Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty
by John William De Forest · English · Gutenberg #41355 · 1,029,061 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty
Author: John William De Forest
Release date: November 12, 2012 [eBook #41355]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41355
Credits: Produced by Mark C. Orton, Martin Pettit and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISS RAVENEL'S CONVERSION FROM SECESSION TO LOYALTY ***
+-------------------------------------------------+
|Transcriber's note: |
| |
|Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. |
|Inconsistent spelling and punctuation has been |
|retained. |
| |
+-------------------------------------------------+
THE NEW BOOKS OF THE SEASON
PUBLISHED BY
HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.
HARPER & BROTHERS _will send the following works by mail, postage
prepaid, to any part of the United States, on receipt of the
price_.
HARPER'S CATALOGUE _and_ TRADE-LIST _may be obtained gratuitously
on application to the Publishers personally, or will be sent by
mail on receipt of Five Cents_.
_McClintock and Strong's Cyclopædia._
A Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical
Literature. Prepared by the Rev. JOHN MCCLINTOCK, D.D., and JAMES
STRONG, S.T.D. Vol. I.--A, B. Royal 8vo, Cloth, $5 00; Sheep, $6
00; Half Mor., $8 00.
_Christie's Faith._
By the Author of "Mattie: a Stray," "Carry's Confession," &c. 12mo,
Cloth, $1 75.
_Thrilling Adventures of Daniel Ellis._,
The great Union Guide of East Tennessee for a Period of nearly Four
Years during the great Southern Rebellion. Written by Himself.
Containing a Short Biography of the Author. With Illustrations.
12mo, Cloth, $2 50.
_Trollope's Last Chronicle of Barset._
The Last Chronicle of Barset. A Novel. By ANTHONY TROLLOPE, Author
of "Can You Forgive Her?" "The Small House at Allington," "Doctor
Thorne," "Framley Parsonage," &c. 8vo, Cloth and Paper. (_Just
Ready._)
_Henry Winter Davis's Speeches and Addresses._
Speeches and Addresses delivered in the Congress of the United
States, and on several Public Occasions, by HENRY WINTER DAVIS, of
Maryland. Preceded by a Sketch of his Life, Public Services, and
Character (being an Oration by the Hon. J. A. J. CRESWELL, U. S.
Senator from Maryland). With Notes, Introductory and Explanatory.
8vo, Cloth, $4 00.
_Trollop's Claverings._
The Claverings. A Novel. By ANTHONY TROLLOPE, Author of "The Last
Chronicle of Barset," &c. With Illustrations. 8vo, Paper, 50 cents;
Cloth, $1 00.
_American Leaves_:
Familiar Notes of Thought and Life. By Rev. SAMUEL OSGOOD, D.D.
12mo, Cloth, Beveled Edges, $1 75.
_Played Out._
A Novel. By ANNIE THOMAS, Author of "On Guard," "Denis Donne,"
"Playing for High Stakes," "Walter Goring," &c. 8vo, Paper, 75
cents.
_Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood._
A Novel. By GEORGE MACDONALD, M.A. 12mo, Cloth, $1 75.
_Two Marriages._
A Novel. By Miss MULOCK, Author of "John Halifax, Gentleman," "A
Noble Life," "Christian's Mistake," &c., &c. Large 12mo, Cloth,
Beveled Edges, $1 50.
_The Land of Thor._
By J. ROSS BROWNE, Author of "An American Family in Germany,"
"Crusoe's Island," "Yusef," &c. Illustrations. 12mo, Cloth.
(_Nearly Ready._)
_The Village on the Cliff._
A Novel. By Miss THACKERAY, Author of "The Story of Elizabeth."
Illustrated. 8vo, Paper, 25 cents.
_Partisan Life with Mosby_;
Or, Three Years with Mosby and his Men. By JOHN SCOTT, of Fauquier,
Author of "The Lost Principle" and "Letters to an Officer in the
Army." 8vo, Cloth. (_In Press._)
_Black Sheep._
A Novel. By EDMUND YATES, Author of "Kissing the Rod," "Land at
Last," &c. 8vo, Paper, 50 cents.
MISS RAVENEL'S CONVERSION
FROM
SECESSION TO LOYALTY.
BY J. W. DE FOREST,
AUTHOR OF "EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCE," "SEACLIFF,"
ETC., ETC.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1867.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight
hundred and sixty-seven, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of
New York.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Mr. Edward Colburne becomes acquainted with Miss Lillie
Ravenel 7
II. Miss Ravenel becomes acquainted with Lieutenant Colonel
Carter 19
III. Mr. Colburne takes a Segar with Lieutenant Colonel Carter 34
IV. The Dramatic Personages go on a Picnic, and study the
Ways of New Boston 44
V. The Dramatic Personages get News from Bull Run 59
VI. Mr. Colburne sees his Way clear to be a Soldier 71
VII. Captain Colburne raises a Company, and Colonel Carter a
Regiment 84
VIII. The Brave bid "Good-by" to the Fair 99
IX. From New Boston to New Orleans, _viâ_ Fort Jackson 112
X. The Ravenels find Captain Colburne in good Quarters 125
XI. New Orleans Life and New Orleans Ladies 142
XII. Colonel Carter befriends the Ravenels 159
XIII. The Course of True Love begins to run rough 175
XIV. Lillie chooses for herself 191
XV. Lillie bids "Good-by" to the Lover whom she has chosen
and to the Lover whom she would not choose 203
XVI. Colonel Carter gains one Victory and Miss Ravenel another 218
XVII. Colonel Carter is entirely victorious before he begins his
Campaign 232
XVIII. Doctor Ravenel commences the Reorganization of Southern
Labor 247
XIX. The Reorganization of Southern Labor is continued with
Vigor 261
XX. Captain Colburne marches and fights with Credit 275
XXI. Captain Colburne has Occasion to see Life in a Hospital 289
XXII. Captain Colburne re-enforces the Ravenels in Time to
aid them in running away 303
XXIII. Captain Colburne covers the Retreat of the Southern
Labor Organization 319
XXIV. A desperate Attack and a successful Defense 333
XXV. Domestic Happiness in spite of adverse Circumstances 346
XXVI. Captain Colburne describes Camp and Field Life 360
XXVII. Colonel Carter makes an Astronomical Expedition with
a dangerous Fellow-traveler 371
XXVIII. The Colonel continues to be led into Temptation 385
XXIX. Lillie reaches the Apotheosis of Womanhood 401
XXX. Colonel Carter commits his first ungentlemanly Action 414
XXXI. A Torture which might have been spared 427
XXXII. A most logical Conclusion 440
XXXIII. Lillie devotes herself entirely to the Rising Generation 459
XXXIV. Lillie's Attention is recalled to the Risen Generation 473
XXXV. Captain Colburne as Mr. Colburne 489
XXXVI. A Brace of Offers 503
XXXVII. A Marriage 517
MISS RAVENEL'S CONVERSION.
CHAPTER I.
MR. EDWARD COLBURNE BECOMES ACQUAINTED WITH MISS LILLIE RAVENEL.
It was shortly after the capitulation of loyal Fort Sumter to rebellious
South Carolina that Mr. Edward Colburne of New Boston made the
acquaintance of Miss Lillie Ravenel of New Orleans.
An obscure American author remarks in one of his rejected articles,
(which he had the kindness to read to me from the manuscript) that every
great historical event reverberates in a very remarkable manner through
the fortunes of a multitude of private and even secluded individuals. No
volcanic eruption rends a mountain without stirring the existence of the
mountain's mice. It was unquestionably the southern rebellion which
brought Miss Ravenel and Mr. Colburne into interesting juxtaposition.
But for this gigantic political upturning it is probable that the young
lady would never have visited New Boston where the young gentleman then
lived, or, visiting it and meeting him there, would have been a person
of no necessary importance in his eyes. But how could a most loyal,
warm-hearted youth fail to be interested in a pretty and intelligent
girl who was exiled from her home because her father would not be a
rebel?
New Boston, by the way, is the capital city of the little Yankee State
of Barataria. I ask pardon for this geographical impertinence of
introducing a seventh State into New England, and solemnly affirm that I
do not mean to disturb thereby the congressional balance of the
republic. I make the arrangement with no political object, but solely
for my private convenience, so that I may tell my story freely without
being accused of misrepresenting this private individual, or insulting
that public functionary, or burlesquing any self-satisfied community.
Like Sancho Panza's famous island of the same name, Barataria was
surrounded by land, at least to a much greater extent than most islands.
It was through Ravenel the father that Colburne made the acquaintance of
Miss Ravenel. In those days, not yet a soldier, but only a martially
disposed young lawyer and wrathful patriot, he used to visit the New
Boston House nearly every evening, running over all the journals in the
reading-room, devouring the telegraphic reports that were brought up hot
from the newspaper offices, and discussing the great political events of
the time with the heroes and sages of the city. One evening he found
nobody in the reading-room but a stranger, a tall gentleman of about
fifty, with a baldish head and a slight stoop in the shoulders, attired
in an English morning-suit of modest snuff-color. He was reading the New
York Evening Post through a rather dandified eyeglass. Presently he put
the eyeglass in his vest pocket, produced a pair of steel-bowed
spectacles, slipped them on his nose and resumed his reading with an air
of increased facility and satisfaction. He was thus engaged, and
Colburne was waiting for the Post, raging meanwhile over that copperhead
sheet, The New Boston Index, when there was a pleasant rustle of female
attire in the hall which led by the reading-room.
"Papa, put on your eyeglass," said a silver voice which Colburne liked.
"Do take off those horrid spectacles. They make you look as old as
Ararat."
"My dear, the eyeglass makes me feel as old as you say," responded papa.
"Well, stop reading then and come up stairs," was the young person's
next command. "I've had such an awful afternoon with those pokey people.
I want to tell you----"
Here she caught sight of Colburne regarding her fixedly in the mirror,
and with another rustle of vesture she suddenly slid beyond reach of the
angle of incidence and refraction.
The stranger laid down the Post in his lap, pocketed his spectacles,
and, looking about him, caught sight of Colburne.
"I beg your pardon, sir," said he with a frank, friendly, man of the
world sort of smile. "I have kept the evening paper a long time. Will
you have it?"
To our young gentleman the civility of this well-bred, middle-aged
personage was somewhat imposing, and consequently he made his best bow
and would not accept of the Post until positively assured that the other
had entirely done with it. Moreover he would not commence reading
immediately because that might seem like a tacit reproach; so he uttered
a few patriotic common-places on the news of the day, and thereby gave
occasion for this history.
"Yes, a sad struggle, a sad struggle--especially for the South,"
assented the unnamed gentleman. "You can't imagine how unprepared they
are for it. The South is just like the town's poor rebelling against the
authorities; the more successful they are, the more sure to be ruined."
While he spoke he looked in the young and strange face of his hearer
with as much seeming earnestness as if the latter had been an old
acquaintance whose opinions were of value to him. There was an amiable
fascination in the sympathetic grey eyes and the persuasive smile. He
caught Colburne's expression of interest and proceeded.
"Nobody can tell me anything about those unlucky, misguided people. I am
one of them by birth--I have lived among them nearly all my life--I know
them. They are as ill-informed as Hottentots. They have no more idea of
their relative strength as compared to that of the United States than
the Root-diggers of the Rocky Mountains. They are doomed to perish by
their own ignorance and madness."
"It will probably be a short struggle," said Colburne, speaking the
common belief of the North.
"I don't know--I don't know about that; we mustn't be too sure of that.
You must understand that they are barbarians, and that all barbarians
are obstinate and reckless. They will hold out like the Florida
Seminoles. They will resist like jackasses and heroes. They won't know
any better. They will be an honor to the fortitude and a sarcasm on the
intelligence of human nature. They will become an example in history of
much that is great, and all that is foolish."
"May I ask what part of the South you have resided in?" inquired
Colburne.
"I am a South Carolinian born. But I have lived in New Orleans for the
last twenty years, summers excepted. A man can't well live there the
year round. He must be away occasionally, to clear his system of its
malaria physical and moral. It is a Sodom. I consider it a proof of
depravity in any one to want to go there. But there was my work, and
there I staid--as little as possible. I staid till this stupid,
barbarous Ashantee rebellion drove me out."
"I am afraid you will be an exile for some time, sir," observed
Colburne, after a short silence during which he regarded the exiled
stranger with patriotic sympathy.
"I am afraid so," was the answer, uttered in a tone which implied
serious reflection if not sadness.
He remembers the lost home, the sacrificed wealth, the undeserved
hostility, the sentence of outlawry which should have been a meed of
honor, thought the enthusiastic young patriot. The voice of welcome
ought to greet him, the hand of friendship ought to aid him, here among
loyal men.
"I hope you stay some time in New Boston, sir," he observed aloud. "If
I can be of the slightest benefit to you, I shall be most happy. Allow
me to offer you my card, sir."
"Oh! Thank you. You are extremely kind," said the stranger. He bowed
very politely and smiled very cordially as he took the bit of
pasteboard; but at the same time there was a slight fixity of surprise
in his eye which made the sensitive Colburne color. He read the name on
the card; then, with a start as of reminiscence, glanced at it again;
then leaned forward and peered into the young man's face with an air of
eager curiosity.
"Are you--is it possible!--are you related to Doctor Edward Colburne of
this place who died fourteen or fifteen years ago?"
"I am his son, sir."
"Is it possible! I am delighted to meet you. I am most sincerely and
earnestly gratified. I knew your father well. I had particular occasion
to know him as a fellow beginner in mineralogy at a time when the
science was little studied in this country. We corresponded and
exchanged specimens. My name is Ravenel. I have been for twenty years
professor of theory and practice in the Medical College of New Orleans.
An excellent place for a dissecting class, by the way. So many negroes
are whipped to death, so many white gentlemen die in their boots, as the
saying is, that we rarely lack for subjects.--But you must have been
quite young when you had the misfortune--and science had the
misfortune--to lose your father. Really, you have quite his look about
the eyes and forehead. What profession may I ask?"
"Law," said Colburne, who was flushed with pleasure over the acquisition
of this charming acquaintance, so evidently to him a man of the world, a
savant, a philosopher, and a patriotic martyr.
"Law--that is a smattering of it--just enough to have an office and do
notary work."
"A good profession! A grand profession! But I should have expected your
father's son to be a physician or a mineralogist."
He took off his spectacles and surveyed Colburne's frank, handsome face
with evidently sincere interest. He seemed as much occupied with this
young stranger's history and prospects as he had been a moment before
with his own beliefs and exile.
At this stage of the conversation one of the hotel servants entered the
room and said, "Sir, the young lady wishes you would come up stairs, if
you please, sir."
"Oh, certainly," answered the stranger, or, as I may now call him, the
Doctor. "Mr. Colburne, come up to my room, if you are at leisure. I
shall be most happy to have a longer conversation with you."
Colburne was in the usual quandary of young and modest men on such
occasions. He wished to accept the invitation; he feared that he ought
not to take advantage of it; he did not know how to decline it. After a
lightning-like consideration of the _pros_ and _cons_, after a stealthy
glance at his toilet in the mirror, he showed the good sense and had the
good luck to follow Doctor Ravenel to his private parlor. As they
entered, the same silver voice which Colburne had heard below,
exclaimed, "Why papa! What has kept you so long? I have been as lonely
as a mouse in a trap."
"Lillie, let me introduce Mr. Colburne to you," answered papa. "My dear
sir, take this arm chair. It is much more comfortable than those awkward
mahogany uprights. Don't suppose that I want it. I prefer the sofa, I
really do."
Miss Ravenel, I suppose I ought to state in this exact place, was very
fair, with lively blue eyes and exceedingly handsome hair, very
luxuriant, very wavy and of a flossy blonde color lighted up by flashes
of amber. She was tall and rather slender, with a fine form and an
uncommon grace of manner and movement. Colburne was flattered by the
quick blush and pretty momentary flutter of embarrassment with which she
received him. This same irrepressible blush and flutter often interested
those male individuals who were fortunate enough to make Miss Ravenel's
acquaintance. Each young fellow thought that she was specially
interested in himself; that the depths of her womanly nature were
stirred into pleasurable excitement by his advent. And it was frequently
not altogether a mistake. Miss Ravenel was interested in people, in a
considerable number of people, and often at first sight. She had her
father's sympathetic character, as well as his graceful cordiality and
consequent charm of manner, the whole made more fascinating by being
veiled in a delicate gauze of womanly dignity. As to her being as lovely
as a houri, I confess that there were different opinions on that
question, and I do not care to settle it, as I of course might, by a
tyrannical affirmation.
It is curious how resolutely most persons demand that the heroine of a
story shall be extraordinarily handsome. And yet the heroine of many a
love affair in our own lives is not handsome; and most of us fall in
love, quite earnestly and permanently in love too, with rather plain
women. Why then should I strain my conscience by asserting broadly and
positively that Miss Ravenel was a first class beauty? But I do affirm
without hesitation that, like her father, she was socially charming. I
go farther: she was also very loveable and (I beg her pardon) very
capable of loving; although up to this time she did not feel sure that
she possessed either of these two qualities.
She had simply bowed with a welcoming smile and that flattering blush,
but without speaking or offering her hand, when Colburne was presented.
I suspect that she waited for her father to give her a key to the nature
of the interview and an intimation as to whether she should join in the
conversation. She was quite capable of such small forethought, and
Doctor Ravenel was worthy of the trust.
"Mr. Colburne is the son of Doctor Colburne, my dear," he observed as
soon as his guest was seated. "You have heard me speak of the Doctor's
premature and lamented death. I think myself very fortunate in meeting
his son."
"You are very kind to call on us, Mr. Colburne," said the silver voice
with a musical accent which almost amounted to a singsong. "I hope you
don't hate Southerners," she added with a smile which made Colburne feel
for a moment as if he could not heartily hate Beauregard, then the
representative man of the rebellion. "We are from Louisiana, you know."
"I regret to hear it," answered Colburne.
"Oh, don't pity us," she laughed. "It is not such a bad place."
"Please don't misunderstand me. I meant that I regret your exile from
your home."
"Thank you for that. I don't know whether papa will thank you or not. He
doesn't appreciate Louisiana. I don't believe he is conscious that he
has suffered a misfortune in being obliged to quit it. I am. New Boston
is very pretty, and the people are very nice. But you know how it is; it
is bad to lose one's home."
"My dear, I can't help laughing at your grand misfortune," said the
Doctor. "We are something like the Hebrews when they lost Pharaoh king
of Egypt, or like people who lose a sinking wreck by getting on a sound
vessel. Besides, our happy home turned us out of doors."
The Doctor felt that he had a right to abuse his own, especially after
it had ill-treated him.
"Were you absolutely exiled, sir?" asked Colburne.
"I had to take sides. Those unhappy Chinese allow no neutrals--nothing
but themselves, the central flowery people, and outside barbarians. They
have fed on the poor blacks until they can't abide a man who isn't a
cannibal. He is a reproach to them, and they must make away with him.
They remind me of a cracker whom I met at a cross road tavern in one of
my journeys through the north of Georgia. This man, a red-nosed,
tobacco-drizzling, whiskey-perfumed giant, invited me to drink with
him, and, when I declined, got furious and wanted to fight me. I told
him that I never drank whiskey and that it made me sick, and finally
succeeded in pacifying him without touching his poison. In fact he made
me a kind of apology for having offered to cut my throat. 'Wa'al, fact
is, stranger,' said he, '_I_,' (laying an accent as strong as his liquor
on the personal pronoun) '_I_ use whiskey.'--You understand the
inference, I suppose: a man who refused whiskey was a contradiction, a
reproach to his personality: such a man he could not suffer to live. It
was the Brooks and Sumner affair over again. Brooks says, 'Fact is _I_
believe in slavery,' and immediately hits Sumner over the head for not
believing in it."
"Something like my grandfather, who, when he had to diet, used to want
the whole family to live on dry toast," observed Colburne. "For the time
being he believed in the universal propriety and necessity of toast."
"Were you in danger of violence before you left New Orleans?" he
presently asked. "I beg pardon if I am too curious."
"Violence? Why, not precisely; not immediate violence. The breaking-off
point was this. I must explain that I dabble in chemistry as well as
mineralogy. Now in all that city of raw materialism, of cotton-bale and
sugar-hogshead instinct--I can't call it intelligence--there was not a
man of southern principles who knew enough of chemistry to make a fuse.
They wanted to possess themselves of the United States forts in their
State. They supposed that they would be obliged to shell them. The
shells they had plundered from the United States arsenal; but the fuses
were wanting. A military committee requested me to fabricate them. Of
course I was driven to make an immediate choice between rebellion and
loyalty. I took the first steamboat to New York, getting off just in
time to escape the system of surveillance which the vigilance committees
established."
