They returned to the little parlor. The Doctor came in, and immediately forced the invalid to lie on a sofa, propping him up with pillows and proposing to cover him with an Affghan.
"No," said Colburne. "I beg pardon for my obstinacy, but I suffer with heat all the time."
"It is the fever," said the Doctor. "Remittent malarious fever. It is no joke when it dates from Brashear City."
"It is not being used to a house," answered Colburne, stubborn in faith in his own health. "It is wearing a vest and a broadcloth coat. I really am not strong enough to bear the hardships of civilization."
"We shall see," said the Doctor gravely. "The Indians die of civilization. So does many a returned soldier. You will have to be careful of yourself for a long time to come."
"I am," said Colburne. "I sleep with windows open."
"Why didn't you write to us that you were sick?" asked Lillie.
"I didn't wish to worry you. I knew you were kind enough to be worried. What was the use?"
She thought that it was noble, and just like him, but she said nothing. She could not help admiring him, as he lay there, for looking so sick and weak, and yet so cheerful and courageous, so absolutely indifferent to his state of bodily depression. There was not in his face or manner a single shadow of expression which seemed like an appeal for pity or sympathy. He had the air of one who had become so accustomed to suffering as to consider it a common-place matter, not worthy of a moment's despondency, or even consideration. His look was noticeably resolute, and energetic, yet patient.
"You are the most resigned sick man that I ever saw," she said. "You make as good an invalid as a woman."
"A soldier's life cultivates some of the Christian virtues," he answered; "especially resignation and obedience. Just see here. You are roused at midnight, march twenty miles on end, halt three or four hours, perhaps in a pelting rain; then you are faced about, marched back to your old quarters and dismissed, and nobody ever tells you why or wherefore. You take it very hard at first, but at last you get used to it and do just as you are bid, without complaint or comment. You no more pretend to reason concerning your duties than a millstone troubles itself to understand the cause of its revolutions. You are set in motion, and you move. Think of being started out at early dawn and made to stand to arms till daylight, every morning, for six weeks running. You may grumble at it, but you do it all the same. At last you forget to grumble and even to ask the reason why. You obey because you are ordered. Oh! a man learns a vast deal of stoical virtue in field service. He learns courage, too, against sickness as well as against bullets. I believe the war will give a manlier, nobler tone to the character of our nation. The school of suffering teaches grand lessons."
"And how will the war end?" asked Lillie, anxious, as every citizen was, to get the opinion of a soldier on this great question.
"We shall beat them, of course."
"When?"
"I can't say. Nobody can. I never heard a military man of any merit pretend to fix the time. Now that I am a civilian, perhaps I shall resume the gift of prophecy."
"Mr. Seward keeps saying, in three months."
"Well, if he keeps saying so long enough he will hit it. Mr. Seward hasn't been serious in such talk. His only object was to cheer up the nation."
"So we shall beat them?" cheerfully repeated the converted secessionist. "And what then? I hope we shall pitch into England. I hate her for being so underhandedly spiteful toward the North, and false toward the South."
"Oh no; don't hate her. England, like every body else, doesn't like a great neighbor, and would be pleased to see him break up into small neighbors. But England is a grand old nation, and one of the lights of the world. The only satisfaction which I should find in a war with England would be that I could satisfy my curiosity on a point of professional interest. I would like to see how European troops fight compared with ours. I would cheerfully risk a battle for the spectacle."
"And which do you think would beat?" asked Lillie.
"I really don't know. That is just the question. Marengo against Cedar Creek, Leipsic against the Wilderness. I should like, of all things in the world, to see the trial."
Thus they talked for a couple of hours, in a quiet way, strolling over many subjects, but discussing nothing of deep personal interest. Colburne was too weak to have much desire to feel or to excite emotions. In studying the young woman before him he was chiefly occupied in detecting and measuring the exact change which the potent incidents of her later life had wrought in her expression. He decided that she looked more serious and more earnest than of old; but that was the total of his fancied discoveries; in fact, he was too languid to analyze.
During three months Colburne rested from marches, battles, fatigues, emotions. He was temporarily so worn out in body and mind that he could not even rally vigor enough to take an interest in any but the greatest of the majestic passing events. It is to be considered that he had been case-hardened by war to all ordinary agitations; that exposure to cannon and musketry had so calloused him as that he could read newspapers with tranquillity. Accordingly he troubled himself very little about the world; and it got along at an amazing rate without his assistance. There were no more Marengos in the Shenandoah Valley, but there was a Waterloo near Petersburg, and an Ulm near Raleigh, and an assassination of a greater than William of Orange at Washington, and over all a grand, re-united, triumphant republic.
As to the battles Colburne only read the editorial summaries and official reports, and did not seem to care much for "our own correspondent's" picturesque particulars. Give him the positions, the dispositions, the leaders, the general results, and he knew how to infer the minutiæ. To some of his civilian friends, the brother abolitionists of former days, this calmness seemed like indifference to the victories of his country; and such was the eagerness and hotness of the times that some of them charged him with want of patriotism, sympathy with the rebels, copperheadism, etc. One day he came into the Ravenel parlor with a smile on his face, but betraying in his manner something of the irritability of weakness and latent fever.
"I have heard a most astonishing thing," he said. "I have been called a Copperhead. I who fought threeyears, marched the skin off my feet, have been wounded, starved, broken down in field service, am a Copperhead. The man who inferred it ought to know; he has lived among Copperheads for the last three years. He has never been in the army—never smelled a pinch of rebel powder. There were no Copperheads at the front; they were all here, at the rear, where he was. He ought to know them, and he says that I am one of them. Isn't it amazing!"
"How did he discover it?" asked the Doctor.
"We were talking about the war. This man—who has never heard a bullet whistle, please remember—asserted that the rebel soldiers were cowards, and asked my opinion. I demurred. He insisted and grew warm. 'But,' said I, 'don't you see that you spoil my glory? Here I have been in the field three years, finding these rebels a very even match in fighting. If they are cowards, I am a poltroon. The inference hurts me, and therefore I deny the premise.' I think that my argument aggravated him. He repeated positively that the rebels were cowards, and that whoever asserted the contrary was a southern sympathiser. 'But,' said I, 'the rebel armies differ from ours chiefly in being more purely American. Is it the greater proportion of native blood which causes the cowardice?' Thereupon I had the Copperhead brand put upon my forehead, and was excommunicated from the paradise of loyalty. I consider it rather stunning. I was the only practical abolitionist in the company—the only man who had freed a negro, or caused the death of a slaveholder. Doctor, you too must be a Copperhead. You have suffered a good deal for the cause of freedom and country; but I don't believe that you consider the rebel armies packs of cowards."
