University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.
LILLIE CHOOSES FOR HERSELF.

Late in that eventful summer of 1862, so bloody in Virginia
and Kentucky, so comparatively peaceful in the malarious
heats of Louisiana, the Colonel of the Tenth Barataria
held a swearing soliloquy. In general when he
swore it was at somebody or to somebody; but on the
present occasion the performance was confined to the solitude
of his own room and the gratification of his own
ears; unless, indeed, we may venture to suppose that he
had a guardian angel whose painful duty it was to attend
him constantly. I suspect that I have not yet enabled
the reader to realize how remarkable were the Colonel's
gifts in the way of profanity; and I fear that I could not
do it without penning three or four such astonishing pages
as never were printed, unless it might be in the infernal
regions. In the appropriate words of Lieutenant Van
Zandt, who, by the way, honestly admired his superior
officer for this and for his every other characteristic, “it
was a nasty old swear.”

Carter's quarters were a large brick house belonging to
a lately wealthy but now impoverished and exiled Secessionist.
He had his office, his parlor, his private sitting-room,
his dining-room, his billiard-room, and five upper
bedrooms, besides the basement. His life corresponded
with his surroundings; his dinners were elegant, his wines
and segars superior. As it was now evening and his business
hours long since over, he was in his sitting-room,
lounging in an easy chair, his feet on a table, a half-smoked
segar in one hand and an open letter in the other.
Only the Colonel or Lieutenant Van Zandt, or men equally
gifted in ardent expressions. could suitably describe the
heat of the weather. Although he wore nothing but his
shirt and pantaloons, his cheeks were deeply flushed, and
his forehead beaded with perspiration. The Louisiana
mosquitoes, a numerous and venomous people, were buzzing
in his ears, raising blotches on his face and perforating
his linen. But it was not about them, it was about
the letter, that he was blaspheming. When the paroxysm
was over he restored the segar to his lips, discovered that
it was out, and relighted it; for he was old smoker enough
and healthy enough to prefer the pungency of a stump to
the milder flavor of a virgin weed. While he re-reads his
letter, we will venture to look over his shoulder.

“D—n it! of course I mean to fight,” muttered the
Colonel, when he had finished his second reading. “I'll
resign the mayoralty, and ask for active service and a
brigade. Then I must write something to explain that

filibustering business.—No, I won't. The less that is explained,
the better. I'll deny it outright.—Now there's
Weitzel. He, by” (this and that) “can have a star, and
I can't. My junior, by” (that and the other) “in the service,
by” (this and that) “by at least six years. What
if he should get the active brigade? It would be just him,
by” (this and that) “to want it, and just like Butler, by”
(that and the other) “to give it to him.”

The Colonel sat for a long time in vexatious thought,
slapping his mosquito bites, relighting his stump and
smoking it down to its bitterest dregs. Finally, without
having written a word, he gave up the battle with the
stinging multitudes, drank a glass of brandy and water,
turned off the gas, stepped into the adjoining bedroom,
kicked off his trousers (long since unbuttoned), drew the
mosquito-curtain, and went to bed as quickly and quietly
as an infant. Soldiering habits had enabled him to court
slumber with success under all circumstances.

During the month of September was formed that famous
organization, composed of five regiments of infantry,
with four squadrons and two batteries attached, known
officially as the Reserve Brigade, but popularly as Weitzel's.
It was intended from the first for active service,
and the title Reserve was applied to it simply to mislead
the enemy. The regiments were encamped for purposes
of drill and preparation on the flats near Carrollton, a village
four or five miles above New Orleans. Carter applied
for the brigade, but was unable to obtain it. Weitzel
was not only his superior in rank, but was Butler's favorite
officer and most trusted military adviser. Then Carter
threw up his mayoralty and reported for duty to his regiment,
in great bitterness of spirit at finding himself obliged
to serve under a man who had once been his junior and
inferior. His only consolation was that this was not the
worst; both he and Weitzel were under the orders of an
attorney.

