University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.
LILLIE BIDS GOOD-BYE TO THE LOVER WHOM SHE HAS
CHOSEN, AND TO THE LOVER WHOM SHE
WOULD NOT CHOOSE.

Lillie left Mrs. Larue early, without a word as to the
great event which had just changed the world for her,
and retired to her own house and her own room. She
was in a state of being, half stunned, half ecstatic; every
faculty seemed to be suspended, except so far as it was

electrified to action by one idea; she sat by the window
with folded hands, motionless, seeing and hearing only
through her memory; she sought to recollect him as he
was when he took her hand and kissed it; she called to
mind all that he had said and looked and done. She
could not tell whether she had been thus occupied five
minutes or half an hour, when she heard the tinkle of the
door-bell, followed by her father's entrance. Then suddenly
a great terror and sense of guilt fell upon her spirit.
From the moment when that confession of love had been
uttered down to this moment her mind had been occupied
by but one human being, and that was her lover. Now,
for the first time during the evening, she recollected that
the man of her choice was not the man of her father's
choice, but, more than almost any other person, the object
of his suspicion, if not of his aversion. Yet she loved
them both; she could not take sides with one against the
other; it would kill her to give up the affection of
either. All impulse, all passion, blood and brain as tremulous
as quicksilver, she ran down stairs, opened the door
into the study where the doctor stood among his boxes,
wavered backward under a momentary throb of fear, then
sprang forward, threw her arms around his neck and
sobbed upon his shoulder,

“Oh, papa!—I am so happy!—so miserable!”

The doctor stared in astonishment and in some vague
alarm. Hardly aware of how much energy he used, he
detached her from him and held her out at arm's length,
looking anxiously at her for an explanation.

“Oh, don't push me away,” begged Lillie, and struggled
back to him, trying to hide her face against his
breast.

A suspicion of the truth fell across the Doctor, but he
strove to fling it from him as one dashes off a disagreeable
reptile. Still, he looked quite nervous and apprehensive
as he said, “What is it, my child?”

“Mr. Carter will tell you,” she whispered; then, before
he could speak, “Do love him for my sake.”

He pushed her sobbing into a chair, and turned his back
on her with a groan.

“Oh!—That man!—I can't—I won't.”

He walked several times rapidly up and down the room,
and then broke out again.

“I can not consent. I will not consent. It is not my
duty. Oh, Lillie! how could you choose the very man of
all that —! I tell you this must not be. It must stop here.
I have no confidence in him. He will not make you happy.
He will make you miserable. I tell you that you will regret
the day that you marry him to the last moment of
your life. My child,” (persuasively) “you must believe
me. You must trust my judgment. Will you not be
persuaded? Will you not stop where you are?”

He ceased his walk and gazed eagerly at her, hoping for
some affirmative sign. As may be supposed Lillie could
not give it; she could make no very distinct signs just
then, either one way or the other; she did not speak, nor
look at him, nor shake her head, nor nod it; she only covered
her face with her hands, and sobbed. Then the Doctor,
feeling himself to be forsaken, and acknowledging it
by outward dumb show, after the manner of men who are
greatly moved, went to the other end of the room, sat down
by himself and dropped his head into his hands, as if accepting
utter loneliness in the world. Lillie gave him one
glance in his acknowledged extremity of desertion, and,
running to him, knelt at his feet and laid her head against
his. She was certainly the most unhappy of the two, but
her eagerness was even stronger than her misery.

“Oh papa! why do you hate him so?”

“I don't hate him. I dread him. I suspect him. I know
he will not make you happy. I know he will make you
miserable.”

“But why?—why? Perhaps he can explain it. Tell

him what you think, papa. I am sure he can explain every
thing.”

But the Doctor only groaned, rose up, disentangled
himself from his daughter, and leaving her there on the
floor, continued his doleful walk.