The Doctor noted the excitement of his young friend, and observed to himself, "Remittent malarious fever."
"I get along very easily with these earnest people," he added aloud. "They say more than they strictly believe, because their feelings are stronger than can be spoken.They are pretty tart; but they are mere buttermilk or lemonade compared with the nitric acid which I used to find in Louisiana; they speak hard things, but they don't stick you under the fifth rib with a bowie-knife. Thanks to my social training in the South, I am able to say to a man who abuses me for my opinions, 'Sir, I am profoundly grateful to you for not cutting my throat from ear to ear. I shall never forget your politeness.'"
The nervous fretfulness apparent in Colburne's manner on this occasion passed away as health and strength returned. Another phenomenon of his recovered vigor was that he began to show a stronger passion for the society of Mrs. Carter than he had exhibited when he first returned from the wars. On his well days he made a span with young Whitewood at the baby wagon; only it was observable that, after a few trials, they came to a tacit understanding to take turns in this duty; so that when one was there, the other kept away, in a magnanimous, man fashion. Colburne found Mrs. Carter, in the main, a much more serious person in temper than when he bade her good-bye in Thibodeaux. The interest which this shadow of sadness gave her in his eyes, or, perhaps I should say, the interest with which she invested the subject of sadness in his mind, may be inferred from the somewhat wordy fervor of the following passage, which he penned about this time in his common-place book.
"The Dignity of Sorrow.Grand is the heart which is ennobled, not crushed, by sorrow; by mighty sorrows worn, not as manacles, but as a crown. Try to conceive the dignity of a soul which has suffered deeply and borne its sufferings well, as compared with another soul which has not suffered at all. Remember how we respect a veteran battle-ship—a mere dead mass of timber, ropes, and iron—the Hartford—after her decks have run with blood, and been torn by shot. No spectacle of new frigates just from the stocks, moulded in the latest perfected form, can stir our souls with sympathy like the sight ofthe battered hulk. Truly there is something of divinity in the man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, even when his body is but human, provided always that his soul has grown purer by its trials."
At one time Colburne was somewhat anxious about Mrs. Carter lest her character should become permanently sombre in consequence of lonely brooding over her troubles. He remembered with pleasure her former girlish gayety, and wished that it might be again her prevailing expression.
"Do you think you see people enough?" he asked her. "I mean, a sufficient variety of people. Monotony of intellectual diet is as bad for the spirit as monotony of physical nourishment for the body."
"I am sure that papa and Mr. Whitewood constitute a variety," she answered.
Colburne was not badly pleased with this speech, inasmuch as it seemed to convey a slight slur upon Mr. Whitewood. He was so gratified, in fact, that he lost sight of the subject of the conversation until she recalled him to it.
"Do you think I am getting musty?" she inquired.
"Of course not. But there is danger in a long-continued uniformity of spiritual surroundings: danger of running into a habit of reverie, brooding, melancholy: danger of growing spiritually old."
"I know it. But what can a woman do? It is one of the inconveniences of womanhood that we can't change our surroundings—not even our hoops—at our own pleasure. We can't run out into the world and say, Amuse us."
"There are two worlds for the two sexes. A man's consists of all the millions of earth and of future time—unless he becomes a captain in the Tenth Barataria—then he stays where he began. A woman's consists of the people whom she meets daily. But she can enlarge it; she can make it comprehend more than papa and Mr. Whitewood."
"But not more than Ravvie," said Lillie.
As Colburne listened to this declaration he felt something like jealousy of the baby, and something like indignation at Mrs. Carter. What business had she to let herself be circumscribed by the limits of such a diminutive creature? This was not the only time that Lillie shot this single arrow in her quiver at Mr. Colburne. She talked a great deal to him about Ravvie, believing all the while that she kept a strict rein upon her maternal vanity, and did not mention the boy half as often as she would have been justified in doing by his obesity and other remarkable characteristics. I do not mean to intimate that the subject absolutely and acrimoniously annoyed our hero. On the whole her maternal fondness was a pleasant spectacle to him, especially when he drew the inference that so good a mother would be sure to make an admirable wife. Moreover his passion for pets easily flowed into an affection for this infant, and the child increased the feeling by his grateful response to the young bachelor's attentions. Mrs. Carter blushed more than once to see her baby quit her and toddle across the room and greet Colburne's entrance.
"Ravvie, come here," she would say. "You trouble people."
"No, no," protested Colburne, picking up the little man and setting him on his shoulder. "I like to be troubled by people who love me."
Then after a slight pause, he added audaciously, "I never have been much troubled in that way."
Mrs. Carter's blush deepened a shade or two at this observation. It was one of those occasions on which a woman always says something as mal-apropos as possible; and in accordance with this instinct of her sex, she spoke of the Russian Plague, which was then a subject of gossip in the papers.
"I am so afraid Ravvie will take it," she said. "I have heard that there is a case next door, and I am really tempted to run away with him for a week or two."
"I wouldn't," replied Colburne. "You might run into it somewhere else. One case is not alarming. If I had forty children to be responsible for, I wouldn't break up for a single case."
"If you had forty you mightn't be so frightened as if you had only one," remarked Mrs. Carter, seriously.
Then the Doctor came in, to declare in his cheerful way that there was no Russian Plague in the city, and that, even if there were, it was no great affair of a disease among a well-fed and cleanly population.
"We are more in danger of breaking out with national vanity," said he. "They are singing anthems, choruses, pæans of praise to us across the water. All the nations of Europe are welcoming our triumph, as the daughters of Judea went out with cymbals and harps to greet the giant killing David. Just listen to this."
Here he unfolded the Evening Post of the day, took off his eye-glasses, put on his spectacles, and read extracts from European editorials written on the occasion of the fall of Richmond and surrender of Lee.
"They are more flattering than Fourth of July orations," said Colburne. "I feel as though I ought to go straight down to the sea-shore and make a bow across the Atlantic. It is enough to make a spread peacock-tail sprout upon every loyal American. I am not sure but that the next generation will be furnished with the article, as being absolutely necessary to express our consciousness of admiration. On the Darwinian theory, you know; circumstances breed species."
"The Europeans seem to have more enthusiastic views of us than we do of ourselves," observed Lillie. "I never thought of our being such a grand nation as Monsieur Laboulaye paints us. You never did, papa."
