Finally, old Leroux, who had long delayed the step for poor Fannie's sake, hired a clerk, and Valentine lost his over-hour situation, and with it many fair though humble hopes and prospects. He was much depressed; but Fannie bid him do right, trust in God, and cheer up; and said that she would probably get her own salary raised, and that they would get on very well.
Now, whether his marriage had changed his feelings toward Valentine, or whether it was Valentine's marriage that in time and effect grew displeasing to him, or whether both these causes combined to produce an estrangement between the master and the man, I know not; but certainly their mutual relations were changing for the worse. The master grew less considerate and indulgent, and more arrogant and exacting toward his poor servant; and that servant had a daily struggle with his own indignant sense of outraged manhood. Still, Fannie soothed him.
"Govern your temper, dear Valley, and God will bless you. Never mind me and Coralie; we shall get along well enough; and we can see each other Sunday at church, and Thursday at prayer-meeting, anyhow," she would say, cheerfully.
True, Fannie had her baby always with her, and that was a great comfort to the youthful wife and mother for the absence of her husband. They might have looked for some aid from the intercession of Mrs. Waring; but alas! for fair and false hopes, her romantic interest in little Fannie that had been but a frail spring blossom of her own happy bridehood, soon withered; and, added to that, her influence with her husband had waned with her honeymoon. So, between her indifference and her inability, together with her ignorance of the facts—for Valentine seldom had sight or speech alone with his mistress, or, when he had, was too proud and reserved to complain, and Fannie, from native modesty, would rather endure than plead—little aid was to be expected from Mrs. Waring's interference in behalf of the young couple.
The gathering clouds of fate darkened and deepened over the head of the doomed boy. His little home in the city was visited with sickness.
First, his little Coralie was taken ill. No father in this world, whatever his nature or degree might be, ever loved his infant with a more passionate attachment, than poor Valentine felt toward his little Coralie; she was the darling of his heart and eyes, the light and joy of his present, and the hope of his future. It was for her own sake that he wished to save money—to educate her. Daily he thanked God that she was born free.
Now, his bright, beautiful Coralie was pining away under a complication of infant disorders.
A sick and suffering child is one of the most distressing objects in nature, especially when that child is but a babe, and cannot, as the nurses say, "tell where its trouble is," and can only look at you with its pleading eyes, as if imploring the relief you cannot give. You who have ever had an ill and suffering infant, always pining and moaning with its aching head, too heavy for the slender, attenuated neck, dropped upon its nurse's or its mother's shoulder, yet still often looking up with a faint little smile to greet you when you come to take it, or piteously holding out its emaciated arms to coax you back when you are called to leave it—you can estimate the distress of the poor young father, living three miles distant from the sick child, that might at any hour grow suddenly worse, and die; and only permitted to visit it occasionally at the pleasure of others.
Fannie's health, never strong, began to fail; loss of rest night after night, with the sick child, joined to the fatiguing duties of her situation, which she was still obliged to retain as a means of support, exhausted her strength.
The poor infant, bereft all day of both parents, and left in charge of an old, free negress, that lived near the shop, had the sad, unnatural grief of home-sickness added to its other suffering, and so pined and failed day by day.