University of Virginia Library

31. CHAPTER XXXI.
A TORTURE WHICH MIGHT HAVE BEEN SPARED.

A week after the conflagration Carter received his commission
as Brigadier-General. His first impression was one
of exultation: his enemies and his adverse fate had been
beaten; he was on the road to distinction; he could wear
the silver star. Then came a feeling of despondency and
fear, while he remembered the crime into which he had
been driven, as he thought or tried to think, by the lack
of this just recognition of his services. Oh the bitterness
of good fortune, long desired, which comes too late!

“A month ago this might have saved me,” he muttered,
and then burst into curses upon his political opponents, his
creditors, himself, all those who had brought about his
ruin.

“My only crime! The only ungentlemanly act of my
life!” was another phrase which dropped from his lips.
Doubtless he thought so: many people of high social position
hold a similarly mixed moral creed; they allow that
a gentleman may be given to expensive immoralities, but
not to money-getting ones; that he may indulge in wine,
women, and play, but not in swindling. All over Europe
this curious ethical distinction prevails, and very naturally,
for it springs out of the conditions of a hereditary aristotracy,
and makes allowance for the vices to which wealthy
nobles are tempted, but not for vices to which they are
not tempted. A feeble echo of it has traversed the ocean,
and influenced some characters in America both for good
and for evil.

Carter was almost astonished at the child-like joy, so
contradictory to his own angry remorse, with which Lillie
received the news of his promotion.

“Oh!—My General!” she said, coloring to her forehead

with delight, after a single glance at the commission which
he dropped into her lap. She rose up and gave him a
mock military salute; then sprang at him and covered his
bronzed face and long mustache with kisses.

“I am so happy! They have done you justice at last—
a little justice. Oh, I am so glad and proud! I am going
with you to buy the star. You shall let me choose it.”

Then, her mind taking a forward leap of fifteen years,
she added, “We will send Ravvie to West Point, and he
shall be a general, too, He is going to be very intelligent.
And brave, also. He isn't in the least timid.”

Carter laughed for the first time since he had received
the commission.

“My dear,” said he, “Ravvie will probably become a
general long after I have ceased to be one. I am a volunteer.
I am only a general while the war lasts.”

“But the war will last a long time,” hopefully replied
the monster in woman's guise, who loved her husband a
hundred times as much as she did her country.

“There is one unpleasant result of this promotion,” observed
Carter.

“What! You are not going to the field?” asked Lillie,
clutching him by the sleeve. “Oh, don't do that!”

“My little girl, I cannot hold my present position. A
Brigadier-General can't remain quartermaster, not even of
a department. I must resign it and report for duty.
Headquarters may order me to the field, and I certainly
ought to go.”

“Oh no! It can't be necessary. To think that this
should come just when we were so happy. I wish you
hadn't been promoted.”

“My darling, you want to make a woman of me,” he
said, holding her close to his side. “I must show myself
a man, now that my manhood has been recognized. My
honor demands it.”

He talked of his honor from long habit; conscious, however,
that the word stung him.

“But don't ask to be sent to the field,” pleaded Lillie.
“Resign your place and report for duty, if you must.
But please don't ask to be sent to the field. Promise me
that; won't you?”

Looking into his wife's tearful eyes, with his strong and
plump hands on her sloping shoulders, the Colonel promised
as she asked him. But that evening, writing from his
office, he sent a communication to the headquarters of the
Department of the Gulf, requesting that he might be relieved
from his quartermastership and assigned to duty
with the army in the field. What else should he do? He
had proved himself unfit for family life, unfit for business;
but, by (this and that and the other) he could command a
brigade and he could fight. He would do what he had
done, and could do again, with credit. Besides, if he should
win distinction at Grande Ecore, it might prevent an investigation
into that infernal muddle of cotton and steamboats.
A great deal is pardoned by the public, and even
by the War Department, to courage, capacity, and success.

In a few days he received orders from the General commanding,
directing him to report to the headquarters of the
army in the field. He signed his last quartermaster papers
gaily, kissed his wife and child sadly, shook hands with
Ravenel and Mrs. Larue, and took the first boat up the
river.

Lillie was amazed and shocked at discovering how little
she missed him. She accused herself of being wicked and
heartless; she would not accept the explanation that she
was a mother. It was all the more hateful in her to forget
him, she said, now that he was the father of her child.
Still, she could not be miserable; she was almost always
happy with her baby. Such a lovely baby he was; charming
because he was heavy, because he ate, because he
slept, because he cried! His wailing troubled her because
it denoted that he was ill at ease, and not because the
sound was in itself disagreeable to her ear. If she heard it
at a little distance from the house, for instance when rereturning

from a walk, she quickened her step and smiled
gaily, saying, “He is alive. You will see how he will
stop when I take him.”