It may seem odd to some sensible people that this learned gentleman of
over fifty should expose his own history so freely to a young fellow
whom he had not seen until half an hour before. But it was a part of the
Doctor's character to suppose that humanity took an interest in him just
as he took an interest in all humanity; and his natural frankness had
been increased by contact with the prevailing communicativeness of his
open-hearted fellow-citizens of the South. I dare say that he would have
unfolded the tale of his exile to an intelligent stage-driver by whom he
might have chanced to sit, with as little hesitation as he poured it
into the ears of this graduate of a distinguished university and
representative of a staid puritanical aristocracy. He had no thought of
claiming admiration for his self-sacrificing loyalty. His story was
worth telling, not because it was connected with his interests, but
because it had to do with his sentiments and convictions. Why should he
not relate it to a stranger who was evidently capable of sympathising
with those sentiments and appreciating those convictions?
But there was another reason for the Doctor's frankness. At that time
every circumstance of the opening civil war, every item of life that
came from hostile South to indignant North, was regarded by all as a
species of public property. If you put down your name on a hotel
register as arrived from Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, New Orleans, or
any other point south of Mason & Dixon's line, you were immediately
addressed and catechised. People wanted to know how you escaped, and why
you tried to escape; and were ready to accord you any credit you
demanded for perilous adventures and patriotic motives; and did not
perceive it nor think a bit ill of you if you showed yourself somewhat
of a romancer and braggart. And you, on the other hand, did not object
to telling your story, but let it out as naturally as a man just rescued
from drowning opens his heart to the sympathising crowd which greets him
on the river bank.
Now Miss Ravenel was a rebel. Like all young people and almost all
women she was strictly local, narrowly geographical in her feelings and
opinions. She was colored by the soil in which she had germinated and
been nurtured; and during that year no flower could be red, white and
blue in Louisiana. Accordingly the young lady listened to the Doctor's
story of his self-imposed exile and to his sarcasms upon the people of
her native city with certain pretty little starts and sniffs of
disapprobation which reminded Colburne of the counterfeit spittings of a
kitten playing anger. She could not under any provocation quarrel with
her father, but she could perseveringly and energetically disagree with
his opinions. When he had closed his tirade and history she broke forth
in a defence of her darling Dixie.
"Now, papa, you are too bad. Mr. Colburne, don't you think he is too
bad? Just see here. Louisiana is my native State, and papa has lived
there half his life. He could not have been treated more kindly, nor
have been thought more of, than he was by those Ashantees, as he calls
them, until he took sides against them. If you never lived with the
southerners you don't know how pleasant they are. I don't mean those
rough creatures from Arkansas and Texas, nor the stupid Acadians, nor
the poor white trash. There are low people everywhere. But I do say that
the better classes of Louisiana and Mississippi and Georgia and South
Carolina and Virginia, yes, and of Tennessee and Kentucky, are right
nice. If they don't know all about chemistry and mineralogy, they can
talk delightfully to ladies. They are perfectly charming at receptions
and dinner parties. They are so hospitable, too, and generous and
courteous! Now I call that civilization. I say that such people are
civilized."
"They have taught you Ashantee English, though," smiled the Doctor, who
has not yet fully realized the fact that his daughter has become a young
lady, and ought no longer to be criticised like a school girl. "I am
afraid Mr. Colburne won't understand what 'right nice' means."
"Oh, yes he will. Do try to understand it, Mr. Colburne," answers Miss
Ravenel, coloring to her temples and fluttering like a canary whose cage
has been shaken, but still smiling good-naturedly. Her father's satire,
delivered before a stranger, touched her, but could not irritate a good
temper softened by affection.
"I must be allowed to use those Ashantee phrases once in a while," she
went on. "We learn them from our old mammas; that is, you know, our nice
old black nurses. Well, I admit that the mammas are not grammarians. I
admit that Louisiana is not perfect. But it is my Louisiana. And, papa,
it ought to be your Louisiana. I think we owe fealty to our State, and
should go with it wherever it goes. Don't you believe in State rights,
Mr. Colburne? Wouldn't you stand by Barataria in any and every case?"
"Not against the Union, Miss Ravenel," responded the young man, unshaken
in his loyalty even by that earnest look and winning smile.
"Oh dear! how can you say so!" exclaims the lovely advocate of
secession. "I thought New Englanders--all but Massachusetts
people--would agree with us. Wasn't the Hartford Convention held in New
England?"
"I can't help admiring your knowledge of political history. But the
Hartford Convention is a byeword of reproach among us now. We should as
soon think of being governed by the Blue Laws."
At this declaration Miss Ravenel lost hope of converting her auditor.
She dropped back in her corner of the sofa, clasping her hands and
pouting her lips with a charming earnestness of mild desperation.
Well, the evening passed away delightfully to the young patriot,
although it grieved his soul to find Miss Ravenel such a traitor to the
republic. It was nearly twelve when he bade the strangers good night and
apologized for staying so late, and accepted an invitation to call next
day, and hoped they would continue to live in New Boston. He actually
trembled with pleasure when Lillie at parting gave him her hand in the
frank southern fashion. And after he had reached his cosy bedroom on the
opposite side of the public square he had to smoke a segar to compose
himself to sleep, and succeeded so ill in his attempt to secure speedy
slumber that he heard the town clock ring out one and then two of the
morning before he lost his consciousness.
"Oh dear! papa, how he did hang on!" said Miss Ravenel as soon as the
door had shut behind him.
Certainly it was late, and she had a right to be impatient with the
visitor, especially as he was a Yankee and an abolitionist. But Miss
Ravenel, like most young ladies, was a bit of a hypocrite in talking of
young men, and was not so very ill pleased at the bottom of her heart
with the hanging on of Mr. Colburne.
CHAPTER II.
MISS RAVENEL BECOMES ACQUAINTED WITH LIEUTENANT-COLONEL CARTER.
Mr. Colburne was not tardy in calling on the Ravenels nor careless in
improving chances of encountering them by seeming accident. His modesty
made him afraid of being tiresome, and his sensitiveness of being
ridiculous; but neither the one terror nor the other prevented him from
inflicting a good deal of his society upon the interesting exiles. Three
weeks after his introduction it was his good fortune to be invited to
meet them at a dinner party given them by Professor Whitewood of his own
Alma Mater, the celebrated Winslow University.
The Whitewood house was of an architecture so common in New Boston that
in describing it I run no risk of identifying it to the curious.
Exteriorly it was a square box of brick, stuccoed to represent granite;
interiorly it consisted of four rooms on each floor, divided by a hall
up and down the centre. This was the original construction, to which had
been added a greenhouse, into which you passed through the parlor,
carefully balanced by a study into which you passed through the library.
Trim, regular, geometrical, one half of the structure weighing to an
ounce just as much as the other half, and the whole perhaps forming some
exact fraction of the entire avoirdupois of the globe, the very
furniture distributed at measured distances, it was precisely such a
building as the New Boston soul would naturally create for itself. Miss
Ravenel noticed this with a quickness of perception as to the relations
of mind and matter which astonished and amused Mr. Colburne.
"If I should be transported on Aladdin's carpet," she said, "fast
asleep, to some unknown country, and should wake up and find myself in
such a house as this, I should know that I was in New Boston. How the
Professor must enjoy himself here! This room is exactly twenty feet one
way by twenty feet the other. Then the hall is just ten feet across by
just forty in length. The Professor can look at it and say, Four times
ten is forty. Then the greenhouse and the study balance each other like
the paddle-boxes of a steamer. Why will you all be so square?"
"But how shall we become triangular, or circular, or star-shaped, or
cruciform?" asked Colburne. "And what would be the good of it if we
should get into those forms?"
"You would be so much more picturesque. I should enjoy myself so much
more in looking at you."
"I am so sorry you don't like us."
"How it grieves you!" laughed the young lady. A flush of rose mounted
her cheek as she said this; but I must beg the reader to recollect that
Miss Ravenel blushed at anything and nothing.
"Now here are buildings of all shapes and colors," she proceeded,
turning over the leaves of a photographic album which contained views of
Venetian architecture. "Don't you see that these were not built by New
Bostonians?"
They were in the library, whither Miss Whitewood had conducted them to
exhibit her father's fine collection of photographs and engravings. A
shy but hospitable and thoughtful maiden, incapable of striking up a
flirtation of her own, and with not a selfish matrimonial in her head,
but still quite able to sympathise with the loves of others, Miss
Whitewood had seated her two guests at their art banquet, and then had
gently withdrawn herself from the study so that they might talk of what
they chose without restraint. It was already reported, with or without
reason, that Mr. Colburne was interested in the fascinating young exile
from Louisiana, and that she was not so indifferent to him as she
evidently was to most of the New Boston beaux. This was the reason why
that awkward but good Miss Whitewood, twenty-five years old and without
a suitor, be it remembered, had brought them into the quiet of the
study. Meantime the door was wide open into the hall, and exactly
opposite to it was another door wide open into the parlor, where, in
full view of the young people, sat all the old people, meaning thereby
Doctor Ravenel, Professor Whitewood, Mrs. Whitewood, and her prematurely
middle-aged daughter. The three New Bostonians were listening with
evident delight to the fluent and zealous Louisianian. But, instead of
entering upon his conversation, which consisted chiefly of lively satire
and declamation directed against slavery and its rebellious partizans,
let us revert for a tiresome moment or two, while dinner is preparing
and other guests are arriving, to the subject on which Miss Ravenel has
been teasing Mr. Colburne.
New Boston is not a lively nor a sociable place. The principal reason
for this is that it is inhabited chiefly by New Englanders. Puritanism,
the prevailing faith of that land and race, is not only not favorable
but is absolutely noxious to social gayeties, amenities and graces. I
say this in sorrow and not in anger, for New England is the land of my
birth and Puritanism is the creed of my progenitors. And I add as a mere
matter of justice, that, deficient as the New Bostonians are in timely
smiles and appropriate compliments, bare as they are of jollities and
angular in manners and opinions, they have strong sympathies for what is
clearly right, and can become enthusiastic in a matter of conscience and
benevolence. If they have not learned how to love the beautiful, they
know how to love the good and true. But Puritanism is not the only
reason why the New Bostonians are socially stiff and unsympathetic. The
city is divided into more than the ordinary number of cliques and
coteries, and they are hedged from each other by an unusually thorny
spirit of repulsion. From times now far beyond the memory of the oldest
inhabitant, the capsheaf in the social pyramid has been allotted by
common consent, without much opposition on the part of the other
inhabitants, to the president and professors of Winslow University,
their families, and the few whom they choose to honor with their
intimacy. In early days this learned institution was chiefly theological
and its magnates all clerical; and it was inevitable that men bearing
the priestly dignity should hold high rank in a puritan community.
Eighty or a hundred years ago, moreover, the professor, with his salary
of a thousand dollars yearly was a nabob of wealth in a city where there
were not ten merchants and not one retired capitalist who could boast an
equal income. Finally, learning is a title to consideration which always
has been and still is recognized by the majority of respectable
Americans. An objectionable feature of this sacred inner circle of
society is that it contains none of those seraphim called young
gentlemen. The sons of the professors, excepting the few who become
tutors and eventually succeed their fathers, leave New Boston for larger
fields of enterprise; the daughters of the professors, enamored of
learning and its votaries alone, will not dance, nor pic-nic, much less
intermarry, with the children of shop-keepers, shippers and
manufacturers; and thus it happens that almost the only beaux whom you
will discover at the parties given in this Upper Five Hundred are
slender and beardless undergraduates.
From the time of Colburne's introduction to the Ravenels it was the
desire of his heart to make New Boston a pleasant place to them; and by
dint of spreading abroad the fame of their patriotism and its ennobling
meed of martyrdom, he was able, in those excitable days, to infect with
the same fancy all his relatives and most of his acquaintances; so that
in a short time the exiles received quite a number of hospitable calls
and invitations. The Doctor, travelled man of the world as he was, made
no sort of difficulty in enjoying or seeming to enjoy these attentions.
If he did not sincerely and heartily relish the New Bostonians, so
different in flavor of manner and education from the society in which he
had been educated, he at least made them one and all believe that they
were luxuries to his palate. He became shortly the most popular man for
a dinner party or an evening _conversazione_ that was ever known in that
city of geometry and puritanism. Except when they had wandered outside
of New Boston, or rather, I should say, outside of New England, and got
across the ocean, or south of Mason and Dixon's line, these good and
grave burghers had never beheld such a radiant, smiling, universally
sympathetic and perennially sociable gentleman of fifty as Ravenel. A
most interesting spectacle was it to see him meet and greet one of the
elder magnates of the university, usually a solid and sincere but shy
and somewhat unintelligible person, who always meant three or four times
as much as he said or looked, and whose ice melted away from him leaving
him free to smile, as our southern friend fervently grasped his frigid
hand and beamed with tropical warmth into his arctic spirit. Such a
greeting was as exhilarating as a pint of sherry to the sad, sedentary
scholar, who had just come from a weary day's grubbing among Hebrew
roots, and whose afternoon recreation had been a walk in the city
cemetery.
There were not wanting good people who feared the Doctor; who were
suspicious of this inexhaustible courtesy and alarmed at these
conversational powers of fascination; who doubted whether poison might
not infect the pleasant talk, as malaria fills the orange-scented air of
Louisiana.
"I consider him a very dangerous man; he might do a great deal of harm
if he chose," remarked one of those conscientious but uncharitable
ladies whom I have regarded since my childhood with a mixture of
veneration and dislike. Thin-lipped, hollow-cheeked, narrow-chested,
with only one lung and an intermittent digestion, without a single
rounded outline or graceful movement, she was a sad example of what the
New England east winds can do in enfeebling and distorting the human
form divine. Such are too many of the New Boston women when they reach
that middle age which should be physically an era of adipose, and
morally of charity. Even her smile was a woful phenomenon; it seemed to
be rather a symptom of pain than an expression of pleasure; it was a
kind of griping smile, like that of an infant with the colic.
"If he chose! What harm would he choose to do?" expostulated Colburne,
for whose ears this warning was intended.
"I can't precisely make out whether he is orthodox or not," replied the
inexorable lady. "And if he _is_ heterodox, what an awful power he has
for deceiving and leading away the minds of the young! He is altogether
too agreeable to win my confidence until I know that he is guided and
restrained by grace."
"That is the most unjust thing that I ever heard of," broke out Colburne
indignantly. "To condemn a man because he is charming! If the converse
of the rule is true, Mrs. Ruggles--if unpleasant people are to be
admired because they are such--then some of us New Bostonians ought to
be objects of adoration."
"I have my opinions, Mr. Colburne," retorted the lady, who was somewhat
stung, although not clever enough to comprehend how badly.
"It makes a great difference with an object who looks at it," continued
the young man. "I sometimes wonder what the ants think of us human
beings. Do they understand our capacities, duties and destinies? Or do
they look upon us from what might be called a pismire point of view?"
Colburne could say such things because he was a popular favorite. To
people who, like the New Bostonians, did not demand a high finish of
manner, this young man was charming. He was sympathetic, earnest in his
feelings, as frank as such a modest fellow could be, and among friends
had any quantity of expansion and animation. He would get into a gale of
jesting and laughter over a game of whist, provided his fellow players
were in anywise disposed to be merry. On such occasions his eyes became
so bright and his cheeks so flushed that he seemed luminous with good
humor. His laugh was sonorous, hearty, and contagious; and he was not at
all fastidious as to what he laughed at: it was sufficient for him if he
saw that you meant to be witty. In conversation he was very pleasant,
and had only one questionable trick, which was a truly American habit of
hyperbole. When he was excited he had a droll, absent-minded way of
running his fingers through his wavy brown hair, until it stood up in
picturesque masses which were very becoming. His forehead was broad and
clear; his complexion moderately light, with a strong color in the
cheeks; his nose straight and handsome, and other features sufficiently
regular; his eyes of a light hazel, and remarkable for their gentleness.
There was nothing hidden, nothing stern, in his expression--you saw at a
glance that he was the embodiment of frankness and good nature. In
person he was strongly built, and he had increased his vigor by
systematic exercise. He had been one of the best gymnasts and oarsmen in
college, and still kept up his familiarity with swinging-bars and racing
shells. His firm white arms were well set on broad shoulders and a full
chest; and a pair of long, vigorous legs completed an uncommonly fine
figure. Pardonably proud of the strength which he had in part created,
he loved to exhibit gymnastic feats, and to talk of the matches in which
he had been stroke-oar. It was the only subject on which he exhibited
personal vanity. To sum up, he was considered in his set the finest and
most agreeable young man in New Boston.
Let us now return to the dinner of Professor Whitewood. The party
consisted of eight persons; the male places being filled by Professor
Whitewood, Doctor Ravenel, Colburne, and a Lieutenant-Colonel Carter;
the female by Mrs. and Miss Whitewood, Miss Ravenel, and John Whitewood,
Jr. This last named individual, the son and heir of the host, a youth of
twenty years of age, was a very proper person to fill the position of
fourth lady. Thin, pale and almost sallow, with pinched features
surmounted by a high and roomy forehead, tall, slender, narrow-chested
and fragile in form, shy, silent, and pure as the timidest of girls, he
was an example of what can be done with youthful blood, muscle, mind and
feeling by the studious severities of a puritan university. Miss
Ravenel, accustomed to far more masculine men, felt a contempt for him
at the first glance, saying to herself, How dreadfully ladylike! She was
far better satisfied with the appearance of the stranger,
Lieutenant-Colonel Carter. A little above the middle height he was, with
a full chest, broad shoulders and muscular arms, brown curling hair, and
a monstrous brown mustache, forehead not very high, nose straight and
chin dimpled, brown eyes at once audacious and mirthful, and a dark rich
complexion which made one think of pipes of sherry wine as well as of
years of sunburnt adventure. When he was presented to her he looked her
full in the eyes with a bold flash of interest which caused her to color
from her forehead to her shoulders. In age he might have been anywhere
from thirty-three to thirty-seven. In manner he was a thorough man of
the world without the insinuating suavity of her father, but with all
his self-possession and readiness.
Colburne had not expected this alarming phenomenon. He was clever enough
to recognize the stranger's gigantic social stature at a glance, and
like the Israelitish spies in the presence of the Amakim, he felt
himself shrink to a grasshopper mediocrity.
At table the company was arranged as follows. At the head sat Mrs.
Whitewood, with Dr. Ravenel on her right, and Miss Whitewood on her
left. At the foot was the host, flanked on the right by Miss Ravenel and
on the left by Lieutenant-Colonel Carter. The two central side places
were occupied by young Whitewood and Colburne, the latter being between
Miss Whitewood and Miss Ravenel. With a quickness of perception which I
suspect he would not have shown had not his heart been interested in the
question he immediately decided that Doctor Ravenel was intended to go
_tête-a-tête_ with Mrs. Whitewood, and this strange officer with Miss
Ravenel, while he was to devote himself to Miss Whitewood. The worrying
thought drove every brilliant idea from his head. He could no more talk
and be merry than could that hermaphrodite soul whose lean body and
cadaverous countenance fronted him on the opposite side of the table.
Miss Whitewood, who was nearly as great a student as her brother, was
almost as deficient in the powers of speech; she made an effort, first
in the direction of the coming Presentation Day, then towards somebody's
notes on Cicero, finally upon the weather; at last, with a woman's
sympathetic divination, she guessed the cause of Colburne's gloom, and
sank into a pitying silence. As for Mrs. Whitewood, amiable woman and
excellent housewife, though an invalid, her conversational faculty
consisted in listening. Thus nobody talked except the Ravenels,
Lieutenant-Colonel Carter, and Professor Whitewood.
Colburne endeavored to conceal his troubled condition by a smile of
counterfeit interest in the conversation. Then he grew ashamed of
himself, and tearing off his fictitious smirk, substituted a look of
stern thought, thereby exhibiting an honest countenance, but not one
suitable to the occasion. There was sherry on the table; not because
wine-bibbing was a habit of the Whitewoods, inasmuch as the hostess had
brought it out of the family medical stores with a painful twinge of
conscience; but there it was, in deference to the supposed tastes of the
army gentleman and the strangers from the south. Colburne was tempted to
rouse himself with a glass of it, but did not, being a pledged member of
a temperance society. Instead of this he made a gallant moral effort,
and succeeded in talking copiously to the junior Whitewood. But as what
he said is of little consequence to our story, let us go back a few
moments and learn what it was that had depressed his spirits.
"I am delighted to meet some one from Louisiana, Miss Ravenel," said the
Lieutenant-Colonel, after the master of the house had said grace.
"Why? Are you a Louisianian?" asked the young lady with a blush of
interest which was the first thing that troubled Colburne.
