University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.
MR. COLBURNE SEES HIS WAY CLEAR TO BE A SOLDIER.

Stragglers arrived, and then the regiments. People
were not angry with the beaten soldiers, but treated
them with tenderness, gave them plentiful cold collations,
and lavished indignation on their ragged shoddy uniforms.
Then the little State, at first pulseless with despair, took
a long breath of relief when it found that Beauregard had
not occupied Washington, and set bravely about preparing
for far bloodier battles than that of Bull Run.

Lieutenant-Colonel Carter did not return with his regiment;
and Colburne read with a mixture of emotions that
he had been wounded and taken prisoner while gallantly
leading a charge. He marked the passage, and left the
paper with his compliments for the Ravenels, after debating
at the door of the hotel whether he should call on them,

and deciding in the negative. Not being able as yet to
appreciate that blessing in disguise, Bull Run, his loyal
heart was very sad and sore over it, and he felt a thrill of
something like horror whenever he thought of the joyful
shriek with which Lillie had welcomed the shocking tidings.
He was angry with her, or at least he tried to be.
He called up his patriotism, that strongest of New England
isms, and resolved that with a secessionist, a woman
who wished ill to her country, he would not fall in love.
But to be sure of this he must keep away from her; for
thus much of love, or of perilous inclination at least, he
already had to acknowledge; and moreover, while he was
somewhat ashamed of the feeling, he still could not heartily
desire to eradicate it. Troubled thus concerning the
affairs of the country and of his own heart, he kept aloof
from the Ravenels for three or four days. Then he said to
himself that he had no cause for avoiding the Doctor, and
that to do so was disgraceful treatment of a man who had
proved his loyalty by taking up the cross of exile.

This story will probably have no readers so destitute of
sympathy with the young and loving, as that they can
not guess the result of Colburne's internal struggles. After
two or three chance conversations with Ravenel he
jumped, or to speak more accurately, he gently slid to the
conclusion that it was absurd and unmanly to make a
distinction in favor of the father and against the daughter.
Quarrel with a woman; how ridiculous! how unchivalrous!
He colored to the tips of his repentant ears as he
thought of it and of what Miss Ravenel must think of it.
He hastened to call on her before the breach which he had
made between her and himself should become untraversable;
for although the embargo on their intercourse had
lasted only about a week, it already seemed to him a
lapse of time measureable by months; and this very
naturally, inasmuch as during that short interval he had
lived a life of anguish as a man and a patriot. Accordingly
the old intimacy was resumed, and the two young

people seldom passed forty-eight hours apart. But of the
rebellion they said little, and of Bull Run nothing. These
were such sore subjects to him that he did not wish to
speak of them except to the ear of sympathy; and she,
divining his sensitiveness, would not give him pain notwithstanding
that he was an abolitionist and a Yankee.
If the Doctor, ignorant of what passed in these young
hearts, turned the conversation on the war, Lillie became
silent, and Colburne, appreciating her forbearance, tried to
say very little. Thus without a compact, without an explanation,
they accorded in a strain of mutual charity which
predicted the ultimate conversion of one or the other.

Moreover, Colburne asked himself, what right had he to
talk if he did not fight? If he wanted to answer this
woman's outcry of delight over the rout of Bull Run, the
place to do it was not a safe parlor, but a field of victorious
battle. Why did he not act in accordance with these
truly chivalrous sentiments? Why not fall into one of the
new regiments which his gallant little State was organizing
to continue the struggle? Why not march on with
the soul of old John Brown, joining in the sublime though
quaint chorus of, “We're coming, Father Abraham, three
hundred thousand more?”

He did talk very earnestly of it with various persons,
and, among others, with Doctor Ravenel. The latter approved
the young man's warlike inclinations promptly
and earnestly.

“It is the noblest duty that you may ever have a chance
to perform during your life,” said he. “To do something
personally towards upholding this Union and striking
down slavery is an honor beyond any thing that ever was
accorded to Greek or Roman. I wish that I were young
enough for the work, or fitted for it by nature or education.
I would be willing to have my tombstone set up
next year, if it could only bear the inscription, “He died
in giving freedom to slaves.”