People who feel so strongly are rarely interesting except
to those who share their feelings, or who have learned
to love them under any circumstances, and though all the
metamorphoses of which a single character is capable. She
would have been perfectly tedious at this period to any ordinary
acquaintance who had not been initiated into the
sweet mystery of love for children. Her character and conversation
seemed to be all solved in the great alembic of
maternity. She was a mother as passionately as she had
been a betrothed and a wife; and indeed it appeared as
if this culminating condition of her womanhood was the
most absorbing of all. This exquisite life, delicious in spite
of her occasional anxieties and self-reproaches concerning her
husband, flowed on without much mixture of trouble until
one day she picked up a letter on the floor of her father's
study which opened to her a hitherto inconceivable fountain
of bitterness. Let us see how this unfortunate manuscript
found its way into the house.

Doctor Ravenel, deprived for the last two years of his
accustomed summer trip to Europe, or the north, or other
countries blessed with a mineralogy, sought health and
amusement in long walks about New Orleans and its flat,
ugly vicinity. Lillie, who used to be his comrade in these
exercises, now took constitutionals in the pony carriage or
in company with the wicker wagon of Master Ravvie.
These strolls of the Doctor were therefore somewhat dull
business. A country destitute of stones was to him much
like a language destitute of a literature. He fell into a
way of walking without paying much attention to his surroundings,
revolving the while new systems of mineralogy,
crystallizing his knowledge into novel classifications, recalling
to memory the characteristics of his specimens, as
Lillie recollected the giggles and cunning ways of her baby.
In one of these absent-minded moods he was surprised by

a heavy shower, three or four miles from home. The only
shelter was a deserted shanty, once probably the dwelling
of a free negro. A minute or two after the Doctor found
himself in its single room, and before he had discovered
the soundest part of its leaky roof, a man in the undress
uniform of a United States officer, dripping wet, reeled into
the doorway, with the observation, “By Jove! this is
watering my rum.”

The Doctor immediately recognized in the herculean form,
bronzed face, black eyes and twisted nose, the personality
of Lieutenant Van Zandt. He had not seen him for nearly
two years, but the man's appearance and voice were unforgettable.
The Doctor was charitable in philosophising
concerning coarse and vicious people, but he abominated
their society and always avoided it if possible. He looked
about him for a means of escape and found none; the man
filled up the only door-way, and the rain was descending in
torrents. Accordingly the Doctor turned his back on the
Lieutenant and ruminated mineralogy.

“I prefer plain whisky,” continued Van Zandt, staring
at the rain with a contemptuous grin. “I don't want, by
Jove! so much water in my grog. None of your mixed
drinks, by Jove! Plain whisky!”

After a minute more of glaring and smiling, he remarked,
“Dam slow business, by Jove! Van Zandt, my bully
boy, we won't wait to see this thing out. We'll turn in.”

Facing about with a lurch he beheld the other inmate
of the shanty.

“Hullo!” he exclaimed. Then recollecting the breeding
of his youth, he added, “I beg pardon, sir. Am I intruding?”

“Not at all; of course not,” replied Ravenel. “Our
rights here are the same.”

“I am glad to hear it. And, by the way, have the kindness
to understand me, sir. I didn't mean to insinuate
that I supposed this to be your residence. I only thought
that you might be the proprietor of the estate.”

“Not so unfortunate,” said the Doctor.

The Lieutenant laughed like a twelve-pound brass howitzer,
the noisiest gun, I believe, in existence.

“Very good, sir. The more a man owns here in Louisiana,
the poorer he is. That's just my opinion, sir. I feel
honored in agreeing with you, sir. By Jove, I own nothing.
I couldn't afford it—on my pay.”

A stream of water from a hole in the roof was pattering
on his broad back, but he took no notice of it, and probably
was not conscious of it. He stared at the Doctor with unblinking,
bulging eyes, not in the least recollecting him,
but perfectly conscious that he was in the presence of a
gentleman. Drunk or sober, Van Zandt never forgot that
he came of old Knickerbocker stock, and never failed to
accord respect to aristocratic demeanor wherever he
found it.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” he resumed. “You must excuse
me for addressing you in this free and easy way. I
only saw you indistinctly at first, sir, and couldn't judge
as to your social position and individual character. I perceive
that you are a gentleman, sir. You will excuse me
for mentioning that I come of an old Knickerbocker family
which dates in American history from the good old jolly
Dutch times of Peter Stuyvesant—God bless his jolly old
Dutch memory! You will understand, sir, that a man
who feels such blood as that in his veins is glad to meet a
gentleman anywhere, even in such a cursed old hovel as
this, as leaky and rickety, by Jove! as the Southern Confederacy.
And, sir, in that connection allow me to say,
hoping no offence if you hold a contrary opinion, that the
Confederacy is played out. We licked them on the Red
River, sir. The bully old First Division—God bless its
ragged old flags! I can't speak of them without feeling
my eyes water—much as I hate the fluid—the jolly, fighting
old First Division fairly murdered them at Sabine
Cross Roads. At Pleasant Hill the old First, and Andrew
Jackson Smith's western boys laid them out over two

