University of Virginia Library

25. CHAPTER XXV.
DOMESTIC HAPPINESS, IN SPITE OF ADVERSE CIRCUMSTANCES.

When Colburne reached Port Hudson, it had capitulated;
the stars and stripes were flying in place of the stars
and bars. With a smile of triumph he climbed the steep
path which zig-zagged up the almost precipitous breast—
earth changing into stone—of the gigantic bluff which
formed the river front of the fortress. At the summit was
a plateau of nearly three-quarters of a mile in diameter,
verdant with turf and groves, and pleasantly rolling in
surface. He had never been here before; he and twelve
thousand others had tried to come here on the 27th of
May, but had failed; and he paused to take a long look at
the spot and its surroundings. Not a sign of fortification
was visible, except five or six small semi-lunes of earth at
different points along the edge of the bluff, behind which
were mounted as many monstrous guns, some smooth-bore,
some rifled. Solid shot from these giants had sunk the
Mississippi, and crippled all of Farragut's fleet but two in
his audacious rush up the river. Shells from them had
flown clean over the bluff, and sought out the farthest
camps of Banks's army, bursting with a sonorous, hollow
thunder which seemed to shake earth and atmosphere. On
the land side the long lines of earthworks which had so

steadily and bloodily repulsed our columns were all below
the line of sight, hidden by the undulations of the ground,
or by the forest. The turf was torn and pitted by the
bombardments; two-hundred-pound shells, thrown by the
long rifles of the fleet, lay here and there, some in fragments,
some unexploded; the church, the store, and half a dozen
houses, which constituted the village, were more or less
shattered. The bullets of the Union sharpshooters had
reached as far as here, and had even gone quite over and
fallen into the Mississippi. A gaunt, dirty woman told
Colburne that on the spot where he stood a soldier of the
garrison had been killed by a chance rifle-ball while drinking
a glass of beer. Leaving his cicerone, he joined a
party of officers who were lounging in the shade of a
tree, and inquired for the residence of Colonel Carter.

“Here you are,” answered a lieutenant, pointing to
the nearest house. “Can I do any thing for you, Captain?
I am his aid. I wouldn't advise you to call on him unless
you have something very particular to say. Every
body has been celebrating the surrender, and the Colonel
isn't exactly in a state for business.”

Colburne hesitated; but he had letters from Carter's
wife and father-in-law, and of course he must see him,
drunk or sober. At that moment he heard a voice that
he recognized; a voice that had demanded and obtained
what he had not dared to ask for—a voice that, as he
well knew, she longed for as the sweetest of earth's music.

“Hi! hi!” said the Colonel, making his appearance upon
the unpainted, warped, paralytic verandah of his dwelling.
Through the low-cut window from which he issued
could be seen a sloppy table, with bottles and glasses, and
the laughing faces of two bold-browed, slatternly girls,
the one seventeen, the other twenty. He had on an old
dressing-gown, fastened around his waist with a sword-belt,
and his trousers hung loose about the heels of a pair
of dirty slippers. His face was flushed and his eyes blood-shot;
he was winking, leering, and slightly unsteady.

Colburne slunk behind a tree, humiliated for his sake, and
ready to rave or weep as he thought of the young wife
to whom this man's mere name was a comfort.

“Hi! hi!” repeated Carter. “Where are all these
fellows?”

The aid advanced and saluted. “Do you want any one,
Colonel?”

“No, no. Don't want any one. What for? Celebrate
it alone. Man enough for it.”

Presently catching the eye of another officer, he again
chuckled, “Hi! hi!”

The person thus addressed approached and saluted.

“I say,” observed the Colonel, “I got letters last night
addressed General Carter—Brigadier-General John T.
Carter. What do you think of that?”

“I hope it means promotion,” said the officer. “Colonel,
do you think we shall go into quarters?”

“No, no; no go into quarters; no go into quarters
for us. Played out—quarters. In ole, ole times, after
fought a big battle, used to stop—look out good quarters,
and stop. But now nix cum rouse the stop.”