"Not precisely. I came very near calling myself such at one time, I
liked the State and the people so much. I was stationed there for
several years."
"Indeed! At New Orleans?"
"Not so fortunate," replied the Lieutenant Colonel with a smile and a
slight bow, which was as much as to say that, if he had been stationed
there, he might have hoped for the happiness of knowing Miss Ravenel
earlier. "I was stationed in the arsenal at Baton Rouge."
"I never was at Baton Rouge; I mean I never visited there. I have passed
there repeatedly in going up and down the river, just while the boat
made its landings, you know. What a beautiful place it is! I don't mean
the buildings, but the situation, the bluffs."
"Precisely. Great relief to get to Baton Rouge and see a hill or two
after staying in the lowlands."
"Oh! don't say anything against the lowlands," begged Miss Ravenel.
"I won't," promised the Lieutenant Colonel. "Give you my word of honor I
won't do it, not even in the strictest privacy."
There was a cavalier dash in the gentleman's tone and manner; he looked
and spoke as if he felt himself quite good enough for his company. And
so he was, at least in respect to descent and social position; for no
family in Virginia boasted a purer strain of old colonial blue blood
than the Carters. In addition the Lieutenant Colonel was a gentleman by
right of a graduation from West Point, and of a commission in the
regular service which dated back to the times when there were no
volunteers and few civilian appointments, and when by consequence army
officers formed a caste of aristocratic military brahmins. From the
regular service, however, in which he had been only a lieutenant, his
name had vanished several years previous. His lieutenant-colonelcy was a
volunteer commission issued by the governor of the State. It was in the
Second Barataria, a three-months' regiment, which was shortly to
distinguish itself by a masterly retreat from Bull Run. Carter had
injured his ancle by a fall from his horse, and was away from the army
on a sick leave of twenty days, avoiding the hospitals of Washington,
and giving up his customary enjoyments in New York for the sake of
attending to business which will transpire during this narrative. His
leave had nearly expired, but he had applied to the War Department for
an extension of ten days, and was awaiting an answer from that awful
headquarters with the utmost tranquillity. If he found himself in the
condition of being absent without leave, he knew how to explain things
to a military commission or a board of inquiry.
The Lieutenant-Colonel liked the appearance of the young person whom he
had been invited to meet. In the first place, he said to himself, she
had a charming mixture of girlish freshness and of the thorough-bred
society air which he considered indispensable to a lady. In the second
place she looked somewhat like his late wife; and although he had been a
wasteful and neglectful husband, he still kept a moderately soft spot in
his heart for the memory of the departed one; not being in this respect
different, I understand, from the majority of widowers. He saw that Miss
Ravenel was willing to talk any kind of nothing so long as she could
talk of her native State, and that therefore he could please her without
much intellectual strain or chance of rivalry. Consequently he prattled
and made prattle for some minutes about Louisiana.
"Were you acquainted with the McAllisters?" he wanted to know. "Very
natural that you shouldn't be. They lived up the river, and seldom went
to the city. They had such a noble plantation, though! You could enjoy
the true, old-style, princely Louisiana hospitality there. Splendid
life, that of a southern planter. If I hadn't been in the army--or
rather, if I could have done everything that I fancied, I should have
become a sugar planter. Of course I should have run myself out, for it
takes a frightful capital and some business faculty, or else the best of
luck. By the way, I am afraid those fine fellows will all of them come
to grief if this war continues five or six years."
"Five or six years!" exclaimed Professor Whitewood in astonishment, but
not in dismay, so utter was his incredulity. "Do you suppose, Colonel,
that the rebels can resist for five or six years?"
"Why not? Ten or twelve millions of people on their own ground, and
difficult ground too, will make a terrific resistance. They are as well
prepared as we are, and better. Frederic of Prussia wasn't conquered in
seven years. I don't see anything unreasonable in allowing these fellows
five or six. By the way," he laughed, "I am giving you an honest
professional opinion. Talking outside--to the rabble--talking as a
patriot," (here he laughed again) "and not as an officer, I say three
months. Do it in three months, gentlemen!" he added, setting his head
back and swelling his chest in imitation of the conventional popular
orator.
Miss Ravenel laughed outright to hear the enemies of her section
satirized.
"But how will the South stand a contest of five or six years?" queried
the Professor.
"Oh, badly, of course; get whipped, of course; that is, if we develope
energy and military talent. We have the resources to thrash them. War in
the long run is pretty much a matter of arithmetical calculation. Oh,
Miss Ravenel, I was about to ask you, did you know the Slidells?"
"Very slightly."
"Why slightly? Didn't you like them? I thought they were very agreeable
people; though, to be sure, they were _parvenus_."
"They were very ultra, you know; and papa was of the other party."
"Oh, indeed!" said the Lieutenant-Colonel, turning his head and
surveying Ravenel with curiosity, not because he was loyal, but because
he was the young lady's papa. "How I regret that I had no chance to make
your father's acquaintance in Louisiana. Give you my honor that I wasn't
so simple as to prefer Baton Rouge to New Orleans. I tried to get
ordered to the crescent city, but the War Department was obdurate. I am
confident," he added, with his audacious smile, half flattering and half
quizzical, "that if the Washington people had known _all_ that I lost by
not getting to New Orleans, they would have relented."
It was perfectly clear to Miss Ravenel that he meant to pay her a
compliment. It occurred to her that she was probably in short dresses
when the gallant Lieutenant-Colonel was on duty at Baton Rouge, and thus
missed a chance of seeing her in New Orleans. But she did not allude to
this ludicrous possibility; she only colored at his audacity, and said,
"Oh, it's such a lovely city! I think it is far preferable to New York."
"But is it not a very wicked city?" asked the host, quite seriously.
"Mr. Whitewood! How can you say that to me, a native of it?" she
laughed.
"Jerusalem," pursued the Professor, getting out of his scrape with a
kind of ponderous dexterity, like an elephant backing off a shaky
bridge, and taking his time about it, like Noah spending a hundred and
twenty years in building his ark--"Jerusalem proved her wickedness by
casting out the prophets. It seems to me that your presence here, and
that of your father, as exiles, is sufficient proof of the iniquity of
New Orleans."
"Upon my honor, Professor!" burst out the Lieutenant-Colonel, "you beat
the best man I ever saw at a compliment."
It was now Professor Whitewood's pale and wrinkled cheek which flushed,
partly with gratification, partly with embarrassment. His wife surveyed
him in mild astonishment, almost fearing that he had indulged in much
sherry.
The Lieutenant-Colonel, by the way, had taken to the wine in a style
which showed that he was used to the taste of it, and liked the effects.
His conversation grew more animated; his bass voice rang from end to end
of the table, startling Mrs. Whitewood; his fine brown eyes flashed, and
a few drops of perspiration beaded his brow. It must not be supposed
that the sherry alone could do as much as this for so old a campaigner.
That afternoon, as he lounged and yawned in the reading-room of the New
Boston House, he had thought of Professor Whitewood's invitation, and,
feeling low-spirited and stupid, had concluded not to go to the dinner,
although in the morning he had sent a note of acceptance. Then, feeling
low-spirited and stupid, as I said, he took a glass of ale, and
subsequently a stiffish whiskey-punch, following up the treatment with a
segar, which by producing a dryness of the throat, induced him to try
another whiskey-punch. Fortified by twenty-five cents' worth of liquor
(at the then prices) he felt his ambition and industry revive. By Jove,
Carter, he said to himself, you must go to that dinner-party. Whitewood
is just one of those pious heavyweights who can bring this puritanical
governor to terms. Put on your best toggery, Carter, and make your bow,
and say how-de-do.
Thus it was that when the Professor's sherry entered into the
Lieutenant-Colonel, it found an ally there which aided it to produce the
afore-mentioned signs of excitement. Colburne, I grieve to say, almost
rejoiced in detecting these symptoms, thinking that surely Miss Ravenel
would not fancy a man who was, to say the least, inordinately convivial.
Alas! Miss Ravenel had been too much accustomed to just such gentlemen
in New Orleans society to see anything disgusting or even surprising in
the manner of the Lieutenant-Colonel. She continued to prattle with him
in her pleasantest manner about Louisiana, not in the least restrained
by Colburne's presence, and only now and then casting an anxious glance
at her father; for Ravenel the father, man of the world as he was, did
not fancy the bacchanalian New Orleans type of gentility, having
observed that it frequently brought itself and its wife and children to
grief.
The dinner lasted an hour and a half, by which time it was nearly
twilight. The ordinary prandial hour of the Whitewoods, as well as of
most fashionable New Boston people, was not later than two o'clock in
the afternoon, but this had been considered a special occasion on
account of the far-off origin of some of the guests, and the meal had
therefore commenced at five. On leaving the table the party went into
the parlor and had coffee. Then Miss Ravenel thought it wise to
propitiate her father's searching eye by quitting the Lieutenant-Colonel
with his pleasant worldly ways and his fascinating masculine maturity,
and going to visit the greenhouse in company with that pale bit of human
celery, John Whitewood. Carter politely stood up to the rack for a while
with Miss Whitewood, but, finding it dry fodder to his taste, soon made
his adieux. Colburne shortly followed, in a state of mind to question
the goodness of Providence in permitting lieutenant-colonels.
CHAPTER III.
MR. COLBURNE TAKES A SEGAR WITH LIEUTENANT-COLONEL CARTER.
As Colburne neared his house he saw the Lieutenant-Colonel standing in
the flare of a street lamp and looking up at the luminary with an air of
puzzled consideration. With a temperance man's usual lack of charity to
people given to wine, the civilian judged that the soldier was
disgracefully intoxicated, and, instead of thinking how to conduct him
quietly home, was about to pass him by on the other side. The
Lieutenant-Colonel turned and recognized the young man. In other states
of feeling he would have cut him there and then, on the ground that it
was not binding on him to continue a chance acquaintance. But being full
at the moment of that comprehensive love of fellow existences which some
constitutions extract from inebriating fluids, he said,
"Ah! how are you? Glad to come across you again."
Colburne nodded, smiled and stopped, saying, "Can I do anything for
you?"
"Will you smoke?" asked the Lieutenant-Colonel, offering a segar. "But
how to light it? there's the rub. I've just broken my last match against
this cursed wet lamp-post--never thought of the dew, you know--and was
studying the machine itself, to see if I could get up to it and into
it."
"I have matches," said Colburne. He produced them; they lighted and
walked on together.
Being a great fancier of good segars, and of moonlit summer walks under
New Boston elms, I should like here to describe how sweetly the
fragrance of the Havanas rose through the still, dewy air into the
interlacing arches of nature's cathedral aisles. The subject would have
its charms, not only for the great multitude of my brother smokers, but
for many young ladies who dearly love the smell of a segar because they
like the creatures who use them. At a later period of this history, if I
see that I am likely to have the necessary space and time, I may bloom
into such pleasant episodes.
"Come to my room," said the soldier, taking the arm of the civilian.
"Hope you have nothing better to do. We will have a glass of ale."
Colburne would have been glad to refuse. He was modest enough to feel
himself at a disadvantage in the company of men of fashion; and moreover
he was just sufficiently jealous of the Lieutenant-Colonel not to desire
to fraternize with him. Finally, a strong suspicion troubled his mind
that this military personage, indifferent to New Boston opinions, and
evidently a wine-bibber, might proceed to get publicly drunk, thus
making a disagreeable scene, with a chance of future scandal. Why then
did not Colburne decline the invitation? Because he was young,
good-natured, modest, and wanting in that social tact and courage which
most men only acquire by much intercourse with a great variety of their
fellow creatures. The Lieutenant-Colonel's walk was the merest trifle
unsteady, or at least careless, and his herculean arm, solid and
knotted as an apple-tree limb, swayed repeatedly against Colburne,
eliciting from him a stroke-oarsman's approbation. Proud of his own
biceps, the young man had to acknowledge its comparative inferiority in
volume and texture.
"Are you a gymnast, Colonel?" he asked. "Your arm feels like it."
"Sword exercise," answered the other. "Very good thing to work off a
heavy dinner. What do you do here? Boat it, eh? That's better yet, I
fancy."
"But the sword exercise is just the thing for your profession."
"Pshaw!--beg pardon. But do you suppose that we in these times ever
fight hand to hand? No sir. Gunpowder has killed all that."
"Perhaps there never was much real hand to hand fighting," suggested
Colburne. "Look at the battle of Pharsalia. Two armies of Romans, the
best soldiers of antiquity, meet each other, and the defeated party
loses fifteen thousand men killed and wounded, while the victors lose
only about two hundred. Is that fighting? Isn't it clear that Pompey's
men began to run away when they got within about ten feet of Cæsar's?"
"By Jove! you're right. Bully for you! You would make a soldier. Yes.
And if Cæsar's men had had long-range rifles, Pompey's men would have
run away at a hundred yards. All victories are won by moral force--by
the terror of death rather than by death itself."
"Then it is not the big battalions that carry the day," inferred
Colburne. "The weakest battalions will win, if they will stand."
"But they won't stand, by Jove! As soon as they see they are the
weakest, they run away. Modern war is founded on the principle that one
man is afraid of two. Of course you must make allowance for
circumstances, strength of position, fortifications, superior
discipline, and superior leadership. Circumstances are sometimes strong
enough to neutralize numbers.--Look here. Are you interested in these
matters? Why don't you go into the army? What the devil are you staying
at home for when the whole nation is arming, or will soon have to arm?"
"I"--stammered Colburne--"I _have_ thought of applying for a
quartermaster's position."
"A quartermaster's!" exclaimed the Lieutenant-Colonel, without seeking
to disguise his contempt. "What for? To keep out of the fighting?"
"No," said Colburne, meekly. "But I do know a little of the ways of
business, and I know nothing of tactics and discipline. I could no more
drill a company than I could sail a ship. I should be like the man who
mounted such a tall horse that he not only couldn't manage him, but
couldn't get off till he was thrown off. I should be dismissed for
incompetency."
"But you can learn all that. You can learn in a month. You are a college
man, aint you?--you can learn more in a month than these boors from the
militia can in ten years. I tell you that the fellows who are in command
of companies in my regiment, and in all the volunteer regiments that I
know, are not fit on an average to be corporals. The best of them are
from fair to middling. You are a college man, aint you? Well, when I get
a regiment you shall have a company in it. Come up to my quarters, and
let's talk this over."
Arrived at his room, Carter rang for Scotch ale and segars. In the
course of half an hour he became exceedingly open-hearted, though not
drunk in the ordinary and disagreeable acceptation of the word.
"I'll tell you why I am on here," said he. "It's my mother's native
State--old Baratarian family--Standishes, you know--historically Puritan
and colonial. The Whitewoods are somehow related to me. By the way, I'm
a Virginian. I suppose you think it queer to find me on this side. No
you don't, though; you don't believe in the State Right of secession.
Neither do I. I was educated a United States soldier. I follow General
Scott. No Virginian need be ashamed to follow old Fuss and Feathers. We
used to swear by him in the army. Great Scott! the fellows said. Well,
as I had to give up my father's State, I have come to my mother's. I
want old Barataria to distinguish herself. Now's the chance. We are
going to have a long war. I want the State to be prepared and come out
strong; it's the grandest chance she'll ever have to make herself
famous. I've been to see the Governor. I said to him, 'Governor, now's
your chance; now's the chance for Barataria; now's my chance. It's going
to be a long war. Don't depend on volunteering--it won't last. Get a
militia system ready which will classify the whole population, and bring
it into the fight as fast as it's needed. Make the State a Prussia. If
you'll allow me, I'll draw up a plan which shall make Barataria a
military community, and put her at the head of the Union for moral and
physical power. Appoint me your chief of staff, and I'll not only draw
up the plan, but put it in force. Then give me a division, or only a
brigade, and I'll show you what well-disciplined Baratarians can do on
the battle-field.' Now what do you think the Governor
answered?--Governor's a dam fool!"
"Oh, no!" protested Colburne, astonished; for the chief magistrate of
Barataria was highly respected.
"I don't mean individually--not a natural-born fool," explained the
Lieutenant-Colonel--"but a fool from the necessity of the case;
mouthpiece, you see, of a stupid day and generation. What can he do? he
asks. I admit it. He can't do anything but what Democracy permits. Lose
the next election, he says. Well, I suppose he would; and that won't
answer. Governor's wise in his day and generation, although a fool by
the eternal laws of military reason.--I don't know as I talk very
clearly. But you get at my meaning, don't you?--Well, I had a long
argument, and gave it up. We must go on volunteering, and commissioning
the rusty militia-men and greasy demagogues who bring in the companies.
The rank and file is magnificent--can't be equalled--too good. But such
an infernally miserable set as the officers average! Some bright young
fellows, who can be licked into shape; the rest old deacons, tinkers,
military tailors, Jew pedlars broken down stump orators; wrong-headed
cubs who have learned just enough of tactics to know how not to do it.
Look at the man that I, a Virginian gentleman, a West Pointer, have over
me for Colonel. He's an old bloat--an old political bloat. He knows no
more of tactical evolutions than he does of the art of navigation. He'll
order a battalion which is marching division front to break into
platoons. You don't understand that? It's about the same as--well, never
mind--it can't be done. Well, this cursed old bloat is engineering to be
a General. We don't want such fellows for Generals, nor for Colonels,
nor for Captains, nor for privates, by Jove! If Barataria had to fit out
frigates instead of regiments, I wonder if she would put such men in
command of them. Democracy might demand it. The Governor would know
better, but he might be driven to it, for fear of losing the next
election."
"Now then," continued the Lieutenant-Colonel, "I come to business. We
shall have to raise more regiments. I shall apply for the command of one
of them, and shall get it. But I want gentlemen for my officers. I am a
gentleman myself, and a West Pointer. I don't want tinkers and pedlars
and country deacons. You're a college man, aint you? All right. College
men will do for me. I want you to take a company in my regiment, and get
in as many more of your set as you can. I'm not firing blank cartridge.
My tongue may be thick, but my head is clear. Will you do it?"
"I will," decided Colburne, after a moment of earnest consideration.
The problem occurred to him whether this man, clever as he was,
professional soldier as he was, but apparently a follower of rash John
Barleycorn, would be a wiser leader in the field than a green but
temperate civilian. He could not stop to settle the question, and
accepted the Lieutenant-Colonel's leadership by impulse. The latter
thanked him cordially, and then laughed aloud, evidently because of that
moment of hesitation.
"Don't think I'm this way always," he said. "Never when on duty; Great
Scott! no man can say that. Indeed I'm not badly off now. If I willed it
I could be as logical as friend Whitewood--I could do a problem in
Euclid. But it would be a devil of an effort. You won't demand it of me,
will you?"
"It's an odd thing in man," he went on gravely, "how he can govern
drunkenness and even sickness. Just as though a powder-magazine should
have self-control enough not to explode when some one throws a live coal
into it. The only time I ever got drunk clear through, I did it
deliberately. I was to Cairo, caught there by a railroad breakdown, and
had to stay over a night. Ever at Cairo? It is the dolefullest,
cursedest place! If a man is excusable anywhere for drinking himself
insensible, it is at Cairo, Illinois. The last thing I recollect of that
evening is that I was sitting in the bar-room, feet against a pillar,
debating whether I would go quite drunk, or make a fight and stay sober.
I said to myself, It's Cairo, and let myself go. My next distinct
recollection is that of waking up in a railroad car. I had been half
conscious two or three times previously, but had gone to sleep again,
without taking notice of my surroundings. This time I looked about me.
My carpet-bag was between my feet, and my over-coat in the rack above my
head. I looked at my watch; it was two in the afternoon. I turned to the
gentleman who shared my seat and said, 'Sir, will you have the goodness
to tell me where this train is going?' He stared, as you may suppose,
but replied that we were going to Cincinnati. The devil we are! thought
I; and I wanted to go to St. Louis. I afterwards came across a man who
was able to tell me how I got on the train. He said that I came down at
five in the morning, carpet-bag and over-coat in hand, settled my bill
in the most rational manner possible, and took the omnibus to the
railroad station. Now it's my belief that I could have staved off that
drunken fit by obstinacy. I can stave this one off. You shall see."
He emptied his glass, lighted a fresh segar big enough to floor some men
without other aid, and commenced walking the room, taking it diagonally
from corner to corner, so as to gain a longer sweep.
"Don't stir," he said. "Don't mind me. Start another segar and try the
ale. You won't? What an inhuman monster of abstinence!"
"That is the way they bring us up in New Boston. We are so temperate
that we are disposed to outlaw the raising of rye."
"You mean in your set. There must be somebody in this city who gets
jolly! there is everywhere, so far as I have travelled. You will find a
great many fellows like me, and worse, in the old army. And good reason
for it; just think of our life. All of us couldn't have nice places in
charge of arsenals, or at Newport, or on Governor's Island. I was five
years on the frontier and in California before I got to Baton Rouge; and
that was not so very delightful, by the way, in yellow fever seasons.
