"Ride off again. Stop those fires instantly. My God! the fools want to tell the enemy just when we start."
This outburst raised his spirits, and after swallowing a cocktail he sat down to breakfast with some appetite. The toughness of the cold boiled chicken, and the dryness and hardness of the army biscuit served as a further distraction, and enabled him to utter a joke about such delicacies being very suitable for projectiles. But he was still nervous, uneasy, eager, driven by the sin which was past, and dragged by the battle which was before, so that any long reveling at the banquet was impossible. He quitted the empty cracker box which served him for a table, and paced grimly up and down until his orderly came to buckle on his sword, and his servant brought him his horse.
"How are the saddle-pockets, Cato?" he asked.
"Oh, day's chuck full, Gen'l. Hull cold chicken in dis yere one, an' bottle o' whisky in dis yere."
Carter swung himself slowly and heavily into his saddle. He was weary, languid and feverish with want of sleep, and trouble of mind. In truth he was physically and morally a much discomforted Brigadier General. Without waiting for other directions than his example, his five staff officers mounted also and fell into a group behind him. In their rear was the brigade flag-bearer escorted by half-a-dozen cavalry-men. The sombre dawn was turning to red and gold in the east. A monstrous serpent of blue and steel was already creeping toward the ferry, increasing in length as additional regiments streamed into the road from the fields which had served for the bivouac. When Carter had seen his entire brigade file by, he set off at a canter, placed himself at the head of it, and rode on at a walk, silent and gloomy of countenance. Not even the thought that he was now a general, and had a chance to make a reputation for himself as well as for others, could enable him to quite throw off the seriousness and anxiety which beclouds the minds of men during the preliminaries of battle. The remembrance of the misery which he had wrought for his wife was no pleasant distraction. It was like a foreboding; it overshadowed him even when he was not thinking of it distinctly; it seemed to have a menacing arm which pointed him to punishment, calamity, perhaps a grave. He was like a haunted man who sees his following phantom if he turns his head ever so little. Nevertheless, when he squarely faced the subject, and dragged it out separately from the general sombreness of the situation, it did not seem such a very hopeless misfortune. It surely was not possible that she had broken with him for life. He would win her back to him; it must be that she loved him enough to forgive him some day; he would win her back with repentance and victories. As he thought this he dashed a little way into the fields, gave a glance at the line of his brigade, and dispatched a couple of his staff to close up the rearmost files of his regiments.
Presently there was a halt: something probably goingon in front: perhaps a reconnaisance: perhaps battle. The men were allowed to stack arms and sit down by the roadside. Then came news: Enemy in force at the crossing: a direct attack in front out of the question: turning movements to be made somewhere by somebody. It was a full hour after sunrise when an aid of General Emory's arrived with orders for General Carter to report for duty to General Birge.
"What is the situation?" asked the General.
"Two brigades are forming in front," replied the aid. "We have an immense line of skirmishers stretching from the Cane River on the right all along the edge of the woods, and out into the fields. But we can't go at them in front. Their ground is nearly a hundred feet higher than ours, and the crossing isn't fordable. We have got to flank them. Closson is going up with some artillery to establish a position on our left, and from that the cavalry will turn the right wing of the enemy. Birge is to do the same thing on this side with three brigades. He will go up about a mile—three miles from the ferry—ford the river—it's fordable up there—come round on the fellows, and give it to them over the left."
"Very good," said Carter. "If I shouldn't come back, give the General my compliments for his plan. Much obliged, Lieutenant."
At this moment the flat, dull report of a rifled iron gun came from the woods far away in front, followed a few seconds afterward by another report, still flatter in sound and much more distant, the bursting of a shell.
"There goes Closson," laughed the young officer. "Two twenty-pound Parrotts and four three-inch rifles! He'll wake 'em up when he gets fairly a-talking. Good luck to you, General."
And away he rode gaily, at a gallop, in the direction of the ferry.
While Birge's column countermarched, and Carter's brigade filed into the rear of it, the cannonade becamelively in the front, the crashes of the guns alternating rapidly with the crashes of the shells, as Closson went in with all his six pieces, and a Rebel battery of seven responded. After half an hour of this the enemy found that a range of two thousand yards was too long for them, and became silent. Then Closson ceased firing also, and waited to hear from Birge. And now for five or six hours there was no more sound of fighting along this line, except an occasional shot from the skirmishers aimed at puffs of rifle smoke which showed rarely against the pines of the distant bluffs. The infantry column struggled over its long detour by the right; the cavalry tried in vain to force a way through the jungles on the left; the centre listened to the roar of A. J. Smith's battle in the rear, and lunched and waited. At two o'clock Emory put everything in order to advance whenever Birge's musketry should give notice that he was closely engaged. Closson was to move forward on the left, and fire as fast as he could load. The remainder of the artillery was to gallop down the river road to the ferry, and open with a dozen or fifteen pieces. The two supporting brigades were to push through the woods as rapidly as possible and cover the artillery. The skirmishers were to cross the river wherever they could ford it, and keep up a heavy fire in order to occupy the attention of the enemy. Closson started at once, forced five of his three-inch rifles through the wood, went into battle at a range of a thousand yards, and in ten minutes dislodged the Rebel guns from their position. But all this was mere feinting; the heavy fighting must be done by Birge.
The flanking column had a hard road to travel. After fording the Cane River it entered a country of thickets, swamps and gullies so difficult of passage that five hours were spent in marching barely five miles. Two regiments were deployed in advance as skirmishers; the others followed in columns of division doubled on the centre. At one time the whole force went into line of battle on a false alarm of the near presence of the enemy. Then the natureof the ground forced it to move for nearly a mile in the ordinary column of march. It floundered through swampy undergrowths; it forded a deep and muddy bayou. About two o'clock in the afternoon it came out upon a clearing in full view of a bluff, forty or fifty feet in height, flanked on one side by the river, and on the other by a marshy jungle connecting with a lake. Along the brow of this bluff lay Polignac's left wing, an unknown force of Texan riflemen, all good shots, and impetuous fighters, elated moreover with pursuit and the expectation of victory. Here Carter received an order to charge with his brigade.
"Very good," he answered, in a loud, satisfied, confident tone, at the same time throwing away his segar. "Let me look at things first. I want to see where to go in."
A single glance told him that the river side was unassailable. He galloped to the right, inspected the boggy jungle, glared at the lake beyond, and decided that nothing could be done in that quarter. Returning to the brigade he once more surveyed the ground in its front. It would be necessary to take down a high fence, cross an open field, take down a second fence, and advance up the hill under a close fire of musketry. But he was not dispirited by the prospect; he was no longer the silent, sombre man of the morning. The whizzing of the Texan bullets, the sight of the butternut uniforms, and ugly broadbrims which faced him, had cleared his deep breast of oppression, and called the fighting fire into his eyes. He swore loudly and gaily; he would flog those dirty rapscallions; he would knock them high and dry into the other world; he would teach them not to get in his way.