"I never had occasion to till now," said the Doctor. "As long as we were bedraggled in slavery there was not much room for honest, intelligent pride of country. It is different now. These Europeans judge us aright; we havedone a stupendous thing. They are outside of the struggle, and can survey its proportions with the eyes with which our descendants will see it. I think I can discover a little of its grandeur. It is the fifth act in the grand drama of human liberty. First, the Christian revelation. Second, the Protestant reformation. Third, the war of American Independence. Fourth, the French revolution. Fifth, the struggle for the freedom of all men, without distinction of race and color; this Democratic struggle which confirms the masses in an equality with the few. We have taught a greater lesson than all of us think or understand. Once again we have reminded the world of Democracy, the futility of oligarchies, the outlawry of Cæsarism."
"In the long run the right conquers," moralized Colburne.
"Yes, as that pure and wise martyr to the cause of freedom, President Lincoln, said four years ago, right makes might. A just system of labor has produced power, and an unjust system has produced weakness. The North, living by free industry, has twenty millions of people, and wealth inexhaustible. The South, living by slavery, has twelve millions, one half of whom are paupers and secret enemies. The right always conquers because it always becomes the strongest. In that sense 'the hand of God' is identical with 'the heaviest battalions.' Another thing which strikes me is the intensity of character which our people have developed. We are no longer a mere collection of thirty millions of bores, as Carlyle called us. There never was greater vigor or range. Look at Booth, the new Judas Iscariot. Look at Blackburn, who packed up yellow fever rags with the hope of poisoning a continent. What a sweep, what a gamut, from these satanic wretches to Abraham Lincoln! a purer, wiser and greater than Socrates, whom he reminds one of by his plain sense and homely humor. In these days—the days of Lincoln, Grant and Sherman—faith in the imagination—faith inthe supernatural origin of humanity—becomes possible. We see men who are demoniacal and men who are divine. I can now go back to my childhood, and read Plutarch as I then read him, believing that wondrous men have lived because I see that they do live. I can now understand the Paradise Lost, for I have beheld Heaven fighting with Hell."
"The national debt will be awful," observes Lillie, after the brief pause which naturally follows the Doctor's Cynicism. "Three thousand millions! What will my share be?"
"We will pay it off," says the Doctor, "in a series of operatic entertainments, at a hundred thousand dollars the dress seats—back seats fifty thousand."
"The southern character will be improved by the struggle," observed Colburne, after another silence. "They will be sweetened by adversity, as their persimmons are by frost. Besides, it is such a calming thing to have one's fight out! It draws off the bad blood. But what are we to do about punishing the masses? I go for punishing only the leaders."
"Yes," coincided the Doctor. "They are the responsible criminals. It is astonishing how imperiously strong characters govern weak ones. You will often meet with a man who absolutely enters into and possesses other men, making them talk, act and feel as if they were himself. He puts them on and wears them, as a soldier crab puts on and wears an empty shell. For instance, you hear a man talking treason; you look at him and say, 'It is that poor fool, Cracker.' But all the while it is Planter, who, being stronger minded than Cracker, dwells in him and blasphemes out of his windows. Planter is the living crab, and Cracker is the dead shell. The question comes up, 'Which shall we hang, and which shall we pardon?' I say, hang Planter, and tell Cracker to get to work. Planter gone, some better man will occupy Cracker and make him speak and live virtuously."
But strange as it may seem, unpatriotic as it may seem, there was a subject which interested Colburne more than these great matters. It was a woman, a widow, a mother, who, as he supposed, still mourned her dead husband, and only loved among the living her father and her child. How imperiously, for wise ends, we are governed by the passion of sex for sex, in spite of the superficial pleas of selfish reason and interest! What other quality, physical or moral, have we that could take the place of this beneficently despotic instinct? Do you believe that conscience, sense of duty, philanthropy, would induce men and women to bear with each other—to bring children into the world—to save the race from extinction? Strike out the affection of sex for sex, and earth would be, first a hell, then a desert. God is not very far from every one of us. The nation was not more certainly guided by the hand of Providence in overthrowing slavery, than was this man in loving this woman. I do not suspect that any one of these reflections entered the mind of Colburne, although he was intellectually quite capable of such a small amount of philosophy. We never, or hardly ever think of applying general principles to our own cases; and he believed, as a matter of course, that he liked Mrs. Carter simply because she was individually loveable. On other subjects he could think and talk with perfect rationality; he could even discourse transcendentally to her concerning her own heart history. For instance, one day when she was sadder than usual, nervous, irritable, and in imperious need of a sympathising confidant, she alluded shyly to her sorrows, and, finding him willing to listen, added frankly, "Oh, I have been so unhappy!"
It is rather strange that he did not seize the opportunity and say, "Let me be your consoler." But he too was in a temporarily morbid state, his mind unpractical with fever and weakness, wandering helplessly around the ideas of trouble and consolation like a moth around thebewilderment of a candle, and not able to perceive that the great comforter of life is action, labor, duty.
"So have multitudes," he answered. "There is some comfort in that."
"Howcanyou say so?" she asked, turning upon him in astonishment.
"Look here," he answered. "There are ten thousand blossoms on an apple tree, but not five hundred of them mature into fruit. So it is with us human beings: a few succeed, the rest are failures. It is a part of the method of God. He creates many, in order that some may be sure to reach his proposed end. He abounds in means; he has more material than he needs; he minds nothing but his results. You and I, even if we are blighted blooms, must be content with knowing that his purposes are certain to be fulfilled. If we fail, others will succeed, and in that fact we can rejoice, forgetting ourselves."
"Oh! but that is very hard," said Lillie.
"Yes; it is. But what right have we to demand that we shall be happy? That is a condition that we have no right and no power to make with the Creator of the Universe. Our desire should be that we might be enabled to make others happy. I wonder that this should seem hard doctrine to you. Women, if I understand them, are full of self-abnegation, and live through multitudes of self-sacrifices."
"And still it sounds hard," persisted Lillie. "I could not bear another sacrifice."
She closed her eyes under an impulse of spiritual agony, as the thought occurred to her that she might yet be called on to give up her child.
"I am sorry you have been unhappy," he said, much moved by the expression of her face at this moment. "I have sympathised with you, oh, so much! without ever saying a word before."
She did not stop him from taking her hand, and for a few moments did not withdraw it from his grasp. Fardeeper than the philosophy, which she could understand but not feel, these simple and common-place words, just such as any child might utter, stole into her heart, conveying a tearful sense of comfort and eliciting a throb of gratitude.
But their conversation was not often of so melancholy and sentimental a nature. She had more gay hours with this old friend during a few weeks than she had had during six months previous to his arrival. She often laughed when the tears were ready to start; but gradually the spirit of laughter was expelling the spirit of tears. She was hardly sensible, I suspect, how thoroughly he was winding himself into all her emotions, her bygone griefs, her present consolations, her pitying remembrance of her husband, her love for her father and child, her recollections of the last four years, so full for her of life and feeling. His presence recalled by turns all of these things, sweeping gently, like a hand timid because of affection, over every chord of her heart. Man has great power over a woman when he is so gifted or so circumstanced that he can touch that strongest part of her nature, her sentiments.