Never having really feared what had come to pass, but
only given occasional thought to it as a possible though
improbable calamity, he had not inquired strictly into
Carter's manner of life, and so had nothing definite to allege
against him. At the same time he knew perfectly
well from trifling circumstances, incidental remarks, general
air and bearing, that he was one of the class known in
the world as “men about town:” a class not only obnoxious
to the Doctor's moral sentiments as the antipodes of
his own purity, but also as being a natural product of that
slaveholding system which he regarded as a compendium
of injustice and wickedness; a class the members of which
were constantly coming to grief and bringing sorrow upon
those who held them in affection. He knew them; he had
watched and disliked them since his childhood; he was
familiar by unpleasant observation with their language,
feelings, and doings; he knew where they began, how they
went on, and in what sort they ended. The calamities
which they wrought for themselves and all who were connected
with them he had witnessed in a hundred similar,
and, so to speak, reflected instances. He remembered
young Hammersley, who had sunk down in drunken paralysis
and burned his feet to a crisp at his father's fire.
Young Ellicot had dashed out his brains by leaping from
a fourth story window in a fit of delirium tremens. Tom
Akers was shot dead while drunk by a negro whom he had
horribly tortured. Fred Sanderson beat his wife until she
left him, spent his property at bars and gaming-tables
and died in Cuba with Walker. Others he recollected, by
the dozen, it seemed to him, who had fallen, wild with
whiskey, in grog-shop broils or savage street rencontres.
Those who lived to grow old had slave-born children, whom

they either shamelessly acknowledged, or more shamelessly
ignored, and perhaps sold at the auction-block. They were
drunkards, gamblers, adulterers, murderers. Of such was
the kingdom of Hell. And this man, to whom his only
child, his Lillie, had entrusted her heart, was, he feared,
he almost knew, one of that same class, although not, it
was to be hoped, so deeply stained with the brutish forms
of vice which flow directly from slavery. He could not
entrust her to him; he could not accept him as a son.
At the same time he could not in this interview make any
distinct charges against his life and character. Accordingly
his talk was vague, incoherent, and sounded to Lillie like
the frettings of groundless prejudice. The painful interview
lasted above an hour, and, so far as concerned a decision,
ended precisely where it began.

“Go to your bed, my child,” the Doctor said at last,
“And go to sleep if you can. You will cry yourself sick.”

She gave him a silent kiss, wet with tears, and went
away with an aching heart and a wearied frame.

For two hours or more the Doctor continued his miserable
walk up and down the study, from the door to the
window, from corner to corner, occasionally stopping to
rest a tired body which yet had no longing for slumber.
He went back over his daughter's life, beginning with the
infantile days when he used to send the servant away from
the cradle in which she lay, and rock it himself for the
pure pleasure of watching her. He remembered how she
had expanded into the whole of his heart when her mother
died. He thought how solely he had loved her since that
bereavement, and how her love for him had grown with
her growth and strengthened with every maturing power
of her spirit. In the enthusiasm, the confidence of this
recollection, he did not doubt at moments but that he could
win her back to himself from this misplaced affection. She
was so young yet, her heart must be so pliable yet, that
he could surely influence her. As this comforting hope
stole through him he felt a desire to look at her. Yes, he

must see her again before he could get to sleep; he would
go gently to her room and gaze at her without waking
her. Putting on his slippers, he crept softly up stairs and
opened her door without noise. By the light of a dying
candle he saw Lillie in her night dress, sitting up in bed
and wiping the tears from her cheeks with her hands.

“Papa!” she said in an eager gasp, tremulous with
affection, grief and hope.

“Oh, my child! I thought you would be asleep,” he
answered, advancing to the bedside.

“You are not very angry with me?” she asked, making
him sit down by her.

“No; not angry. But so grieved!”

“Then may he not write to me?”

She looked so loving, so eager, so sorrowful that he
could not say No.

“Yes; he may write.”

She drew his head towards her with her wet hands, and
gave him a kiss the very gratitude of which pained him.

“But not you,” he added, trying to be stern. “You
must not write. You must not entangle yourself farther.
I want to make inquiries. I must have time in this matter.
I will not be hurried. You must not consider yourself
engaged, Lillie. I cannot allow it.”

“Oh, you will inquire, papa?” implored the girl, confident
that Carter's character would come unharmed out
of the furnace of investigation.

“Yes, yes. But give me time. This is too important,
too solemn a matter to be hurried over. I will see. I will
decide hereafter. There. Now you must go to sleep.
Good night, my darling.”

“Good night, dear papa,” she murmured, with the sigh
of a tired child. “Forgive me.”

