The setting sun streamed in upon a parlor on St. John's Square. One
might have mistaken it for an upholsterer's ware-room, so loaded was it
with chairs, sofas, and _tête-à-têtes_, of every conceivable size and
pattern. The same taste had hung the walls with pictures, whose
coloring, perspectives, and foreshortening would have driven a true
artist mad; the gaudy frames, with their elaborate gildings, being the
magnet which had drawn the money from the pocket of the lady hostess.
Distorted mythology, in various forms, looked down from little gilt
roosts in the corners, peeped at you from under tables, stared at you
from out niches. Books there were, whose principal merit was their
"pretty binding," the exception to this being in the shape of a large
Family Bible, splendidly bound, and on the present occasion
ostentatiously placed on the center-table, for Mrs. Howe had at last a
baby, and this was christening-day.
Mrs. Howe had an idea that it was more exclusive and genteel to have
this little ceremony performed in the house. There was to be a splendid
christening--cake and wine, after the baptism, and only the
appreciative select were to be present.
Mrs. Howe had expended a small fortune on the baby's christening-cap and
robe, not to speak of her own dress, which she considered, coiffure and
tournure, to be unsurpassable; and now she was flying in and out, with
that vulgar fussiness so common to your would-be-fine-lady; giving
orders, and countermanding them in the same breath, screaming up stairs
and down to the servants; at one moment foolishly familiar with them,
and at the next reprehensibly severe; pulling the furniture this way and
that, and making her servants as much trouble, and herself as red in the
face as possible. "Dolly Smith," was too much for "Mrs. John Howe." St.
John's Square had an odor of the milliner's shop.
The baby slept as quietly as if it were not the heroine of the day; as
if all the novels, and poems, and newspaper stories had not been
ransacked for fitting appellations; as if its mother had not nudged its
father in the ribs for fourteen consecutive nights, to know if "he had
thought of any thing."
Mr. John Howe! who had married on purpose to get _rid_ of thinking; who
had no more sentiment than a stove funnel; who would not have cared had
his baby been named Zerubbabel or Kerenhappuch; who was contented to let
the world wag on in its own fashion, provided it did not meddle with his
"pipe."
Yes, Mr. Howe smoked "a pipe." Mrs. Howe got up several hysteric fits
about it, but on that point only he was immovable, spite of
smelling-salts and burned feathers. Finally, Mrs. Howe made up her mind
to remove the odium by artistifying it, and with the sweetest conjugal
smile presented him with an expensive chibouk, to take the place of that
leveling clay pipe. She also added a crimson velvet smoking-cap, in
which she declared he looked "as Oriental as a dervish."
"Thunder!" exclaimed Mr. Howe, as he caught sight of himself in a glass,
"you have made me look like that foreign fool of a conjuror we went to
see the other evening, who turned eggs into watches. You don't expect me
to wear this gimcrack?"
Mrs. Howe whispered something in Mr. Howe's ear. Whatever it was, the
effect was electrifying. Husband's have their weak points like other
mortals. The smoking-cap was received into favor--so was the chibouk.
In default of any preference of Mr. Howe's for the baby's name, Mrs.
Howe had selected "Fenella Fatima Cecilia." It was written on a card,
all ready for the Reverend Doctor Knott, who had the misfortune to be a
little deaf, laid by the side of the gilt Bible, and held down to the
table by an alabaster hand, with a _real_ diamond ring on the third
finger.
The baptismal basin was of silver, with two doves perched on the edges.
The water to be used on the occasion, said to have come from the river
Jordan, was in a state of preparedness in a corked bottle in the china
closet.
All the preparations were completed, but still the baby slept on. Mrs.
Howe was rather glad than otherwise, partly because it gave her plenty
of time to survey her new apparel in a full-length mirror, partly
because the baby always had "such a pretty color in its cheeks when it
first 'woke," and she wanted to carry it in when the flush was on.
The last pin was adjusted in the maternal head-dress; the Reverend Dr.
Knott had arrived, so had the appreciative select; Mr. Howe's cravat and
waistcoat had been duly jerked into place by his wife, and now the baby
"really must be woke." Mrs. Howe sprinkles a little jockey-club on Mr.
Howe's handkerchief, takes one last lingering look in the mirror,
readjusts a stray ribbon, changes the latitude of a gold head pin, then
steps up to the rose-wood cradle, and draws aside the lace curtains.
What a pity! There is no flush on the babe's face! and how very pale she
looks! Mrs. Howe takes hold of the plump little waxen hand that lies out
upon the coverlid. What is there in the touch of her own flesh and blood
to blanch her lip and palsy her tongue?
Ah! she can not face death, who could gaze with stony eyes on misery
worse than death?
"Vengeance is mine--I will repay, saith the Lord."