Janet shall surely come in answer to
your call, and ere you deem it possible her shadow shall fall across
your threshold--her step be heard upon the stairs--her hand be
clasped in yours!