But he went to work vigorously at drilling, disciplining

and fitting out his regiment. His Sunday morning inspections
were awful ordeals which lasted the whole forenoon.
If a company showed three or four dirty men the Colonel
sent for the Captain and gave him such a lecture as made
him think seriously of tendering his resignation. When not
on drill or guard duty the soldiers were busy nearly all
day in brushing their uniforms, polishing their brasses and
buttons, blacking their shoes and accoutrements, and washing
their shirts, drawers, stockings, and even their canteen
strings. The battalion drills of the Tenth were truly laborious
gymnastic exercises, performed in great part on
the double-quick. The sentinels did their whole duty, or
were relieved and sent to the guardhouse. Corporals who
failed to make their rounds properly were reduced to the
ranks. Privates who forgot to salute an officer, or who
did not do it in handsome style, were put in confinement
on bread and water. The company cooking utensils were
scoured every day, and the camp was as clean as bare,
turfless earth could be. Carter was a hard-hearted, intelligent,
conscientious, beneficent tyrant. The Tenth
Barataria was the show regiment of the Reserve Brigade.
I have not time to analyze the interesting feelings of freeborn
Yankees under this searching despotism. I can only
say that the soldiers hated their colonel because they
feared him; that, like true Americans they profoundly respected
him because, as they said, “he knew his biz;”
that they were excessively proud of the superior drill and
neatness to which he had brought them against their
wills; and that, on the whole, they would not have exchanged
him for any other regimental commander in the
brigade. They firmly believed that under “Old Carter”
they could whip the best regiment in the rebel service. It
is true that there were exceptional ruffians who could not
forget that they had been bucked and put in the stocks,
and who muttered vindictive prophecies as to something
desperate which they would do on the first field of battle.

“Bedad an' I'll not forget to pay me reshpecs to 'im,”

growled a Hibernian pugilist. “Let 'im get in front of
the line, an I'll show 'im that I know how to fire to the
right and left oblike.”

Carter laughed contemptuously when informed of the
bruiser's threat.

“It's not worth taking notice of,” he said. “I know
what he'll do when he comes under the enemy's fire. He'll
blaze away straight before him as fast as he can load and
pull trigger, he'll be in such a cursed hurry to kill the men
who are trying to kill him. I couldn't probably make him
fire right oblique, if I wanted to. You never have seen
men in battle, Captain Colburne. It's really amusing to
notice how eager and savage new troops are. The moment
a man has discharged his piece he falls to loading as
if his salvation depended on it. The moment he has loaded
he fires just where he did the first time, whether he sees
anything or not. And he'll keep doing this till you stop
him. I am speaking of raw troops, you understand. The
old cocks save their powder,—that is unless they get bedeviled
with a panic. You must remember this when we
come to fight. Don't let your men get to blazing away at
nothing and scaring themselves with their own noise, under
the delusion that they are fiercely engaged.”

During the month or more which the brigade passed at
Carrollton Ravenel frequently visited Colburne, and did
not forget to make an incidental call or two of civility on
Colonel Carter. On two or three gala occasions he brought
out Mrs. Larue and Miss Ravenel. They always came and
went by the railroad, their present means not justifying a
carriage. When the ladies appeared in camp the Colonel
usually discovered the fact, and hastened to make himself
master of the situation. He invited them under the marquee
of his double tent, brought out store of confiscated
Madeira, ordered the regimental band to play, sent word
to the Lieutenant-Colonel to take charge of dress-parade,
and escorted his visitors in front of the line to show them
the exercises. In these high official hospitalities neither

Colburne nor any other company officer was invited to
share. Even the lieutenant-colonel, the major, the first
surgeon and the chaplain, though ranking as field and
staff officers, kept at a respectful distance from the favored
visitors and their awful host. For discipline's sake Carter
lived in loftier state among these volunteers than he would
have done in a regular regiment. Miss Ravenel was
amused, but she was also considerably impressed, by the
awe with which he was regarded by all who surrounded
him. I believe that all women admire men who can make
other men afraid.

“Are you as much scared at the general as your officers
are at you?” she laughingly asked. “I wish I could see
the general.”

“I will bring him to your house,” said Carter; but this
was one of the promises that he did not keep. That gay
speech of the young lady must have been a bitter dose to
him, as we know who are aware of his professional disappointment.

The ladies were delighted to walk down the open ranks
on inspection, and survey the neat packing of the double
lines of unslung knapsacks.

“It is like going through a milliner's shop,” said Lillie.
“How nicely the things are folded! They really have a great
deal of taste in arranging the colors. See, here is blue and
red and grey, and then blue again, with a black cravat here
and a white handherchief there. It is like the backs of a
row of books.”

“Yes, this box knapsack is a good one for show,” the
Colonel admitted. “It is too large, however. When the
men come to march they will find themselves overloaded.
I shall have to make a final inspection and throw away a
few tons of these extra-military gewgaws. What does a
soldier want of black cravats and daguerreotypes and
diaries and Testaments?”

“How cruelly practical you are!” said Lillie.

“Not in every thing,” responded the Colonel with a sigh;

and for some reason the young lady blushed profoundly
at the answer.