Now imagine yourself in command of a company garrisoning Fort
Wallah-Wallah on the upper Missouri, seven hundred miles from an opera,
or a library, or a lady, or a mince pie, or any other civilizing
influence. The Captain is on detached service somewhere. You are the
First Lieutenant, and your only companion is Brown the Second
Lieutenant. You mustn't be on sociable terms with the men, because you
are an officer and a gentleman. You have read your few books, and talked
Brown dry. There is no shooting within five miles of the fort; and if
you go beyond that distance, the Blackfeet will raise your hair. What is
there to save you from suicide but old-rye? That's one way we come to
drink so. You are lucky. You have had no temptations, or almost none,
in this little Puritan city."
"There are some bad places and people here. I don't speak of it
boastingly."
"Are there?" laughed Carter. "I'm delighted to hear it, by Jove! When my
father went through college here, there wasn't a chance to learn
anything wicked but hypocrisy. Chance enough for that, judging from the
stories he told me. So old Whitewood is no longer the exact model of all
the New Bostonians?"
"Not even in the University. There used to be such a solemn set of
Professors that they couldn't be recognized in the cemetery because they
had so much the air of tombstones. But that old dark-blue lot has nearly
died out, and been succeeded by younger men of quite a pleasant cerulean
tint. They have studied in Europe. They like Paris and Vienna, and other
places that used to be so wicked; they don't think such very small lager
of the German theologians; they accept geology, and discuss Darwin with
patience."
"Don't get out of my range. Who the devil is Darwin? Never mind; I'll
take him for granted; go on with your new-school Professors."
"Oh, I havn't much to say about them. They are quite agreeable. They are
what I call men of the world--though I suppose I hardly know what a man
of the world is. I dare say I am like the mouse who took the first dog
that he saw for the elephant that he had heard of."
The Lieutenant-Colonel stopped his walk and surveyed him, hands in
pockets, a smile on his lip, and a silent horse-laugh in his eye.
"Men of the world, are they? By Jove! Well; perhaps so; I havn't met
them yet. But if it comes to pointing out men of the world, allow me to
indicate our Louisiana friend, Ravenel. There's a fellow who can do the
universally agreeable. You couldn't tell this evening which he liked
best, Whitewood or me; and I'll be hanged if the same man can like both
of us. When he was talking with the Professor he seemed to be saying to
himself, 'Whitewood is my blue-book;' and when he was talking with me
his whole countenance glowed with an expression which stated that
'Carter is the boy.' What a diplomatist he would make! I like him
immensely. He has a charming daughter too; not beautiful exactly, but
very charming."
Colburne felt an oppression which would not allow him to discuss the
question. At the same time he was not indignant, but only astonished,
perhaps also a little pleased, at the tone of indifference with which
the other spoke of the young lady. His soul was so occupied with this
new train of thought that I doubt whether he heard understandingly the
conversation of his interlocutor for the next few minutes. Suddenly it
struck him that Carter was entirely sober, in body and brain.
"Colonel, wouldn't you like to go on a pic-nic?" he asked abruptly.
"Pic-nic?--political thing? Why, yes; think I ought to like it; help
along our regiment."
"No, no; not political. I'm sorry I gave you such an exalted
expectation; now you'll be disappointed. I mean an affair of young
ladies, beaux, baskets, paper parcels, sandwiches, cold tongue, biscuits
and lemonade."
"Lemonade!" said Carter with a grimace. "Could a fellow smoke?"
"I take that liberty."
"Is Miss Ravenel going?"
"Yes."
"I accept. How do you go?"
"In an omnibus. I will see that you are taken up--say at nine o'clock
to-morrow morning."
CHAPTER IV.
THE DRAMATIC PERSONAGES GO ON A PIC-NIC, AND STUDY THE WAYS OF NEW
BOSTON.
When the Lieutenant-Colonel awoke in the morning he did not feel much
like going on a pic-nic. He had a slight ache in the top of his head, a
huskiness in the throat, a woolliness on the tongue, a feverishness in
the cuticle, and a crawling tremulousness in the muscles, as though the
molecules of his flesh were separately alive and intertwining
themselves. He drowsily called to mind a red-nosed old gentleman whom he
had seen at a bar, trying in vain to gather up his change with shaky
fingers, and at last exclaiming, "Curse the change!" and walking off
hastily in evident mortification.
"Ah, Carter! you will come to that yet," thought the
Lieutenant-Colonel.--"To be sure," he added after a moment, "this
sobering one's self by main strength of will, as I did last night, is an
extra trial, and enough to shake any man's system.--But how about
breakfast and that confounded pic-nic?" was his next reflection.
"Carter, temperance man as you are, you must take a cocktail, or you
won't be able to eat a mouthful this morning."
He rang; ordered an eye-opener, stiff; swallowed it, and looked at his
watch. Eight; never mind; he would wash and shave; then decide between
breakfast and pic-nic. Thanks to his martial education he was a rapid
dresser, and it still lacked a quarter of nine when he appeared in the
dining saloon. He had time therefore to eat a mutton chop, but he only
looked at it with a disgusted eye, his stomach being satisfied with a
roll and a cup of coffee. In the outer hall he lighted a segar, but
after smoking about an inch of it, threw the rest away. It was
decidedly one of his qualmish mornings, and he was glad to get a full
breath of out of door air.
"Is my hamper ready?" he said to one of the hall-boys.
"Sir?"
"My hamper, confound you;" repeated the Lieutenant-Colonel, who was more
irritable than usual this morning. "The basket that I ordered last
night. Go and ask the clerk."
"Yes, sir," said the boy when he returned. "It's all right, sir. There
it is, sir, behind the door."
The omnibus, a little late of course, appeared about a quarter past
nine. Besides Colburne it contained three ladies, two of about
twenty-five and one of thirty-five, accompanied by an equal number of
beardless, slender, jauntily dressed youths whom the Lieutenant-Colonel
took for the ladies' younger brothers, inferring that pic-nics were
family affairs in New Boston. Surveying these juvenile gentlemen with
some contempt, he was about to say to Colburne, "Very sorry, my dear
fellow, but really don't feel well enough to go out to-day," when he
caught sight of Miss Ravenel.
"Are you going?" she asked with a blush which was so indescribably
flattering that he instantly responded, "Yes, indeed."
Behind Miss Ravenel came the doctor, who immediately inquired after
Carter's health with an air of friendly interest that contrasted
curiously with the glance of suspicion which he bent on him as soon as
his back was turned. Libbie hastened into the omnibus, very much afraid
that her father would order her back to her room. It was only by dint of
earnest begging that she had obtained his leave to join the pic-nic, and
she knew that he had given it without suspecting that this sherry-loving
army gentleman would be of the party.
"But where are your matrons, Mr. Colburne?" asked the doctor. "I see
only young ladies, who themselves need matronizing."
The beauty of thirty-five looked graciously at him, and judged him a
perfect gentleman.
"Mrs. Whitewood goes out in her own carriage," answered Colburne.
The Doctor bowed, professed himself delighted with the arrangements,
wished them all a pleasant excursion, and turned away with a smiling
face which became exceedingly serious as he walked slowly up stairs. It
was not thus that young ladies were allowed to go a pleasuring at New
Orleans. The severe proprieties of French manners with regard to
_demoiselles_ were in considerable favor there. Her mother never would
have been caught in this way, he thought, and was anxious and repentant
and angry with himself, until his daughter returned.
In the omnibus Colburne did the introductions; and now Carter discovered
that the beardless young gentlemen were not the brothers of the ladies,
but most evidently their cavaliers; and was therefore left to infer that
the beaux of New Boston are blessed with an immortal youth, or rather
childhood. He could hardly help laughing aloud to think how he had been
caught in such a nursery sort of pic-nic. He glanced from one downy face
to another with a cool, mocking look which no one understood but Miss
Ravenel, who was the only other person in the party to whom the sight of
such juvenile gallants was a rarity. She bit her lips to repress a
smile, and desperately opened the conversation.
"I am so anxious to see the Eagle's Nest," she said to one of the
students.
"Oh! you never saw it?" he replied.
There were two things in this response which surprised Miss Ravenel. In
the first place the young gentleman blushed violently at being
addressed; in the second, he spoke in a very hoarse and weak tone, his
voice being not yet established. Unable to think of anything further to
say, he turned for aid to the maiden of thirty-five, between whom and
himself there was a tender feeling, as appeared openly later in the
day. She set him on his intellectual pins by commencing a conversation
on the wooden-spoon exhibition.
"What is the wooden-spoon?" asked Lillie.
"It is a burlesque honor in college," answered the youth. "It used to be
given to the stupidest fellow in the graduating class. Now it's given to
the jolliest fellow--most popular fellow--smartest fellow, that doesn't
take a real honor."
"Allow me to ask, sir, are you a candidate?" inquired the
Lieutenant-Colonel.
Miss Ravenel cringed at this unprovoked and not very brilliant
brutality. The collegian merely stammered "No, sir," and blushed
immoderately. He was too much puzzled by the other's impassable stare to
comprehend the sneer at once; but he studied it much during the day, and
that night writhed over the memory of it till towards morning. Both
Carter and the lady of thirty-five ought to have been ashamed of
themselves for taking unfair advantage of the simplicity and
sensitiveness of this lad; but the feminine sinner had at least this
excuse, that it was the angelic spirit of love, and not the demoniac
spirit of scorn, which prompted her conduct. Perceiving that her boy was
being abused, she inveigled him into a corner of the vehicle, where they
could talk together without interruption. The conversation of lovers is
not usually interesting to outsiders except as a subject of laughter; it
is frequently stale and flat to a degree which seems incomprehensible
when you consider the strong feelings of the interlocutors. This is the
ordinary sort of thing, at least in New Boston:--
_Lady._ (smiling) Did you go out yesterday?
_Gent._ (smiling) Yes.
_Lady._ Where?
_Gent._ Only down to the post-office.
_Lady._ Many people in the streets?
_Gent._ Not very many.
And all the while the two persons are not thinking of the walk, nor of
the post-office, nor of the people in the streets, nor of anything of
which they speak. They are thinking of each other; they are prattling
merely to be near each other; they are so full of each other that they
cannot talk of foreign subjects interestingly; and so the babble has a
meaning which the unsympathetic bye-stander does not comprehend.
After circulating through the city to pick up the various invited ones,
the omnibus was joined by a second omnibus and two or three family
rockaways. The little fleet of vehicles then sailed into the country,
and at the end of an hour's voyage came to anchor under the lee of a
wooded cliff called the Eagle's Nest, which was the projected site of
the pic-nic. Up the long slope which formed the back of the cliff, a
number of baskets and demijohns were carried by the youthful beaux of
the party with a child-like zeal which older gallants might not have
exhibited. Carter's weighty hamper was taken care of by a couple of
juniors, who jumped to the task on learning that it belonged to a United
States army officer. He offered repeatedly to relieve them, but they
would not suffer it. In a roundabout and inarticulate manner they were
exhibiting the fervent patriotism of the time, as well as that perpetual
worship which young men pay to their superiors in age and knowledge of
the world. And oh! how was virtue rewarded when the basket was opened
and its contents displayed! It was not for the roast chicken that the
two frolicsome juniors cared: the companion baskets around were crammed
with edibles of all manner of flesh and fowl; it was the sight of six
bottles of champagne which made their eyes rejoice. But with a holy
horror equal to their wicked joy did all the matrons of the party, and
indeed more than half of the younger people, stare. Carter's champagne
was the only spirit of a vinous or ardent nature present. And when he
produced two bunches of segars from his pockets and proceeded to
distribute them, the moral excitation reached its height. Immediately
there were opposing partisans in the pic-nic: those who meant to take a
glass of champagne and smoke a segar, if it were only for the wicked fun
of the thing; and those who meant, not only that they would not smoke
nor drink themselves, but that nobody else should. These last formed
little groups and discussed the affair with conscientious bitterness.
But what to do? The atrocity puzzled them by its very novelty. The
memory of woman did not go back to the time when an aristocratic New
Boston pic-nic had been so desecrated. I say the memory of _woman_
advisedly and upon arithmetical calculation; for in this party the age
of the males averaged at least five years less than that of the females.
"Why don't you stop it, Mrs. Whitewood?" said the maiden of thirty-five,
with girlish enthusiasm. "You are the oldest person here." (Mrs.
Whitewood did not look particularly flattered by this statement.) "You
have a perfect right to order anything." (Mrs. Whitewood looked as if
she would like to order the young lady to let her alone.) "If I were
you, I would step out there and say, Gentlemen, this must be stopped."
Mrs. Whitewood might have replied, Why don't you say it yourself?--you
are old enough. But she did not; such sarcastic observations never
occurred to her good-natured soul; nor, had she been endowed with
thousands of similar conceits, would she have dared utter one. It was
impossible to rub her up to the business of confronting and putting down
the adherents of the champagne basket. She did think of speaking to
Lieutenant-Colonel Carter privately about it, but before she could
decide in what terms to address him, the last bottle had been cracked,
and then of course it was useless to say anything. So in much horror of
spirit and with many self-reproaches for her weakness, she gazed
helplessly upon what she considered a scene of wicked revelry. In fact
there was a good deal of jollity and racket. The six bottles of
champagne made a pretty strong dose for the unaccustomed heads of the
dozen lads and three or four young ladies who finished them. Carter
himself, cloyed with the surfeit of yesterday, took almost nothing, to
the wonder, and even, I suspect, to the disappointment of the temperance
party. But he made himself dreadfully obnoxious by urging his Sillery
upon every one, including the Whitewoods and the maiden of thirty-five.
The latter declined the proffered glass with an air of virtuous
indignation which struck him as uncivil, more particularly as it evoked
a triumphant smile from the adherents of lemonade. With a cruelty
without parallel, and for which I shall not attempt to excuse him, he
immediately offered the bumper to the young gentleman on whose arm the
lady leaned, with the observation, "Madam, I hope you will allow your
son to take a little."
The unhappy couple walked away in a speechless condition. The two
juniors heretofore mentioned burst into hysterical gulphs of laughter,
and then pretended that it was a simultaneous attack of coughing. There
were no more attempts to put down the audacious army gentleman, and he
was accorded that elbow-room which we all grant to a bull in a
china-shop. He was himself somewhat shocked by the sensation which he
had produced.
"What an awful row!" he whispered to Colburne. "I have plunged this
nursery into a state of civil war. When you said pic-nic, how could I
suppose that it was a Sabbath-school excursion? By the way, it isn't
Sunday, is it? Do you always do it this way in New Boston? But you are
not immaculate. You do some things here which would draw down the frown
of society in other places. Look at those couples--a young fellow and a
girl--strolling off by themselves among the thickets. Some of them have
been out of sight for half an hour. I should think it would make talk. I
should think Mrs. Whitewood, who seems to be matron in chief, would stop
it. I tell you, it wouldn't do in New York or Philadelphia, or any such
place, except among the lower classes. You don't catch our young
Louisianienne making a dryad of herself. I heard one of these lads ask
her to take a walk in the grove on top of the hill, and I saw her
decline with a blush which certainly expressed astonishment, and, I
think, indignation. Now how the devil can these old girls, who have
lived long enough to be able to put two and two together, be so dem'd
inconsistent? After regarding me with horror for offering them a glass
of champagne, they will commit imprudences which make them appear as if
they had drunk a bottle of it. And yet, just look. I have too much
delicacy to ask one of those young ones to stroll off with me in the
bushes.--Won't you have a segar? I don't believe Miss Ravenel objects to
tobacco. They smoke in Louisiana; yes, and they chew and drink, too.
Shocking fast set. I really hope the child never will marry down there.
I take an interest in her. You and I will go out there some day, and
reconquer her patrimony, and put her in possession of it, and then ask
her which she will have."
Colburne had already talked a good deal with Miss Ravenel. She was so
discouraging to the student beaux, and Carter had been so general in his
attentions with a view to getting the champagne into circulation, that
she had fallen chiefly to the young lawyer. As to the women, she did not
much enjoy their conversation. At that time everybody at the North was
passionately loyal, especially those who would not in any chance be
called upon to fight--and this loyalty was expressed towards persons of
secessionist proclivities with a frank energy which the latter
considered brutal incivility. From the male sex Miss Ravenel obtained
some compassion or polite forbearance, but from her own very little; and
the result was that she avoided ladies, and might perhaps have been
driven to suffer the boy beaux, only that she could make sure of the
society of Colburne. Important as this young gentleman was to her, she
could not forbear teasing him concerning the local peculiarities of New
Boston. This afternoon she was satirical upon the juvenile gallants.
"You seem to be the only man in New Boston," she said. "I suppose all
the males are executed when they are found guilty of being twenty-one.
How came you to escape? Perhaps you are the executioner. Why don't you
do your office on the Lieutenant-Colonel?"
"I should like to," answered Colburne.
Miss Ravenel colored, but gave no other sign of comprehension.
"I don't like old beaux," persisted Colburne.
"Oh! I do. When I left New Orleans I parted from a beau of forty."
"Forty! How could you come away?"
"Why, you know that I hated to leave New Orleans."
"Yes; but I never knew the reason before. Did you say forty?"
"Yes, sir; just forty. Is there anything strange in a man of forty being
agreeable? I don't see that you New Bostonians find it difficult to like
ladies of forty. But I havn't told you the worst. I have another beau,
whom I like better than anybody, who is fifty-five."
"Your father."
"You are very clever. As you are so bright to-day perhaps you can
explain a mystery to me. Why is it that these grown women are so fond of
the society of these students? They don't seem to care to get a word
from Lieutenant-Colonel Carter. I don't think they are crazy after you.
They are altogether absorbed in making the time pass pleasantly to these
boys."
"It is so in all little university towns. Can't you understand it? When
a girl is fifteen a student is naturally a more attractive object to her
than a mechanic or a shopkeeper's boy. She thinks that to be a student
is the chief end of man; that the world was created in order that there
might be students. Frequently he is a southerner; and you know how
charming southerners are."
"Oh, I know all about it."
"Well, the girl of fifteen takes a fancy to a freshman. She flirts with
him all through the four years of his under-graduate course. Then he
departs, promising to come back, but never keeping his promise. Perhaps
by this time she is really attached to him; and that, or habit, or her
original taste for romance and strangers, gives her a cant for life; she
never flirts with anything but a student afterwards; can't relish a man
who hasn't a flavor of Greek and Latin. Generally she sticks to the
senior class. When she gets into the thirties she sometimes enters the
theological seminary in search of prey. But she never likes anything
which hasn't a student smack. It reminds one of the story that when a
shark has once tasted human flesh he will not eat any other unless
driven to it by hunger."
"What a brutal comparison!"
"One consequence of this fascination," continued Colburne, "is that New
Boston is full of unmarried females. There is a story in college that a
student threw a stone at a dog, and, missing him, hit seven old maids.
On the other hand there are some good results. These old girls are
bookish and mature, and their conversation is improving to the
under-graduates. They sacrifice themselves, as woman's wont is, for the
good of others."
"If you ever come to New Orleans I will show you a fascinating lady of
thirty. She is my aunt--or cousin--I hardly know which to call her--Mrs.
Larue. She has beautiful black hair and eyes. She is a true type of
Louisiana."
"And you are not. What right had you to be a blonde?"
"Because I am my father's daughter. His eyes are blue. He came from the
up-country of South Carolina. There are plenty of blondes there."
This conversation, the reader perceives, is not monumentally grand or
important. Next in flatness to the ordinary talk of two lovers comes, I
think, the ordinary talk of two young persons of the opposite sexes. In
the first place they are young, and therefore have few great ideas to
interchange and but limited ranges of experience to compare; in the
second place they are hampered and embarrassed by the mute but potent
consciousness of sex and the alarming possibility of marriage. I am
inclined to give much credit to the saying that only married people and
vicious people are agreeably fluent in an assembly of both sexes. When
therefore I report the conversation of these two uncorrupted young
persons as being of a moderately dull quality, I flatter myself that I
am publishing the very truth of nature. But it follows that we had best
finish with this pic-nic as soon as possible. We will suppose the
chickens and sandwiches eaten, the champagne drunk, the segars smoked,
the party gathered into the omnibusses and rockaways, and the vehicle in
which we are chiefly interested at the door of the New Boston House. As
the Lieutenant-Colonel enters with Miss Ravenel a waiter hands him a
telegraphic message.
"Excuse me," he says, and reads as they ascend the stairs together. On
the parlor floor he halts and takes her hand with an air of more
seriousness than he has yet exhibited.