"Go to the regimental commanders," he shouted to his staff officers. "Tell them to push straight at the hill. Tell them, Guide right."
On went the regiments, four in number, keeping even pace with each other. There was a halt at the first fence while the men struggled with the obstacle, climbing it insome places, and pushing it over in others. The General's brow darkened with anxiety lest the temporary confusion should end in a retreat; and spurring close up to the line he rode hither and thither, cheering the soldiers onward.
"Forward, my fine lads," he said. "Down with it. Jump it. Now then. Get into your ranks. Get along, my lads."
On went the regiments, moving at the ordinary quickstep, arms at a right-shoulder-shift, ranks closed, gaps filled, unfaltering, heroic. The dead were falling; the wounded were crawling in numbers to the rear; the leisurely hum of long-range bullets had changed into the sharp, multitudinouswhit-whitof close firing; the stifled crash of balls hitting bones, and the softchuckof flesh-wounds mingled with the outcries of the sufferers; the bluff in front was smoking, rattling, wailing with the incessant file-fire; but the front of the brigade remained unbroken, and its rear showed no stragglers. The right hand regiment floundered in a swamp, but the other hurried on without waiting for it. As the momentum of the movement increased, as the spirits of the men rose with the charge, a stern shout broke forth, something between a hurrah and a yell, swelling up against the rebel musketry, and defying it. Gradually the pace increased to a double-quick, and the whole mass ran for an eighth of a mile through the whistling bullets. The second fence disappeared like frost-work, and up the slope of the hill struggled the panting regiments. When the foremost ranks had nearly reached the summit, a sudden silence stifled the musketry. Polignac's line wavered, ceased firing, broke and went to the rear in confusion. The clamor of the charging yell redoubled for a moment, and then died in the rear of a tremendous volley. Now the Union line was firing, and now the rebels were falling. Such was the charge which carried the crossing, and gained the battle of Cane River.
But Brigadier-General John Carter had already fallen gloriously in the arms of victory.
At the moment that the fatal shot struck him he had forgotten his guilt and remorse in the wild joy of successful battle. He was on horseback, closely following his advancing brigade, and watching its spirited push, and listening to its mad yell, with such a smile of soldierly delight and pride that it was a pleasure to look upon his bronzed, confident, heroic face. It would have been strange to a civilian to hear the stream of joyful curses with which he expressed his admiration and elation.
"God damn them! see them go in!" he said. "God damn their souls! I can put them anywhere!"
He had just uttered these words when a Minie-ball struck him in the left side, just below the ribs, with athudwhich was audible ten feet from him in spite of the noise of the battle. He started violently in the saddle, and then bent slowly forward, laying his right hand on the horse's mane. He was observed to carry his left hand twice toward the wound without touching it, as if desirous, yet fearful, of ascertaining the extent of the injury. The blow was mortal, and he must have known it, yet he retained his ruddy bronze color for a minute or two. With the assistance of two staff officers he dismounted and walked eight or ten yards to the shade of a tree, uttering not a groan, and only showing his agony by the manner in which he bent forward, and the spasmodic clutch with which he held to those supporting shoulders. But when he had been laid down, it was visible enough that there was not half an hour's life in him. His breath was short, his forehead was thickly beaded with a cold perspiration, and his face was of an ashy pallor stained with streaks of ghastly yellow.
"Tell Colonel Gilliman," he said, mentioning the senior colonel of the brigade, and then paused to catch his breath before he resumed, "tell him to keep straight forward."
These were the first words that he had spoken since hewas hit. His voice had already sunk from a clear, sonorous bass to a hoarse whisper. Presently, as the smoking and roaring surge of battle rolled farther to the front a chaplain and a surgeon came up, followed by several ambulance men bearing stretchers. The chaplain was attached to Carter's old regiment, and had served under him since its formation. The surgeon, a Creole by birth, a Frenchman by education, philosophical and roué, belonged to a Louisiana loyal regiment, and had known the General in other days, when he was a dissipated, spendthrift lieutenant of the regular army, stationed at Baton Rouge. He gave him a large cup of whiskey, uncovered the wound, probed it with his finger, and said nothing, looked nothing.
"Why don't you do something?" whispered the chaplain eagerly, and almost weeping.
"I have done all that is—essential," he replied, with a slight shrug of the shoulders.
"How do you feel, General?" asked the chaplain, turning to his dying commander.
"Going," was the whispered answer.
"Going!—Oh, going where?" implored the other, sinking on his knees. "General, have you thought of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ?"
For a moment Carter's deep voice returned to him, as, fixing his stern eyes on the chaplain, he answered, "Don't bother!—where is the brigade?"
Perhaps he thought it unworthy of him to seek God in his extremity, when he had neglected Him in all his hours of health. Perhaps he felt that he owed his last thoughts to his country and his professional duties. Perhaps he did not mean all that he said.
It was strange to note the power of military discipline upon the chaplain. Even in this awful hour, when it was his part to fear no man, he evidently quailed before his superior officer. Under the pressure of a three years' habit of obedience and respect, cowed by rank and that audacious will accustomed to domination, he shrank backinto silence, covering his face with his hands, and no doubt praying, but uttering no further word.
"General, the brigade has carried the position," said one of the staff-officers.
Carter smiled, tried to raise his head, dropped it slowly, drew a dozen labored breaths, and was dead.
"Il a maintenu jusq'au bout son personnage," said the surgeon, letting fall the extinct pulse. "Sa mort est tout ce qu'il y a de plus logique."
So he thought, and very naturally. He had only known him in his evil hours; he judged him as all superficial acquaintances would have judged; he was not aware of the tenderness which existed at the bottom of that passionate nature. With another education Carter might have been a James Brainard or a St. Vincent de Paul. With the training that he had, it was perfectly logical that in his last moments he should not want to be bothered about Jesus Christ.
The body was borne on a stretcher in rear of the victorious columns until they halted for the night, when it was buried in the private cemetery of a planter, in presence of Carter's former regiment. Among the spectators was Colburne, stricken with real grief as he thought of the bereaved wife. Throughout the army the regret was general and earnest over the loss of this brave and able officer, apparently just entering upon a career of long-deserved promotion. In a letter to Ravenel, Colburne related the particulars of Carter's death, and closed with a fervent eulogium on his character as a man and his services as a soldier, forgetting that he had sometimes drunk too deeply, and that there were suspicions against him of other vices. It is thus that young and generous spirits are apt to remember the dead, and it is thus always that a soldier laments for a worthy commander who has fallen on the field of honor.
Lillie wished to return, at least for a while, to her old quarters in the New Boston House. A desire to go back by association to some part of her life which had been happy may have influenced her in this choice; and she was so quietly earnest in it that her father yielded, although he feared that the recollections connected with the place would increase her melancholy. They had been there only three days when he read with a shock the newspaper report of the battle of Cane River, and the death of "the lamented General Carter." He did not dare mention it to her, and sought to keep the journals out of her reach. This was easy enough, for she never went out alone, rarely spoke to any one but her father, and devoted her time mostly to her child and her sewing. But about a week after their arrival, as the Doctor came in to dinner from a morning's reading in the college library, he found her weeping quietly over a letter which lay open in her lap. She handed it to him, merely saying, "Oh, papa!"