Of course these visits, the regiment, the Reserve Brigade,
and its destination were matters of frequent conversation
at the Ravenel dwelling. Through some leak of indiscretion
or treachery it transpired that Weitzel was to oust
Mouton from the country between the Mississippi and the
Atchafalaya, where he was a constant menace to New Orleans.
The whole city, rebel and loyal, argued and quarreled
about the chances of success. The Secessionists were
rampant; they said that Mouton had fifteen thousand men;
they offered to bet their piles that he would have New Orleans
back in a month. At every notable corner and in
front of every popular drinking saloon were groups of
tall, dark, fierce-looking men, carrying heavy canes, who
glared at Union officers and muttered about coming
Union defeats. Pale brunette ladies flouted their skirts
scornfully at sight of Federal uniforms, and flounced out
of omnibusses and street cars defiled by their presence.
These feminine politicians never visited Miss Ravenel, however
intimately they might have known her before the war;
and if they met her in the street they complimented her with
the same look of hate which they vouchsafed to the flag
of their country. With Madame Larue they were still on
good terms, although they rarely called at her house for
fear of encountering the Ravenels. This suited Madame's
purposes precisely; she could thereby be Federal at home
and Secessionist abroad.

“You know, my dears,” she would say to the female
Langdons and Soulés, “that one cannot undo one's self of
one's own relatives. That would be unreasonable. So I
am obliged to receive the Doctor and his poor daughter
at my house. But I understand perfectly that their society
must be to you disagreeable. Therefore I absolve
you, though with pain, from returning my visits. But, my
dears, I shall only call on you the more often. Do not be
surprised,” she would sometimes add, “if you see a Federal

uniform enter my door from time to time. I have my
objects. I flatter myself that I shall yet be of benefit to
the good cause.”

And in fact she did occasionally send to a certain secret
junto scraps of information which she professed to have extracted
from Union officers. This information was of no
value; it is even probable that much of it was a deliberate
figment of her imagination; but in this way she kept her
political odor sweet in the nostrils of the city Secessionists.

In secret she cared for little more than to be on the safe
side and keep her property. She laughed with delighted
malice at the Doctor's sarcasms upon the absurdities of
New Orleans politics, and the rottenness of New Orleans
morals. She sympathized with Lillie's youthful indignation
at her own social proscription. She flattered Carter's
professional pride by predicting his success in the field.
She satirized Colburne behind his back, and praised him to
his face, for his Catonian principles. She was all things to
all men, and made herself generally agreeable.

Meantime Lillie had become what she called a Federalist;
for she was not yet so established in the faith as to style
it Loyalist or Patriot. What girl would not have been
thus converted, driven as she was from the mansion of
secession by its bitter inmates, and drawn towards the opposing
house by her father and her two admirers? Colonel
Carter's visits were frequent and his influence strong and
increasing, notwithstanding the Doctor's warning tirades.
It made her uneasy, fretful and unhappy, to disagree with
her father; but on the subject of this preference she positively
could not hold his opinions. He seemed to her to
be so unjust; she could not understand why he should be
so bitterly and groundlessly prejudiced; the reasons
which he hinted at glided off her like rain off a bird's
feathers. She granted no faith to the insinuation that the
Colonel was a bad man, nor, had she credited it, would she
have inferred therefrom that he would make a bad husband.
Let us not be astonished at the delusion of this intelligent

and pure-minded young lady. I have witnessed more extraordinary
assortments and choices than this. I have
more than once seen an elegant, brilliant, highly-cultured
girl make an inexplicable and hungry snap at a man who
was stupidly, boorishly, viciously her inferior. The subtle
and potent sense which draws the two sexes together is
an inexorable despot.

The Colonel was one of its victims, although not quite
bereft of reason. Still, if he did not offer himself to Miss
Ravenel before going on this Lafourche expedition, it was
simply from considerations of worldly prudence, or, as he
phrased it to himself, out of regard to her happiness. He
thought that his pay was insufficient to support her in the
style to which she had been accustomed, and in which he
wished his wife to live. That he would be rejected he did
not much expect, being a veteran in love affairs, accustomed
to conquer, and gifted by birthright with an audacious
confidence. Nor did he so much as suspect that he
was not good enough for her. His moral perceptions, not
very keen perhaps by nature, had been still further calloused
by thirty-five years of wandering in the wilderness
of sin. Strange as it may seem to people of staid lives the
Colonel did not even consider himself a fast man. He allowed
that he drank; yes, that he sometimes drank more
than was good for him; but, as he laughingly said, he
never took more than his regulation quart a day; by
which he meant that, according to the army standard, he
was a temperate drinker. As to gambling, that was a
gentleman's amusement, and moreover he had done very
little of it in the last year or two. It was true that he
had had various —; but then all men did that sort of
thing at timesand under temptation; they did it more or
less openly, according as they were men of the world or
hypocrites; if they said they didn't, they lied. The Colonel
did not grant the least faith to the story of Joseph, or, allowing
it to be true, for the sake of argument, he considered
Joseph no gentleman. In short, after inspecting himself

fairly and fully according to his lights, he concluded
that he was rather honorable even in his vices. Had he
not, for instance, entangled himself in that affair of the
French boudoir chiefly to get Miss Ravenel out of his head,
and so keep from leading her and himself into a poverty-stricken
marriage? Thus, though he was very frank with
himself, he still concluded that he was a tolerably good
fellow. Yes; and there were many other persons who
thought him good enough; men who knew his ways perfectly
but could not see much matter of reproach in them.