“Oh! do stop,” implored Lillie, who entered in time to

hear the concluding sentence. “What do you talk about
your tombstone for? You will get perfectly addled about
abolition, like all the rest. Now, papa, you ought to be
more consistent. You didn't use to be so violent against
slavery. You have changed since five years ago.”

“I know it,” says the Doctor. “But that doesn't prove
that I am wrong now. I wasn't infallible five years ago.
Why, my dear, the progress of our race from barbarism to
civilization is through the medium of constant change. If
the race is benefited by it, why not the individual? I am
a sworn foe to consistency and conservation. To stick
obstinately to our old opinions, because they are old, is as
foolish as it would be in a soldier-crab to hold on to his
shell after he had outgrown it instead of picking up a new
one fitted to his increased size. Suppose the snakes persisted
in going about in their last year's skins? No, no;
there are no such fools in the lower animal kingdom; that
stupidity is confined to man.”

“The world does move,” observed Colburne. “We
consider ourselves pretty strict and old-fashioned here in
New Boston. But if our Puritan ancestors could get
hold of us, they would be likely to have us whipped as
heretics and Sabbath-breakers. Very likely we would be
equally severe upon our own great-great-grandchildren, if
we should get a chance at them.”

“Weak spirits are frightened by this change, this growth,
this forward impetus,” said the Doctor. “I must tell you a
story. I was travelling in Georgia three years ago. On
the seat next in front of me sat a cracker, who was evidently
making his first railroad experience, and in other
respects learning to go on his hind legs. Presently the
train crossed a bridge. It was narrow, uncovered and
without sides, so that a passenger would not be likely to
see it unless he sat near the window. Now the cracker
sat next the alley of the car, and away from the window.
I observed him give a glare at the river and turn away
his head suddenly, after which he rolled about in a queer

way, and finally went on the floor in a heap. We picked
him up; spirits were easily produced, (they always are
down there); and presently the cracker was brought to
his senses. His first words were, `Has she lit'— He
was under the impression that the train had taken the
river at a running jump. Now that is very much like the
judgment of timid and ill-informed people on the progress
of the nation or race at such a time as this. They
don't know about the bridge; they think we are flying
through the air; and so they go off in general fainting-fits.”

Colburne laughed, as many another man has done before
him, at this good old story.

“On our train,” said he, “on the train of human progress,
we are parts of the engine and not mere passengers.
I ought to be revolving somewhere. I ought to be at
work. I want to do something—I am most anxious to do
something—but I don't know precisely what. I suppose
that the inability exists in me, and not in my circumstances.
I am like the gentleman who tired himself out
with jumping, but never could jump high enough to see
over his own standing-collar.”

“I know how you feel. I have been in that state myself,
often and in various ways. For instance it has occurred
to me, especially in my younger days, to feel a
strong desire to write, without having anything to say.
There was a burning in my brain; there was a sentiment
or sensation which led me to seek pens, ink and paper;
there was an impatient, uncertain, aimless effort to commence;
there was a pause, a revery, and all was over.
It was a storm of sheet-lightning. There were glorious
gleams, and far off openings of the heavens; but no sound,
droppings, no sensible revelation from the upper world.—
However, your longings are for action, and I am convinced
that you will find your opportunity. There will
be work enough in this matter for all.”

“I don't know,” said Calburne. “The sixth and seventh

regiments are full. I hear that there isn't a lieutenantcy
left.”

“You will have to raise your own company.”

“Ah! But for what regiment? We shan't raise another,
I am afraid. Yes, I am actually afraid that the war will
be over in six months.”

Miss Ravenel looked up hastily as if she should like to
say “Forty years,” but checked herself by a surprising
effort of magnanimity and good nature.

“That's queer patriotism,” laughed the Doctor. But let
me assure you, Mr. Colburne, that your fears are groundless.
There will be more regiments needed.”

Miss Ravenel gave a slight approving nod, but still said
nothing, remembering Bull Run and how provokingly she
had shouted over it.