miles square of prairie. If we had had a cracker in our
havresacks we would have gone bang up to Shreveport—if
we had had a cracker apiece, and the firm of W. C. Do
you know what I mean, sir, by W. C? Weitzel and Carter!
Those are the boys for an advance. That's the firm
that our brigade and division banks on. Weitzel and
Carter would have taken us to Shreveport, with or without
crackers, by Jove! We wanted nothing but energy. If
we had had half the go, the vim, the forward march, to
lead us, that the rebels had, we would have finished the
war in the southwest. We must take a leaf out of Johnny
Reb's book. Fas est ab hostes doceri. I believe I quote
correctly. If not, please correct me. By the way, did I
mention to you that I am a graduate of Columbia College
in New York City? Allow me to repeat the statement.
I have reason to be proud of the fact, inasmuch as I took
the Greek salutatory, the second highest honor, sir, of the
graduation. You are a college man yourself, sir, I perceive,
and can make allowance for my vanity in the circumstance.
But I am wandering fron my subject. I was
speaking, I believe, of Colonel Carter—I beg his pardon—
General Carter. At last, sir, the Administration has done
justice to one of the most gallant and capable officers in
the service. So much the better for the Administration.
Colonel Carter—I beg pardon—General Carter is not only
an officer but a gentleman; not one of those plebeian humbugs
whom our ridiculous Democracy delights to call
nature's gentlemen; but a gentleman born and bred—
un echantillon de bonne race—a jet of pure old sangre azul.
I, who am an old Knickerbocker—as I believe I had the
honor to inform you—I delight to see such men put forward.
Don't you, sir?”

The Doctor admitted with a polite smile that the promotion
of General Carter gave him pleasure.

“I knew it would, sir. You came of good blood yourself.
I can see it in your manners and conversation, sir.
Well, as I was saying, the promotion of Carter is one of

the most intelligent moves of the Administration. Carter—
I beg pardon—I don't mean to insinuate that I am on
familiar terms with him—I acknowledge him as my superior
officer and keep my distance—General Carter is born
for command and for victory. Wherever he goes he conquers.
He is triumphant in the field and in the boudoir.
He is victorious over man and women. By Jove, sir,”
(here he gave a saturnine chuckle, and leer.) “I came
across the most amusing proof of his capacity for bringing
the fair sex to a surrender.”

The Doctor grew uneasy, and looked out anxiously at
the pouring rain, but saw no chance of effecting an escape.

“You see, sir, I am wounded,” continued Van Zandt.
“They gave me a welt at Port Hudson, and they gave me
another at Pleasant Hill.”

“My dear sir, you will catch your death, standing under
the dripping in that way,” said the Doctor.

“Thank you, sir,” replied Van Zandt, changing his position.
“No great harm, however. Water, sir, doesn't
hurt me, unless it gets into my whiskey. Exteriorly it is
simply disagreeable; interiorly the same, as well as injurious.
Not that I am opposed to bathing. On the contrary,
it is my practice to take a sponge bath every morning—that
is, when I don't sleep within musket range of
the enemy. Well, as I was saying, they gave me a welt
at Pleasant Hill—a mere flesh wound through the thigh—
nothing worth blathering about—and I was sent to St.
James Hospital. I can't stand the hospital. I don't fancy
the fare at the milk-toast table, sir. (This with a grimace of
unutterable disgust.) I took out a two-legged leave of
absence to-day, and went over to the Lake House; lost my
horse there, and had to foot it back to the city. That is
how I came to have the pleasure of listening to your conversation
here, sir. But I believe I was speaking of General
Carter. Some miserable light wine which I had the
folly to drink at the Lake has muddled my head, I fancy.
Plain whisky is the only safe thing. Allow me to recommend

you to stick to it. I wish we had a canteen of honest
commissary now; we could pass the night very
comfortably, sir. But I was speaking of General Carter,
and his qualities as an officer. Ah! I remember. I mentioned
a letter. And, by Jove! here it is in my breast-pocket,
soaked with this cursed water. If you will have
the goodness to peruse it, you will see that I am not exaggerating
when I boast of the conquests of my superior
officer. The lady frankly owns up to the fact that she has
surrendered to him; no capitulation, no terms, no honors
of war; unconditional surrender, by Jove! a U. S. G. surrender.
It is an unreserved coming down of the coon.”