However, it must not be supposed that Mr. Colburne was at this time playing a very audible tune on Mrs. Carter's heart-strings, or that he even distinctly intended to touch that delicate instrument. He was quite aware that he must better his pecuniary condition before he could honorably meddle in such lofty music.
"I must go to work," he said, after he had been at home nearly three months. "I shall get so decayed with laziness that I sha'n't be able to pick myself up. I shall cease to be respectable if I lounge any longer than is absolutely necessary to restore my health."
"Yes, work is best," answered the Doctor. "It is our earthly glory and blessing. It is a great comfort to think that the evil spirit of no-work is pretty much exorcised from our nation. The victory of the North is at bottomthe triumph of laboring men living by their own industry, over non-laboring men who wanted to live by the industry of others. Europe sees this even more plainly than we do. All over that continent the industrious classes hail the triumph of the North as their own victory. Slavery meant in reality to create an idle nobility. Liberty has established an industrious democracy. In working for our own living we are obeying the teachings of this war, the triumphant spirit of our country and age. The young man who is idle now belongs to bygone and semi-barbarous centuries; he is more of an old fogy than the narrowest minded farm-laborer or ditch-digging emigrant. What a prosperous hive this will be now that it contains no class of drones! There was no hope of good from slavery. It was like that side of the moon which never sees the bright face of the Earth and whose night is always darkness, no matter how the heavens revolve. Yes, we must all go to work. That is, we must be useful and respectable. I am very glad for your sake that you have studied a profession. A young man brought up in literary and scientific circles is subject to the temptation of concluding that it will be a fine thing to have no calling but letters. He is apt to think that he will make his living by his pen. Now that is all wrong; it is wrong because the pen is an uncertain means of existence; for no man should voluntarily place himself in the condition of living from hand to mouth. Every university man, as well as every other man, should learn a profession, or a business, or a trade. Then, when he has something solid to fall back upon, he may if he chooses try what he can do as a scholar or author."
"I shall re-open my law office," said Colburne.
"I wonder if it would be unhandsome or unfair," queried the Doctor, "if I too should open an office and take such patients as might offer."
"I don't see it. I don't see it at all," responded Colburne.
"Nor do I, either—considering my necessities," said Ravenel, meanwhile calculating internally how much longer his small cash capital would last at the present rate of decrease.
Within a week after this conversation two offices were opened, and the professional ranks of New Boston were reinforced by one doctor and one lawyer.
"Papa, now that you have set up a sign," said Lillie, "I will trust you entirely with Ravvie."
"Yes, women always ask after a sign," observed Ravenel. "It is astonishing how much the sex believes in pretense and show. If I should advertise myself—no matter how ignorant I might be—as a specialist in female maladies, I could have all the lady invalids in New Boston for patients. Positively I sometimes get out of patience with the sex for its streaks of silliness. I am occasionally tempted to believe that the greatest difficulty which man has overcome in climbing the heights of civilization is the fact that he has had to tote women on his shoulders."
"I thought you never used negro phrases, papa."
"I pass that one. Tote has a monosyllabic vigor about it which pleads for it."
"You know Mrs. Poyser says that women are fools because they were made to match the men."
"Mrs. Poyser was a very intelligent woman—well worthy of her son, Ike," returned the Doctor, who knew next to nothing of novels.
"Now go to your office," said Lillie, "and if Mrs. Poyser calls on you, don't give her the pills meant for Mrs. Partington. They are different ladies."
Colburne did not regret that he had been a soldier; he would not have missed the battle of Cedar Creek alone for a thousand dollars; but he sometimes reflected that if he had remained at home during the last three years, he might now be in a lucrative practice. From his salary as captain he had been able to lay up next to nothing. Nominally it was fifteen hundred and sixty dollars; but theincome tax took out thirty dollars, and he had forfeited the monthly ten dollars allowed for responsibility of arms, etc., during the time he was on staff duty; in addition to which gold had been up to 290, diminishing the cash value of his actual pay to less than five hundred dollars. Furthermore he had lent largely to brother officers, and in consequence of the death of the borrowers on heroic fields, had not always been repaid. Van Zandt owed him two hundred dollars, and Carter had fallen before he could return him a similar sum. Nevertheless, thanks to the industry and economy of a father long since buried, the young man had a sufficient income to support him while he could plant the slowly growing trees of business and profit. He could live; but could he marry? Gold was falling, and so were prices; but even before the war one thousand dollars a year would not support two; and now it certainly would be insufficient for three. He considered this question a great deal more than was necessary for a man who meant to be a bachelor; and occasionally a recollection of Whitewood's eighty thousand gave him a pang of envy, or jealousy, or both together.
The lucre which he so earnestly desired, not for its own stupid sake, but for the gratification of a secretly nursed purpose, began to flow in upon him in small but constant driblets. Some enthusiastic people gave him their small jobs in the way of conveyancing, etc., because he had fought three years for his country; and at least, somewhat to his alarm, a considerable case was thrust upon him, with a retaining fee which he immediately banked as being too large for his pocket. Conscious that his legal erudition was not great, he went to a former fellow student who during the past four year had burrowed himself into a good practice, and proposed that they should take the case in partnership.
"You shall be counsellor," said he, "and I will be advocate. You shall furnish the law skeleton of the plea, and I will clothe it with appeals to the gentlemen of thejury. I used to be famous for spouting, you know; and I think I could ask a few questions."
"I will do it for a third," said the other, who was not himself a pleader.
"Good!"
It was done and the case was gained. The pecuniary profits were divided, but Colburne carried away all the popular fame, for he had spouted in such a manner as quite to dissolve the gentlemen of the jury. The two young men went into partnership on the basis afforded by their first transaction, and were soon in possession of a promising if not an opulent business. It began to seem possible that, at a not very distant day, Colburne might mean something if he should say, "I endow thee with my worldly goods."
At last Colburne gave Mrs. Carter a bouquet. It was a more significant act than the reader who loves flowers will perceive without an explanation. Fond as he was of pets and of most things which are, or stand as emblems of innocence, he cared very little for flowers except as features of a landscape. He was conscious of a gratification in walking along a field path which ran through dandelions, buttercups, etc.; but he never would have thought of picking one of them for his own pleasure any more than of picking a maple tree. In short, he was deficient in that sense which makes so many people crave their presence, and could probably have lived in a flowerless land without any painful sentiment of barrenness. Therefore it was only a profound and affectionate studyinto Mrs. Carter's ways and tastes which brought him to the point of buying and bringing to her a bouquet.
