 | CHAPTER I.
MR. EDWARD COLBURNE BECOMES ACQUAINTED WITH MISS
LILLIE RAVENEL. Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty |  |
1. CHAPTER I.
MR. EDWARD COLBURNE BECOMES ACQUAINTED WITH MISS
LILLIE RAVENEL.
It was shortly after the capitulation of loyal Fort Sumter
to rebellious South Carolina that Mr. Edward Colburne
of New Boston made the acquaintance of Miss Lillie
Ravenel of New Orleans.
An obscure American author remarks in one of his rejected
articles, (which he had the kindness to read to me
from the manuscript) that every great historical event reverberates
in a very remarkable manner through the fortunes
of a multitude of private and even secluded individuals.
No volcanic eruption rends a mountain without
stirring the existence of the mountain's mice. It was unquestionably
the southern rebellion which brought Miss
Ravenel and Mr. Colburne into interesting juxtaposition.
But for this gigantic political upturning it is probable
that the young lady would never gave visited New Boston
where the young gentleman then lived, or, visiting
it and meeting him there, would have been a person of no
necessary importance in his eyes. But how could a most
loyal, warm-hearted youth fail to be interested in a pretty
and intelligent girl who was exiled from her home because
her father would not be a rebel?
New Boston, by the way, is the capital city of the little
Yankee State of Barataria. I ask pardon for this geographical
New England, and solemnly affirm that I do not mean to
disturb thereby the congressional balance of the republic.
I make the arrangement with no political object, but solely
for my private convenience, so that I may tell my story
freely without being accused of misrepresenting this private
individual, or insulting that public functionary, or
burlesquing any self-satisfied community. Like Sancho
Panza's famous island of the same name, Barataria was
surrounded by land, at least to a much greater extent than
most islands.
It was through Ravenel the father that Colburne made
the acquaintance of Miss Ravenel. In those days, not yet
a soldier, but only a martially disposed young lawyer and
wrathful patriot, he used to visit the New Boston House
nearly every evening, running over all the journals in the
reading-room, devouring the telegraphic reports that were
brought up hot from the newspaper offices, and discussing
the great political events of the time with the heroes and
sages of the city. One evening he found nobody in the
reading-room but a stranger, a tall gentleman of about
fifty, with a baldish head and a slight stoop in the shoulders,
attired in an English morning-suit of modest snuff-color.
He was reading the New York Evening Post
through a rather dandified eyeglass. Presently he put the
eyeglass in his vest pocket, produced a pair of steel-bowed
spectacles, slipped them on his nose and resumed his reading
with an air of increased facility and satisfaction. He
was thus engaged, and Colburne was waiting for the Post,
raging meanwhile over that copperhead sheet, The New
Boston Index, when there was a pleasant rustle of female
attire in the hall which led by the reading-room.
“Papa, put on your eyeglass,” said a silver voice which
Colburne liked. “Do take off those horrid spectacles.
They make you look as old as Ararat.”
“My dear, the eyeglass makes me feel as old as you
say,” responded papa.
“Well, stop reading then and come up stairs,” was the
young person's next command. “I've had such an awful
afternoon with those pokey people. I want to tell
you—”
Here she caught sight of Colburne regarding her fixedly
in the mirror, and with another rustle of vesture she suddenly
slid beyond reach of the angle of incidence and refraction.
The stranger laid down the Post in his lap, pocketed
his spectacles, and, looking about him, caught sight of
Colburne.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said he with a frank, friendly,
man of the world sort of smile. “I have kept the evening
paper a long time. Will you have it?”
To our young gentleman the civility of this well-bred,
middle-aged personage was somewhat imposing, and consequently
he made his best bow and would not accept of
the Post until positively assured that the other had entirely
done with it. Moreover he would not commence reading
immediately because that might seem like a tacit reproach;
so he uttered a few patriotic common-places on
the news of the day, and thereby gave occasion for this
history.