"Miss Ravenel, I must bid you good-bye. I am so sorry! I leave for
Washington immediately. My application for extension of leave has been
refused. I do sincerely hope that I shall meet you again."
"Good bye," she simply said, not unaware that her hand had been pressed,
and for that reason unable or unwilling to add more.
He left her there, hurried to his room, packed his valise, and was off
in twenty minutes; for when it was necessary to move quick he could put
on a rate of speed not easily equalled.
Miss Ravenel walked to her father's room in deep meditation. Without
stating the fact in words she felt that the presence of this mature,
masculine, worldly gentleman of the army was agreeable to her, and that
his farewell had been an unpleasant surprise. If he was inebriate,
dissipated, dangerous, it must be remembered that she did not know it.
In simply smelling of wine and segars he had an odor of Louisiana, to
which she had been accustomed from childhood even in the grave society
of her father's choice, and which was naturally grateful to the homesick
sensibilities of the exiled girl.
For the last hour or two Doctor Ravenel had paced his room in no little
excitement. He was a notably industrious man, and had devoted the day to
writing an article on the mineralogy of Arkansas; but even this labor,
the utterance of a life-long scientific enthusiasm, could not divert him
from what I may call maternal anxieties. Why did I let her go on that
silly expedition? he repeated to himself. It is the last time;
absolutely the last.
At this moment she entered the room and kissed him with more than
ordinary effusion. She meant to forestall his expected reproof for her
unexpectedly long absence; moreover she felt a very little lonely and in
need of unusual affection in consequence of that farewell.
"My dear! how late you are!" said the unappeased Doctor. "How could you
stay out so? How could you do it? The idea of staying out till dusk; I
am astonished. Really, girls have no prudence. They are no more fit to
take care of themselves amid the dangers and stupidities of society than
so many goslings among the wheels and hoofs of a crowded street."
Do not suppose that Miss Ravenel bore these reproofs with the serene
countenance of Fra Angelico's seraphs, softly beaming out of a halo of
eternal love. She was very much mortified, very much hurt and even a
little angry. A hard word from her father was an exceeding great trial
to her. The tears came into her eyes and the color into her cheeks and
neck, while all her slender form trembled, not visibly, but consciously,
as if her veins were filled with quicksilver.
"Late! Why, no papa!" (Running to the window and pointing to the
crimson west.) "Why, the sun is only just gone down. Look for yourself,
papa."
"Well; _that_ is too late. If for nothing else, just think of the
dew,--the chill. I am not pleased. I tell you, Lillie, I am not
pleased."
"Now, papa, you are right hard. I do say you are right cruel. How could
I help myself? I couldn't come home alone. I couldn't order the pic-nic
to break up and come home when I pleased. How could I? Just think of it,
papa."
The Doctor was walking up and down the room with his hands behind his
back and his head bent forward. He had hardly looked at his daughter: he
never looked at her when he scolded her. He gave her a side-glance now,
and seeing her eyes full of tears, he was unable to answer her either
good or evil. The earnestness of his affection for her made him very
sensitive and sore and cowardly, in case of a misunderstanding. She was
looking at him all the time that she talked, her face full of her
troubled eagerness to exculpate herself; and now, though he said not a
word, she knew him well enough to see that he had relented from his
anger. Encouraged by this discovery she regained in a moment or two her
self-possession. She guessed the real cause, or at least the strongest
cause of his vexation, and proceeded to dissipate it.
"Papa, I think there must be something important going on in the army.
Lieutenant-Colonel Carter has received a telegraph, and is going on by
the next train."
He halted in his walk and faced her with a childlike smile of pleasure.
"Has he, indeed!" he said as gaily as if he had heard of some piece of
personal good fortune. Then, more gravely and with a censorious
countenance, "Quite time he went, I should say. It doesn't look well for
an officer to be enjoying himself here in Barataria when his men may be
fighting in Virginia."
Miss Ravenel thought of suggesting that the Lieutenant-Colonel had been
on sick leave, but concluded that it would not be well to attempt his
defence at the present moment.
"Well Lillie," resumed the Doctor, after taking a couple of leisurely
turns up and down the room, "I don't know but I have been unjust in
blaming you for coming home so late. I must confess that I don't see how
you could help it. The fault was not yours. It resulted from the very
nature of all such expeditions. It is one of the inconveniences of
pic-nics that common sense is never invited or never has time to go. I
wonder that Mrs. Whitewood should permit such irrational procedures."
The Doctor was somewhat apt to exaggerate, whether in praise or blame,
when he became interested in a subject.
"Well, well, I am chiefly in fault myself," he concluded. "It must be
the last time. My dear, you had better take off your things and get
ready for tea."
While Lillie was engaged on her toilette the Doctor cogitated, and came
to the conclusion that he must say something against this Carter, but
that he had better say it indirectly. So, as they sauntered down stairs
to the tea-table he broke out upon the bibulous gentry of Louisiana.
"To-day's Herald will amuse you," he said. "It contains the proceedings
of a meeting of the planters of St. Dominic Parish. They are opposed to
freedom. They object to the nineteenth century. They mean to smash the
United States of America. And for all this they pledge their lives,
their fortunes, and their sacred honor. It surpasses all the jokes in
Joe Miller. To think of those whiskey-soaked, negro-whipping,
man-slaughtering ruffians, with a bottle of Louisiana rum in one hand
and a cat-o'-nine-tails in the other, a revolver in one pocket and a
bowie-knife in the other, drunken, swearing, gambling, depraved as
Satan, with their black wives and mulatto children--to think of such
ruffians prating about their sacred honor! Why, they absolutely don't
understand the meaning of the words. They have heard of respectable
communities possessing such a quality as honor, and they feel bound to
talk as if they possessed it. The pirates of the Isle of Pines might as
well pledge their honesty and humanity. Their lives, their fortunes, and
their sacred honor! Their lives are not worth the powder that will blow
them out of existence. Their fortunes will be worth less in a couple of
years. And as for their sacred honor, it is a pure figment of ignorant
imaginations made delirious by bad whiskey. That drinking is a ruinous
vice. When I see a man soaking himself with sherry at a friend's table,
after having previously soaked with whiskey in some groggery, I think I
see the devil behind his chair putting the infernal mark on the back of
his coat. And it is such a common vice in Louisiana. There is hardly a
young man free from it. In the country districts, when a young fellow is
paying attention to a young lady, the parents don't ask whether he is in
the habit of getting drunk; they take that for granted, and only concern
themselves to know whether he gets cross-drunk or amiable-drunk. If the
former, they have some hesitation; if the latter, they consent to the
match thankfully."
Miss Ravenel understood perfectly that her father was cutting at
Lieutenant-Colonel Carter over the shoulders of the convivial gentlemen
of Louisiana. She thought him unjust to both parties, but concluded that
she would not argue the question; being conscious that the subject was
rather too delicately near to her feelings to be discussed without
danger of disclosures.
"Well, they are rushing to their doom," resumed the Doctor, turning
aside to general reflections, either because such was the tendency of
his mind, or because he thought that he had demolished the
Lieutenant-Colonel. "They couldn't wait for whiskey to finish them, as
it does other barbarous races. They must call on the political mountains
to crush them. Their slaveholding Sodom will perish for the lack of five
just men, or a single just idea. It must be razed and got out of the
way, like any other obstacle to the progress of humanity. It must make
room for something more consonant with the railroad, electric-telegraph,
printing-press, inductive philosophy, and practical Christianity."
CHAPTER V.
THE DRAMATIC PERSONAGES GET NEWS FROM BULL RUN.
"Papa, are we going to stay in New Boston forever?" asked Miss Ravenel.
"My dear, I am afraid we shall both have to die some day, after which we
can't expect to stay here, pleasant as it might be," replied the Doctor.
"Nonsense, papa! You know what I mean. Are you going to make New Boston
a permanent place of residence?"
"How can I tell, my dear? We can't go back to New Orleans at present;
and where else should we go? You know that I must consult economy in my
choice of a residence. My bank deposits are not monstrous, and there is
no telling how long I may be cut off from my resources. New Boston
presents two advantages; it gives me some employment and it is tolerably
cheap. Through the friendliness of these excellent professors I am kept
constantly busy, and am not paid so very badly, though I can't say that
I am in any danger of growing suddenly rich. Then I have the run of the
university library, which is a great thing. Finally, where else in the
United States should we find a prettier or pleasanter little city?"
"The people are dreadfully poky."
"My daughter, I wish you would have the goodness to converse with me in
English. I never became thoroughly familiar with the Gold Coast
dialects, and not even with the court language of Ashantee."
"It isn't Ashantee at all. Everybody says poky; and it is real poky in
you to pretend not to understand it; don't you think so yourself now?
Besides these New Bostonians are so ferociously federal! I can't say a
word for the South but the women glare at me as though they wanted to
hang me on a sour apple tree, like Jeff Davis."
"My dear, if one of these loyal ladies should say a word for her own
lawful government in New Orleans, she would be worse than glared at. I
doubt whether the wild-mannered cut-throats of your native city would
let her off with plain hanging. Let us thank Heaven that we are among
civilized people who only glare at us, and do not stick us under the
fifth rib, when we differ with them in opinion."
"Oh papa! how bitter you are on the southerners! It seems to me you must
forget that you were born in South Carolina and have lived twenty-five
years in Louisiana."
"Oh! oh! the beautiful reason for defending organized barbarism! Suppose
I had had the misfortune of being born in the Isle of Pines; would you
have me therefore be the apologist of piracy? I do hope that I am
perfectly free from the prejudices and trammels of geographical
morality. My body was born amidst slavery, but my conscience soon found
the underground railroad. I am not boasting; at least I hope not. I have
had no plantations, no patrimony of human flesh; very few temptations,
in short, to bow down to the divinity of Ashantee. I sincerely thank
Heaven for these three things, that I never owned a slave, that I was
educated at the north, and that I have been able to visit the free
civilization of Europe."
"But why did you live in Louisiana if it was such a Sodom, papa?"
"Ah! there you have me. Perhaps it was because I had an expensive
daughter to support, and could pick up four or five thousand dollars a
year there easier than anywhere else. But you see I am suffering for
having given my countenance to sin. I have escaped out of the burning
city, like Lot, with only my family. It is my daily wonder, Lillie, that
you are not turned into a pillar of salt. The only reason probably is
that the age of miracles is over."
"Papa, when I am as old as you are, and you are as young as I am, I'll
satirize you dreadfully.--Well, if we are going to live in New Boston,
why can't we keep house?"
"It costs more for two people to keep house than to board. Our
furniture, rent, food, fuel, lights and servants would come to more than
the eighteen dollars a week which we pay here, now that we have given up
our parlor. In a civilized country elbow-room is expensive."
"But is it exactly nice to stay forever in a hotel? English travellers
make such an outcry about American families living in hotels."
"I know. At the bottom it is bad. But it is a sad necessity of American
society. So long as we have untrained servants--black barbarians at the
South and mutinous foreigners at the North--many American housekeepers
will throw down their keys in despair and rush for refuge to the hotels.
And numbers produce respectability, at least in a democracy."
"So we must give up the idea of a nice little house all to ourselves."
"I am afraid so, unless I should happen to find diamonds in the basaltic
formation of the Eagle's Nest."
The Doctor falls to his writing, and Miss Ravenel to her embroidery.
Presently the young lady, without having anything in particular to say,
is conscious of a desire for further conversation, and, after searching
for a subject, begins as follows.
"Papa, have you been in the parlor this morning?"
"Yes, my dear," answers papa, scratching away desperately with his
old-fashioned quill pen.
"Whom did you see there?"
"See?--Where?--Oh, I saw Mr. Andrew Smith," says the Doctor, at first
absent-minded, then looking a little quizzical.
"What did he have to say?"
"Why, my dear, he spoke so low that I couldn't hear what he said."
"He did!" responds Miss Ravenel, all interest. "What did that mean? Why
didn't you ask him to repeat it?"
"Because, my dear, he wasn't talking to me; he was talking to Mrs.
Smith."
Here Miss Ravenel perceives that her habitual curiosity is being made
fun of, and replies, "Papa, you ought to be ashamed of yourself."
"My child, you _must_ give me some chance to write," retorts the Doctor;
"or else you must learn to sit a little in your own room. Of course I
prefer to have you here, but I do demand that you accord me some
infinitesimal degree of consideration."
Father and daughter used to have many conversations not very dissimilar
to the above. It was a constant prattle when they were together, unless
the Doctor raised the standard of revolt and refused to talk in order
that he might work. Ever since Lillie's earliest recollection they had
been on these same terms of sociability, companionship, almost equality.
The intimacy and democracy of the relation arose partly from the
Doctor's extreme fondness for children and young people, and partly from
the fact that he had lost his wife early, so that in his household life
he had for years depended for sympathy upon his daughter.
Twice or thrice every morning the Doctor was obliged to remonstrate
against Lillie's talkativeness, something after the manner of an
affectionate old cat who allows her pussy to jump on her back and bite
her ears for a half hour together, but finally imposes quiet by a
velvety and harmless cuffing. Occasionally he avenged himself for her
untimely demands on his attention by reading to her what he considered a
successful passage of the article which he might then be composing. In
this, however, he had not the least intention of punishment, but
supposed that he was conferring a pleasure. It was an essential element
of this genial, social, sympathetic nature to believe that whatever
interested him would necessarily interest those whom he loved and even
those with whom he simply came in contact. When Lillie offered
corrections on his style, which happened frequently, he rarely hesitated
to accept them. Vanity he had none, or at any rate displayed none,
except on two subjects, his daughter and his scientific fame. As a proof
of this last he gloried in an extensive correspondence with European
_savants_, and made Lillie read every one of those queer-shaped letters,
written on semi-transparent paper and with foreign stamps and postmarks
on their envelopes, which reached him from across the Atlantic. Although
medicine was his profession and had provided him with bread, he had
latterly fallen in love with mineralogy, and in his vacation wanderings
though that mountainous belt which runs from the Carolinas westward to
Arkansas and Missouri he had discovered some new species which were
eagerly sought for by the directors of celebrated European collections.
Great was his delight at receiving in New Boston a weighty box of
specimens which he had shipped as freight from New Orleans just previous
to his own departure, but which for two months he had mourned over as
lost. It dowered him with an embarrassment of riches. During a week his
bed, sofa, table, wash-stand, chairs and floor were littered with the
scraps of paper and tufts of cotton and of Spanish moss which had served
as wrappers, and with hundreds of crystals, ores and other minerals.
Over this confusion the Doctor domineered with a face wrinkled by happy
anxiety, laying down one queer-colored pebble to pick up another,
pronouncing this a Smithite and that a Brownite trying his blowpipe on
them and then his hammer, and covering all the furniture with a layer
of learned smudge and dust and gravel.
"Papa, you have puckered your forehead up till it is like a baked
apple," Lillie would remonstrate. "You look more than five thousand
years old; you look as though you might be the grandfather of all the
mummies. Now do leave off bothering those poor Smithites and Hivites and
Amelekites, and come and take a walk."
"My dear, you havn't the least idea how necessary it is to push one's
discoveries to a certainty as quickly as possible," would answer the
Doctor, meanwhile peering at a specimen through his magnifying glass.
"The world won't wait for me to take your time. If I don't work fast
enough in my researches, it will set somebody else at the job. It makes
no allowance for Louisiana ideas of leisure and,"--here he suddenly
breaks off his moralizing and exclaims, "My dear, this is _not_ a
Brownite; it is a Robinsonite--a most unquestionable and superb
Robinsonite."
"Oh papa! I wish I was an unquestionable Robinsonite; then you would
take some sort of interest in me," says Miss Lillie.
But the Doctor is lost in the ocean of his new discovery, and for
fifteen minutes has not a word to say on any subject comprehensible to
the young lady.
Two hours of every afternoon were devoted by father and daughter to a
long walk in company, sometimes a mere shopping or calling tour, but
generally an excursion into the pure country of fields and forest as yet
so easily reached from the centre of New Boston. The Doctor preserved a
reminiscence of his college botany, and attempted to impart some of his
knowledge of plants to Lillie. But she was a hopeless scholar; she
persisted in caring for little except human beings and such literature
as related directly to them, meaning thereby history, biography, novels
and poetry; she remained delightfully innocent of all the ologies.
"You ought to have been born four thousand years ago, Lillie," he
exclaimed in despair over some new instance of her incapacity to move in
his favorite grooves. "So far as you are concerned, Linnæus, Humboldt,
Lyell, Faraday, Agassiz and Dana might as well not have lived. I believe
you will go through life without more knowledge of science than just
enough to distinguish between a plant and a pebble."
"I do hope so, papa," replied the incorrigible and delightful ignoramus.
When they met one of their acquaintance on these walks the Doctor would
not allow him to pass with a nod and a smile, after the unobtrusive New
Boston fashion. He would stop him, shake hands cordially, inquire
earnestly after his health and family, and before parting contrive to
say something personally civil, if not complimentary; all of which would
evidently flatter the New Bostonian, but would also as evidently
discompose him and turn his head, as being a man unaccustomed to much
social incense.
"Papa, you trouble these people," Lillie would sometimes expostulate.
"They don't know where to put all your civilities and courtesies. They
don't seem to have pockets for them."
"My child, I am nothing more than ordinarily polite."
"Nothing more than ordinary in Louisiana, but something very
extraordinary here. I have just thought why all the gentlemen one meets
at the South are so civil. It is because the uncivil ones are shot as
fast as they are discovered."
"There is something in that," admitted the Doctor. "I suppose duelling
has something to do with the superficial good manners current down
there. But just consider what an impolite thing shooting is in itself.
To knock and jam and violently push a man into the other world is one of
the most boorish and barbarous discourtesies that I can imagine. How
should I like to be treated that way! I think I never should be
reconciled to the fact or its author."
"But these New Bostonians are so poky--so awfully serious."
"I have some consideration for anti-jokers. They are not amusing, but
they are generally useful. It is well for the race, no doubt, to have
many persons always in solemn earnest. I don't know what the world would
come to if every body could see a joke. Possibly it might laugh itself
to death."
Frequently on these walks they were met and joined by Mr. Colburne. That
young gentleman, frank as his clear hazel eyes and hearty laugh made him
appear, was awkwardly sly in bringing about these ostensibly accidental
meetings. Not that his clumsy male cunning deceived Miss Ravenel: she
was not by any means fond enough of him to fail to see through him; she
knew that he walked in her paths with malice aforethought. Her father
did not know it, nor suspect it, nor ever, by any innate consciousness
or outward hint, feel his attention drawn toward the circumstance. And,
what was most absurd of all, Mr. Colburne persisted in fearing that the
Doctor, that travelled and learned man of the world, guessed the secret
of his slyness, but never once attributed that degree of
sharp-sightedness to the daughter. I sometimes get quite out of patience
with the ugly sex, it is so densely stupid with regard to these little
social riddles. For example, it happened once at a party that while
Colburne, who never danced, was talking to Miss Ravenel, another
gentleman claimed her hand for a quadrille. She took her place in the
set, but first handed her fan to Colburne. Now every lady who observed
this action understood that Miss Ravenel had said to Colburne as plainly
as it was possible to express the thing without speaking or using force,
that she wished him to return to her side as soon as the quadrille was
over, and that in fact she preferred his conversation to that of her
dancing admirer. But this masculine blunderer comprehended nothing; he
grumbled to himself that he was to be put off with the honor of holding
a fan while the other fellow ran away with the owner; and so, shoving
the toy into his pocket, he absented himself for half an hour, to the
justifiable disapprobation of Miss Ravenel, who did not again give him
any thing to hold for many evenings.
But this was an exceptional piece of stupidity in Colburne, and probably
he would not have been guilty of it but for a spasm of jealousy. He was
not grossly deficient in social tact, any more than in natural
cleverness or in acquired information. Conversation, and very sensible
conversation too, flowed like a river when he came into confluence with
the Ravenels. The prevailing subject, as a matter of course, was the
rebellion. It was every body's subject; it was the nightmare by night
and the delirium by day of the American people; it was the one thing
that no one ignored and no one for an hour forgot. The twenty loyal
millions of the North shuddered with rage at the insolent wickedness of
those conspirators who, merely that they might perpetuate human bondage
and their own political supremacy, proposed to destroy the grandest
social fabric that Liberty ever built, the city of refuge for oppressed
races, the hope of the nations. For men who through such a glorious
temple as this could rush with destroying torches and the cry of "Rule
or ruin," the North felt a horror more passionate than ever, on any
occasion, for any cause, thrilled the bosom of any other people. This
indignation was earnest and wide-spread in proportion to the
civilization of the century and the intelligence of the population. The
hundreds of telegraph lines and thousands of printing presses in the
United States, sent the knowledge of every new treason, and the
reverberation of every throb of patriotic anger, in a day to all
Americans outside of nurseries and lunatic asylums. The excitement of
Germany at the opening of the Thirty Years' War, of England previous to
the Cromwellian struggle, was torpid and partial in comparison with
this outburst of a modern, reading and swiftly-informed free democracy.