He glanced through it hastily; it was Colburne's account of Carter's death.
"I knew this, my dear," he said. "But I did not dare to tell you. I hope you are able to bear it. There is a great deal to bear in this world. But it is for our good."
"Oh, I don't know," she replied with a weary air. She was thinking, not of his general consolations, but of his hope that she could endure her trial; for a trial it was, this sudden death of her husband, though she had thought of him of late only as separated from her forever. After a short silence she sobbed, "I am so sorry I quarreledwith him. I wish I had written to him that I was not angry."
She went on crying, but not passionately, nor with a show of unendurable sorrow. From that time, as he watched the patient tranquillity of her grief, the Doctor conceived a firm hope that she would not be permanently crushed by her afflictions. She kept the letter in her own writing desk, and read it many times when alone; sometimes laying it down with a start to take up the unconscious giggling comforter in the cradle; sometimes telling him what it all meant, and what her tears meant, saying, "Poor baby! Baby's papa is dead."
Only once did an expression savoring of anger at any one force its way through her lips.
"I don't see why I should have been made miserable because others are wicked," she said.
"It is one of the necessary consequences of living," answered the Doctor. "Other people's sins are sometimes brought to our doors, just as other people's infants are sometimes left there in baskets. God has ordained that we shall help bear the burdens of our fellow creatures, even down to the consequences of their crimes. It is one way of teaching us not to sin. I have had my small share of this unpleasant labor. I lost my home and my income because a few men wanted to found a slave-driving oligarchy on the ruins of their country."
"We have had nothing but trials," sighed Lillie.
"Oh yes," said the Doctor. "Life in the average is a mass of happiness, only dotted here and there by trials. Our pleasures are so many that they grow monotonous and are overlooked."
I must now include the history of eight months in a few pages. The Doctor, ignorant of the steamboat transaction, allowed his daughter to draw the money which she had left behind on deposit, considering that Carter's child unquestionably had a right to it. Through the good offices of that amiable sinner, Mrs. Larue (of which he was equallyunaware), he was enabled to let his house in New Orleans as a Government office. Thus provided with ready money and a small quarterly payment, he resumed his literary and scientific labors, translating from a French Encyclopedia for a New York publisher, and occasionally securing a job of mineralogical discovery. The familiar life of former days, when father and daughter were all and all to each other, slowly revived, saddened by recollections, but made joyful also by the new affection which they shared. As out of the brazen vase of the Arabian Nights arose the malignant Jinn whose head touched the clouds, and whose voice made the earth tremble, so out of the cradle of Ravvie arose an influence, perhaps a veritable angel, whose crown was in the heavens, and whose power brought down consolation. There was no cause of inner estrangement; nothing on which father and child could not feel alike. Ravenel had found some difficulty in liking his daughter's husband, but he had none at all in loving his daughter's baby. So, agreeing on all subjects of much importance to either, and disposed by affection and old habit to take a strong interest in each other's affairs, they easily returned to their former ways of much domestic small-talk. Happily for Lillie she was not taciturn, but a prattler, and by nature a light-hearted one. Now prattlers, like workers of all kinds, physical and moral, unconsciously dodge by their activity a great many shafts of suffering which hit their quieter brothers and sisters. A widow who orders her mourning, and waits for it with folded hand and closed lips, is likely to be more melancholy than a widow who must trim her gowns, and make up her caps with her own fingers, and who is thereby impelled to talk of them to her mother, sisters, and other born sympathisers. It was a symptom of returning health of mind when Lillie could linger before the glass, arrange her hair with the old taste, put on a new cap daintily and say, "Papa, how does that look?"
"Very well, my dear," answers papa, scratching awayat his translation. Then, remembering what his child had suffered, and transferring his thoughts to the subject which she proffers for consideration, he adds, "It seems to me that it is unnecessarily stiff and parchment like. It looks as if it was made of stearine."
"Why, that's the material," says Lillie. "Of course it looks stiff; it ought to."
"But why not have some other material?" queries the Doctor, who is as dull as men usually are in matters of the female toilet. "Why not use white silk, or something?"
"Silk, papa!" exclaims Lillie, and laughs heartily. "Who ever heard of using silk for mourning?"
Woe to women when they give up making their own dresses and take to female tailors! Five will then die of broken hearts, of ennui, of emptiness of life, where one dies now.
But her great diverter and comforter was still her child. Like most women she was born for maternity more distinctly and positively even than for love. She had not given up her dolls until she was fourteen; and then she had put them reverentially and tenderly away in a trunk where she could occasionally go and look at them; and less than seven years later she had a living doll, her own, her soul's doll, to care for and worship. It was charming to see this slender, Diana-like form, overloaded and leaning, but still bearing, with an affection which was careless of fatigue, the disproportionate weight of that healthy, succulent, ponderous Ravvie. His pink face, and short flaxen hair bobbed about her shoulders, and his chubby hands played with her nose, lips, hair, and white collars. When he went out on an airing she almost always went with him, and sometimes took the sole charge of his wicker wagon, proud to drag it because of its illustrious burden. Ravvie had a promenade in the morning with mamma and nurse, and another late in the afternoon with mamma and grandpapa. Lillie meant to make him healthy bykeeping him constantly in the open air, and burning him brown in the sunshine, after the sensible fashion of southern nurseries, and in consonance with the teaching of her father. The old Irish nurse, a veteran and enthusiast in her profession, had more than one contest with this provokingly devoted mother. Not that Rosann objected to the child being out; she would have been glad to have him in the wicker wagon from breakfast to dinner, and from dinner to sundown; but she wanted to be the sole guide and companion of his wanderings. When, therefore she was ordered to stay at home and do the small washing and ironing, while the mistress went off with the baby, she set up an indignant ullaloo, and threatened departure without warning. Sometimes Lillie was satirical and said, "Rosann, since you can't nurse the baby, I hope you will allow me to do so."
To which Rosann, with Irish readiness, and with an apologetic titter, would reply, "An' since God allows ye to do it, ma'am, I don't see as I can make an objection."
"I would turn her away if she wasn't so fond of Ravvie," affirmed Lillie in a pet. "She is the most selfish creature that I ever saw. She wants him the whole time. I declare, papa, I only keep her out of pity. I believe it would break her heart to deprive her of the child."
"It's a very odd sort of selfishness," observed the Doctor. "Most people would call it devotion, self-abnegation, or something of that sort."
"But he isn't her child," answered Lillie, half vexed, half smiling. "She thinks he is. I actually believe she thinks that she had him. But she didn't. I did."