“It is one of Lillie's letters,” thought Ravenel. “This
drunkard does not know that the General is married, and
mistakes the frank affection of a wife for the illicit passion
of an intriguante. It is best that I should expose the mistake
and prevent further misrepresentation.”

He took the moist, blurred sheet, unfolded it, and found
the envelope carefully doubled up inside. It was addressed
to “Colonel J. T. Carter,” with the addition in one corner
of the word “personal.” The handwriting was not Lillie's,
but a large, round hand, foreign in style, and, as he judged,
feigned. Glancing at the chirography of the note itself, he
immediately recognized, as he thought, the small, close,
neat penmanship of Mrs. Larue. Van Zandt was too drunk
to notice how pale the Doctor turned, and how his hand
trembled.

“By Jove! I am tired,” said the Bacchanal. “I shall,
with your permission, take the d—st nap that ever was
heard of since the days of the seven sleepers. Don't be
alarmed, sir, at my snoring. I go off like a steamboat
bursting its boiler.”

Tearing a couple of boards from the wall of the shanty,
he laid them side by side in one corner, selected a blackened
stone from the fire-place for a pillow, put his cap on it,
stretched himself out with an inebriated smile, and was
fast asleep before the Doctor had decided whether he would

or would not read the letter. He was most anxious to
establish innocence; if there was any guilt, he did not
want to know it. He ran over all of Mrs. Larue's conduct
since the marriage, and could not call to mind a single circumstance
which had excited in him a suspicion of evil.
She was coquettish, and, he feared, unprincipled; but he
could not believe that she was desperately wicked. Nevertheless,
as he did not understand the woman, as he erroneously
supposed her to be of an ardent, impulsive nature,
he thought it possible that she had been fascinated
by the presence of such a masculine being as Carter. Of
him as yet he had no suspicion: no, he could not have
been false, even in thought, to his young wife; or, as Ravenel
phrased it to himself, “to my daughter.” He would
read the letter and probe the ugly mystery and discover
the falsity of its terrors. As he unfolded the paper he was
checked by the thought that to peruse unbidden a lady's
correspondence was hardly honorable. But there was a
reply to that: the mischief of publicity had already commenced;
the sleeping drunkard there had read the letter.
After all, it might be a mere joke, a burlesque, an April-Fool
affair; and if so, it was properly his business to discover
it and to make the explanation to Van Zandt. And
if, on the other hand, it should be really a confession of
criminal feeling, it was his duty to be informed of that also,
in order that he might be able to protect the domestic
peace of his daughter.

He read the letter through, and then sat down on the
door-sill, regardless of the driving rain. There was no
charitable doubt possible in the matter; the writer was a
guilty woman, and she addressed a guilty man. The letter
alluded clearly and even grossly to past assignations, and
fixed the day and hour for a future one. Carter's name
did not appear except on the envelope; but his avocations
and business hours were alluded to; the fact of their voyage
together to New York was mentioned; there was no doubt
that he was the man. The Doctor was more miserable than

he remembered to have been before since the death of his
wife. After half an hour of wretched meditation, walking
meanwhile up and down the puddles which had collected
on the earthen floor of the shanty, he became aware that
the rain had ceased, and set out on his miserable walk
homeward.

Should he destroy the letter? Should he give it to Mrs.
Larue and crush her? Should he send it to Carter? Should
he show it to Lillie? How could he answer any one of
these horrible questions? What right had Fate to put such
questions to him? It was not his crime.

On reaching home he changed his wet clothes, put the
billet in his pocket-book, sat down to the dinner-table and
tried to seem cheerful. But Lillie soon asked him, “What
is the matter with you, papa?”

“I got wet, my dear. It was a very hard walk back
through the mud. I am quite worn out. I believe I shall
go to bed early.”

She repeated her question two or three times: not that
she suspected the truth, or suspected anything more than
just what he told her: but because she was anxious about
his health, and because she had a habit of putting many
questions. Even in the absorption of his inexplicable
trouble she worried him, so that he grew fretful at her importunity,
and answered her crisply, that he was well
enough, and needed nothing but quiet. Then suddenly he
repented himself with invisible tears, wondering at his
irrational and seemingly cruel peevishness, and seeming
to excuse himself to himself by calling to mind that he was
tormented on her account. He almost had a return of his
vexation when Lillie commenced upon him about her husband,
asking, “Isn't it time to hear, papa? And how soon
do you think I will get a letter?”