“This southern oligarchy,” continued the Doctor, “will
be a tough nut to crack. It has the consolidated vigor of
a tyranny.”

“I wonder where Lieutenant-Colonel Carter is?” queried
Colburne. “It is six weeks since he was taken prisoner.
It seems like six years.”

Miss Ravenel raised her head with an air of interest,
glanced hastily at her father, and gave herself anew to
her embroidery. The Doctor made a grimace which was
as much as to say that he thought small beer or sour beer
of Lieutenant-Colonel Carter.

“He is a very fine officer,” said Colburne. “He was
highly spoken of for his conduct at Bull Run.”

“I would rather have you for a Colonel,” replied the
Doctor.

Colburne laughed contemptuously at the idea of his
fitness for a colonelcy.

“I would rather have any respectable man of tolerable
intellect,” insisted the Doctor. “I tell you that I know
that type perfectly. I know what he is as well as if I had
been acquainted with him for twenty years. He is what
we southerners, in our barbarous local vanity, are accustomed

to call a southern gentleman. He is on the model
of the sugar-planters of St. Dominic Parish. He needs
somebody to care for him. Let me tell you a story. When
I was on a mineralogical expedition in North Carolina
some years ago, I happened to be out late at night looking
for lodgings. I was approaching one of those cross-road
groggeries which they call a tavern down there, when I
met a most curious couple. It was a man and a goose.
The man was drunk, and the goose was sober. The man
was staggering, and the goose was waddling perfectly
straight. Every few steps it halted, looked back and
quacked, as if to say, Come along. The moon was shining,
and I could see the whole thing plainly. I was obliged to
put up for the night in the groggery, and there I got an
explanation of the comedy. It seems that this goose was
a pet, and had taken an unaccountable affection to its
owner, who was a wretched drunkard of a cracker. The
man came nearly every night to the groggery, got drunk
as regularly as he came, and generally went to sleep on
one of the benches. About midnight the goose would appear
and cackle for him. The bar-keeper would shake up
the drunkard and say, `Here! your goose has come for
you.' As soon as the brute could get his legs he would
start homeward, guided by his more intelligent companion.
If the man fell down and couldn't get up, the goose
would remain by him and squawk vociferously for assistance.—Now,
sir, there was hardly a sugar-planter, hardly
a southern gentleman, in St. Dominic Parish, who didn't
need some such guardian. Often and often, as I have
seen them swilling wine and brandy at each other's tables,
I have charitably wished that I could say to this one and
that one, Sir, your goose has come for you.”

“But you never have seen the Lieutenant-Colonel so
badly off,” answered Colburne, after a short meditation.

“Why no—not precisely,” admitted the Doctor. “But
I know his type,” he presently added with an obstinacy
which Miss Ravenel secretly thought very unjust. She

thought it best to direct her spirit of censure in another
direction.

“Papa,” said she, “what a countryfied habit you have
of telling stories!”

“Don't criticise, my dear,” answers papa. “I am a high
toned southern gentleman, and always knock people on
the head who criticise me.”

The question still returns upon us, why Mr. Colburne
did not join the army. It is time, therefore, to state the
hitherto unimportant fact that he was the only son of a
widow, and that his life was a necessity to her, not only
as a consolation to her loneliness, but as a support to her
declining fortunes. Doctor Colburne had left his wife and
child an estate of about twenty-five thousand dollars,
which at the time of his death was a respectable fortune
in New Boston. But the influx of gold from California,
and the consequent rise of prices, seriously diminished the
value of the family income just about the time that Edward,
by growing into manhood and entering college, necessitated
an increase of expenses. Therefore Mrs. Colburne
was led to put one half of the joint fortune into certain
newly-organized manufacturing companies, which
promised to increase her annual six per cent to twenty-four
—nor was she therein exceedingly to blame, being led away
by the example and advice of some of the sharpest New
Boston capitalists, many of whom had their experienced
pinions badly lamed in these joint-stock adventurings.