She tossed her head with a pretty air of defiance, which was as much as to say that she was not ashamed of the feat.
Long before Master Ravvie could say a word in any language, she had commenced the practice of talking to him only in French. He should be a linguist from his cradle; and she herself would be his teacher. When hegot old enough her father should instruct him in the sciences, and, if he chose to be a doctor, in the theory and practice of medicine. They would never send him to school, nor to college: thus they would save money, have him always by them and keep him from evil. Concerning this project she had long arguments with her father, who thought a boy should be with boys, learn to rough it away from home, study human nature as well as languages and sciences, and grow up with a circle of emulators and life comrades.
"You will give up this little plan of yours," he said, "when he gets old enough to make it necessary. When he is fifteen he won't wear the shell that fits him now, and meantime we must let another one grow on his back against he needs it."
But Lillie could not yet see that her child ought even to be separated from her. She was constantly arranging, and re-arranging her imaginary future in such ways as seemed best fitted to make him a permanent feature of it. In every cloud-castle that she built he occupied a central throne, with her father sitting on the right hand and she on the left. Of course, however, she was chiefly occupied with his present, desiring to make it as delightful to him as possible.
"I wonder if Ravvie would like the sea-shore," she said, on one of the first warm days of summer.
"Why so?" asks papa.
"Oh, it would be so pleasant to spend a week or so on the sea-shore. I think I could get a little fatter and stronger if I might have the sea-breeze and sea-bathing. I am tired of being so thin. Besides, it would be such fun to take Ravvie down to the beach and see him stare at the waves rolling in. How round his eyes would be! Do you remember how he used to turn his head up when he was a month old, and stare at the sky with his eyes set like a doll-baby's. I wish I knew what he used to think of it."
"I presume he thought just about as much as the hollyhocks do when they turn their faces toward the sun," says the Doctor.
"For shame, papa! Do you compare him to a vegetable?"
"Not now. But in those days he was only a grade above one. There wasn't much in him but possibilities. Well; he may have perceived that the sky was very fine; but then the hollyhocks perceive as much."
"What! don't you suppose he had a soul?"
"Oh yes. He had a tongue too, but he hadn't learned to talk with it. I doubt whether his soul was of much use to him in that stage of his existence."
"Papa, it seems to me that you talk like an infidel. Now if Ravvie had died when he was a month old, I should have expected to meet him in Heaven—that is, if I am ever fit to go there."
"I have no doubt you would—no doubt of it," affirmed the Doctor with animation. "I never intended to dispute the little man's immortality."
"Then why did you call him a hollyhock?"
"My dear, I take it all back. He isn't a hollyhock and never was."
"If we can hire a house I want it in the suburbs," said Lillie, after a meditation. "I want it outside the city so that Ravvie can have plenty of air. His room must be on the sunny side, papa—hear?"
"Yes," answered papa, who had also had his revery, probably concerning Smithites and Brownites.
"You don't hear at all," said Lillie. "You don't pay any attention."
"Well, my child, there is plenty of time. We sha'n't have a house for the next five minutes."
"I know it. Not for five years perhaps. But I want you to pay attention when I am talking about Ravvie."
Meantime the two were very popular in New Boston. As southern refugees, as martyrs in the cause of loyalty,as an organizer of free black labor, as the widow of a distinguished Union officer, both and each were personages whom the fervent Federalists of the little city delighted to honor. As soon as they would receive calls or accept of new acquaintances they had all that they wanted. Professor Whitewood had been killed at Chancellorsville, although bodily more than three hundred miles from the field of battle; and his son was now worth eighty thousand dollars, besides seven hundred dollars yearly from a tutorship, and the prospect of succeeding to his father's position. This well-to-do, virtuous, amiable, and intelligent young gentleman was more than suspected of being in love with the penniless widow. His sister made the affair a subject of much meditation, and even of prayer, being anxious above all things on earth, that her brother should be happy. Whitewood was more than once observed to drop his Hindustani, sidle out upon the green and beg the privilege of drawing Ravvie's baby-wagon; and what was particularly suspicious about the matter was, that he never attempted to join Rosann in this manner, but only Mrs. Carter. Lillie colored at the significance of the shyly-preferred request, and would not consent to it, but nevertheless was not angry. Her bookish admirer's interest in her increased when he found that she aided her father in his translations; for from his childhood he had been taught to like people very much in proportion to their intellectuality and education. Of evenings he was frequently to be seen in the little parlor of the Ravenels on the fourth floor of the New Boston House. Lillie would have been glad to have him bring his sister, so that they four could make up a game of whist; but since the dawn of history no Whitewoods had ever handled a pack of cards, and the capacity of learning to do so was not in them. Moreover they still retained some of the old New England scruples of conscience on the subject. Whitewood talked quite as much with the Doctor as with Lillie; quite as much about minerals and chemistry asabout subjects with which she was familiar; but it was easy to see that, if he had known how, he would have made his conversation altogether feminine. At precisely ten o'clock he rose with a start and sidled to the door; stuck there a few moments to add a postscript concerning science or classic literature; then with another start opened the door, and said, "Good evening" after he was in the passage.
"How awkward he is!" Lillie would sometimes observe.
"Yes—physically," was the Doctor's answer. "But not morally. I don't see that he tramples on any one's feelings, or breaks any one's heart."
The visitor gone, father and daughter walked in the hall while Rosann opened the windows for ventilation. After that the baby's cradle was dragged into the parlor with much ceremony, the whole family either directing or assisting; a mattress and blankets were produced from a closet and made up on the floor into a bed for the nurse; grandpapa kissed both his children and went to his own room next door; and Lillie proceeded to undress, talking to Rosann about Ravvie.
"An' do ye know, ma'am, what the little crater did to me to-day?" says the doting Irishwoman. "He jist pulled me spectacles off me nose an' stuck 'em in his own little mouth. He thought, mebbe, he could see with his mouth. An' thin he lucked me full in the face as cunnin as could be, an' give the biggest jump that iver was. I tell ye, ma'am, babies is smarter now than they used to be."
This remarkable anecdote, with the nurse's commentary, being repeated to the Doctor in the morning, he philosophised as follows.
"There may be something in Rosann's statement. It is not impossible that the babies of a civilized age are more exquisitely sensitive beings than the babies of antique barbarism. It may be that at my birth I was a little ahead of my Gallic ancestor at his birth. Perhaps I was able to compare two sensations as early in life as he was able toperceive a single sensation. It might be something like this. He at the age of ten days would be capable of thinking, 'Milk is good.' I at the same age could perhaps go so far as to think, 'Milk is better than Dally's Mixture.' Babies now-a-days have need of being cleverer than they used to be. They have more dangers to evade, more medicines to spit out."
"I know what you mean," said Lillie. "You always did rebel against Dally. But what was I to do? Hewouldhave the colic."