As yet there was little bloodshed; the old respect for law and
confidence in the processes of reason could not at once die, and men
still endeavored to convince each other by argument while holding the
pistol to each other's heads; but from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf
there was a spiritual preparedness for slaughter which was to end in
such murderous contests as should make ensanguined Europe rise from its
thousand battle-fields to stare in wonder.
Women and children were as wild with the patriotic excitement as men.
Some of the prettiest and gentlest-born ladies of New Boston waited in a
mixed crowd half the night at the railroad station to see the first
regiments pass towards Washington, and flung their handkerchiefs, rings,
pencil-cases, and other trinkets to the astonished country lads, to show
them how the heart of woman blessed the nation's defenders. In no
society could you be ten minutes without hearing the words war, treason,
rebellion. And so, the subject being every body's subject, the Ravenels
and Colburne frequently talked of it. It was quite a sad and sore
circumstance to the two gentlemen that the lady was a rebel. To a man
who prides himself on his superior capacity and commanding nature, (that
is to say, to almost every man in existence) there can be few greater
grievances than a woman whom he cannot convert; and more particularly
and painfully is this true when she bears some near relationship to him,
as for instance that of a wife, sister, daughter and sweetheart. Thus
Ravenel the father and Colburne the admirer, fretted daily over the
obstinate treasonableness of Miss Lillie. Patriotism she called it,
declaring that Louisiana was her country, and that to it she owed her
allegiance.
It is worthy of passing remark how loyal the young are to the prevailing
ideas of the community in which they are nurtured. You will find adult
republicans in England, but no infant ones; adults monarchists in our
own country, but not in our schools and nurseries. I have known an
American of fifty whose beliefs, prejudices and tastes were all
European, but who could not save his five children from being all
Yankee. Accordingly this young lady of nineteen, born and nurtured among
Louisianians, held firm for Louisiana in spite of the arguments of the
adored papa and the rather agreeable admirer.
The Doctor liked Colburne, and respected his intellect. He rarely tired
of talking with him on any subject, and concerning the war they could go
on interminably. The only point on which they disagreed was the probable
length of the contest; the southerner prophecying that it would last
five or six years, and the northerner that the rebels would succumb in
as many months. Miss Ravenel sometimes said that the North would give up
in a year, and sometimes that the war would last forty years, both of
which opinions she had heard sustained in New Orleans. But, whatever she
said, she always believed in the superior pluck and warlike skill of the
people of her own section.
"Miss Ravenel," said Colburne, "I believe you think that all southerners
are giants, so tall that they can't see a Yankee without lying down, and
so pugnacious that they never go to church without praying for a chance
to fight somebody."
She resented this satire by observing, "Mr. Colburne, if I believe it
you ought not to dispute it."
I am inclined to think that the young man in these days rather damaged
his chances of winning the young lady's kind regards (to use a hackneyed
and therefore decorous phrase) by his stubborn and passionate loyalty to
the old starry banner. It was impossible that the two should argue so
much on a subject which so deeply interested both without occasionally
coming to spiritual blows. But why should Mr. Colburne win the kind
regards of Miss Ravenel? If she were his wife, how could he support her?
He had little, and she had nothing.
While they were talking over the war it went on. One balmy summer day
our little debating club of three sat in one of the small iron balconies
of the hotel, discussing the great battle which had been fought, and
rumor said won, on the heights around Manassas Junction. For a week the
city had been wild about the 'on to Richmond' movement; and to-day the
excitement culminated in a general joy which was impatient for official
announcements, flags, bells and cannon. It was true that there was one
suspicious circumstance; that for twenty-four hours no telegrams
concerning the fight had come over the wires from Washington; but,
excepting a few habitual croakers and secret copperheads, who were
immediately frowned into silence, no one predicted evil tidings. At the
last accounts "the grand army of the Potomac" was driving before it the
traitorous battalions of the South; McDowell had gained a great victory,
and there was an end of rebellion.
"I don't believe it--I don't believe it," Miss Ravenel repeatedly
asseverated, until her father scolded her for her absurd and disloyal
incredulity.
"The telegraph is in order again," observed Colburne. "I heard one of
those men who just passed say so. Here comes somebody that we know.
Whitewood!--I say, Whitewood! Any thing on the bulletin-board?"
The pale young student looked up with a face of despair and eyes full of
tears.
"It's all up, Colburne," said he. "Our men are running, throwing away
their guns and every thing."
His trembling voice hardly sufficed for even this short story of shame
and disaster. Miss Ravenel, the desperate rebel, jumped to her feet with
a nervous shriek of joy and then, catching her father's reproving eye,
rushed up stairs and danced it out in her own room.
"It's impossible!" remonstrated Colburne in such excitement that his
voice was almost a scream. "Why, by the last accounts--"
"Oh! that's all gone up," groaned Whitewood, who was in such a state of
grief that he could hardly talk intelligibly. "We've got more. We've got
the end of the battle. Johnson came up on our right, and we are whipped
all to pieces."
"Johnson! Why, where was Patterson?"
"Patterson is an old traitor," shouted Whitewood, pushing wildly on his
way as if too sick at heart to talk more.
"It is very sad," observed the Doctor gravely. The thought occurred to
him that for his own interests he had better have stayed in New Orleans;
but he lost sight of it immediately in his sorrow for the seeming
calamity which had befallen country and liberty and the human race.
"Oh! it's horrible--horrible. I don't believe it. I can't believe it,"
groaned Colburne. "It's too much to bear. I must go home. It makes me
too sick to talk."
CHAPTER VI.
MR. COLBURNE SEES HIS WAY CLEAR TO BE A SOLDIER.
Stragglers arrived, and then the regiments. People were not angry with
the beaten soldiers, but treated them with tenderness, gave them
plentiful cold collations, and lavished indignation on their ragged
shoddy uniforms. Then the little State, at first pulseless with despair,
took a long breath of relief when it found that Beauregard had not
occupied Washington, and set bravely about preparing for far bloodier
battles than that of Bull Run.
Lieutenant-Colonel Carter did not return with his regiment; and Colburne
read with a mixture of emotions that he had been wounded and taken
prisoner while gallantly leading a charge. He marked the passage, and
left the paper with his compliments for the Ravenels, after debating at
the door of the hotel whether he should call on them, and deciding in
the negative. Not being able as yet to appreciate that blessing in
disguise, Bull Run, his loyal heart was very sad and sore over it, and
he felt a thrill of something like horror whenever he thought of the
joyful shriek with which Lillie had welcomed the shocking tidings. He
was angry with her, or at least he tried to be. He called up his
patriotism, that strongest of New England isms, and resolved that with a
secessionist, a woman who wished ill to her country, he would not fall
in love. But to be sure of this he must keep away from her; for thus
much of love, or of perilous inclination at least, he already had to
acknowledge; and moreover, while he was somewhat ashamed of the feeling,
he still could not heartily desire to eradicate it. Troubled thus
concerning the affairs of the country and of his own heart, he kept
aloof from the Ravenels for three or four days. Then he said to himself
that he had no cause for avoiding the Doctor, and that to do so was
disgraceful treatment of a man who had proved his loyalty by taking up
the cross of exile.
This story will probably have no readers so destitute of sympathy with
the young and loving, as that they can not guess the result of
Colburne's internal struggles. After two or three chance conversations
with Ravenel he jumped, or to speak more accurately, he gently slid to
the conclusion that it was absurd and unmanly to make a distinction in
favor of the father and against the daughter. Quarrel with a woman; how
ridiculous! how unchivalrous! He colored to the tips of his repentant
ears as he thought of it and of what Miss Ravenel must think of it. He
hastened to call on her before the breach which he had made between her
and himself should become untraversable; for although the embargo on
their intercourse had lasted only about a week, it already seemed to him
a lapse of time measureable by months; and this very naturally, inasmuch
as during that short interval he had lived a life of anguish as a man
and a patriot. Accordingly the old intimacy was resumed, and the two
young people seldom passed forty-eight hours apart. But of the
rebellion they said little, and of Bull Run nothing. These were such
sore subjects to him that he did not wish to speak of them except to the
ear of sympathy; and she, divining his sensitiveness, would not give him
pain notwithstanding that he was an abolitionist and a Yankee. If the
Doctor, ignorant of what passed in these young hearts, turned the
conversation on the war, Lillie became silent, and Colburne,
appreciating her forbearance, tried to say very little. Thus without a
compact, without an explanation, they accorded in a strain of mutual
charity which predicted the ultimate conversion of one or the other.
Moreover, Colburne asked himself, what right had he to talk if he did
not fight? If he wanted to answer this woman's outcry of delight over
the rout of Bull Run, the place to do it was not a safe parlor, but a
field of victorious battle. Why did he not act in accordance with these
truly chivalrous sentiments? Why not fall into one of the new regiments
which his gallant little State was organizing to continue the struggle?
Why not march on with the soul of old John Brown, joining in the sublime
though quaint chorus of, "We're coming, Father Abraham, three hundred
thousand more?"
He did talk very earnestly of it with various persons, and, among
others, with Doctor Ravenel. The latter approved the young man's warlike
inclinations promptly and earnestly.
"It is the noblest duty that you may ever have a chance to perform
during your life," said he. "To do something personally towards
upholding this Union and striking down slavery is an honor beyond any
thing that ever was accorded to Greek or Roman. I wish that I were young
enough for the work, or fitted for it by nature or education. I would be
willing to have my tombstone set up next year, if it could only bear the
inscription, 'He died in giving freedom to slaves.'"
"Oh! do stop," implored Lillie, who entered in time to hear the
concluding sentence. "What do you talk about your tombstone for? You
will get perfectly addled about abolition, like all the rest. Now, papa,
you ought to be more consistent. You didn't use to be so violent against
slavery. You have changed since five years ago."
"I know it," says the Doctor. "But that doesn't prove that I am wrong
now. I wasn't infallible five years ago. Why, my dear, the progress of
our race from barbarism to civilization is through the medium of
constant change. If the race is benefited by it, why not the individual?
I am a sworn foe to consistency and conservation. To stick obstinately
to our old opinions, because they are old, is as foolish as it would be
in a soldier-crab to hold on to his shell after he had outgrown it
instead of picking up a new one fitted to his increased size. Suppose
the snakes persisted in going about in their last year's skins? No, no;
there are no such fools in the lower animal kingdom; that stupidity is
confined to man."
"The world does move," observed Colburne. "We consider ourselves pretty
strict and old-fashioned here in New Boston. But if our Puritan
ancestors could get hold of us, they would be likely to have us whipped
as heretics and Sabbath-breakers. Very likely we would be equally severe
upon our own great-great-grandchildren, if we should get a chance at
them."
"Weak spirits are frightened by this change, this growth, this forward
impetus," said the Doctor. "I must tell you a story. I was travelling in
Georgia three years ago. On the seat next in front of me sat a cracker,
who was evidently making his first railroad experience, and in other
respects learning to go on his hind legs. Presently the train crossed a
bridge. It was narrow, uncovered and without sides, so that a passenger
would not be likely to see it unless he sat near the window. Now the
cracker sat next the alley of the car, and away from the window. I
observed him give a glare at the river and turn away his head suddenly,
after which he rolled about in a queer way, and finally went on the
floor in a heap. We picked him up; spirits were easily produced, (they
always are down there); and presently the cracker was brought to his
senses. His first words were, 'Has she lit'-- He was under the
impression that the train had taken the river at a running jump. Now
that is very much like the judgment of timid and ill-informed people on
the progress of the nation or race at such a time as this. They don't
know about the bridge; they think we are flying through the air; and so
they go off in general fainting-fits."
Colburne laughed, as many another man has done before him, at this good
old story.
"On our train," said he, "on the train of human progress, we are parts
of the engine and not mere passengers. I ought to be revolving
somewhere. I ought to be at work. I want to do something--I am most
anxious to do something--but I don't know precisely what. I suppose that
the inability exists in me, and not in my circumstances. I am like the
gentleman who tired himself out with jumping, but never could jump high
enough to see over his own standing-collar."
"I know how you feel. I have been in that state myself, often and in
various ways. For instance it has occurred to me, especially in my
younger days, to feel a strong desire to write, without having anything
to say. There was a burning in my brain; there was a sentiment or
sensation which led me to seek pens, ink and paper; there was an
impatient, uncertain, aimless effort to commence; there was a pause, a
revery, and all was over. It was a storm of sheet-lightning. There were
glorious gleams, and far off openings of the heavens; but no sound,
droppings, no sensible revelation from the upper world.--However, your
longings are for action, and I am convinced that you will find your
opportunity. There will be work enough in this matter for all."
"I don't know," said Colburne. "The sixth and seventh regiments are
full. I hear that there isn't a lieutenantcy left."
"You will have to raise your own company."
"Ah! But for what regiment? We shan't raise another, I am afraid. Yes, I
am actually afraid that the war will be over in six months."
Miss Ravenel looked up hastily as if she should like to say "Forty
years," but checked herself by a surprising effort of magnanimity and
good nature.
"That's queer patriotism," laughed the Doctor. "But let me assure you,
Mr. Colburne, that your fears are groundless. There will be more
regiments needed."
Miss Ravenel gave a slight approving nod, but still said nothing,
remembering Bull Run and how provokingly she had shouted over it.
"This southern oligarchy," continued the Doctor, "will be a tough nut to
crack. It has the consolidated vigor of a tyranny."
"I wonder where Lieutenant-Colonel Carter is?" queried Colburne. "It is
six weeks since he was taken prisoner. It seems like six years."
Miss Ravenel raised her head with an air of interest, glanced hastily at
her father, and gave herself anew to her embroidery. The Doctor made a
grimace which was as much as to say that he thought small beer or sour
beer of Lieutenant-Colonel Carter.
"He is a very fine officer," said Colburne. "He was highly spoken of for
his conduct at Bull Run."
"I would rather have you for a Colonel," replied the Doctor.
Colburne laughed contemptuously at the idea of his fitness for a
colonelcy.
"I would rather have any respectable man of tolerable intellect,"
insisted the Doctor. "I tell you that I know that type perfectly. I know
what he is as well as if I had been acquainted with him for twenty
years. He is what we southerners, in our barbarous local vanity, are
accustomed to call a southern gentleman. He is on the model of the
sugar-planters of St. Dominic Parish. He needs somebody to care for him.
Let me tell you a story. When I was on a mineralogical expedition in
North Carolina some years ago, I happened to be out late at night
looking for lodgings. I was approaching one of those cross-road
groggeries which they call a tavern down there, when I met a most
curious couple. It was a man and a goose. The man was drunk, and the
goose was sober. The man was staggering, and the goose was waddling
perfectly straight. Every few steps it halted, looked back and quacked,
as if to say, Come along. The moon was shining, and I could see the
whole thing plainly. I was obliged to put up for the night in the
groggery, and there I got an explanation of the comedy. It seems that
this goose was a pet, and had taken an unaccountable affection to its
owner, who was a wretched drunkard of a cracker. The man came nearly
every night to the groggery, got drunk as regularly as he came, and
generally went to sleep on one of the benches. About midnight the goose
would appear and cackle for him. The bar-keeper would shake up the
drunkard and say, 'Here! your goose has come for you.' As soon as the
brute could get his legs he would start homeward, guided by his more
intelligent companion. If the man fell down and couldn't get up, the
goose would remain by him and squawk vociferously for assistance.--Now,
sir, there was hardly a sugar-planter, hardly a southern gentleman, in
St. Dominic Parish, who didn't need some such guardian. Often and often,
as I have seen them swilling wine and brandy at each other's tables, I
have charitably wished that I could say to this one and that one, Sir,
your goose has come for you."
"But you never have seen the Lieutenant-Colonel so badly off," answered
Colburne, after a short meditation.
"Why no--not precisely," admitted the Doctor. "But I know his type," he
presently added with an obstinacy which Miss Ravenel secretly thought
very unjust. She thought it best to direct her spirit of censure in
another direction.
"Papa," said she, "what a countryfied habit you have of telling
stories!"
"Don't criticise, my dear," answers papa. "I am a high toned southern
gentleman, and always knock people on the head who criticise me."
The question still returns upon us, why Mr. Colburne did not join the
army. It is time, therefore, to state the hitherto unimportant fact that
he was the only son of a widow, and that his life was a necessity to
her, not only as a consolation to her loneliness, but as a support to
her declining fortunes. Doctor Colburne had left his wife and child an
estate of about twenty-five thousand dollars, which at the time of his
death was a respectable fortune in New Boston. But the influx of gold
from California, and the consequent rise of prices, seriously diminished
the value of the family income just about the time that Edward, by
growing into manhood and entering college, necessitated an increase of
expenses. Therefore Mrs. Colburne was led to put one half of the joint
fortune into certain newly-organized manufacturing companies, which
promised to increase her annual six per cent to twenty-four--nor was she
therein exceedingly to blame, being led away by the example and advice
of some of the sharpest New Boston capitalists, many of whom had their
experienced pinions badly lamed in these joint-stock adventurings.
"What you want, Mr. Colburne," said a director, "is an investment which
is both safe and permanent. Now this is just the thing."
I can not say much for the safety of the investment, but it certainly
was a permanent one. During the first year the promised twenty-four per
cent was paid, and the widow could have sold out for one hundred and
twenty. Then came a free-trade, Democratic improvement on the tariff;
the manufacturing interest of the country was paralyzed, and the
Braggville stock fell to ninety. Mrs. Colburne might still have sold
out at a profit, counting in her first year's dividend; but as it was
not in her inexperience to see that this was wisdom, she held on for
a--decline. By the opening of the war her certificates of manufacturing
stock were waste paper, and her annual income was reduced to eight
hundred dollars. Indeed, for a year or two previous to the commencement
of this story, she had been forced to make inroads upon her capital.
Of this crisis in the family affairs Edward was fully aware, and like a
true-born, industrious Yankee, did his best to meet it. From every
lowermost branch and twig of his profession he plucked some fruit by
dint of constant watchfulness, so that during the past year he had been
very nearly able to cover his own conscientiously economical
expenditures. He was gaining a foothold in the law, although he as yet
had no cases to plead. If he held on a year or two longer at this rate
he might confidently expect to restore the family income and stave off
the threatened sale of the homestead.
But this was not all which prevented him from going forth to battle. The
cry of his mother's heart was, "My son, how can I let thee go?" She was
an abolitionist, as was almost every body of her set in New Boston; she
was an enthusiastic patriot, as was almost every one in the north during
that sublime summer of popular enthusiasm; but this war--oh, this
strange, ferocious war! was horrible. Her sensitively affectionate
nature, blinded by veils of womanly tenderness, folded in habits of
life-long peace, could not see the hard, inevitable necessity of the
contest. Earnestly as she sympathised with its loyal and humane objects,
she was not logical enough or not firm enough to sympathise with the
iron thing itself. Lapped in sweet influences of peace all her loving
life, why must she be called to death amid the clamor of murderous
contests? For her health was failing; a painful and fatal disease had
fastened its clutches on her; another year's course she did not hope to
run. And if the hateful struggle must go on, if it must torment her
last few days with its agitations and horrors, so much the more did she
need her only child. Other women's sons--yes, if there was no help for
it--but not hers--might put on the panoply of strife, and disappear from
anxiously following eyes into the smoke and flame of battle. Edward told
her every day the warlike news of the journals, the grand and stern
putting on of the harness, the gigantic plans for crushing the nation's
foes. She could take no interest in such tidings but that of aversion.
He read to her in a voice which thrilled like swellings of martial
music, Tennyson's Charge of the Six Hundred. She listened to the
clarion-toned words with distaste and almost with horror.
Well, the summer wore away, that summer of sombre preparation and
preluding skirmishes, whose scattering musketry and thin cannonade
faintly prophecied the orchestral thunders of Gettysburg and the
Wilderness, and whose few dead preceded like skirmishers the massive
columns which for years should firmly follow them into the dark valley.
Its forereaching shadows fell upon many homes far away from the
battlefield, and chilled to death many sensitive natures. Old persons
and invalids sank into the grave that season under the oppression of its
straining suspense and preliminary horror; and among these victims, whom
no man has counted and whom few have thought of collectively, was the
mother of Colburne.
One September afternoon she sent for Edward. The Doctor had gone; his
labors were over. The clergyman had gone; neither was he longer needed.