Back he reeled through the window, to sit down to his
whiskey and water, amidst the laughter and rather scornful
blandishments of the Secession lasses.

Nevertheless I must see him, decided Colburne. “Ask
Colonel Carter,” he said to an orderly, “if he can receive
Captain Colburne, who brings letters and messages
from Mrs. Carter.”

In a minute the man returned, saluted and said, “The
Colonel sends his compliments and asks you to walk in,
sir.”

When Colburne entered Carter's presence he found him
somewhat sobered in manner; and although the bottles
and glasses were still on the table, the bold-faced girls had
disappeared.

“Captain, sit down. Take glass plain whiskey,” were

the Colonel's first words. “Good for your arm—good for
every thing. Glad you got off without a—cut-off.”

He would have used the word amputation, only he
knew that his tongue could not manage it.

“Thank you, Colonel. Here are two letters, sir, from
Mrs. Carter and the Doctor. Just as I was leaving, when
it was too late to write, Mrs. Carter charged me to say to
you that her father had decided to go at once to New
Orleans, so that your letters must be directed to her
there.”

“I understand,” answered Carter slowly and with the
solemnity of enforced sobriety. “Thank you.”

He broke open his wife's letter and glanced hurriedly
through it.

“Captain, I'm 'bliged to you,” he said. “You've saved
my wife from im-prisn—ment. She's 'bliged to you.
You're noble fellah. I charge myself with your pro—
mosh'n.”

It was so painful to see him struggle in that humiliating
manner to appear sober, that Colburne cut short the interview
by pretexting a necessity of reporting immediately
to his regiment.

“Come to-morrow,” said Carter. “All right to-morrow.
Business to-morrow. To-day—celebrash'n.”

The Colonel, although not aware of the fact, was far advanced
in the way of the drunkard. He had long since
passed the period when it was necessary to stimulate his
appetite for spirituous liquors by sugar, lemon-peel, bitters
and other condiments. He had lived through the era of
fancy drinks, and entered the cycle of confirmed plain
whiskey. At the New Orleans bars he did not call for the
fascinating mixtures for which those establishments are
famous; he ran his mind's eye wearily over the milk-punches,
claret-punches, sherry-cobblers, apple-toddies,
tom-and-jerries, brandy-slings, and gin-cocktails; then
said in a slightly hoarse basso profondo, “Give me some
plain whiskey.” He had swallowed a great deal of strong

drink during the siege, and since the surrender he had not
known a sober waking moment. His appetite was poor,
especially at breakfast. His face was constantly flushed,
his body had an appearance of being bloated, and his hands
were tremulous. Nevertheless, obedient to a delusion
common to men of his habits, he did not consider himself
a hard drinker. He acknowledged that he got intoxicated
at times and thoroughly, but he thought not more frequently
or thoroughly than the average of good fellows.
He was kept in countenance by a great host of comrade
inebriates in the old service and in the new, in the navy
as well as in the army, in high civilian position and at the
front, in short throughout almost every grade and class of
American society. He could point to men whose talents
and public virtues the nation honors, and say, “They get
as drunk as I do, and as often.” He could point to such
cases on this side of the water and on the other. Does
anybody remember the orgies of the viri clari et venerabili,
who gathered at Boston to celebrate the obsequies
of John Quincy Adams, and at Charleston to lament over
the remains of John C. Calhoun? Does anybody remember
the dinner speeches on board of Sir Charles Napier's
flagship, just before the Baltic fleet set out for Cronstadt?
Latterly this vice has increased upon us in America, thanks
to the reaction against the Maine liquor law, thanks to the
war. Perhaps it is for the best; perhaps it is a good thing
that hundreds of leading Americans and hundreds of thousands
of led Americans should be drunkards; it may be,
in some incomprehensible manner, for the interest of humanity.
To my unenlightened mind the contrary seems
probable; but I am liable to error, and sober at this moment
of writing: a pint of whiskey might illuminate me to
see behind the veil. It is wonderful to me, a member of
the guzzling Anglo-Saxon race, that the abstemious Latin
nations have not yet got the better of us. Nothing can
account for it, unless it is that spiritual, and intellectual,
and political tyranny more than counterbalance the advantages
of temperance. Boozing John Bull and Jonathan
have kept an upper hand because their geographical conditions
have enabled them to remain free; and on their
impregnable islands and separated quarters of the globe
they have besotted themselves for centuries with political
impunity.