"I know it! He would! But Dally couldn't help it. Don't, for pity's sake, vitiate and torment your poor little angel's stomach, so new to the atrocities of this world, with drugs. These mixers of baby medicines ought to be fed on nothing but their own nostrums. That would soon put a stop to their inventions of the adversary."
"Oh dear," sighed Lillie. "I don't know what to do with him sometimes. I amsoafraid of not doing enough, or doing too much!"
Then theargumentem ad hominemoccurred to her: thatargumentemwhich proves nothing, and which women love so well.
"But you have given him things, papa. Don't you remember the red fluid?"
"I never gave it to him," asserted the Doctor.
"But you gave it to me to give to him—when you threw the Dally out of the window."
"And do you know what the red fluid was?"
"No. It did him good. It was just as powerful as the Dally. Consequently it must have been a drug."
"It was pure water, slightly colored. That was all, upon my honor—as we say down south. It used to amuse me to see you drop it according to prescription—five drops for a dose—very particular not to give him six. He might have drunk the vial full."
"Papa," said Lillie when she had fully realized thisawful deception, "you have a great many sins to repent of."
"Poisoning my own grandchild is not one of them, thank Heaven!"
"But suppose Ravvie had become really sick?" she suggested more seriously.
"Ah! what a clear conscience I should have had! Nobody could have laid it to me."
"How healthy, and strong, and big he is?" was her next observation. "He will be like you. I would bet anything that he will be six feet high."
Ravenel laughed at a bet which would have to wait some sixteen or eighteen years for a decision, and said it reminded him of a South Carolinian who offered to wager that in the year two thousand slavery would prevail the world over.
"This whole subject of infancy's perceptions, and opinions is curious," he observed presently. "What a world it would be, if it were exactly as these little people see it! Yes, and what a world it would be, if it were as we grown people see it in our different moods of depression, exhilaration, vanity, spite, and folly! I suppose that only Deity sees it truly."
In this kind of life the spring grew into summer, the summer sobered into autumn, and the autumn began to grow hoary with winter. Eight months of paternal affection received, and maternal cares bestowed had decided that Lillie should neither die of her troubles nor suffer a life-long blighting of the soul. In bloom she was what she used to be; in expression alone had she suffered a change. Sometimes sudden flashes of profoundly felt pain troubled her eyes, as she thought of her venture of love and its great shipwreck. She had not the slightest feeling of anger toward her husband; she could not be angry with the buried father of her child. But she felt, and sometimes reproached herself for it, that his crime had made her grieve less over his death, just as his death had led herto pardon his crime. She often prayed for him, not that she believed in Purgatory and its deliverance, but rather because the act soothed painful yearnings which she could not dispel by reason alone. Her devotional tendencies had been much increased by her troubles. In fact, she was far more religious than some of the straiter New Bostonians were able to believe when they knew that she played whist, and noted how tastefully she was dressed, and how charmingly graceful she was in social intercourse. She never went to sleep without reading a chapter in the Bible, and praying for her child, her father, and herself. It is possible that she may have forgotten the heathen, the Jews, and the negroes. Well, she had not been educated to think much of far away people, but rather to interest herself in such as were near to her, and could be made daily happy or unhappy by her conduct. She almost offended Mrs. Whitewood by admitting that she loved Ravvie a thousand times more than the ten tribes, or, as Mrs. W. called them, the wandering sheep of the house of Israel. Nor could this excellent lady enlist her interest in favor of the doctrine of election, owing perhaps to the adverse remarks of Doctor Ravenel.
"My dear madame," he said, "let us try to be good, repent of our short-comings, trust in the atonement, and leave such niceties to those whose business it is to discuss them. Doctrines are no more religion than geological bird-tracks are animated nature. Doctrines are the footprints of piety. You can learn by them where devout-minded men have trod in their searchings after the truth. But they are not in themselves religion, and will not save souls."
"But think of the great and good men who have made these doctrines the study and guide of their lives," said Mrs. Whitewood. "Think of our Puritan forefathers."
"I do," answered the Doctor. "I think highly of them. They have my profoundest respect. We are still moving under the impetus which they gave to humanity. Deadas they are, they govern this continent. At the same time they must have been disagreeable to live with. Their doctrines made them hard in thought and manner. When I think of their grimness, uncharity, inclemency, I am tempted to say that the sinners of those days were the salt of the earth. Of course, Mrs. Whitewood, it is only a temptation. I don't succumb to it. But now, as to these doctrines, as to merely dogmatic religion, it reminds me of a story. This story goes (I don't believe it), that an ingenious man, having found that a bandage drawn tight around the waist will abate the pangs of hunger, set up a boarding-house on the idea. At breakfast the waiters strapped up each boarder with a stout surcingle. At dinner the waistbelts were drawn up another hole—or two, if you were hungry. At tea there was another pull on the buckle. The story proceeds that one dyspeptic old bachelor found himself much better by the evening of the second day, but that the other guests rebelled and left the house in a body, denouncing the gentlemanly proprietor as a humbug. Now some of our ethical purveyors remind me of this inventor. They put nothing into you; they give you no sustaining food. They simply bind your soul, and now and then take up a hole in your moral waistbelt."
It is pretty certain that Lillie even felt more interest in Captain Colburne than in the vanished Hebrews. It will be remembered that she has never ceased to like him since she met him, more than three years ago, in this same New Boston House, which is now in some faint degree fragrant to her with his memory. Here commenced that loyal affection which has followed her through her love for another, her marriage, and her maternity, and which has risked life to save her from captivity. She would be ungrateful if she did not prefer him in her heart to every other human being except her father and Ravvie. Next to her intercourse with this same parent and child, Colburne's letters were her chief social pleasures. They were invariably directed to the Doctor; but if she got at themfirst, she had no hesitation about opening them. It was her business and pleasure also to file them for preservation.
"If he never returns," she said, "I will write his life. But how horrible to hear of him killed!"
"In five months more his three years will be up," observed the Doctor. "I hope that he will be protected through the perils that remain."
"I hope so," echoed Lillie. "I wonder if the war will last long enough to need Ravvie. He shall never go to West Point."
"He is pretty certain not to go for the next fourteen years," said Ravenel, smiling at this long look ahead.
Lillie sighed; she was thinking of her husband; it was West Point which had ruined his noble character; nothing else could account for such a downfall; and her child should not go there.
In July (1864) they heard that the Nineteenth Corps had been transferred to Virginia, and during the autumn Colburne's letters described Sheridan's brilliant victories in the Shenandoah Valley. The Captain was present in the three pitched battles, and got an honorable mention for gallantry, but no promotion. Indeed advancement was impossible without a transfer, for, although his regiment had only two field-officers, it was now too much reduced in numbers to be entitled to a colonel. More than two-thirds of the rank and file, and more than two-thirds of the officers had fallen in those three savage struggles. Nevertheless the young man's letters were unflagging in their tone of elation, bragging of the bravery of his regiment, describing bayonet charges through whistling storms of hostile musketry, telling of captured flags and cannon by the half hundred, affectionate over his veteran corps commander, and enthusiastic over his youthful general in chief.