“Very soon, my dear,” he replied gloomily, remembering
the wicked letter in his pocket, and clenching his hands
under the table to resist a sudden impulse to give it to her.

“I hope there will be no more battles. Don't you think
that the fighting is over?”

“Perhaps it may be best for him to have a battle.”

“Oh no, papa! He has his promotion. I am perfectly
satisfied. I don't want him to fight any more.”

The father made no answer, for he could not tell her
what he thought, which was that perhaps her husband had
better die. It must be remembered that he did not know
that the intrigue had terminated.

“Here comes the little Brigadier,” said Lillie, when the
baby made his usual after-dinner irruption into the parlor.

“Isn't he sweet?” she asked for the ten thousandth
time, as she took him from the hands of the nurse and put
him in her father's lap. The cooing, jumping, clinging
infant clawing at watch-chain, neck-tie and spectacles, soft,
helpless and harmless, gave the Doctor the first emotion
similar to happiness which he had felt for the last three
hours. How we fly for consolation to the dependent innocence
of childhood when we have been grievously and
lastingly wounded by the perfidy or cruelty of the adult
creatures in whom we had put our trust! Stricken ones
who have no children sometimes take up with dogs and
cats, knowing that, if they are feeble, they are also faithful.
But with the baby in his arms, Ravenel could not
decide what to do with the baby's father; and so he
handed the boy back to his mother, saying with more
significance of manner than he intended, “There, my dear,
there is your comfort.”

“Papa, you are sick,” replied Lillie, looking at him
auxiously. “Do lie down on the sofa.”

“I will go to my room and go to bed,” said he. “It is
eight o'clock; and it will do me no harm if I sleep twelve
hours to-night. Now don't follow me, my child; don't
tease me. I only want rest.”

After kissing her and the child he hurried away, for he
heard Mrs. Larue coming through the back hall toward the
parlor, and as frequently happens, the innocent had not the

audacity to face the guilty. In the passage he paused,
glanced back through the crack of the door, and was
amazed, almost infuriated, to see that woman kneel at
Lillie's feet and fondle the baby with her usual air of girlish
gayety.

“What infernal hypocrisy!” he muttered as he turned
away, a little indignant at the giggling delight with which
Ravvie welcomed the well-known visitor. His charitable
philosophy had all evaporated for the time, and he could
not believe that this wicked creature had a spark of good
in her, not even enough to smile upon a child honestly.
To his mind the caresses which she lavished on Ravvie
were part of a deep-laid plan of devilish deceit.

Four wretched hours passed over him, and at midnight
he was still undecided what to do. There were fathers in
Louisiana who did not mind this sort of thing; but he
could not understand those fathers; he minded it. There
were fathers who would simply say to an erring son-in-law
over a glass of wine, “Now look here, my dear sir,
you must be cautious about publicity;” or who would
quietly send Mrs. Larue her letter, with a note politely requesting
that she would make arrangements which would
not interfere with the quiet of, “Yours very respectfully,”
etc. But such fathers could not love their daughters as he
loved his, and could not have such a daughter as he had.
To be false to Lillie was an almost unparalleled crime—
a crime which demanded not only reproach but punishment;
a crime which, if passed over, would derange the
moral balance of the universe. It seemed to him that he
must show Lillie the letter, and take her away from this
unworthy husband, and carry her north or somewhither
where she should never see him more. This was what
ought to be; but then it might kill her. Late in the night,
when he fell asleep on the outside of his bed, still dressed,
his light still burning, the letter in his hand, he had not
yet decided what to do.

About dawn, awakened early as usual by the creeping

of Ravvie, Lillie thought of her father, and slipping on a
dressing-gown, stole to his room to see if he were well or
ill. She was alarmed to find him dressed, and looking
pale and sunken. Before she had decided whether to let
him sleep on, or to awaken him and tell him to go to bed
as a sick man should, her eye fell upon the letter. It must
be that which had made him so gloomy and strange. What
could it be about? Had he lost his place at the hospital?
That need not trouble him, for her husband had left her
two thousand dollars in bank, and he would not object to
have her share it with her father. Her husband was so
generous and loving, that she could trust his affection for
any thing! She was accustomed to open and read her father's
letters without asking his permission. She took up
this one, and glanced through it with delirious haste. The
Doctor was awakened by a shriek of agony, and found
Lillie senseless on the floor, with the open letter under her
hand.

Now he knew what to do; she must go far away at once
—she must never again see her husband.