He was actually surprised at the flush of pleasure with which she received it: a pleasure evidently caused in great measure by the nature of the gift itself; and only in small part, he thought, by a consciousness of the motives of the giver. He watched her with great interest while she gaily filled a vase with water, put the bouquet in it, placed it on the mantel piece, stepped back to look at it, then set it on her work-table, took in the effect once more, drew a pleased sigh and resumed her seat. Her Diana-like, graceful form showed to advantage in the plain black dress, and her wavy blonde hair seemed to him specially beautiful in its contrast with her plain widow's cap. Youth with its health and hope had brought back the rounded outlines which at one time had been a little wasted by maternity and sorrow. Her white and singularly clear skin had resumed its soft roseate tint and could show as distinctly as ever the motions of the quickly-stirred blood. Her blue eyes, if not as gay as they were four years ago were more eloquent of experience, thought, and feeling. Mr. Colburne must be pardoned for thinking that she was more beautiful than the bouquet, and for wondering how she could prize a loveliness so much inferior in grace and expression to her own.
"Do you know?" she said, and then checked herself. She was about to remind him that these were the first flowers which he ever gave her, and to laugh at him good-humoredly for having been so slow in divining one of her passions. But the idea struck her that the gift might be, for the very reason of its novelty, too significant to be a proper subject for her comments.
"Do you know," she continued, after a scarcely perceptible hesitation, "that I am not so fond of flowers as I was once? They remind me of Louisiana, and I—don't love Louisiana."
"But this is thanking you very poorly for yourpresent," she added, after another and longer pause. "You know that I am obliged to you. Don't you?"
"I do," said Colburne. He had been many times repaid for his offering by seeing the pains which she took to preserve it and place it to the best advantage.
"It is very odd to me, though, that you never seemed to love them," she observed, reverting to her first thought.
"It is my misfortune. I have a pleasure the less. It is like not having an ear for music."
"How can you love poetry without loving flowers?"
"I knew a sculptor once who couldn't find the slightest charm or the slightest exhibition of capacity in an opera. I had a soldier in my company who could see perfectly well by daylight, but was stone blind by moonlight. That is the way some of us are made. We are but partially developed or, rather, not developed equally in all directions. My æsthetic self seems to be lacking in button-holes for bouquets. If I could carry a landscape about in my hand, I think I would; but not a bunch of flowers."
"But you love children; and they are flowers."
"Ah! but they are so human! They make a noise; they appreciate you comprehensibly; they go after a fellow."
So you like people who go after you? thought Mrs. Carter, smiling to herself at the confession. Somehow she was interested in and pleased with the minutest peculiarities of Mr. Colburne.
From that day forward her work table rarely lacked a bouquet, although her friend's means, after paying his board bill, were not by any means ample. In fact there soon came to be two bouquets, representing rival admirers of the lady. Young Whitewood, who loved flowers, and had a greenhouse full of them, but had never hitherto dared present one to the pretty widow, took courage from Colburne's example, and far exceeded him in the sumptuousness of his offerings. By the way, I must not neglect this shy gentleman's claims to a place in my narrative. Hewas a prominent figure of evenings in the Ravenel parlor, and did a great deal of talking there on learned subjects with the Doctor, sitting the while on the edge of his chair, with his thin legs twisted around each other in such a way as to exhibit with painful distinctness their bony outlines. Each of these young men was considerably afraid of the other. Colburne recognized the fact that a fortune of eighty thousand dollars would be a very suitable adjunct to Mrs. Carter's personal and social graces, and that it would be perfectly proper in her to accept it if offered, as it seemed likely to be. Whitewood bowed modestly to Colburne's superior conversational cleverness, and humbled himself in the dust before his honorable fame as a soldier. What was he, a man of peace, a patriot who had only talked and paid, in comparison with this other man who had shed his blood and risked his life for their common country and the cause of human progress? So when the Captain talked to Mrs. Carter, the tutor contented himself with Doctor Ravenel. He was painfully conscious of his own stiffness and coldness of style, and mourned over it, and envied the ease and warmth of these southerners. To this subject he frequently alluded, driven thereto by a sort of agony of conviction; for the objective Whitewood imperfectly expressed the subjective, who thought earnestly and felt ardently.
"I don't understand," he said mournfully, "why people of the same blood should be so different—in fact, so opposed—in manner, as are the northerners and southerners."
"The difference springs from a radical difference of purpose in their lives," said the Doctor. "The pro-slavery South meant oligarchy, and imitated the manners of the European nobility. The democratic North means equality—every man standing on his own legs, and not bestriding other men's shoulders—every man passing for just what he is, and no more. It means honesty, sincerity, frankness, in word as well as deed. It means general hardwork, too, in consequence of which there is less chance to cultivate the graces. The polish of the South is superficial and semi-barbarous, like that of the Poles and all other slaveholding oligarchies. I confess, however, that I should like to see a little more sympathy and expansion in the northern manners. A native, untravelled New Bostonian is rather too much in the style of an iceberg. He is enough to cause atmospheric condensation and changes of temperature. It is a story that when a new Yankee arrives in the warm air of Louisiana, there is always a shower. But that, you know, is an exaggeration."
Whitewood laughed in a disconcerted, conscience-stricken manner.
"Nevertheless, they do a vast deal of good," continued the Doctor. "They purify as well as disturb the atmosphere. To me, a southerner, it is a humiliating reflection, that, but for these Yankees and their cold moral purity, we should have established a society upon the basis of the most horrible slavery that the world has known since the days of pagan Rome."
Whitewood glanced at Mrs. Carter. She smiled acquiescence and sympathy; her conversion from secession and slavery was complete.
All this while Colburne boarded at the New Boston House, and saw the Doctor and Mrs. Carter and Ravvie every day. When they went down to the sea-shore for a week during the hot weather, he could not leave his business to accompany them, as he wished, but must stay in New Boston, feeling miserably lonesome of evenings, although he knew hundreds of people in the little city. It was an aggravation of his troubles to learn that Mr. Whitewood had followed the Ravenels to the watering-place. When the family returned, still accompanied by the eighty thousand dollar youth, Colburne looked very searchingly into the eyes of Mrs. Carter to discover if possible what she had been doing with herself. She noticed it, and blushed deeply, which puzzled and troubled himthrough hours of subsequent meditation. If they were engaged, they would certainly tell me, thought he; but nevertheless he was not entirely easy about the matter.
It happened the next evening that he lounged into one of the small parlors of the hotel, intending to pass out upon a little front balcony and look at the moonlit, elm-arched glories of the Common. A murmur of two voices—a male voice and a female—came in from the balcony and checked his advance. As he hesitated young Whitewood entered the room through the open window, hastily followed a moment afterward by Mrs. Carter.