"Really, that is a most brilliant letter," observed Ravenel, after listening to Colburne's account of the victory of Cedar Creek. "That is the most splendid battle-piecethat ever was produced by any author, ancient or modern," he went on to say in his enthusiastic and somewhat hyperbolical style. "Neither Tacitus nor Napier can equal it. Alison is all fudge and claptrap, with his granite squares of infantry and his billows of cavalry. One can understand Colburne. I know just how that battle of Cedar Creek was fought, and I almost think that I could fight such an one myself. There is cause and effect, and their relations to each other, in his narrative. When he comes home I shall insist upon his writing a history of this war."
"I wish he would," said Lillie, with a flash of interest for which she blushed presently.
On or about the first of January, 1865, Lillie chanced to go out on a shopping excursion, and descended the stairway of the hotel just in time to catch sight of a newly arrived guest, who was about entering his room on the first story. One servant directed the unsteady step and supported the wavering form of the stranger, while another carried a painted wooden box eighteen or twenty inches square, which seemed to be his sole baggage. As Lillie was in the broad light and the invalid was walking from her down a dark passage, she could not see how thin and yellow his face was, nor how weather-stained, threadbare, and even ragged was his fatigue uniform. But she could distinguish the dark blue cloth, and gilt buttons which her eye never encountered now without a sparkle of interest.
She had reached the street before the question occurred to her. Could it be Captain Colburne? She reasoned that it could not be, for he had written to them only a fortnightago without mentioning either sickness or wounds, and the time of his regiment would not be up for ten days yet. Nevertheless she made her shopping tour a short one for thinking of that sick officer, and on returning to the hotel she looked at the arrival-book, regardless of the half-dozen students who lounged against the office counter. There, written in the clerk's hand, was "Capt. Colburne, No. 18." As she went up stairs she could not resist the temptation of passing No. 18, and was nearly overcome by a sudden impulse to knock at the door. She wanted to see her best friend, and to know if he were really sick, and how sick, and whether she could do anything for him. She determined to send a servant to make instant inquiries; but on reaching her room she found her father playing with Ravvie.
"Papa, Captain Colburne is here," were her first words.
"Is it possible!" exclaimed the Doctor, leaping up with delight. "Have you seen him?"
"Not to speak with him. I am afraid he is sick. He was leaning on the porter's arm. He is in number eighteen. Do go and ask how he is."
"I will. You are certain that it is our Captain Colburne?"
"It must be," answered Lillie as he went out; and then thought with a blush, "Will papa laugh at me if I am mistaken?"
When Ravenel rapped at the door of No. 18, a deep but rather hoarse voice answered, "Come in."
"My dear friend!" exclaimed the Doctor, rushing into the room; but the moment that he saw the Captain he stopped in surprise and dismay.
"Don't get up," he said. "Don't stir. Bless me! how long have you been in this way?"
"Only a little while—a month or two," answered Colburne with his customary cheerful smile. "Soon be all right again. Sit down."
He was stretched at full length on his bed, evidentlyquite feeble, his eyes underscored with lines of blueish yellow, his face sallow and features sharpened. The eyes themselves were heavy and dull with the effects of the opium which he had taken to enable him to undergo the day's journey. Besides his long brown mustache, which had become ragged with want of care, he had on a beard of three weeks' growth; and his face and hands were stained with the dust and smirch of two days' continuous railroad travel, which he had not yet had time to wash away—in fact, as soon as he had reached his room he had thrown himself on the bed and fallen asleep. His only clothing was a summer blouse of dark blue flannel, a common soldier's shirt of knit woolen, Government trousers of coarse light-blue cloth without a welt, and brown Government stockings worn through at toe and heel. On the floor lay his shoes, rough kip-skin brogans, likewise of Government issue. All of his clothing was ineradically stained with the famous mud of Virginia; his blouse was threadbare where the sword-belt went, and had a ragged bullet-hole through the collar. Altogether he presented the spectacle of a man pretty thoroughly worn out in field service.
"Is that all you wear in this season?" demanded, or rather exclaimed the Doctor. "You will kill yourself."
Colburne's answering laugh was so feeble that its cheerfulness sounded like mockery.
"There isn't a chance of killing me," he said. "I am not cold. On the contrary, I am suffering with the heat of these fires and close rooms. It's rather odd, considering how run down I am. But actually I have been quarreling all the way home to keep my window in the car open, I was so stifled for want of air. Three years spent out of doors makes a house seem like a Black Hole of Calcutta."
"But no vest!" urged the Doctor. "It's enough to guarantee you an inflammation of the lungs."
"I hav'n't seen my vest nor any part of my full uniformfor six months," said Colburne, much amused. "You don't know till you try it how hardy a soldier can be, even when he is sick. My only bed-clothing until about the first of November was a rubber blanket. I will tell you. When we left Louisiana in July we thought we were going to besiege Mobile, and consequently I only took my flannel suit and rubber blanket. It was enough for a southern summer campaign. Henry had all he could do to tote his own affairs, and my rations and frying-pan. You ought to have seen the disgust with which he looked at his bundle. He began to think that he would rather be respectable, and industrious, and learn to read, than carry such a load as that. His only consolation was that he would soon steal a horse. Well, I hav'n't seen my trunk since I left it on store in New Orleans, and I don't know where it is, though I suppose it may be in Washington with the rest of the baggage of our division. I tell you this has been a glorious campaign, this one in the Shenandoah; but it has been a teaser for privations, marching, and guard-duty, as well as fighting. It is the first time that I ever knocked under to hardships. Half-starved by day, and half-frozen by night. I don't think that even this would have laid me out, however, if I hadn't been poisoned by the Louisiana swamps. Malarious fever is what bothers me."
"You will have to be very careful of yourself," said the Doctor. He noticed a febrile agitation in the look and even in the conversation of the wasted young hero which alarmed him.
"Oh no," smiled Colburne. "I will be all right in a week or two. All I want is rest. I will be about in less than a week. I can travel now. You don't realize how a soldier can pick himself up from an ordinary illness. Isn't it curious how the poor fellows will be around on their pins, and in their clothes till they die? I think I am rather effeminate in taking off my shoes. I only did it out of compliment to the white coverlet. Doesn't it lookreproachfully clean compared with me? I am positively ashamed of my filthiness, although I didn't suspect it until I got into the confines of peaceful civilization. I assure you I am a tolerably tidy man for our corps in its present condition. I am a very respectable average."
"We are all ready here to worship your very rags."
"Well. After I get rid of them. I must have a citizen's suit as soon as possible."
"Can't you telegraph for your trunk?"
"I have. But that's of no consequence. No more uniform for me. I am home to be mustered out of service. I can't stay any longer, you understand. I am one of the original officers, and have never been promoted, and so go out with the original organization. If we could have re-enlisted eighteen men more, we should have been a full veteran regiment, and I could have staid. I came home before the organization. I was on detached duty as staff-officer, and so got a leave of absence. You see I wanted to be here as early as possible in order to make out my men's account, and muster-out rolls. I have a horrible amount of work to do this week."