“What you want, Mr. Colburne,” said a director, “is
an investment which is both safe and permanent. Now
this is just the thing.”

I can not say much for the safety of the investment, but
it certainly was a permanent one. During the first year
the promised twenty-four per cent was paid, and the widow
could have sold out for one hundred and twenty. Then
came a free-trade, Democratic improvement on the tariff;
the manufacturing interest of the country was paralyzed.
and the Braggville stock fell to ninety. Mrs. Colburne

might still have sold out at a profit, counting in her first
year's dividend; but as it was not in her inexperience to
see that this was wisdom, she held on for a—decline. By
the opening of the war her certificates of manufacturing
stock were waste paper, and her annual income was reduced
to eight hundred dollars. Indeed, for a year or two
previous to the commencement of this story, she had been
forced to make inroads upon her capital.

Of this crisis in the family affairs Edward was fully
aware, and like a true-born, industrious Yankee, did his
best to meet it. From every lowermost branch and twig
of his profession he plucked some fruit by dint of constant
watchfulness, so that during the past year he had been
very nearly able to cover his own conscientiously economical
expenditures. He was gaining a foothold in the law,
although he as yet had no cases to plead. If he held on a
year or two longer at this rate he might confidently expect
to restore the family income and stave off the threatened
sale of the homestead.

But this was not all which prevented him from going
forth to battle. The cry of his mother's heart was,
“My son, how can I let thee go?” She was an abolitionist,
as was almost every body of her set in New Boston;
she was an enthusiastic patriot, as was almost every one
in the north during that sublime summer of popular
enthusiasm; but this war—oh, this strange, ferocious war!
was horrible. Her sensitively affectionate nature, blinded
by veils of womanly tenderness, folded in habits of life-long
peace, could not see the hard, inevitable necessity of
the contest. Earnestly as she sympathised with its loyal
and humane objects, she was not logical enough or not
firm enough to sympathise with the iron thing itself.
Lapped in sweet influences of peace all her loving life, why
must she be called to death amid the clamor of murderous
contests? For her health was failing; a painful and fatal
disease had fastened its clutches on her; another year's
course she did not hope to run. And if the hateful struggle

must go on, if it must torment her last few days with
its agitations and horrors, so much the more did she need
her only child. Other women's sons—yes, if there was no
help for it—but not hers—might put on the panoply of
strife, and disappear from anxiously following eyes into
the smoke and flame of battle. Edward told her every day
the warlike news of the journals, the grand and stern putting
on of the harness, the gigantic plans for crushing the
nation's foes. She could take no interest in such tidings
but that of aversion. He read to her in a voice which
thrilled like swellings of martial music, Tennyson's Charge
of the Six Hundred. She listened to the clarion-toned
words with distaste and almost with horror.

Well, the summer wore away, that summer of sombre
preparation and preluding skirmishes, whose scattering
musketry and thin cannonade faintly prophecied the orchestral
thunders of Gettysburgh and the Wilderness,
and whose few dead preceded like skirmishers the massive
columns which for years should firmly follow them into
the dark valley. Its forereaching shadows fell upon many
homes far away from the battlefield, and chilled to death
many sensitive natures. Old persons and invalids sank
into the grave that season under the oppression of its
straining suspense and preliminary horror; and among
these victims, whom no man has counted and whom few
have thought of collectively, was the mother of Colburne.

One September afternoon she sent for Edward. The
Doctor had gone; his labors were over. The clergyman
had gone; neither was he longer needed. There was no
one in the room but the nurse, the dying mother and the
only child. The change had been expected for days, and
Edward had thought that he was prepared for it; had indeed
marvelled and been shocked at himself because he
could look forward to it with such seeming composure;
for, reason with his heart and his conscience as he might,
he could not feel a fitting dread and anguish. In the
common phrase of humanity, when numbed by unusual

sorrow, he could not realize it. But now, as, leaning over
the footboard and looking steadfastly upon his mother's
face, he saw that the final hour had come, a sickness of
heart fell upon him, and a trembling as if his soul were
being torn asunder. Yet neither wept; the Puritans and
the children of the Puritans do not weep easily; they are
taught, not to utter, but to hide their emotions. The
nurse perceived no signs of unusual feeling, except that
the face of the strong man became suddenly as pale as
that of the dying woman, and that to him this was an hour
of anguish, while to her it was one of unspeakable joy.
The mother knew her son too well not to see, even with
those failing eyes, into the depths of his sorrow.

