Of Francis Ravenel at this time much could be written. In the first
months of his separation from Katrine, during all of the period of his
mother's illness, he remained firm in the intention expressed in the
unsent letter to visit her in Paris, ask her forgiveness, and make her a
formal offer of marriage. But quick on the heels of his return to New
York had followed the railroad business, to which Dermott McDermott's
insolence had added new reason for making the enterprise a successful
one.
But underneath the several postponements of visiting Katrine, the real
cause of them all, in fact, was a fear of the well-merited rebuff which
he might receive from her. He understood her pride well; and although he
believed that she had not ceased to love him, he doubted if he held her
respect, and many times, when instinct bade him go to her, he had
recalled the pleading tones of her voice in that last interview, when
she had cried: "We may never meet again! Ah, please God, we may never
meet again!"
Katrine's letters, which came to him with perfect regularity, kept him
closely in touch with her daily life in Paris. He looked anxiously in
them for any variation in her sentiments toward himself, but found none.
Reading one night in Firdousi, he discovered a passage which described
Katrine so perfectly to him that he put a marker between the pages of
the book, and kept it by his bedside to read at night as a pious person
might have kept the confession of his faith.
"She was an elemental force," wrote the old poet, "and astonished
me by her amount of life, when I saw her day after day radiating
every instant redundant joy and grace on all around her. Though the
bias of her nature was not to thought but to sympathy, yet was she
so perfect in her own nature as to meet intellectual persons by the
fulness of her heart, warming them by her sentiments, believing, as
she did, that by dealing nobly with all, all would show themselves
noble."
And there were sometimes bits of her letters which drove him wild with
regret for what he had done.
"Is personal happiness, after all," she wrote once, "a very
important thing? Nothing can ever make me suffer again as I have
suffered, for I have learned to use a man's solace: work; work in
which I can go far away from myself and be as impersonal as a
problem in geometry. But I ask myself, Is that what was intended?
Sometimes I seem to touch the edge of the knowledge that it is
(perhaps) greater to be a sad, little, suffering, incompetent
mother, than to be the person which trouble and music have made of
me."
But in his self-abasement Frank failed to take into the accounting the
stupendous effect which the New York influences and the handling of
great affairs had had upon his own character. Day by day he had learned
more plainly the lessons of responsibility, of continued and
concentrated action, and even McDermott himself could not use Napoleon's
great question, "What has he done?" more meaningly than Frank himself
did now.
But with this new manhood came a finer comprehension of his baseness to
Katrine, and an emphasized doubt as to whether she ever could forgive
the miserable selfishness which he had displayed.
In his visits between the States and England (he made three during
Katrine's stay in Paris, besides the one in which he had met the
Countess de Nemours) he went from one side of the question to the other
in his thinking, wanting to visit Katrine, but realizing to the full
that Mademoiselle Dulany, a singer to the world, or Katrine, adopted
daughter of the Countess de Nemours, and a possible duchess, were worlds
removed from the little Irish girl who had loved him in the Carolina
woods. Fontainebleau! Fontainebleau! Since the day the Countess had told
him of Katrine's being there, the name repeated itself in his head like
a song. He remembered the silence of the great trees, the nightingales
at dusk among them, and dreamed of a day with Katrine there, hearing her
quaint humor, her daring speeches, her tenderness, her selfless view of
life, of herself, of everything in all the world save him.
At the Christmas-time of Katrine's last year in Paris, he received a
quaint illumination with the following note of explanation:
MY DEAR UNKNOWN FRIEND,--I have thought this out and printed it,
too. It is not very well done, but I have tried to make it sincere.
Of course I got the idea of making prayers for myself from R.L.S.
I am sending it to you with a heart full of hope that your
Christmas may be a merry one.
Affectionately,
KATRINE DULANY.
He read and reread the printed lines, and finally had them framed and
hung by his bedside, where they were the first thing upon which his eyes
rested in the morning:
"Grant me the ability to do some one thing well.
"Give me sympathy for the suffering of others which has been
brought to them by their own acts.
"Grant that I may have courage for the weak and the friendship of
those who demand the best of my nature.
"Remove all doubts from me that there will be ultimate peace and
happiness for every one.
"Let fear of the consequences of a right act be far from me. Let me
forget the words expediency, convention, and reward.
"Grant me largeness of judgment, and silence for all weakness,
especially that of woman.
"And give me, each day, my daily work, with rest at night under
some friendly stars."
* * * * *
Early in April, after the lonesomest winter of his life, he received the
following letter from his mother, who was still in Paris with Anne
Lennox:
MY DEAR, DEAR CHILD,--I have been going about a great deal, meeting
old friends and making some new ones, which accounts for my not
having written you last week. Anne's house is like a Union Station
for repose and solitude. She has people in to luncheon and dinner
and tea, and I suspect even for the _café au lait_ in the mornings.
I enjoy it, however. One is seldom bored, though frequently
exhausted. Why I am writing this dull introduction I cannot say,
for I have more important things to tell.