"Mr. Whitewood, please say nothing about this," she whispered. "Of course you will not. I never shall."
"Certainly, not," replied the young man. The tone in which he spoke was so low that Colburne could detect no expression in it, whether of despondency or triumph. Entering as they did from the moonlight into a room which had been left unlighted in order to keep out summer insects, neither of them perceived the involuntary listener. Whitewood went out by the door, and Mrs. Carter returned to the balcony. In order that the reader may be spared the trouble of turning over a few pages here, I will state frankly that the young man had proposed and been refused, and that Mrs. Carter had begged him not to let the affair get abroad because—well, because a sudden impulse came over her to do just that, whether it concerned her or not to keep the secret.
Colburne remained alone, in such an agony of anxiety as he had not believed himself capable of feeling. All the stoicism which he had learned by forced marches, starvations, and battles was insufficient, or was not of the proper kind, to sustain him comfortably under the torture inflicted by his supposed discovery. The Rachel whom he had waited for more than four years was again lost to him. But was she lost? asked the hope that never dies in us. It was not positively certain; words and situations may have different meanings; his rival did not seem muchelated. He would ask Mrs. Carter what the scene meant, and learn his fate at once. She would not keep the secret from him when he should tell her the motives which induced him to question her. Whether she refused him or not, whether she was or was not engaged to another, he would of course be entirely frank with her, only regretting that he had not been so before. He was whole-souled enough, he had learned at least this much of self-abnegation, not to try to save his vanity in such a matter as loving for life. As the most loveable woman that he had ever known, it was due to her that she should be informed that his heart was at her command, no matter what she might do with it. The feeling of the moment was a grand one, but not beyond the native power of his character, although three years ago he had not been sufficiently developed to be capable of it.
He stepped to the window, pushed apart the long damask curtains and stood by her side.
"Oh! Is it you!" she exclaimed. "You quite startled me." Then, after a moment's hesitation, "When did you come in?"
"I was in the room three minutes ago," he answered, and paused to draw a long breath. "Tell me, Mrs. Carter," he resumed, "what is it that Mr. Whitewood is to keep secret?"
"Mr. Colburne!" she replied, full of astonishment that he should put such a question.
"I did not overhear intentionally," he went on. "I did not hear much, and I wish to know more than I heard."
Mr. Colburne was master of the situation, although he was not aware of it. Surprise was the least of Lillie's emotions; she was quite overwhelmed by her lover's presence, and by the question which he put to her; she could not have declared truly at the moment that her soul was altogether her own.
"Oh, Mr. Colburne! I cannot tell you," was all she could say, and that in a whisper.
She would have told him all, if he had insisted, but he did not. He had manliness enough, he was sufficiently able to affront danger and suffering, to say what was in his own heart, without knowing what had passed between her and his rival. He stood silent a moment, pondering, not over his purpose, but as to what his words should be. Then flashed across him a suspicion of the truth, that Whitewood had made his venture and met with shipwreck. A wave of strong hope seemed to lift him over reefs of doubt, and shook him so, like a ship trembling on a billow, that for an instant longer he could not speak. Just then Rosann's recognizable Irish voice was heard, calling, "Mrs. Carter! Mrs. Carter! Might I spake t' ye?"
"What is it?" asked Lillie, stepping by Colburne into the parlor. Ravvie was cutting a double tooth, was feverish and fretful, and she had been anxious about him.
"Ma'am, I'd like t' have ye see the baby. I'm thinkin' he ought t' have somethin' done for 'm. He's mightily worried."
"Please excuse me, Mr. Colburne," said the mother, and ran up stairs. Thus it happened that Lillie unintentionally evaded the somewhat remarkable and humiliating circumstance of receiving two declarations of love, two offers of marriage, in a single evening. She did not, however, know precisely what it was that she had escaped; and, moreover, she did not at first think much about it, except in a very fragmentary and unsatisfactory manner; for Ravvie soon went into convulsions and remained in a precarious condition the whole night, absorbing all her time and attention. Of course he had his gums lanced, and his chubby feet put in hot water, and medicine poured down his patient throat. In the morning he was so comfortable that his mother went to bed and slept till noon. When she awoke and found Ravvie quite recovered, and had kissed his cheeks, his dimpled neck, and the fat collops in his legs a hundred times or so, and called him herown precious, and her dearest darling, and her sweet little man at every kiss, she began to dress herself and to think of Mr. Colburne, and of his unexplained anxieties to say—what? She went tremulously to dinner, blushing scarlet after her sensitive manner as she entered the dining-room, but quite unnecessarily, inasmuch as he was not at table. She could not say whether she was most relieved or annoyed by his unexpected absence. It is worthy of record that before tea-time she had learned through some roundabout medium, (Rosann and the porter, I fear,) that Mr. Colburne had been summoned to New York by a telegram and was not expected back for a day or two. Her father was away on a mineralogical hunt, unearthing burrows and warrens of Smithites and Brownites. Thus she had plenty of opportunity for reflection, and she probably employed it as well as most young women would under similar circumstances, but, of course, to no purpose at all so far as concerned taking any action. In such matters a woman can do little more than sit still while others transact her history. She was under the spell: it was not she who would control her own fate: it was Mr. Colburne. She was ashamed and almost angry to find that she was so weak; she declared that it was disgraceful to fall in love with a man who had not yet told her plainly that he loved her; but all her shame, and anger, and declarations could not alter the stubborn fact. She would never own it to any one else, but she was obliged to confess it to herself, although the avowal made her cry with vexation. She had to remember, too, that it was not quite two years and a half since she was married, and not quite eighteen months since she had become a widow. She walked through a valley of humiliation, very meek in spirit, and yet, it must be confessed, not very unhappy. At times she defended herself, asking the honest and rational question, How could she help loving this man? He had been so faithful and delicate, he was so brave and noble, that she wondered that every woman who knew him did notadore him. And then, as she thought of his perfections, she went tremblingly back to the inquiry, Did he love her? He had not gone so far as to say it, or anything approaching to it; and yet he surely would not have asked her what had passed between another man and herself unless he meant to lay bare to her his inmost heart; she knew that he was too generously delicate to demand such a confidence except with a most serious and tender purpose. She did not indeed suppose that he would have gone on then to say everything that he felt for her; for it did not seem to her that any one moment which she could fix upon would be great enough for such a revelation. But it would have come in time, if she had answered him suitably; it might come yet, if she had not offended him, and if he did not meet some one whom he should see to be more desirable.Hadshe offended him by her manner, or by what she had said, or failed to say? Oh, how easy it is to suspect that those whom we love are vexed with us! If it should be so that she had given him cause of anger, how could she make peace with him without demeaning herself? Well, let the worst come to the worst, there was her boy who would always be faithful and loving. She kissed him violently and repeatedly, but could not keep a tear or two from falling on him, although why they were shed the child could have explained as rationally as she.