“Yes, a sad struggle, a sad struggle—especially for the
South,” assented the unnamed gentleman. “You can't
imagine how unprepared they are for it. The South is
just like the town's poor rebelling against the authorities;
the more successful they are, the more sure to be ruined.”
While he spoke he looked in the young and strange face
of his hearer with as much seeming earnestness as if the
latter had been an old acquaintance whose opinions were
of value to him. There was an amiable fascination in the
sympathetic grey eyes and the persuasive smile. He
caught Colburne's expression of interest and proceeded.
“Nobody can tell me anything about those unlucky,
misguided people. I am one of them by birth—I have
lived among them nearly all my life—I know them. They
of their relative strength as compared to that of the United
States than the Root-diggers of the Rocky Mountains.
They are doomed to perish by their own ignorance and
madness.”
“It will probably be a short struggle,” said Colburne,
speaking the common belief of the North.
“I don't know—I don't know about that; we mustn't
be too sure of that. You must understand that they are
barbarians, and that all barbarians are obstinate and reckless.
They will hold out like the Florida Seminoles.
They will resist like jackasses and heroes. They won't
know any better. They will be an honor to the fortitude
and a sarcasm on the intelligence of human nature. They
will become an example in history of much that is great,
and all that is foolish.”
“May I ask what part of the South you have resided
in?” inquired Colburne.
“I am a South Carolinian born. But I have lived in
New Orleans for the last twenty years, summers excepted.
A man can't well live there the year round. He must be
away occasionally, to clear his system of its malaria physical
and moral. It is a Sodom. I consider it a proof of
depravity in any one to want to go there. But there was
my work, and there I staid—as little as possible. I staid
till this stupid, barbarous Ashantee rebellion drove me out.”
“I am afraid you will be an exile for some time, sir,”
observed Colburne, after a short silence during which he
regarded the exiled stranger with patriotic sympathy.
“I am afraid so,” was the answer, uttered in a tone
which implied serious reflection if not sadness.
He remembers the lost home, the sacrificed wealth, the
undeserved hostility, the sentence of outlawry which
should have been a meed of honor, thought the enthusiastic
young patriot. The voice of welcome ought to greet
him, the hand of friendship ought to aid him, here among
loyal men.
“I hope you stay some time in New Boston, sir,” he
observed aloud. “If I can be of the slightest benefit to
you, I shall be most happy. Allow me to offer you my
card, sir.”
“Oh! Thank you. You are extremely kind,” said the
stranger. He bowed very politely and smiled very cordially
as he took the bit of pasteboard; but at the same
time there was a slight fixity of surprise in his eye which
made the sensitive Colburne color. He read the name on
the card; then, with a start as of reminiscence, glanced at
it again; then leaned forward and peered into the young
man's face with an air of eager curiosity.
“Are you—is it possible!—are you related to Doctor
Edward Colburne of this place who died fourteen or fifteen
years ago?”
“I am his son, sir.”
“Is it possible! I am delighted to meet you. I am
most sincerely and earnestly gratified. I knew your father
well. I had particular occasion to know him as a fellow
beginner in mineralogy at a time when the science was
little studied in this country. We corresponded and exchanged
specimens. My name is Ravenel. I have been
for twenty years professor of theory and practice in the
Medical College of New Orleans. An excellent place for
a dissecting class, by the way. So many negroes are
whipped to death, so many white gentlemen die in their
boots, as the saying is, that we rarely lack for subjects.—
But you must have been quite young when you had the
misfortune—and science had the misfortune—to lose your
father. Really, you have quite his look about the eyes
and forehead. What profession may I ask?”
“Law,” said Colburne, who was flushed with pleasure
over the acquisition of this charming acquaintance, so evidently
to him a man of the world, a savant, a philosopher,
and a patriotic martyr.
“Law—that is a smattering of it—just enough to have
an office and do notary work.”
“A good profession! A grand profession! But I should
have expected your father's son to be a physician or a mineralogist.”