In this state of opinion, and temper of feeling, the Colonel
approached his last interview with Miss Ravenel. He
meant to avoid the temptation of seeing her alone on this
occasion; but when Mrs. Larue told him that he should
have a private interview of half an hour he could not refuse
the offer. It must not be supposed that Lillie was a
party to the conspiracy. Madame alone originated, planned,
and executed. She saw to it beforehand that the Doctor
should be invited out; she stopped Colburne on the doorstep
with a message that the ladies were not at home;
lastly she slipped out of the parlor, dodged through the
back passage into the Ravenel house, and remained there
thirty minutes by the watch. It vexed this amiable creature
a trifle that the Colonel should prefer Lillie; but
since he would be so foolish, she was determined that he
should make a marriage of it. Leaving her to these reflections
as she walks the Doctor's studio, kicking his
minerals about the carpet with her little feet, or watching
at the window lest he should return unexpectedly, let us
go back to Miss Ravenel and her still undecided lover. It
was understood that the expedition was to sail the next
day, although Carter had not said so, not being a man to
tattle official secrets. When, therefore, he entered the
house that evening, she felt a vague dread of him, as if
half comprehending that the occasion might lead him to
say something decisive of her future. Carter on his part
knew that he would not be interrupted for a reasonable

number of minutes; and as Mrs. Larue left the room the
sense of opportunity rushed upon him like a flood of temptation.
He forgot in an instant that she was poor, that he
was poor and extravagant, and that a marriage would be
the maddest of follies, compared with which all his by-gone
extravagancies were acts of sedate wisdom. He was
now what he always had been, and what people of strong
passions very frequently are, the victim of chance and
juxtaposition. He rose from the sofa where he had been
sitting and worrying his cap, walked straight across the
room with a firm step, like the resolute, irresistible advance
of a veteran regiment, and took a chair beside her.

“Miss Ravenel,” he said, and stopped. There was
more profound feeling in his voice and face than we have
yet seen him exhibit in this history; there was so much,
and it was so electrical in its nature, at least as regarded
her, that she trembled in body and spirit. “Miss Ravenel,”
he resumed, “I did intend to go to this battle
without saying one word of love to you. But I cannot
do it. You see I cannot do it.”

Such a moment as this is one of the supreme moments
of a woman's life. There is a fulfillment of hope which is
thrillingly delicious; there is a demand, amounting to a
decree, which involves her whole being, her whole future;
there is a surprise,—it is always a surprise,—which is so
sudden and great that it falls like a terror. A pure and
loving girl who receives a first declaration of love from
the man whom she has secretly chosen out of all men as
the keeper of her heart is in a condition of soul which
makes her womanhood all ecstacy. There is not a nerve
in her brain, not a drop of blood in her body, which does
not go delirious with the enthusiasm of the moment. She
does not seem really to see, nor to hear, nor to speak, but
only to feel that presence and those words, and her own
reply; to feel them all by some new, miraculous sense,
such as we are conscious of in dreams, when things are
communicated to us and by us without touch or voice. It

is a mere palpitation of feeling, yet full of utterances; a
throbbing of happiness so acute and startling as to be almost
pain. That man has no just comprehension of this
moment, or is very unworthy of the power vested in his
manhood, who can awaken such emotions merely for a
passing pleasure, or blight them afterward by unfaithfulness
and neglect. In one sense Carter was as noble as his
triumph; he was not a good man, but he could love fervently.
At the same time he was not timorous, but understood
her although she did not answer. Precisely because
she did not speak, because he saw that she could not
speak, because he felt that no more speech was necessary,
he took her hand and pressed it to his lips. The color
which had left her skin came back to it and burned like a
flame in her face and neck.

“May I write to you when I am away?” he asked.

She raised her eyes to his with an expression of loving
gratitude which no words could utter. She tried to
speak, but she could only whisper—

“Oh! I should be so happy.”

“Then, my dear, my dearest one, remember that I am
yours, and try to feel that you are mine.”

I shall go no farther in the description of this interview.