Of all these struggles Colburne knew nothing and guessed nothing. He too had his yearnings and anxieties, although he did not express them by kissing anything or crying upon anything. He was sternly fearful lest he was losing all-important moments, and he attended to his business in New York as energetically as he would have stormed a battery. Had he offended Mrs. Carter? Had Whitewood succeeded, or failed, or not tried? He could not answer any of these questions, but he was in a fury to get back to New Boston.
Lillie trembled when she heard his knock upon the doorat eight o'clock that evening. She knew it was his by instinct; she had known it two or three times during the day when it was only a servant's; but at last she was right in her divination. She was trying at the moment to write a letter to her father, with the door open into her bed-room, where Ravvie sat under the benign spectacles of Rosann. In answer to her "Come in," Colburne entered, looking pale with want of sleep, for he had worked nights and travelled days.
"I am so glad you have come back," she said in her frank way.
"And I am so glad to get back," he replied, dropping wearily into an easy chair. "When does your father return?"
"I don't know. He told me to write to him at Springfield until I got word to stop."
Colburne was pleased; the Doctor would not be at home for a day or two; that would give him other opportunities in case this one should result in a failure. The little parlor looked more formidable than the balcony, and the glare of the gas was not so encouraging as the mellow moonlight. He did not feel sure how he should be able to speak here, where she could see every working of his countenance. He did not know that from the moment he began to speak of the subject which filled his heart she would not be able to look him in the face until after she had promised to be his altogether and forever.
Women always will talk at such times. They seem to dread to be caught, and to know that silence is a dangerous trap for the feelings; and consequently they prattle about anything, no matter what, provided the prattle will prolong the time during which the hunter is in chase.
"You look quite worn out with your journey," she said. "I should think you had made a forced march to New York and back on foot."
"I have been under the necessity of working nights," he answered, without telling her that it was the desire toreturn as quickly as possible to her which had constituted the forcing power.
"You shouldn't do it. You will wear yourself down again, as you did in field service."
"No. There are no privations here; no hunger, and no food more unwholesome than hunger; no suffering with cold; no malaria. If I fall sick here, it will only be with living too well, and having too easy a time. Somebody says that death is a disgrace; that man ought to be ashamed of himself for dying. I am inclined to admit it, unless the man is in field service. In field service I have suffered keenly now and then, so as to become babyish about it, and think of you and how glad you would be to give me something to eat."
She made no reply, except to look at him steadily for a moment, admiring what seemed to her the heroism of speaking so lightly of hardships.
"You see I confided strongly in your kindness," he resumed. "I do so still."
The color flooded her face and neck as she divined from his manner that he was about to resume the conversation of the balcony. He rose, walked to the door which led into the bed-room, closed it gently and came back. She could not speak nor raise her eyes to his face as he stood before her. If he had kept silence for a few moments she would probably have recovered herself and said, "Won't you sit down," or some such insanity. But he did not give her time for that; he took one of her hands in both of his and said, "Lillie!"
There was a question in the tone, but she could not answer it except by suddenly raising her other hand to her face, as if to hide the confession which was glowing there.
"You know that I have loved you four years," he went on, bending down to her and whispering.
She never knew how it was that she found herself a moment afterwards on her feet, leaning against his breast, with her head on his shoulder, sobbing, trembling, but fullof joy. The man whom she ought always to have loved, the man whom she now did love with the whole strength of her being, whom she could trust perfectly and forever, had claimed her as his, and she had resigned herself to him, not desiring to reserve a drop of her blood or a thought of her soul. Nothing could separate them but death; nothing could make them unhappy but losing each other: for the moment there was nothing in the world but they two and their love. After a time—it might have been five minutes, or half an hour—she remembered—positively recollected with a start—that she had a child.
"Come and see him," she said. "Come and look at our boy."
She caught him by the arm, and dragged him, willing to go, into the room where Ravvie lay asleep. She never thought of her flushed face and disordered hair, although Rosann's spectacles were fixed upon her with an astonishment which seemed to enlarge their silver-bound orbits.
"Isn't he beautiful!" she whispered. "He is yours—mine—ours."
Rosann gave her head a toss of comprehension and satisfaction in which I heartily join her, as does also, I hope, the reader.
Colburne and then Lillie kissed the child—all unconscious of the love which was lavished on him, which filled the room, and was copious enough to fill lives.
It had all come like a great surprise to Lillie. As much as she may have desired it, as much as she may have hoped it in moments for which she reproached herself at the time as absurd and almost immodest, it nevertheless descended upon her, this revelation, with wings of dazzling astonishment. In the night she awoke to disbelieve, and then to remember all with a joyful faith. And while thinking it over, in a delicious reverie which could not justly be called thought, but rather a thrilling succession of recollections and sentiments, there came to her among the multitude of impressions a wonder at her own happiness.She seemed with amazement to see herself in double: the one figure widowed and weeping, seated amid the tombs of perished hopes: the other also widowed in garb, but about to put on garments of bridal white, and with a face which lit up the darkness.
"How can it be!" she exclaimed aloud, as she remembered the despair of eighteen months ago. Then she added, smiling with a delicious consciousness of justification, "Oh! I love him better than I ever loved any other. I am right in loving him."
After that she commended the once-loved one, who was dead, to Heaven's pity—and then prayed long and fervently for the newly loved one who was living—but brokenly, too, and stopping now and then to smile at his bright image painted on the night. Last came a prayer for her child, whom she might have forgotten in these passionate emotions, only that she could hear his gentle breathing through the quiet midnight.
"I wonder how you can love me so, when I kept you so long away from me," she said to Colburne at their next meeting.
"You are all the dearer for it," he answered. "Yes, even because another stood for a long time between us, you are all the dearer. Perhaps it ought not to be so; but so it is, my darling."
Her gratitude was uttered in a silent, fervent pressure of her lips against his cheek. These were the only words that passed between them concerning her first marriage.
"Where are we to live?" he asked. "Do you want to go back to New Orleans?"
"Oh, never!" she replied. "Always at the North! I like it so much better!"
She was willing at all times now to make confession of her conversion.
Doctor Ravenel was delighted when Lillie, blushing monstrously and with one arm around his neck, and her face at first a little behind his shoulder, confided to him the new revelation which had made her life doubly precious.