There was no one in the room but the nurse, the dying mother and the
only child. The change had been expected for days, and Edward had
thought that he was prepared for it; had indeed marvelled and been
shocked at himself because he could look forward to it with such seeming
composure; for, reason with his heart and his conscience as he might, he
could not feel a fitting dread and anguish. In the common phrase of
humanity, when numbed by unusual sorrow, he could not realize it. But
now, as, leaning over the footboard and looking steadfastly upon his
mother's face, he saw that the final hour had come, a sickness of heart
fell upon him, and a trembling as if his soul were being torn asunder.
Yet neither wept; the Puritans and the children of the Puritans do not
weep easily; they are taught, not to utter, but to hide their emotions.
The nurse perceived no signs of unusual feeling, except that the face of
the strong man became suddenly as pale as that of the dying woman, and
that to him this was an hour of anguish, while to her it was one of
unspeakable joy. The mother knew her son too well not to see, even with
those failing eyes, into the depths of his sorrow.
"Don't be grieved for me, Edward," she said. "I am sustained by the
faith of the promises. I am about to return from the place whence I
came. I am re-entering with peace and with confidence into a blessed
eternity."
He came to the side of the bed, sat down on it and took her hand without
speaking.
"You will follow me some day," she went on. "You will follow me to the
place where I shall be, at the right hand of the Lord. I have prayed for
it often;--I was praying for it a moment ago; and, my child, my prayer
will be granted. Oh, I have been so fearful for you; but I am fearful no
longer."
He made no answer except to press her hand while she paused to draw a
few short and wearisome breaths.
"I can bear to part with you now," she resumed. "I could not bear it
till the Lord granted me this full assurance that we shall meet again. I
leave you in his hands. I make no conditions with him. I have been
sweetly brought to give you altogether up to one who loves you better
than I know how to love you. He gave me my love, and he has kept more
than he gave. Perhaps I have been selfish, Edward, to hold on to you as
I have. You have felt it your duty to go into the army, and perhaps I
have been selfish to prevent you. Now you are free; to-morrow I shall
not be here. If you still see that to be your duty, go; and the Lord go
with you, darling, and give you strength and courage. I do not ask him
to spare you, but only to guide you here below, and restore you to me
above.----And he will do it, Edward, for his own sake. I am full of
confidence; the promises are sure. For you and for myself, I rejoice
with a joy unspeakable and full of glory."
While thus speaking, or rather whispering, she had put one arm around
his neck. As he kissed her wasted cheek and let fall his first tears on
it, she drew her hand across his face with a caressing tenderness, and
smiling, fell back softly on her pillow, closing her eyes as calmly as
if to sleep. A few broken words, a murmuring of unutterable, unearthly,
infinite happiness, echoes as it were of greetings far away with
welcoming angels, were her last utterances. To the young man, who still
held her hand and now and then kissed her cheek, she seemed to slumber,
although her breathing gradually sank so low that he could not perceive
it. But after a long time the nurse came to the bedside, bent over it,
looked, listened, and said, "She is gone!"
He was free; she was not there.
He went to his room with a horrible feeling that for him there was no
more love; that there was nothing to do and nothing to expect; that his
life was a blank. He could fix his mind on nothing past or future; not
even upon the unparalleled sorrow of the present. Taking up the Bible
which she had given him, he read a page before he noticed that he had
not understood and did not remember a single passage. In that vacancy,
that almost idiocy, which beclouds afflicted souls, he could not recall
a distinct impression of the scene through which he had just passed, and
seemed to have forgotten forever his mother's dying words, her
confidence that they should meet again, her heavenly joy. With the same
perverseness, and in spite of repeated efforts to close his ears to the
sound, some inner, wayward self repeated to him over and over again
these verses of the unhappy Poe--
"Thank Heaven! the crisis,
The danger is past,
And the lingering illness
Is over at last,
And the fever called Living
Is conquered at last."
The sad words sounded wofully true to him. For the time, for some days,
it seemed to him as if life were but a wearisome illness, for which the
grave was but a cure. His mind, fevered by night watching, anxiety, and
an unaccustomed grappling with sorrow, was not in a healthy state. He
thought that he was willing to die; he only desired to fall usefully,
honorably, and in consonance with the spirit of his generation; he would
set his face henceforward towards the awful beacons of the battle-field.
His resolution was taken with the seriousness of one, who, though
cheerful and even jovial by nature, had been permeated to some extent by
the solemn passion of Puritanism. He painted to himself in strong colors
the risk of death and the nature of it; then deliberately chose the part
of facing this tremendous mystery in support of the right. All this
while, be it remembered, his mind was somewhat exalted by the fever of
bodily weariness and of spiritual sorrow.
CHAPTER VII.
CAPTAIN COLBURNE RAISES A COMPANY, AND COLONEL CARTER A REGIMENT.
The settlement of his mother's estate and of his own pecuniary affairs
occupied Colburne's time until the early part of October. By then he had
invested his property as well as might be, rented the much-loved old
homestead, taken a room in the New Boston House, and was fully prepared
to bid good-bye to native soil, and, if need be, to life. Miss Ravenel
was a strong though silent temptation to remain and to exist, but he
resisted her with the heroism which he subsequently exhibited in
combating male rebels.
One morning, as he left the hotel rather later than usual to go to his
office, his eyes fell upon a high-colored face and gigantic brown
mustache, which he could not have failed to recognize, no matter where
nor when encountered. There was the wounded captive of Bull Run, as big
chested and rich complexioned, as audacious in eye and haughty in air,
as if no hurt nor hardship nor calamity had ever befallen him. He
checked Colburne's eager advance with a cold stare, and passed him
without speaking. But the young fellow hardly had time to color at this
rebuff, when, just as he was opening the outer door, a baritone voice
arrested him with a ringing, "Look here!"
"Beg pardon," continued the Lieutenant-Colonel, coming up hastily.
"Didn't recognize you. It's quite a time since our pic-nic, you know."
Here he showed a broad grin, and presently burst out laughing, as much
amused at the past as if it did not contain Bull Run.
"What a jolly old pic-nic that was!" he went on. "I have shouted a
hundred times to think of myself passing the wine and segars to those
prim old virgins. Just as though I had bowsed into the House Beautiful,
among Bunyan's damsels, and offered to treat the crowd!"
Again the Lieutenant-Colonel laughed noisily, his insolent black eyes
twinkling with merriment. Colburne looked at him and listened to him
with amazement. Here was a man who had lately been in what was to him
the terrible mystery of battle; who had fallen down wounded and been
carried away captive while fighting heroically for the noblest of
causes; who had witnessed the greatest and most humiliating overthrow
which ever befel the armies of the republic; who yet did not allude to
any of these things, nor apparently think of them, but could chat and
laugh about a pic-nic. Was it treasonable indifference, or levity, or
the sublimity of modesty? Colburne thought that if _he_ had been at Bull
Run, he never could have talked of any thing else.
"Well, how are you?" demanded Carter. "You are looking a little pale and
thin, it seems to me."
"Oh, I am well enough," answered Colburne, passing over that subject
with modest contempt, as not worthy of mention. "But how are _you_? Have
you recovered from your wound?"
"Wound? Oh! yes; mere bagatelle; healed up some time ago. I shouldn't
have been caught if I hadn't been stunned by my horse falling. The wound
was nothing."
"But you must have suffered in your confinement," said Colburne,
determined to appreciate and pity.
"Suffered! My dear fellow, I suffered with eating and drinking and
making merry. I had the deuce's own time in Richmond. I met loads of my
old comrades, and they nearly killed me with kindness. They are a nice
set of old boys, if they are on the wrong side of the fence. You didn't
suppose they would maltreat a brother West Pointer, did you?"
And the Lieutenant-Colonel laughed heartily at the civilian blunder.
"I didn't know, really," answered the puzzled Colburne. "I must say I
thought so. But I am as poor a judge of soldiers as a sheep is of
catamounts."
"Why, look here. When I left they gave me a supper, and not only made me
drunk, but got drunk themselves in my honor. Opened their purses, too,
and forced their money on me."
All this, it will be noted, was long previous to the time when Libby
Prison and Andersonville were deliberately converted into pest-houses
and starvation pens.
"I am afraid they wanted to bring you over," observed Colburne. He
looked not only suspicious, but even a little anxious, for in those days
every patriot feared for the faith of his neighbor.
"I suppose they did," replied Carter carelessly, as if he saw nothing
extraordinary in the idea. "Of course they did. They need all the help
that they can get. In fact the rebel Secretary of War paid me the
compliment of making me an offer of a regiment, with an assurance that
promotion might be relied on. It was done so delicately that I couldn't
be offended. In fact it was quite natural, and he probably thought it
would be bad taste to omit it. I am a Virginian, you know; and then I
was once engaged in some southern schemes and diplomacies--before this
war broke out, you understand--oh, no connection with this war. However,
I declined his offer. There's a patriot for you."
"I honor you, sir," said Colburne with a fervor which made the
Lieutenant-Colonel grin. "You ought to be rewarded."
"Quite so," answered the other in his careless, half-joking style.
"Well, I am rewarded. I received a letter yesterday afternoon from your
Governor offering me a regiment. I had just finished an elegant dinner
with some good fellows, and was going in for a roaring evening. But
business before pleasure. I took a cold plunge bath and the next train
for New Boston, getting here at midnight. I am off at ten to see his
Excellency."
"I am sincerely delighted," exclaimed the young man. "I am delighted to
hear that the Governor has had such good sense."
After a moment's hesitation he added anxiously, "Do you remember your
invitation to me?"
"Certainly. What do you say to it now? Will you go with me?"
"I will," said Colburne emphatically. "I will try. I only fear that I
can neither raise nor command a company."
"Never fear," answered Carter in a tone which pooh-poohed at doubt. "You
are just the man. Come round to the bar with me, and let's drink success
to our regiment. Oh, I recollect; you don't imbibe. Smoke a segar, then,
while we talk it over. I tell you that you are just the man. _Noblesse
oblige._ Any gentleman can make a good enough company officer in three
months' practice. As to raising your men, I'll give you my best
countenance, whatever that may amount to. And if you actually don't
succeed in getting your quota, after all, why, we'll take somebody
else's men. Examinations of officers and consolidations of companies
bring all these things right, you know."
"I should be sorry to profit by any other man's influence and energy to
his harm," answered the fastidious Colburne.
"Pshaw! it's all for the good of the service and of the country. Because
a low fellow who keeps a saloon can treat and wheedle sixty or eighty
stout fellows into the ranks, do you suppose that he ought to be
commissioned an officer and a gentleman? I don't. It can't be in my
regiment. Leave those things to me, and go to work without fear. Write
to the Adjutant-General of the State to-day for a recruiting commission,
and as soon as you get it, open an office. I guarantee that you shall
be one of the Captains of the Tenth Barataria."
"Who are the other field officers?" asked Colburne.
"Not appointed yet. I am alone in my glory. I am the regiment. But the
Lieutenant-Colonel and Major shall be of the right stamp. I mean to have
a word to say as to the choice. I tell you that we'll have the bulliest
regiment that ever sprang from the soil of New England."
"Well, I'll try. But I really fear that I shall just get my company
recruited in time for the next war."
"Never fear," laughed Carter, as though war were a huge practical joke.
"We are in for a four or five years' job of fighting."
"You don't mean it!" said the young man in amazement. "Why, we citizens
are all so full of confidence. McClellan, every body says, is organizing
a splendid army. Did Bull Run give you such an opinion of the superior
fighting qualities of the southerners?"
"Not at all. Both sides fought timidly, as a rule, just as greenhorns
naturally would do. The best description of the battle that I have heard
was given in a single sentence by my old captain, Lamar, now in command
of a Georgia regiment. Said he, 'There never was a more frightened set
than our fellows--except your fellows.--Why, we outfought them in the
morning; we had them fairly whipped until Johnston came up on our right.
The retreat was a mathematical necessity; it was like saying, Two and
two make four. When our line was turned, of course it had to retreat."
"Retreat!" groaned Colburne in bitterness over the recollection of that
calamitous afternoon. "But you didn't see it. They ran shamefully, and
never stopped short of Washington. One man reached New Boston inside of
twenty-four hours. It was a panic unparalleled in history."
"Nonsense! Beg your pardon. Did you never read of Austerlitz and Jena
and Waterloo? Our men did pretty well for militia. I didn't see the
panic, to be sure;--I was picked up before that happened. But I have
talked with some of our officers who did see it, and they told me that
the papers exaggerated it absurdly. Newspaper correspondents ought not
to be allowed in the army. They exaggerate every thing. If we had gained
a victory, they would have made it out something greater than Waterloo.
You must consider how easily inexperience is deceived. Just get the
story of an upset from an old stage-driver, and then from a lady
passenger; the first will tell it as quite an ordinary affair, and the
second will make it out a tragedy. Now when some old grannies of
congressmen and some young ladies of newspaper reporters, none of whom
had ever seen either a victory or a defeat before, got entangled among
half a dozen disordered regiments they naturally concluded that nothing
like it had happened in history. I tell you that it wasn't unparalleled,
and that it ought not to have been considered surprising. Whichever of
those two green armies got repulsed was pretty sure to be routed. That
was a very pretty manoeuvre, though, that coming up of Johnston on our
right. Patterson ought to be court-martialed for his stupidity."
"Stupidity! He is a traitor," exclaimed Colburne.
"Oh! oh!" expostulated the Colonel with a cough. "If we are to try all
our dull old gentlemen as traitors, we shall have our hands full. That's
something like hanging homely old women for witches.--By the way, how
are the Allstons? I mean the--the Ravenels. Well, are they? Young lady
as blooming and blushing as ever? Glad to hear it. Can't stop to call on
them; my train goes in ten minutes.--I am delighted that you are going
to fall in with me. Good bye for to-day."
Away he went, leaving Colburne in wonder over his contrasts of
slanginess and gentility, his mingled audacity and _insouciance_ of
character, and all the picturesque ins and outs of his moral
architecture, so different from the severe plainness of the spiritual
temples common in New Boston. The young man would have preferred that
his future Colonel should not drink and swear; but he would not
puritanically decide that a man who drank and swore could not be a good
officer. He did not know army men well enough to dare judge them with
positiveness; and he certainly would not try them by the moral standards
according to which he tried civilians. The facts that Carter was a
professional soldier, and that he had shed his blood in the cause of the
country, were sufficient to make Colburne regard with charity all his
frank vices.
I must not allow the reader to suppose that I present Carter as a type
of all regular officers. There were men in the old army who never tasted
liquors, who never blasphemed, who did not waste their substance in
riotous living, who could be accused of no evil practices, who were
models of Christian gentlemen. The American service, as well as the
English, had its Havelocks, its Headly Vicars, its Colonel Newcomes.
Nevertheless I do venture to say that it had also a great many men whose
moral habits were cut more or less on the Carter pattern, who swore
after the fashion of the British army in Flanders, whose heads could
carry drink like Dugald Dalgetty's, and who had even other vices
concerning which my discreet pen is silent.
Within a week after the conversation above reported Colburne opened a
recruiting office, advertised the "Putnam Rangers" largely, and adorned
his doorway with a transparency representing Old Put in a brand-new
uniform riding sword in hand down the stone steps of Horse-neck. His
company, as yet in embryo, was one of the ten accepted out of the
nineteen offered for Carter's regiment. It was supposed that the name of
a West Point colonel would render the organization a favorite one with
the enlisting classes; and accordingly all the chiefs of incomplete
companies throughout the State of Barataria wanted to seize the chance
for easy recruiting. But Colburne soon found that the dullness of a
young lawyer's office was none too prosy an exordium for the dullness of
a recruiting office at this particular period. Passed was that
springtide of popular enthusiasm when companies were raised in a day,
when undersized heroes wept at being rejected by the mustering officer,
when well-to-do youths paid a hundred dollars to buy out a chance to be
shot at. Bull Run had disenchanted some romantic natures concerning the
pleasures of war, and the vast enlistments of the summer had drawn
heavily on the nation's fighting material. Moreover, Colburne had to
encounter obstacles of a personal nature, such as did not trouble some
of his competitors. A student, a member of a small and shy social
circle, neither business man nor one of the bone and sinew, not having
belonged to a fire company or militia company, nor even kept a bar or
billiard-saloon, he had no retainers nor partisans nor shopmates to call
upon, no rummy customers whom he could engage in the war-dance on
condition of unlimited whiskey. He had absolutely no personal means of
influencing the classes of the community which furnish that important
element of all military organizations, private soldiers. For a time he
remained almost as solitary in his office as Old Put in the perilous
glory of his breakneck descent. In short the raising of his company
proved a slow, vexatious and expensive business, notwithstanding the
countenance and aid of the Colonel.
Miss Ravenel was much spited in secret when she saw his advertisement;
but she was too proud to expose her interest in the matter by
opposition. What object had she in keeping him at home and out of
danger? Moreover, after the fashion of most southern women, she believed
in fighting, and respected a man the more for drawing the sword, no
matter for which party. After a while, when his activity and
cheerfulness of spirit had returned to him, she began to talk with her
old freedom of expression, and indulged in playful prophecies about the
Bull Runs he would fight, the masterly retreats he would accomplish,
and the captivities he would undergo.
"When you are a prisoner in Richmond," she said, "I'll write to my
Louisiana friends in the southern army and tell them what a spiteful
abolitionist you are. I'll get them to put a colored friend and brother
into the same cell with you. You won't like it. You'll promise to go
back to your law office, if they'll send that fellow to his plantation."
The Doctor was all sympathy and interest, and brimmed over with
prophecies of Colburne's success. He judged the people of Barataria by
the people of Louisiana; the latter preferred gentlemen for officers,
and so of course would the former. Notwithstanding his hatred of slavery
he was still somewhat under the influence of its aristocratical glamour.
He had not yet fully comprehended that the war was a struggle of the
plain people against an oligarchy, and that the plain people had, not
very understandingly but still very resolutely, determined to lead the
fighting as well as to do it. He had not yet full faith that the
northern working-man would beat the southern gentleman, without much
guidance from the northern scholar.
"Don't be discouraged," he said to Colburne. "I feel the utmost
confidence in your prospects. As soon as it is generally understood who
you are and what your character is, you will have recruits to give away.
It is impossible that these bar-tenders and tinkers should raise good
men as easily as a gentleman and a graduate of the university. They may
get a run of ruff-scuff, but it won't last. I predict that your company
will be completed sooner and composed of better material than any other
in the regiment. I would no more give your chance for that of one of
these tinkers than I would exchange a meteorite for its weight in old
nails."
The Doctor abounded in promising but unfruitful schemes for helping
forward the Putnam Rangers. He proposed that Colburne should send a
circular to all the clergymen and Sabbath-school superintendents of the
county, calling upon each parish to furnish the subscriber with only one
good recruit.
"If they do that," said he, "as they unquestionably will when the case
is properly presented to them, why the company is filled at once."
He advised the young man to make an oratorical tour, delivering
patriotic speeches in the village lyceums, and circulating an enlistment
paper at the close of each performance. He told him that it would not be
a bad move to apply to his professional brethren far and near for aid in
rousing the popular enthusiasm. He himself wrote favorable notices of
the captain and his company, and got them printed in the city journals.
One day he came home in a hurry, and with great glee produced the
evening edition of the New Boston Patriot.
"Our young friend has hit it at last," he said to Lillie. "He has called
the muses to his aid. Here is a superb patriotic hymn of his
composition. It is the best thing of the kind that the literature of the
war has produced." (The Doctor was somewhat given to hyperbole in
speaking well of his friends.) "It can't fail to excite popular
attention. I venture to predict that those verses alone will bring him
in fifty men."
"Let me see," said Lillie, making an impatient snatch at the paper; but
the Doctor drew it away, desirous of enjoying the luxury of his own
elocution. To read a good thing aloud and to poke the fire are simple
but real pleasures, which some people cannot easily deny themselves--and
which belong of right, I think, to the head of a family. The Doctor
settled himself in an easy chair, adjusted his collar, put up his
eyeglass, dropped it, put on his spectacles in spite of Lillie's
remonstrances, and read as follows--
A NATIONAL HYMN.
_Tune_: AMERICA.
Be thou our country's Chief
In this our year of grief,
Allfather great;
Go forth with awful tread,
Crush treason's serpent head,
Bring back our sons misled,
And save our State.
Uphold our stripes and stars
Through war's destroying jars
With thy right hand;
Oh God of battles, lead
Where our swift navies speed,
Where our brave armies bleed
For fatherland.
Break every yoke and chain,
Let truth and justice reign
From sea to sea;
Make all our statutes right
In thy most holy sight;
Light us, O Lord of light,
To follow Thee.
God bless our fatherland,
God make it strong and grand
On sea and shore;
Ages its glory swell,
Peace in its borders dwell,
God stand its sentinel
For ever more.