“Don't be grieved for me, Edward,” she said. “I am
sustained by the faith of the promises. I am about to return
from the place whence I came. I am re-entering
with peace and with confidence into a blessed eternity.”

He came to the side of the bed, sat down on it and took
her hand without speaking.

“You will follow me some day,” she went on. “You
will follow me to the place where I shall be, at the right
hand of the Lord. I have prayed for it often;—I was
praying for it a moment ago; and, my child, my prayer
will be granted. Oh, I have been so fearful for you;
But I am fearful no longer.”

He made no answer except to press her hand while she
paused to draw a few short and wearisome breaths.

“I can bear to part with you now,” she resumed. “I
could not bear it till the Lord granted me this full assurance
that we shall meet again. I leave you in his hands.
I make no conditions with him. I have been sweetly
brought to give you altogether up to one who loves
you better than I know how to love you. He gave
me my love, and he has kept more than he gave. Perhaps
I have been selfish, Edward, to hold on to you as I have.
You have felt it your duty to go into the army, and perhaps
I have been selfish to prevent you. Now you are

free; to-morrow I shall not be here. If you still see that
to be your duty, go; and the Lord go with you, darling,
and give you strength and courage. I do not ask him to
spare you, but only to guide you here below, and restore
you to me above.—And he will do it, Edward, for his
own sake. I am full of confidence; the promises are sure.
For you and for myself, I rejoice with a joy unspeakable
and full of glory.”

While thus speaking, or rather whispering, she had put
one arm around his neck. As he kissed her wasted cheek
and let fall his first tears on it, she drew her hand across
his face with a caressing tenderness, and smiling, fell back
softly on her pillow, closing her eyes as calmly as if to
sleep. A few broken words, a murmuring of unutterable,
unearthly, infinite happiness, echoes as it were of greetings
far away with welcoming angels, were her last utterances.
To the young man, who still held her hand and now and
then kissed her cheek, she seemed to slumber, although
her breathing gradually sank so low that he could not perceive
it. But after a long time the nurse came to the bedside,
bent over it, looked, listened, and said, “She is
gone!”

He was free; she was not there.

He went to his room with a horrible feeling that for him
there was no more love; that there was nothing to do
and nothing to expect; that his life was a blank. He
could fix his mind on nothing past or future; not even upon
the unparalleled sorrow of the present. Taking up the
Bible which she had given him, he read a page before he
noticed that he had not understood and did not remember
a single passage. In that vacancy, that almost idiocy,
which beclouds afflicted souls, he could not recall a distinct
impression of the scene through which he had just
passed, and seemed to have forgotten forever his mother's
dying words, her confidence that they should meet again,
her heavenly joy. With the same perverseness, and in
spite of repeated efforts to close his ears to the sound,

some inner, wayward self repeated to him over and over
again these verses of the unhappy Poe—

The sad words sounded wofully true to him. For the
time, for some days, it seemed to him as if life were but a
wearisome illness, for which the grave was but a cure. His
mind, fevered by night watching, anxiety, and an unaccustomed
grappling with sorrow, was not in a healthy
state. He thought that he was willing to die; he only desired
to fall usefully, honorably, and in consonance with
the spirit of his generation; he would set his face henceforward
towards the awful beacons of the battle-field. His
resolution was taken with the seriousness of one, who,
though cheerful and even jovial by nature, had been permeated
to some extent by the solemn passion of Puritanism.
He painted to himself in strong colors the risk of
death and the nature of it; then deliberately chose the
part of facing this tremendous mystery in support of the
right. All this while, be it remembered, his mind was
somewhat exalted by the fever of bodily weariness and of
spiritual sorrow.