"I never was more happy since I came into the world, my dear," he said. "I am entirely satisfied. I do most heartily return thanks for this. I believe that now your happiness and well-being are assured, so far as they can be by any human circumstance. He is the noblest young man that I ever knew."
"Shall I send him to you to implore your consent?" she asked roguishly. "Do you want a chance to domineer over him?"
The Doctor laughed outright at the absurdity of the idea.
"I feel," said he, "as though I ought to ask his consent. I ought to apologize to the municipal authorities for taking the finest fellow in the city away from the young ladies of native birth. Seriously, my dear child, you will have to try hard in order to be good enough for him."
"Go away," answered Lillie with a little push. "Papas are the most ungrateful of all human beings. Well, if I am not good enough, there is Ravvie, and you. I throw you both in to make it an even bargain."
It was soon decided that the marriage should take place early in September. Lillie had never had a long engagement, and did not now specially care for one, being therein, I understand, similar to most widows when they are once persuaded to exchange their mourning for bridal attire. Men never like that period of expectation, andColburne urged an early day for his inauguration as monarch of a heart and household. His family homestead, just now tenantless, was made fine by the application of much paint and wall-paper, and the introduction of half-a-dozen new articles of furniture. Lillie and he visited it nearly every day during their brief betrothal, usually accompanied by Ravvie in the wicker baby-wagon, and were very happy in dressing up the neglected garden, arranging and re-arranging the chairs, and tables, and planning how the rooms should be distributed among the family. To the Doctor was assigned the best front bed-room, and to the Smithites and Brownites, etc., an adjoining closet of abundant dimensions.
"Ravvie and Rosann shall have the back chamber," said Lillie, "so that Ravvie can look out on the garden and be away from the dust of the street. I am so delighted that the little fellow is at last to have a garden and flowers. You and I will take the other front bedroom, next to papa's."
Here she colored at her own frankness, and hurried on to other dispositions.
"That will leave us two little rooms for servants up stairs; and down stairs we shall have a parlor, and dining-room, and kitchen; we shall fairly lose ourselves. How much pleasanter than a hotel!"
Colburne had noticed her blush with a sense of pleasure and triumph; but he was generous enough and delicate enough to spare her any allusion to it.
"You have left no place for friends," he merely observed.
"Oh, but we mustn't entertain much, for a while. We—you—cannot afford it. I have been catechising Mrs. Whitewood about the cost of meat and things. Prices are dreadful."
After a little pause she broke out, "Oh, won't it be delightful to have a house, and garden, and flowers! Ravvie will be so happy here! We shall all be so happy! I can't think of anything else."
"And you don't want a wedding tour?"
"Oh yes! Idowant it. But, my darling, you cannot afford it. You must not tempt me. We will have the wedding tour five years hence, when we come to celebrate our wooden wedding. Then you will be rich, perhaps."
The grand ceremony which legalized and ratified all these arrangements took place at five o'clock in the afternoon in the little church of St. Joseph. The city being yet small enough to feel a decided interest in the private affairs of any noted citizen, a crowd of uninvited spectators collected to witness the marriage of the popular young captain with the widow of the lamented Union General. Stories of how the father had given up his all for the sake of the Republic, how Colburne had single-handed saved Mrs. Carter from a brigade of Texans, and how the dying General had bequeathed the care of his family to the Captain on the field of victory, circulated among the lookers on and inflamed them to an enthusiasm which exhibited itself in a violent waving of handkerchief as the little bridal party came out of the church and drove homeward. Since New Boston was founded no other nuptials had been so celebrated, if we may believe the oldest inhabitant.
At last Colburne had his wife, and his wife had her home. For the last four years they have sailed separately over stormy seas, but now they are in a quiet haven, united so long as life shall last.
It grieves me to leave this young woman thus on the threshold of her history. Here she is, at twenty-three, with but one child, and only at her second husband. Two-thirds of her years and heart history are probably before her. Women are most interesting at thirty: then only do they in general enter upon their full bloom, physical, moral and intellectual: then only do they attain their highest charm as members of society. But a sense of artistic fitness, derived from a belief that now she has a sure start in the voyage of happiness, compels me to close the biography of my heroine at her marriage with myfavorite, Mr. Colburne. Moreover, it will be perceived that, if I continue her story, I shall have to do it through the medium of prophecy, which might give it an air of improbability to the reader, besides leading me to assume certain grave responsibilities, such, for instance, as deciding the next presidential election without waiting for the verdict of the people.
We need have no fears about the prospects of Colburne. It is true that during his military career luck has been against him, and he has not received promotion although he deserved it; but his disappointment in not obtaining great military glory will finally give strength to his character and secure to him perfect manliness and success. It has taken down his false pride, and taught him to use means for ends; moreover, it will preserve him from being enfeebled by a dropsy of vanity. Had he been mustered out of service as a Brigadier-General of volunteers, he might possibly have disdained the small beginnings of a law business, demanded a foreign consulate or home collectorship, and became a State pauper for life. As it is, he will stand on his own base, which is a broad and solid one; and the men around him will have no advantage over him, except so far as their individual bases are better than his; for in civilian life there is no rank, nor seniority, and the close corporation of political cabal has little influence. The chivalrous sentiment which would not let him beg for promotion will show forth in a resolute self-reliance and an incorruptible honor, which in the long run will be to his outward advantage. His responsibilities will take all dreaminess out of him, and make him practical, industrious, able to arrive at results. His courage will prolong his health, and his health will be used in effective labor. He has the patience of a soldier, and a soldier's fortitude under discouragement. He is a better and stronger man for having fought three years, out-facing death and suffering. Like the nation, he has developed, and learned his powers. Possessing more physical andintellectual vigor than is merely necessary to exist, he will succeed in the duties of life, and control other men's lives, labors, opinions, successes. It is greatly to his honor, it is a sure promise of his future, that he understands his seeming failure as a soldier, and is not discouraged by it, but takes hold of the next thing to do with confident energy.
He is the soldier citizen: he could face the flame of battle for his country: he can also earn his own living. He could leave his office-chair to march and fight for three years; and he can return to peaceful industry, as ennobling as his fighting.
It is in millions of such men that the strength of the Republic consists.
As for his domestic history, I think that we need have no terrors either for his happiness or that of Mrs. Colburne.
"I don't see but that you get along very well together," said the Doctor, addressing the young couple, a week or so after the marriage. "I really don't see why I can't hereafter devote myself exclusively to my Brownites and Robinsonites."
"Papa," answered Lillie, "I never felt so near saying that I could spare you."
Colburne listened, happily smiling, conscious of a loved and loving wife, of a growing balance in bank, of surroundings which he would not have exchanged for a field of victory.
THE END.