Next day, as Carter had promised, he was able to attend
to business. His first act was to issue an order assigning
Captain Colburne to his staff as “Acting Assistant
Adjutant-General, to be obeyed and respected accordingly.”
When the young officer reported for duty he
found the Colonel sober, but stern and gloomy with the
woful struggle against his maniacal appetite, and shaky
in body with the result of the bygone debauch.

“Captain,” said he, “I wish you would do me the favor
to join my mess. I want a temperance man. No more
whiskey for one while! — By the way, I owe you so
much I never can repay you for saving my wife from those
savages. If admiration is any reward, you have it. My
wife and her father both overflow with your praises.”

Colburne bowed and replied that he had done no more
than his duty as an officer and a gentleman.

“I am glad it was you who did it,” replied the Colonel.
“I don't know any other person to whom I would so willingly
be under such an obligation.”

It was certainly rather handsome in Carter that he should
cheerfully permit his wife to feel admiration and gratitude
towards so handsome a young man as Colburne.

“That infernal poltroon of a Gazaway!” he broke out
presently. “I ought to have cashiered him long ago. I'll
have him court-martialed and shot. By the way, he was
perfectly well when you saw him, wasn't he?”

“I should think so. He looked like a champion of the
heavy weights. The mere reflection of his biceps was
enough to break a looking-glass.”

“I thought he had run away from the service altogether.
He came up to the regiment once during the siege. The

officers kicked him out, and he disappeared. Got in at
some hospital, it seems—By (this and that) three quarters
of the hospitals are a disgrace to the service. They are
asylums for shirks and cowards. I wish you would make
it your first business to inform yourself of all Gazaway's
sneakings—misbehavior in presence of the enemy, you understand—violation
of the fifty-second article of war—and
draw up charges against him. I want charges that will
shoot him.”

Here I may as well anticipate the history of the Major.
When the charges against him were forwarded, he got
wind of them, and, making a personal appeal to high authority,
pleaded hard for leave to resign on a surgeon's
certificate of physical disability. The request was granted
for some mysterious reason, probably of political origin;
and this vulgar poltroon left the army, and the department
with no official stigma on his character. On reaching
Barataria he appealed to his faithful old herd of followers
and assailed Colonel Carter and Captain Colburne as a
couple of aristocrats who would not let a working man
hold a commission.

Two days subsequent to Colburne's arrival at Port
Hudson the brigade sailed to Fort Winthrop and from
thence followed the trail of the retreating Texans as far as
Thibodeaux, where Carter established his head-quarters.
A week later, when the rebels were all across the Atchafalaya
and quiet once more prevailed in the Lafourche Interieur,
he sent to New Orleans for his wife, and established
her in a pretty cottage, with orange trees and a garden, in
the outskirts of the little French American city. The
Doctor's plantation house had been burned, his agricultural
implements destroyed, and his cattle eaten or driven away
by the rebels, who put a devout zeal into the task of laying
waste every spot which had been desecrated by the
labor of manumitted bondsmen. His grand experiment
of reorganizing southern industry being thus knocked on
the head, he had applied for and obtained his old position

in the hospital. Lillie wept at parting from him, but nevertheless
flew to live with her husband.