"Let me see it," persisted Lillie, making a second and more successful
reach for the paper. She read the verses to herself with a slight flush
of excitement, and then quietly remarked that they were pretty. It has
been suspected that she kept that paper; at all events, when her father
sought it next morning to cut out the verses and paste them in his
common-place book, he could not find it; and while Lillie pretended to
take an interest in his search, she made no distinct answer to his
inquiries. I am told by persons wise in the ways of young ladies that
they sometimes lay aside trifles of this sort, and are afterwards
ashamed, from some inexplicable cause, of having the fact become patent
even to their nearest relatives. It must not be understood, by the way,
that Miss Ravenel had lost her slight admiration for that full-blown
specimen of the male sex, Colonel Carter. He was too much in the style
of a Louisiana planter not to be attractive to her homesick eyes. She
welcomed his rare visits with her invariable but nevertheless flattering
blush, and talked to him with a vivacity which sent flashes of pain into
the soul of Colburne. The young man admitted the fact of these spasms,
but tried to keep up a deception as to their cause. In his charity
towards himself he attributed them to an unselfish anxiety for the
happiness of that sweet girl, who, he feared, would find Carter an
unsuitable husband, however grandiose as a social ornament and
accomplished as an officer.
In spite of these sentimental possibilities of disagreement between the
Colonel and the Captain, their friendship daily grew stronger. The
former was not in the least influenced by lovelorn jealousy, and set
much store by Colburne as being the only officer in his regiment who was
precisely to his taste. He had desired, but had not been able to obtain,
the young gentlemen of New Boston, the sons of the college professors,
and of the city clergymen. The set was limited in number and not martial
nor enthusiastic in character. It had held aristocratically aloof from
the militia, from the fire companies, from personal interference in
local politics, from every social enterprise which could bring it into
contact with the laboring masses. It needed two years of tremendous war
to break through the shy reserve of this secluded and almost monastic
little circle, and let loose its sons upon the battlefield. The Colonel
was disgusted with his raft of tinkers and tailors, as he called his
officers, although they were mostly good drill-masters and creditably
zealous in learning the graver duties of their new profession. The
regular army, he said, had not been troubled with any such kind of
fellows. The brahminism of West Point and of the old service revolted
from such vulgar associations. It required the fiery breath of many
fierce battles, in which the gallantry of volunteers shone conspicuous,
to blow this feeling into oblivion.
One day the Colonel related in confidence to the Doctor a circumstance
which had given him peculiar disgust. The Governor having permitted him
to nominate his own Lieutenant-Colonel, he had selected an ex-officer of
a three months' regiment who had shown tactical knowledge, and
gallantry. The field position of Major he had finally resolved to demand
for Colburne. Hence an interview, and an unpleasant one, with the chief
magistrate of Barataria.
"Governor," said Carter, "I want that majority for a particular friend
of mine, the best officer in the regiment and the best man for the place
that I know in the State."
The Governor was in his little office reclining in a high-backed oaken
chair, and toasting his feet at a fire. He was a tall, thin, stooping
gentleman, slow in gait because feeble in health, with a benign dignity
of manner and an unvarying amiability of countenance. His eyes were a
pale blue, his hair a light chestnut slightly silvered by fifty years,
his complexion had once been freckled and was still fair, his smile was
frequent and conciliatory. Like President Lincoln he sprang from the
plain people, who were to conquer in this war, and like him he was
capable of intellectual and moral growth in proportion to enlargement of
his sphere of action. A modest, gentle-tempered, obliging man, patriotic
in every impulse, devout in the severe piety of New England,
distinguished for personal honor and private virtues, he was in the
main a credit to the State which had selected him for its loftiest
dignity.
He had risen from his chair and saluted the Colonel with marked respect.
Although he did not like his moral ways, he valued him highly for his
professional ability and courage, and was proud to have him in command
of a Baratarian regiment. To his shy spirit this aristocratic and
martial personage was in fact a rather imposing phenomenon. Carter had a
fearful eye; by turns audaciously haughty and insolently quizzical; and
on this occasion the Governor felt himself more than usually discomposed
under its wide open, steady, confident stare. He seemed even a little
tremulous as he took his seat; he dreaded to disagree with the
representative of West Point brahminism; and yet he knew that he must.
"Captain Colburne."
"Oh--Captain Colburne," hesitated the Governor. "I agree with you,
Colonel, in all that you say of him. I hope that there will be an
opportunity yet of pushing him forward. But just now," he continued with
a smile that was apologetical and almost penitent, "I don't see that I
can give him the majority. I have promised it to Captain Gazaway."
"To Gazaway!" exclaimed Carter. A long breath of angry astonishment
swelled his broad breast, and his cheek would have flushed if any
emotion could have deepened the tint of that dark red bronze.
"You don't mean, I hope, Governor, that you are resolved to give the
majority of my regiment to that boor."
"I know that he is a plain man," mildly answered the Governor, who had
begun life himself as a mechanic.
"Plain man! He is a plain blackguard. He is a toddy-mixer and
shoulder-hitter."
The Governor uttered a little troubled laugh; he was clearly
discomposed, but he was not angry.
"I am willing to grant all that you say of him," he answered. "I have no
personal liking for the man. Individually I should prefer Captain
Colburne. But if you knew the pressure that I am under--"
He hesitated as if reflecting, smiled again with his habitual
gentleness, folded and unfolded his hands nervously, and proceeded with
his explanation.
"You must not expose our little political secrets, Colonel. I am obliged
to permit certain schemes and plots which personally I disapprove of.
Captain Gazaway lives in a very close district, and influences a
considerable number of votes. He is popular among his class of people,
as you can see by the ease with which he filled his company. He and his
friends insist upon the majority. If we refuse it we shall probably lose
the district and a member of Congress. That is a serious matter at this
time when the administration must be supported by a strong house, or the
nation may be shipwrecked. Still, if I were left alone I would take the
risk, and appoint good officers and no others to all our regiments,
satisfied that success in the field is the best means of holding the
masses firm in support of the Government. But in the meantime Burleigh,
who is our candidate in Gazaway's district, is defeated, we will
suppose. Burleigh and Gazaway understand each other. If Gazaway gets the
majority, he promises to insure the district to Burleigh. You see the
pressure I am under. All the leading managers of our party concur in
urging upon me this promotion of Gazaway. I regret extremely that I can
do nothing now for your favorite, whom I respect very much. I hope to do
something for him in the future."
"When an election is not so near at hand," suggested Carter.
"Here," continued the Governor, without noticing the satire, "I have
been perfectly frank with you. All I ask in return is that you will have
patience."
"'Pon my honor, I can't of course find fault with you personally,
Governor," replied the Colonel. "I see how the cursed thing works. You
are on a treadmill, and must keep stepping according to the machinery.
But by--! sir, I wish this whole matter of appointments was in the hands
of the War Department."
"I almost wish it was," sighed the Governor, still without a show of
wounded pride or impatience.
It was this conversation which the Colonel repeated to the scandalized
ears of Doctor Ravenel, when the latter urged the promotion of Colburne.
"I hope you will inform our young friend of your efforts in his favor,"
said the Doctor. "He will be exceedingly gratified, notwithstanding the
disappointment."
"No," said the Colonel. "I beg your pardon; but don't tell him. It would
not be policy, it would not be soldierly, to inform him of any thing
likely to disgust him with the service."
CHAPTER VIII.
THE BRAVE BID GOOD-BYE TO THE FAIR.
Another circumstance disgusted Colonel Carter even more than the affair
of the majority. He received a communication from the War Department
assigning his regiment to the New England Division, and directing him to
report for orders to Major-General Benjamin F. Butler. Over this paper
he fired off such a volley of oaths as if Uncle Toby's celebrated army
in Flanders had fallen in for practice in battalion swearing.
"A civilian! a lawyer, a political wire-puller! a militiaman!" exclaimed
the high-born southern gentleman, West Point graduate and ex-officer of
the regular army. "What does such a fellow know about the organization
or the command of troops! I don't believe he could make out the property
returns of a company, or take a platoon of skirmishers into action. And
I must report to him, instead of he to me!"
Let us suppose that some inconceivably great power had suddenly created
the Colonel a first-class lawyer, and ordered the celebrated
Massachusetts advocate to act under him as junior counsel. We may
conjecture that the latter might have been made somewhat indignant by
such an arrangement.
"I'll make official application to be transferred to some other
command," continued Carter, thinking to himself. "If that won't answer,
I'll go to the Secretary myself about it, irregular as personal
application may be. And if that won't answer, I'll be so long in getting
ready for the field, that our Major-General Pettifogger will probably go
without me."
If Carter attempted to carry out any of these plans, he no doubt
discovered that the civilian General was greater than the West Point
Colonel in the eyes of the authorities at Washington. But it is probable
that old habits of soldierly obedience prevented him from offering much
if any resistance to the will of the War Department, just as it
prevented him from expressing his dissatisfaction in the presence of any
of his subordinate officers. It is true that the Tenth was an
unconscionable long time in getting ready for the field, but that was
owing to the decay of the enlisting spirit in Barataria, and Carter
seemed to be as much fretted by the lack of men as any body. Meantime
not even Colburne, the officer to whom he unbosomed himself the most
freely, overheard a syllable from him in disparagement of General
Butler.
During the leisurely organization and drilling of his regiment the
Colonel saw Miss Ravenel often enough to fall desperately in love with
her, had he been so minded. He was not so minded; he liked to talk with
pretty young ladies, to flirt with them and to tease them; but he did
not easily take sentiment _au grand sérieux_. Self-conceit and a certain
hard-hearted indifference to the feelings of others, combined with, a
love of fun, made him a habitual quiz. He acknowledged the charm of
Lillie's outlines and manner, but he treated her like a child whom he
could pet and banter at his pleasure. She, on the other hand, was a
little too much afraid of him to quiz in return; she could not treat
this mature and seemingly worldly-wise man with the playful impertinence
which sometimes marked her manner towards Colburne.
"Miss Ravenel, have you any messages for New Orleans?" said the Colonel.
"I begin to think that we shall go just there. It will be such a rich
pocket for General Butler's fingers."
In speaking to civilians Carter was not always so careful of the
character of his superiors as in talking to his subordinate officers.
"Just think of the twelve millions of gold in the banks," he proceeded,
"and the sugar and cotton too, and the wholesale nigger-stealing that we
can do to varnish over our robberies. It grieves me to death to think
that the Tenth will soon be street-firing up and down New Orleans. We
shall make such an awful slaughter among your crowds of old admirers!"
"I hope you won't kill them all."
"Oh, I shan't kill them all. I am not going to commit suicide," said the
Colonel with a flippant gallantry which made the young lady color with a
suspicion that she was not profoundly appreciated.
"Do you really think that you are going to New Orleans?" she presently
inquired.
"Ah! Don't ask me. You have a right to command me; but don't, I beg of
you, order me to tell state secrets."
"Then why do you introduce the subject?" she replied, more annoyed by
his manner than by what he said.
"Because the subject has irresistible charms; because it is connected
with your past, and perhaps with your future."
Now if Carter had looked in the least as he spoke, I fear that Miss
Lillie would have been flattered and gratified. But he did not; he had a
quizzing smile on his audacious face; he seemed to be talking to her as
he would to a child of fourteen. Being a woman of eighteen, and
sensitive, she was not pleased by his confident familiarity, and in her
inexperience she showed her annoyance perhaps a little more plainly than
was quite dignified. After watching her for a moment or two with his
wide-open, unwinking eyes, he suddenly changed his tone, and addressed
her with an air of entirely satisfactory respect. The truth is that he
could not help being at times semi-impertinent to young ladies; but then
he had delicacy of breeding enough to know when he was so; he did not
quiz them in mere boorish stupidity.
"I should be truly delighted," he said, "I should consider it one of the
greatest honors possible to me--if I could do something towards opening
your way back to your own home."
"Oh! I wish you could," she replied with enthusiasm. "I do so want to
get back to Louisiana. But I don't want the South whipped. I want
peace."
"Do you? That is a bad wish for me," observed Carter, with his
characteristic frankness, coolly wondering to himself how he would be
able to live without his colonelcy. As to how he could pay the thousand
or two which he owed to tailors, shoemakers, restaurateurs and wine
merchants, that was never to him a matter of marvel or of anxiety, or
even of consideration.
In obedience to a curious instinct which exists in at least some
feminine natures, Miss Ravenel liked the Colonel, or at least felt that
she could like him, just in proportion as she feared him. A man who can
make some women tremble, can, if he chooses, make them love. Pure and
modest as this girl of eighteen was, she could, and I fear, would have
fallen desperately in love with this toughened worldling, had he, with
his despotic temperament, resolutely willed it. In justice to her it
must be remembered that she knew little or nothing about his various
naughty ways. In her presence he never swore, nor got the worse for
liquor, nor alluded to scenes of dissipation. At church he decorously
put down his head while one could count twenty, and made the responses
with a politeness meant to be complimentary to the parties addressed.
Her father hinted; but she thought him unreasonably prejudiced; she made
what she considered the proper allowance for men who wore uniforms. She
had very little idea of the stupendous discount which would have to be
admitted before Colonel Carter could figure up as an angel of light, or
even as a decently virtuous member of human society. She thought she
stated the whole subject fairly when she admitted that he might be
"fast;" but she had an innocently inadequate conception of the meaning
which the masculine sex attaches to that epithet. She applied it to him
chiefly because he had the monumental self-possession, the graceful
audacity, the free and easy fluency, the little ways, the general air,
of certain men in New Orleans who had been pointed out to her as "fast,"
and concerning whom there were dubious whisperings among elderly
dowagers, but of whom she actually knew little more than that they had
good manners and were favorites with most ladies. She had learned to
consider the type a satisfactory one, without at all appreciating its
moral signification. That Colonel Carter had been downright wicked and
was still capable of being so under a moderate pressure of temptation,
she did not believe with any realizing and saving faith. Balzac says
that very corrupt people are generally very agreeable; and it may be
that this extraordinary fact is capable of a simple and sufficient
explanation. They are scared and do not take things seriously; they do
not contradict you on this propriety and that belief, because they care
nothing about proprieties and beliefs; they love nothing, hate nothing,
and are as easy to wear as old slippers. The strict moralist and
pietest, on the other hand, is as hard and unyielding as a boot just
from the hands of the maker; you must conform to his model, or he will
conscientiously pinch your moral corns in a most grievous manner; he
cannot grant you a hair's-breadth without bursting his uppers and
endangering his sole. But pleasant as our corrupt friends are apt to be,
you must not trust your affections and your happiness to them, or you
may find that you have cast your pearls before the unclean.
These reflections are not perhaps of the newest, but they are just as
true as when they were first promulgated.
Concerning the possible flirtation to which I have alluded Doctor
Ravenel was constantly ill at ease. If he found on returning from a walk
that Lillie had received a call from the Colonel during his absence, he
was secretly worried and sometimes openly peevish for hours afterward.
He would break out upon that sort of people, though always without
mentioning names; and the absent Carter would receive a severe lashing
over the back of some gentleman whom Lillie had known or heard of in New
Orleans.
"I don't see how I ever lived among such a disreputable population," he
would say. "I look upon myself sometimes as a man who has just come from
a twenty-five year's residence among the wealthy and genteel pirates of
the Isle of Pines. I actually feel that I have no claims upon a decent
society to be received as a respectable character. If a New Boston man
should refuse to shake hands with me on the ground that my associations
had not been what they should be, I could not find it in my heart to
disagree with him. Among that people I used to wonder at the patience of
the Almighty. I obtained a conception of his long-suffering mercies such
as I could not have obtained in a virtuous community. Just look at that
Colonel McAllister, who used to be the brightest ornament of New Orleans
fashion. A mass of corruption! The immoral odor of him must have been an
offense to the heavens. I can imagine the angels and glorified spirits
looking down at him with disgust, and actually holding their noses, like
the king in Orcagna's picture when he comes across the dead body. There
never was a subject brought into our dissecting room so abominable to
the physical senses as that man was to the moral sense."
"Oh, papa, don't!" implored Miss Lillie. "You talk most horridly when
you get started on certain subjects."
"My conversation isn't half pungent enough to do justice to the perfume
of the subject," insisted the Doctor. "When I speak or try to speak of
that McAllister, and of similar people to be met there and everywhere, I
am obliged to admit the inadequacy of language. Nothing but the last
trump can utter a sound appropriate to such personages."
"But Colonel McAllister is a very respectable middle-aged planter now,
papa," said Lillie.
"Respectable! Oh, my child! do not persist in talking as if you were
still in the nursery. Saint Paul, Pascal, Wilberforce couldn't have
remained respectable if they had been slaveholding planters."
To Colonel Carter personally the Doctor was perfectly civil, as he was
to every one with whom he was obliged to come in contact, including the
reprobated McAllister and his similars. Even had he been of a combative
disposition, or been twice as prejudiced against Carter as he was, he
could not have brought himself in these days and with his present loyal
enthusiasm, to discourteously entreat an officer who wore the United
States uniform and who had bled in the cause of country against treason.
Moreover he felt a certain degree of good-will towards our military
_roué_, as being the patron of his particular friend Colburne. Of this
young man he seemed almost as fond as if he were his father, without,
however, entertaining the slightest thought of gaining him for a
son-in-law. I never knew, nor read of, not even in the most unnatural
novels, an American father who was a matchmaker.
So the autumn and half the winter passed away, without any one falling
in love, unless it might be Colburne. It needed all his good sense to
keep him from it; or rather to keep him from paying Miss Ravenel what
are called significant attentions; for as to his being in love, I admit
it, although he did not. To use old-fashioned language, alarming in its
directness and strength of meaning, I suppose he would have courted her
if she would have let him. But there was something in the young lady's
manner towards him which kept him at arm's length; which had the charm
of friendship, indeed, but no faintest odor of even the possibility of
love, just as certain flowers have beauty but no perfume; which said to
him very gently but also very firmly, "Mr. Colburne, you had better not
be in a hurry."
At times he was under sudden and violent temptation. The trusting Doctor
placed Lillie under his charge to go to one or two concerts and popular
lectures, following therein the simple and virtuous ways of New Boston,
where young ladies have a freedom which in larger and wickeder cities is
only accorded to married women. On the way to and from these amusements,
Lillie's hand resting lightly on his arm, and the obscurity of the
streets veiling whatever reproof or warning might sparkle in her eyes,
his heart was more urgent and his soul less timid than usual.
"I have only one subject of regret in going to the war," he once said;
"and that is that I shall not see you for a long time, and may never see
you again."
There was a magnetic tremulousness in his voice which thrilled through
Miss Ravenel and made it difficult for her to breathe naturally. For a
few seconds she could not answer, any more than he could continue. She
felt as we do in dreams when we seem to stand on the edge of a gulf
wavering whether we shall fall backward into safety or forward into the
unknown. It was one of the perilous and decisive moments of the young
lady's life; but the end of it was that she recovered self-possession
enough to speak before he could rally to pursue his advantage. Ten
seconds more of silence might have resulted in an engagement ring.
"What a hard heart you have!" she laughed. "No greater cause of regret
than that! And here you are, going to lay waste my country, and perhaps
burn up my house. You abolitionists are dreadful."
He immediately changed his manner of conversation with a painful
consciousness that she had as good as ordered him to do so.
"Oh! I have no sort of compunction about turning the South into a
desert," he said, with a poor attempt at making merry. "I mean to take a
bag of salt with me, and sow all Louisiana with it."
And the rest of the dialogue, until he left her at the door of the
hotel, was conducted in the same style of laborious and painful
trifling.
As the day approached for the sailing of the regiment, Colburne looked
forward with dread yet with eagerness to the last interview. At times he
thought and hoped and almost expected that it would bring about some
decisive expression of feeling which should give a desirable direction
to the perverse heart of this inexplicable young lady. Then he reflected
during certain flashes of pure reason, how foolish, how cruel it would
be to win her affection only to quit her on the instant, certainly for
months, probably for years, perhaps for ever. Moreover, suppose he
should lose a leg or a nose in his first battle, how could he demand
that she should keep her vows, and yet how could he give her up? But
these last interviews are frequently unsatisfactory; and the one which
Colburne excitedly anticipated was eminently so. It took place in the
public parlor of the hotel; the Doctor was present, and so were several
dowager boarders. The regiment had marched through the city in the
afternoon, surrounded and cheered by crowds of enthusiastic citizens,
and was already on board of the coasting steamer which would transfer
it to the ocean transport at New York. Colburne had obtained permission
to remain in New Boston until the evening through train from the east.
"This is a proud day for you," said the warm-hearted Doctor. "But I must
say that it is a sad one for me. I am truly grieved to think how long it
may be before we shall see you again."
"I hope not very long," answered the young m
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/41355