It was near morning before either of them slept; and
both came to the breakfast table with pale, wearied faces.
There were dark circles around Lillie's eyes, and her
head ached so that she could hardly hold it up, but still

she put on a piteous, propitiating smile. She hoped and
feared unreasonable things every time that her father spoke
or seemed to her to be about to speak. She thought he
might say that he had given up all his opposition; and in
the same breath she dreaded lest he might declare that it
must be all over forever. But the conversation of the
evening was not resumed, and the meal passed in absorbed,
anxious, embarrassing silence, neither being able to talk
on any subject but the one which filled their thoughts.
An hour later Lillie suddenly fled from the parlor to her
own room. She had seen Carter approaching the house;
she felt certain that he came to demand her of her father;
and at such an interview she could not have been present,
she thought, without dying. The mere thought of it as
she sat by her window, looking out without seeing anything,
made her breath come so painfully that she wondered
whether her lungs were not affected, and whether she were
not destined to die early. Her fatigue, and still more her troubles,
made her babyish, like an invalid. After half an hour
had passed she heard the outer door close upon the visitor,
and could not resist the temptation of peeping out to see
him, if it were only his back. He was looking, with those
handsome and audacious eyes of his straight at her window.
With a sudden throb of alarm, or shame, or some
other womanish emotion, she hid herself behind the curtain,
only to look out again when he had disappeared, and to
grieve lest she had given him offence. After a while her
father called her, and she went down trembling to the
parlor.

“I have seen him,” said the Doctor. “I told him what
I told you. I told him that I must wait,—that I wanted
time for reflection. I gave him to understand that it must
not be considered an engagement. At the same time I
allowed him to write to you. God forgive me if I have
done wrong. God pity us both.”

Lillie did not think of asking if he had been civil to the
Colonel; she knew that he would not and could not be

discourteous to any human being. She made no answer
to what he said except by going gently to him and kissing
him.

“Come, you must dress yourself,” he added. The regiment
goes on board the transport at twelve o'clock. I
promised the Colonel that we would be there to bid him—
and Captain Colburne good-bye.”

Dressing for the street was usually a long operation
with Lillie, but not this morning. Although she reached
the station of the Carrollton railroad in a breathless condition,
it seemed to her that her father had never walked
so slowly; and on board the cars she really fatigued herself
with the nervous tension of an involuntary mental
effort to push forward the wheezy engine.

Carrollton is one the suburban offshoots of New Orleans,
and contains some two thousand inhabitants, mostly of
the poorer classes, and of Germanic lineage. Around it
stretches the tame, rich, dead level which constitutes
southern Louisiana. The only raised ground is the levee;
the only grand feature of the landscape is the Mississippi;
all the rest is greenery, cypress groves, orange thickets,
flowers, or bare flatness. As Lillie emerged from the
brick and plaster railroad-station she saw the Tenth and
its companion regiments along the levee, the men sitting
down in their ranks and waiting patiently, after the manner
of soldiers. The narrow open place between the river
and the dusty little suburb was thronged with citizens;—
German shopkeepers, silversmiths, &c., who were out of
custom, and Irish laborers who were out of work;—poor
women, (whose husbands were in the rebel army) selling
miserable cakes and beer to the enlisted men; all, white as
well as black, ragged, dirty, lounging, listless hopeless;
none of them hostile, at least not in manner; a discouraged,
subduced, stricken population. Against the
bank were moored six steamboats, their smoke-stacks, and
even their upper decks, overlooking the low landscape.
They were not the famous floating palaces of the Misssisippi,

those had all been carried away by Lovell, or
burnt at the wharves, or sunk in battle near the forts;
these were smaller craft, such as formerly brought cotton
down the Red River, or threaded the shallows between
Lake Pontchartrain and Mobile. They looked more
fragile even than northern steamboats; their boilers and
machinery were unenclosed, visible, neglected, ugly; the
superstructure was a card-house of stanchions and clapboards.

The Doctor led Lillie through the crowd to a pile of
lumber which promised a view of the scene. As she
mounted the humble lookout she caught sight of a manly
equestrian figure, and heard a powerful bass voice thunder
out a sentence of command. It was so guttural as to be
incomprehensible to her; but in obedience to it the lounging
soldiers sprang to their feet and resumed their ranks;
the shining muskets rose straight from the shoulder, and
then took a uniform slope; there was a bustle, a momentary
mingling, and she saw knapsacks instead of faces.

“Battalion!” the Colonel had commanded. “Shoulder
arms. Right shoulder shift arms. Right face.”