The months which she passed at Thibodeaux were the
happiest that she had ever known. The Colonel did not
drink; was with her every moment that he could spare
from his duties; was strongly loving and noisily cheerful,
like a doting dragoon as he was; abounded with
attentions and presents, bouquets from the garden, and
dresses from New Orleans; was uneasy to make her
comfortable, and exhibit his affection. The whole brigade
knew her, and delighted to look at her, drilling badly in
consequence of inattention when she cantered by on horseback.
The sentinels, when not watched by the lieutenant
of the guard, gratified themselves and amused her with the
courteous pleasantry of presenting arms as she passed.
Such officers as were aristocratic enough or otherwise fortunate
enough to obtain a bowing acquaintance, still more
to be invited to her receptions and dinner parties, flattered
her by their evident admiration and devotion. A second
lieutenant who once had a chance to shorten her stirrup
leather, alluded to it vain-gloriously for weeks afterward,
and received the nickname from his envious comrades
of “Acting Assistant Flunkey General, Second Brigade,
First Division, Nineteenth Army Corps.” It made no
difference with the happy youth; he had shortened the
stirrup of the being who was every body's admiration;
and from his pedestal of good fortune he smiled serenely
at detraction. Lillie was the queen, the goddess, the only
queen and goddess, of the Lafourche Interieur. In the
whole district there was no other lady, except the wives
of two captains, who occupied a much lower heaven,
and some bitter Secessionists, who kept aloof from the
army, and were besides wofully scant in their graces and
wardrobe. The adulation which she received did not come
from the highest human source, but it was unmixed, unshared,
whole-souled, constant. She thought it was the
most delightful thing conceivable to keep house, to be married,

to be the wife of Colonel Carter. If she had been
twenty-five or thirty years old, a veteran of society, I
should be inclined to laugh at her for the child-like pleasure
she took in her conditions and surroundings; but only
twenty, hardly ever at a party, married without a wedding,
married less than six months, I sympathise with her,
rejoice with her, in her unaccustomed intoxication of happiness.
It was curious to see how slowly she got accustomed
to her husband. For some time it seemed to her
amazing and almost incredible that any man should call
himself by such a title, and claim the familiarity and the
rights which it implied. She frequently blushed at encountering
him, as if he were still a lover. If she met the
bold gaze of his wide-open brown eyes, she trembled with
an inward thrill, and wanted to say, “Please don't look at
me so!” He could tyrannize over her with his eyes; he
could make her come to him and try to hide from them by
nestling her head on his shoulder; he used to wonder at
his power, and gratify his vanity as well as his affection
by using it.

An officer of the staff, who believed in the marvels
of the so-called psychologists, observed the emotion awakened
in the wife by the husband's gaze, and mentioned it
to Colburne as a proof of the actuality of magnetico-spiritualistic
influence. The Captain was not convinced, and
felt a strong desire to box the officer's ears. What right
had the fellow to make the movements and inclinations of
that woman's soul an object of curiosity and a topic of
conversation? He offered no reply to the remark, and
glared in a way which astonished the other, who had the
want of delicacy common to men of one idea. Colburne
divined Mrs. Carter too well to adopt the magnetic theory.
Judging her nature out of the depths of his own, he believed
that love was the true and all-sufficient explanation
of her nervousness under the gaze of her husband. It was
a painful belief: firstly, for the very natural reason that
he was not himself the cause of the emotion; secondly, because

he feared that the Colonel might be a blight to the
delicate affection which clasped him with its tendrils.