"Work!" exclaimed Ravenel. "You are no more fit to work than you are to fly. You can't work, and you sha'n't."
"But I must. I am responsible. If I don't do this job I may be dismissed the service, instead of being mustered out honorably. Do you think I an going to let myself be disgraced? Sooner die in harness!"
"But, my dear friend, you can't do it. Your very talk is feverish; you are on the edge of delirium."
"Oh no! I can't help laughing at you. You don't know how much a sick man can do, if he must. He can march and fight a battle. I have done it, weaker than this. Thank God, I have my company papers. They are in that box—all my baggage—all I want. I can make my first muster-out roll to-morrow, and hire somebody to do the four copies. You see it must be done, for my men'ssake as well as mine. By Jove! we get horrible hard measure in field service. I have gone almost mad about that box during the past six months; wanted it every day and couldn't have it for lack of transportation; the War Department demanding returns, and hospitals demanding descriptive lists of wounded men; one threatening to stop my pay, and another to report me to the Adjutant-General; and I couldn't make out a paper for lack of that box. If I had only known that we were coming to Virginia, I could have prepared myself, you see; I could have made out a memorandum-book of my company accounts to carry in my pocket; but how did I know?"
He spoke as rapidly and eagerly as if he were pleading his case before the Adjutant-General, and showing cause why he should not be dishonorably dismissed the service. After a moment of gloomy reflection he spoke again, still harping on this worrying subject.
"I have six months' unfinished business to write up, or I am a disgraced man. The Commissary of Musters will report me to the Adjutant-General, and the Adjutant-General will dismiss me from the service. It's pretty justice, isn't it?"
"But if you are a staff-officer and on detached service?"
"That doesn't matter. The moment the muster-out day comes, I am commandant of company, and responsible for company papers. I ought to go to work to-day. But I can't. I am horribly tired. I may try this evening."
"No no, my dear friend," implored the Doctor. "You mustn't talk in this way. You will make yourself sick. Youaresick. Don't you know that you are almost delirious on this subject?"
"Am I? Well, let's drop it. By the way, how are you? And how is Mrs. Carter? Upon my honor I have been shamefully selfish in talking so much about my affairs. How is Mrs. Carter, and the little boy?"
"Very well, both of them. My daughter will be glad to see you. But you mustn't go out to-day."
"No no. I want some clothes. I can't go out in these filthy rags. I am loaded and disreputable with the sacred southern soil. If you will have the kindness to ring the bell, I will send for a tailor. I must be measured for a citizen's suit immediately."
"My dear fellow, why won't you undress and go to bed? I will order a strait-jacket for you if you don't."
"Oh, you don't know the strength of my constitution," said Colburne, with his haggard, feverish, confident smile.
"Upon my soul, you look like it!" exclaimed the Doctor, out of patience. "Well, what will you have for dinner? Of course you are not going down."
"Not in these tatters—no. Why, I think I should like—let me see—some good—oysters and mince pie."
The Doctor laughed aloud, and then threw up his hands desperately.
"I thought so. Stark mad. I'll order your dinner myself, sir. You shall have some farina."
"Just as you say. I don't care much. I don't want anything. But it's a long while since I have had a piece of mince pie, and it can't be as bad a diet as raw pork and green apples."
"I don't know," answered the Doctor. "Now then, will you promise to take a bath and go regularly to bed as soon as I leave you?"
"I will. How you bully a fellow! I tell you I'm not sick, to speak of. I'm only a little worried."
When Ravenel returned to his own apartment he found Lillie waiting to go down to dinner.
"How is he?" she asked the moment he opened the door.
"Very badly. Very feverish. Hardly in his right mind."
"Oh no, papa," remonstrated Lillie. "You always exaggerate such things. Now he isn't very bad; is he? Is he as sick as he was at Donnelsonville? You know howfast he got well then. I don't believe he is in any danger. Is he?"
She took a strong interest in him; it was her way to take an interest and to show it. She had much of what the French call expansion, and very little of self-repression whether in feeling or speech.
"I tell you, my dear, that I am exceedingly anxious. He is almost prostrated by weakness, and there is a febrile excitement which is weakening him still more. No immediate danger, you understand; but the case is certainly a very delicate and uncertain one. So many of these noble fellows die after they get home! I wouldn't be so anxious, only that he thinks he has a vast quantity of company business on hand which must be attended to at once."
"Can't we do it, or some of it, for him?"
"Perhaps so. I dare say. Yes, I think it likely. But now let us hurry down. I want to order something suitable for his dinner. I must buy a dose of morphine, too, that will make him sleep till to-morrow morning. Hemustsleep, or he won't live."
"Oh, papa! I hope you didn't talk that way tohim. You are enough to frighten patients into the other world, you are always so anxious about them."
"Not much danger of frightening him," groaned the Doctor. "I wish he could be scared—just a little—just enough to keep him quiet."
After dinner the Doctor saw Colburne again. He had bathed, had gone to bed, and had an opiated doze, but was still in his state of fevered nervousness, and showed it, unconsciously to himself, in his conversation. Just now his mind was running on the subject of Gazaway, probably in connection with his own lack of promotion; and he talked with a bitterness of comment, and an irritation of feeling which were very unusual with him.
"You know the secret history of his rehabilitation," said he. "Well, there is one consolation in the miserable affair. He fooled our sly Governor. You know it wasagreed, that, after Gazaway had been whitewashed with a lieutenant-colonelcy, he should show his gratitude by carrying his district for our party, and then resign to make way for the Governor's nephew, Major Rathbun. But it seems Gazaway had his own ideas. He knew a trick or two besides saving his bacon on the battle-field. His plan was that he should be the candidate for Congress from the district. When he found that he couldn't make that work, he did the next best thing, and held on to his commission. Wasn't it capital? It pays me for being overlooked, during three years, in spite of the recommendations of my colonel and my generals. There he is still, Lieutenant-Colonel, with the Governor's nephew under him to do his fighting and field duty. I don't know how Gazaway got command of the conscript camp where he has been for the last year. I suppose he lobbied for it. But I know that he has turned it to good account. One of my sergeants was on detached duty at the camp, and was taken behind the scenes. He told me that he made two hundred dollars in less than a month, and that Gazaway must have pocketed ten times as much."
"How is it possible that they have not ferreted out such a scoundrel!" exclaims the horror-stricken Doctor.
"Ah! the War Department has had a great load to carry. The War Department has had its hands too full of Jeff Davis to attend to every smaller rascal."
"But why didn't Major Rathbun have him tried for his old offences? It was the Major's interest to get him out of his own way."
"Those were condoned by the acceptance of his resignation. Gazaway died officially with full absolution; and then was born again in his reappointment. He could go to work with clean hands to let substitutes escape for five hundred dollars a-piece, while the sergeant who allowed the man to dodge him got fifty. Isn't it a beautiful story?"