He now spoke a few words to the adjutant, who repeated
the orders to the captains, and then signalled to the
drum-major. To the sound of drum and fife the right company,
followed successively by the others from right to
left, filed down the little slope with a regular, resounding
tramp, and rapidly crowded one of the transports with
blue uniforms and shining rifles. How superb in Lillie's
eyes was the Colonel, though his face was grim and his
voice harsh with arbitrary power. She liked him for his
bronzed color, his monstrous mustache, his air of matured
manhood; yes, how much better she liked him for being
thirty-five years old than if he had been only twenty-five!
How much prouder of him was she because she was a
little afraid of him, than if he had seemed one whom she
might govern! Presently a brilliant blush rose like a sunrise
upon her countenance. Carter had caught sight of them,

and was approaching. A wave of his hand and a stare of
his imperious eyes drove away the flock of negroes who had
crowded their lookout. The interview was short, and to a
listener would have been uninteresting, unless he had
known the sentimental relations of the parties. The Doctor
did nearly all of that part of the talking which was
done in words; and his observations, if they were noted at
all, probably seemed to the other two mere flatness and
irrelevancy. He prophecied success to the expedition; he
wished the Colonel success for the sake of the good cause;
finally he warmed so far as to wish him personal success
and safety. But what was even this to that other question
of union or separation for life?

Presently the Adjutant approached with a salute, and reported
that the transport would not accommodate the
whole regiment.

“It must,” said the Colonel. “The men are not properly
stowed. I suppose they won't stow. They hav'n't
learned yet that they can't have a state-room apiece. I
well attend to it, Adjutant.”

Turning to the Ravenels, he added, “I suppose I must
bid you good-bye. I shall have little more time to myself.
I am so much obliged to you for coming to see us off. God
bless you! God bless you!”

When a man of the Colonel's nature utters this benediction
seriously he is unquestionably much more moved than
ordinarily. Lillie felt this: not that she considered Carter
wicked, but simply more masculine than most men:
and she was so much shaken by his unusual emotion that
she could hardly forbear bursting into tears in public.
When he was gone she would have been glad to fly immediately,
if only she could have found a place where she
might be alone. Then she had to compose herself to meet
Colburne.

“The Colonel sent me to take care of you,” he said, as
he joined them.

“How good of him!” thought Lillie, meaning thereby
Carter, and not the Captain.

“Will they all get on board this boat?” she inquired.

“Yes. They are moving on now. The men of course
hate to stow close, and it needed the Colonel to make then
do it.”

“It looks awfully crowded,” she answered, searching the
whole craft over for a glimpse of Carter.

The Doctor had little to say, and seemed quite sad; he
was actually thinking how much easier he could have loved
this one than the other. Colburne knew nothing of the
great event of the previous evening, and so was not miserable
about it. He hoped to send back to this girl such a
good report of himself from the field of impending battle
as should exact her admiration, and perhaps force her heart
to salute him Imperator. He was elated and confident;
boasted of the soldierly, determined look of the men;
pointed out his own company with pride; prophesied brilliant
success. When at last he bade them good-bye he
did it in a light, kindly brave way which was meant to
cheer up Miss Ravenel under any possible cloud of foreboding.

“I won't say anything about being brought back on my
shield. I won't ever promise that there shall be enough
left to fill a table-spoon.”

Yet the heart felt a pang of something like remorse for
this counterfeit gayety of the lips.

The gangway plank was hauled in; a few stragglers
leaped aboard at the risk of a ducking; the regimental
band on the upper deck struck up a national air; the negroes
on shore danced and cackled and screamed with
childish delight; the noisy high-pressure engine began to
sob and groan like a demon in pain,—the boat veered
slowly into the stream and followed its consorts. Two
gunboats and six transports steamed up the yellow river,
trailing columns of black smoke athwart the blue sky, and
away over the green levels of Louisiana.

Now came nearly a week of anxiety to Lillie and trouble
to her father. She was with him as much as possible,
partly because that was her old and loving habit, and
partly because she wanted him continually at hand to
comfort her. She was not satisfied with seeing him morning
and evening; she must visit him at the hospitals, and
go back and forth with him on the street cars; she must
hear from him every half hour that there was no danger
of evil tidings, as if he were a newspaper issued by extras;
she must keep at him with questions that no man could
answer.

“Papa, do you believe that Mouton has fifteen thousand
men? Do you believe that there will be a great battle?
Do you believe that our side” (she could call it our side
now) “will be beaten? Do you believe that our loss will
be very heavy? What is the usual proportion of killed
in a battle? You don't know? Well, but what are the
probabilities?”

If he took up a book or opened his cases of minerals, it
was, “Oh, please don't read,” or, “Please let those stones
alone. I want you to talk to me. When do you suppose
the battle will happen? When shall we get the first news?
When shall we get the particulars?”