His relations with both were the most familiar, the
frankest, the kindest. When Carter could not ride out
with his wife, he detailed Colburne for the agreeable duty.
When Mrs. Carter made a visit to headquarters, and did
not find the Colonel there, she asked for the adjutant-general.
The friend sent the lady bouquets by the hands of
the husband. Carter knew to some extent how Colburne
adored Lillie, but he had a fine confidence in the purity
and humility of the adoration, and he trusted her to him
as he would have trusted her to her father. The Captain
was not a member of the family: the cottage was too far
from his official duties to allow of that; but he dined there
every Sunday, and called there every other evening. Ravonel's
letters to one or the other, were the common property
of both. If Lillie did not hear from her father twice
a week, and therefore became anxious about him, because
it was the yellow fever season, or because of the broad
fact that man is mortal, she applied to Colburne as well as
to her husband for comforting suggestions and assurances.
In company with some chance fourth, these three had the
gayest evenings of whist and euchre. Lillie never looked
at her cards without exciting the laughter of the two men,
by declaring that she hadn't a thing in her hand—positively
not a single thing—couldn't take a trick—not one.
She talked perpetually, told what honors she held, stole
glances at her opponent's hand, screamed with delight
when she won, and in short violated all the venerable rules
of whist. She forgot the run of the cards, trumped her
partner's trick, led diamonds when he had trashed on
hearts, led the queen when she held ace and king. To her
trumps she held on firmly, never showing them till the last
moment, and scolding her partner if he called them out.
she invariably claimed the deal at the close of each hand,
thereby getting it oftener than she had a right to it. But
she might do what she pleased, sure that those who played

with her would not complain. Was she not queen and
goddess, Semiramis and Juno? Who would rebel, even
in the slightest particular, against the dominion of a happiness
which overflowed in such gayety, such confidence
in all around, such unchangeable amiability?

She was in superb health of body, and spirit without a
pain, or a sickly moment, or a cloud of foreboding, or a
thrill of pettishness. A physical calmness so deliciously
placid as to remind one of that spiritual peace which passeth
understanding, bore her gently through the summer,
smiling on all beholders. Do you remember the serene
angel in the first picture of Cole's Voyage of Life, who
stands at the helm of the newly launched bark, guiding it
down the gentle river? It is the mother voyaging with
her child, whether before its birth or after. Just now she
looked much like this angel, only more frolicsomely happy.
Her blue eyes sparkled with the lustre of health so perfect
that the mere consciousness of a life was a pleasure. Her
cheeks, usually showing more of the lily than of the rose,
were so radiant with color that it seemed as if every throb
of emotion might force the blood through the delicate skin.
Her arms, neck and shoulders were no longer Dianesque,
but rounded, columnal, Junonian. It was this novel, this
almost superwomanly health which gave her such an
efflorescence of happiness, amiability and beauty.

She had repeatedly hinted to her husband that she had
a secret to tell him. When he asked what it was she
blushed, laughed at him for the question, and declared
that he should never know it, that she had no secret at all,
that she had been joking. Then she wondered that he should
not guess it; thought it the strangest thing in the world
that he should not know it. At last she made her confession:
made it to him alone, with closed doors and in darkness;
she could no more have told it in the light of day
than in the presence of a circle. Then for many minutes
she nestled close to him with wet cheeks and clinging
arms, listening eagerly to his assurances of love and devotion,

hungering unappeaseably for them, growing to him,
one with him.

After this Carter treated his wife with increased tenderness.
Nothing that she desired was too good for her, or
too difficult to get. He sought to check the constant
exercise which she delighted in, and especially her long
rides on horseback; and when with a sweet, laughing wilfulness
she defied his authority, he watched her with evident
anxiety. He wrote about it all to her father, and the
consequence was a visit from the Doctor. This combination
of natural potentates was victorious, and equestrianism
was given up for walking and tending flowers. At this
time she had so much affection to spare that she lavished
treasures of it, not only on plants, but on birds, cats, dogs,
and ponies. Here Colburne drifted into the circle of her
sympathies. He was fond of pets, especially of weak ones,
for instance liking cats better than dogs, and liking them
all the more because most people abused and, as he contended,
misunderstood them. He had stories to tell of
feline creatures who had loved him with a love like that
of Jonathan for David, passing the love of woman. There
was the abnormally sensitive Tabby who pined away with
grief when his mother died, and the uncomformably intelligent
Tom who persisted in getting into his trunk when he
was packing it to go to the wars.

“I am confident,” he asserted, “that Puss knew I was
about to leave, and wanted to be taken along.”

Lillie did not question it; all love, even that of animals,
seemed natural to her; she felt (not thought) that love
was the teacher of the soul.