"Shocking! But this is doing you harm. You don'tneed talk—you need sleep. I have brought you a dose to make you hold your tongue till to-morrow morning."
"Oh, opium. I have been living on it for the last forty-eight hours—the last week."
"Twelve more hours won't hurt you. You must stop thinking and feeling. I tell you honestly that I never saw you in such a feverish state of excitation when you were wounded. You talk in a manner quite unlike yourself."
"Very well," said Colburne with a long-drawn sigh, as if resigning himself by an effort to the repugnant idea of repose.
Here we may as well turn off Lieutenant-Colonel Gazaway, since he will not be executed by any act of civil or military justice. Removed at last from the conscript camp, and ordered to the front, he at once sent in his resignation, backed up by a surgeon's certificate of physical disability, retired from the service with a capital of ten or fifteen thousand dollars, removed to New York, set up a first-class billiard-saloon, turned democrat once more, obtained a couple of city offices, and now has an income of seven or eight thousand a-year, a circle of admiring henchmen, and a reputation for ability in business and politics. When he speaks in a ward meeting or in a squad of speculators on 'Change, his words have ten times the influence that would be accorded in the same places to the utterances of Colburne or Ravenel. I, however, prefer to write the history of these two gentlemen, who appear so unsuccessful when seen from a worldly point of view.
Fearing to disturb Colburne's slumbers, Ravenel did not visit him again until nine o'clock on the following morning. He found him dressed, and looking over a mass of company records, preparatory to commencing his muster-out roll.
"You ought not to do that," said the Doctor. "You are very feverish and weak. All the strength you have is from opiates, and you tax your brain fearfully by driving it on such fuel."
"But it must be done, Doctor," he said with a scowl, as if trying to see clearly through clouds of fever and morphine. "It is an awful job," he added with a sigh. "Just see what it is. I must have the name of every officer and man that ever belonged to the company—where, when, and by whom enlisted—where, when, and by whom mustered in—when and by whom last paid—what bounty paid and what bounty due—balance of clothing account—stoppages of all sorts—facts and dates of every promotion and reduction, discharge, death and desertion—number and date of every important order. Five copies! Why don't they demand five hundred? Upon my soul, it doesn't seem as if I could do it."
"Why not make some of your men do it?"
"I have none here. I am the only man who will go out on this paper. There is not a man of my original company who has not either re-enlisted as a veteran, or deserted, or died, or been killed, or been discharged because of wounds, or breaking down under hardships."
"Astonishing!"
"Very curious. That Shenandoah campaign cut up our regiment wonderfully. We went there with four hundred men, and we had less than one hundred and fifty when I left."
The civilian stared at the coolness of the soldier, which seemed to him much like hard-heartedness. The latter rubbed his forehead and eyes, not affected by these tremendous recollections, but simply seeking to gain clearness of brain enough to commence his talk.
"You must not work to-day," said the Doctor.
"I have only three days for the job, and Imustwork to-day."
"Well—go on then. Make your original, which is, I suppose, the great difficulty; and my daughter and I will make the four others."
"Will you? How kind you are!"
At nine o'clock of the following morning Colburnedelivered to Ravenel the original muster-out roll. During that day and the next the father and daughter finished the four copies, while Colburne lay in bed, too sick and dizzy to raise his head. On the fourth day he went by railroad to the city of ——, the primary rendezvous of the regiment, and was duly mustered out of existence as an officer of the United States army. Returning to New Boston that evening, he fainted at the door of the hotel, was carried to his room by the porters, and did not leave his bed for forty-eight hours. At the end of that time he dressed himself in his citizen's suit, and called on Mrs. Carter. She was astonished and frightened to see him, for he was alarmingly thin and ghastly. Nevertheless, after the first startled exclamation of "Captain Colburne!" she added with a benevolent hypocrisy, "How much better you look than I thought to see you!"
He held both her hands for a moment, gazing into her eyes with a profound gratification at their sympathy, and then said, as he seated himself, "Thank you for your anxiety. I am going to get well now. I am going to give myself three months of pure, perfect rest."
The wearied man pronounced the wordrestwith a touching intonation of pleasure.
"Don't call me Captain," he resumed. "The very word tires me, and I want repose. Besides, I am a citizen, and have a right to the Mister."
"He is mortified because he was not promoted," thought Lillie, and called him by the threadbare title no more.
"It always seems to be our business to take care of you when you are sick," she said. "We nursed you at Taylorsville—that is, till we wanted some fighting done."
"That seems a great while ago," replied Colburne meditatively. "How many things have happened since then!" he was about to say, but checked the utterance for fear of giving her pain.
"Yes, it seems a long time ago," she repeated soberly, for she too thought how many things had happened sincethen, and thought it with more emotion than he could give to the idea. He continued to gaze at her earnestly and with profound pity in his heart, while his memory flashed over the two great incidents of maternity and widowhood. "She has fought harder battles than I have," he said to himself, wondering meanwhile to find her so little changed, and deciding that what change there was only made her more charming. He longed to say some word of consolation for the loss of her husband, but he would not speak of the subject until she introduced it. Lillie's mind also wondered shudderingly around that bereavement, and then dashed desperately away from it, without uttering a plaint.
"Can I see the baby?" he asked, after these few moments of silence.
She colored deeply, not so much with pleasure and pride, as with a return of the old virginity of soul. He understood it, for he remembered that she had blushed in the same manner when she met him for the first time after her marriage. It was the modesty of her womanhood, confessing, "I am not what I was when you saw me last."
"He is not a baby," she laughed. "He is a great boy, more than a year old. Come and look at him."
She led the way into her room. It was the first time that he had ever been in her room, and the place filled him with delicious awe, as if he were in the presence of some sweet sanctity. Irish Rosann, sitting by the bedside, and reading her prayer-book, raised her old head and took a keen survey of the stranger through her silver-rimmed spectacles. On the bed lay a chubby urchin, well grown for a yearling, his fair face red with health, sunburn, and sleep, arms spread wide apart, and one dimpled leg and foot outside of the coverlet.
"There is the Little Doctor," she said, bending down and kissing a dimple.
It was a long time since she had called him "Little General," or, "Little Brigadier." From the worship of thehusband she had gone back in a great measure, perhaps altogether, to the earlier and happier worship of the parent.
"Does he look like his grandfather?" asked Colburne.
"Why! Can't you see it? He is wonderfully like him. He has blue eyes, too. Don't you see the resemblance?"
"I think he has more chins than your father. He has double chins all the way down to his toes," said Colburne, pointing to the collops on the little leg.
"You mustn't laugh at him," she answered. "I suppose you have seen him enough. Men seldom take a longer look than that at a baby."
"Yes. I don't want to wake him up. I don't want the responsibility of it. I wouldn't assume the responsibilities of an ant. I haven't the energy for it."