And so she kept questioning; she was enough to worry
the life out of papa: but then he was accustomed to be
thus worried. He was a most patient man, even in the
bosom of his own family, which is not so common a trait
as many persons suppose. One afternoon those sallow,
black-eyed Hectors at the corners of the streets, who looked
so much like gamblers and talked so much like traitors,
had an air of elation which scared Miss Ravenel; and she
accordinglp hurried home to receive a confirmation of her
fears from Mrs. Larue, who had heard that there had been
a great battle near Thibodeaux, that Weitzel had been defeated
and that Mouton would certainly be in the city by
next day afternoon. For an hour she was in an agony of
unalleviated terror, for her comforter had not returned

from the hospital. When he came she flew upon him and
ravenously demanded consolation.

“My dear, you must not be so childish,” remonstrated
the Doctor. “You must have more nerve, or you won't
last the year out.”

“But what will become of you? If Mouton comes here
you will be sacrificed—you and all the Union men. I wish
you would take refuge on board some of the ships of war.
Do go and see if they will take you. I shan't be hurt.
I can get along.”

Ravenel laughed.

“My dear, have you gone back to your babyhood? I
don't believe this story at all. When the time comes I
will look out for the safety of both of us.”

“But do please go somewhere and see if you can't hear
something.”

And when the Doctor was thus driven to pick up his
hat, she took hers also and accompanied him, not being
able to wait for the news until his return. They could
learn nothing; the journals had no bulletins out; the Union
banker, Mr. Barker, had nothing to communicate; they
looked wistfully at headquarters, but did not dare to intrude
upon General Butler. As they went homeward the
knots of well-dressed Catilines at the corners carried their
treasonable heads as high and stared at Federal uniforms
as insolently as ever. Ravenel thought sadly how much
they resembled in air the well-descended gentleman to
whom he feared that he should have to trust the happiness
of his only child. Those of them who knew him did not
speak nor bow, but glared at him as a Pawnee might glare
at the captive hunter around whose stake he expected to
dance on the morrow. Evidently his life would be in
peril if Mouton should enter the city; but he was a sanguine,
man and did not believe in the calamity.

Next morning, as the father set off for the hospital, the
daughter said, “If you hear any thing, do come right
straight and tell me.”

Twenty minutes afterward Ravenel was back at the
house, breathless and radiant. Weitzel had gained a victory;
had taken cannon and hundreds of prisoners; was in
full march on the rebel capital, Thibodeaux.

“Oh! I am so happy!” cried the heretofore Secessionist.
“But is there no list of killed and wounded? Has our
loss been heavy? What do you think? What do you
think are the probabilities? How strange that there should
be no list of killed and wounded! Was that positively all
that you heard? So little? Oh, papa, don't, please, go
to the hospital to-day. I can't bear to stay alone.—Well,
if you must go, I will go with you.”

And go she did, but left him in half an hour after she
got there, crazy to be near the bulletin boards. During
the day she bought all the extras, and read four descriptions
of the battle, all precisely alike, because copied from
the same official bulletin, and all unsatisfactory because
they did not contain lists of killed and wounded. But at
the post-office, just before it closed, she was rewarded for
that long day of wearying inquiries. There was a letter
from Carter to herself, and another from Colburne to her
father.

It was Lillie's first love letter; it was from a lover who
had just come unharmed out of the perils of battle; it was
a blinding, thrilling page to read. She would not let her
father take it; no, that was not in the agreement at all;
it was too sacred even for his eyes. But she read it to
him, all but those words of endearment; all but those
very words that to her were the most precious of all. In
return he handed her Colburne's epistle, which was also
brief.

“He doesn't say that he is unhurt,” observed the Doctor.

“Of course he is,” answered Lillie, not willing to suppose
for him the honor of a wound when her paragon had
none. “Colonel Carter says that the loss includes no one
whom we know.”

“He is a noble fellow,” pursued the Doctor, still dwelling
on the young man's magnanimity in not thinking to
speak of himself. “He is the most truly heroic, chivalrous
gentleman that I know. He is one of nature's noblemen.”

Lillie was piqued at these praises of Colburne, not considering
him half so fine a character as Carter, in eulogy

of whom her father said nothing. She thought of asking
him if he had noticed how the Captain spoke of the Colonel
as a hero—but concluded not to do it, for fear he
might reply that the latter ought to have paid the former
the same compliment. She felt that for the present, until
her father's prejudices should wear away, she must be
contented with deifying her Achilles alone. Notwithstanding
this pettish annoyance, grievous as it was to a
most loving spirit strongly desirous of sympathy, the rest
of the day passed delightfully, the time being divided between
frequent readings of Carter's letter, and intervals of
meditation thereon. The epistle which her father wrote
to the Colonel was also thoroughly read, and was in fact
so emendated and enlarged by her suggestions that it
might be considered her composition.