By the way, Colburne's passion for pets had deep roots
in his character. It sprang from his pitying fondness for
the weak, and was closely related to his sympathies with
humanity. It extended to the feebler members of his own
race, such as children and old ladies, whom he befriended
and petted whenever he could, and who in return granted
him their easily-won affection. For flowers, and in general

for inanimate nature, he cared little; never could be
induced to study botany, nor to understand why other
people should study it; could not see any human interest
in it. Geology he liked, because it promised, he thought,
some knowledge of the early history of man, or at least of
the grand cosmical preparation for his advent. Astronomy
was also interesting to him, inasmuch as we may at some
future time traverse sidereal spaces. The most interesting
star in the heavens, to his mind, was that one in the
Pleiades which is supposed to be the central sun of our
solar and planetary system. Around this all that he knew
and all whom he loved revolved, even including Mrs.
Carter.

I presume that this summer was the happiest period in
the life of the Colonel. He was in fine health, thanks to
his present temperate ways, although they reduced his
weight so rapidly that his wife thought he was sick, and
became alarmed about him. He frequently recommended
marriage to Colburne, and they had long conversations on
the subject; not, however, before Mrs. Carter, whose entrance
always caused the Captain to drop the subject. The
Telemachus was as fully persuaded of the benefits, happiness
and duty of wedded life as the Mentor, and was much
the best theorizer.

“I believe,” he said, “that neither man nor woman is a
complete nature by himself or herself, and that you must
unite the two in one before humanity is perfected, and, to
use an Emersonianism, comes full circle. The union is
affection, and the consecration of it is marriage. You remember
Baron Munchausen's horse; how he was cut in
two, and the halves got on very poorly without each
other; and how they were reunited with mutual benefit.
Now this is the history of every bachelor and single
woman, who having miserably tried for a while to go it
alone, finally coalesce happily in one flesh.”

“By Jove, Captain, you talk like a philosopher,” said
the Colonel. “You ought to write something. You ought

to practice, too, according to your preaching. There is
Mrs. Larue, now. No,” he added seriously. “Don't take
her. She isn't worthy of you. You deserve the best.”

Colburne was a better conversationalist than Carter, except
in the way of small talk with comparative strangers,
wherein the latter's confidence in himself, strengthened by
habits of authority, gave him an easy freedom. Indeed,
when Carter was actually brilliant in society, you might
be sure he had taken five or six plain whiskeys, and that
five or six more (what a head he sported!) would make
him moderately drunk. If my readers will go back to the
dinner at Professor Whitewood's, and the evening which
followed it, and the next day's pic-nic when he was under
the influence of a whiskey fever, they will see the best that
he could do as a talker. With regard to subjects which
implied ever so little scholarship, the Colonel accorded
the Captain a facile admiration which at first astonished
the latter. Talking one day of the earth-works of Port
Hudson, Colburne observed that the Romans threw up
field fortifications at the close of every day's march, one
legion standing under arms to protect the workmen, while
another marched out and formed line of battle to cover
the foragers. If the brigade commander had ever known
these things, he had evidently forgotten them. He looked
at Colburne with undisguised astonishment, and set him
down from that moment as a fellow of infinite erudition.
This was far from being the only occasion on which the
volunteer captain was led to notice the narrow professional
basis from which most of the officers of the old service
talked and thought. Now and then he met a philosopher
like Phelps, or a chemist like Franklin; but in general he
found them as little versed in the ways and ideas of the
world as so many old sea-captains; and even with regard
to their own profession they were narrowly practical and
technical.

Amidst all these pleasant sentiments and conversings,
Carter had his perplexities and anxieties. He was spending

more than his income, and neither knew how to increase
it, nor how to curtail his outlay. Besides his colonel's
pay he had no resources, unless indeed dunning letters
could be made into negotiable paper. He was not
very sensitive on the subject of these missives; and in fact
he was what most people would consider disgracefully callous
to their influence; but he looked forward with alarm
to a time when his credit might fail altogether, and his
wife might suffer for luxuries.