He took off his spectacles and surveyed Colburne's
frank, handsome face with evidently sincere interest. He
seemed as much occupied with this young stranger's history
and prospects as he had been a moment before with his
own beliefs and exile.
At this stage of the conversation one of the hotel servants
entered the room and said, “Sir, the young lady
wishes you would come up stairs, if you please, sir.”
“Oh, certainly,” answered the stranger, or, as I may
now call him, the Doctor. “Mr. Colburne, come up to my
room, if you are at leisure. I shall be most happy to have
a longer conversation with you.”
Colburne was in the usual quandary of young and modest
men on such occasions. He wished to accept the invitation;
he feared that he ought not to take advantage of it;
he did not know how to decline it. After a lightning-like
consideration of the pros and cons, after a stealthy glance
at his toilet in the mirror, he showed the good sense and
had the good luck to follow Doctor Ravenel to his private
parlor. As they entered, the same silver voice which Colburne
had heard below, exclaimed, “Why papa! What
has kept you so long? I have been as lonely as a mouse
in a trap.”
“Lillie, let me introduce Mr. Colburne to you,” answered
papa. “My dear sir, take this arm chair. It is
much more comfortable than those awkward mahogany
uprights. Don't suppose that I want it. I prefer the sofa,
I really do.”
Miss Ravenel, I suppose I ought to state in this exact
place, was very fair, with lively blue eyes and exceedingly
handsome hair, very luxuriant, very wavy and of a flossy
blonde color lighted up by flashes of amber. She was tall
and rather slender, with a fine form and an uncommon
grace of manner and movement. Colburne was flattered
with which she received him. This same irrepressible
blush and flutter often interested those male individuals
who were fortunate enough to make Miss Ravenel's
acquaintance. Each young fellow thought that she was
specially interested in himself; that the depths of her
womanly nature were stirred into pleasurable excitement
by his advent. And it was frequently not altogether a
mistake. Miss Ravenel was interested in people, in a considerable
number of people, and often at first sight. She
had her father's sympathetic character, as well as his
graceful cordiality and consequent charm of manner, the
whole made more fascinating by being veiled in a delicate
gauze of womanly dignity. As to her being as lovely as a
houri, I confess that there were different opinions on that
question, and I do not care to settle it, as I of course
might, by a tyrannical affirmation.
It is curious how resolutely most persons demand that
the heroine of a story shall be extraordinarily handsome.
And yet the heroine of many a love affair in our own lives
is not handsome; and most of us fall in love, quite earnestly
and permanently in love too, with rather plain women.
Why then should I strain my conscience by asserting
broadly and positively that Miss Ravenel was a first class
beauty? But I do affirm without hesitation that, like her
father, she was socially charming. I go farther: she was
also very loveable and (I beg her pardon) very capable of
loving; although up to this time she did not feel sure that
she possessed either of these two qualities.
She had simply bowed with a welcoming smile and that
flattering blush, but without speaking or offering her hand,
when Colburne was presented. I suspect that she waited
for her father to give her a key to the nature of the interview
and an intimation as to whether she should join in
the conversation. She was quite capable of such small
forethought, and Doctor Ravenel was worthy of the trust.
“Mr. Colburne is the son of Doctor Colburne, my dear,”
heard me speak of the Doctor's premature and lamented
death. I think myself very fortunate in meeting his son.”
“You are very kind to call on us, Mr. Colburne,” said
the silver voice with a musical accent which almost
amounted to a singsong. “I hope you don't hate Southerners,”
she added with a smile which made Colburne feel
for a moment as if he could not heartily hate Beauregard,
then the representative man of the rebellion. “We are
from Louisiana, you know.”
“I regret to hear it,” answered Colburne.
“Oh, don't pity us,” she laughed. “It is not such a bad
place.”
“Please don't misunderstand me. I meant that I regret
your exile from your home.”
“Thank you for that. I don't know whether papa will
thank you or not. He doesn't appreciate Louisiana. I
don't believe he is conscious that he has suffered a misfortune
in being obliged to quit it. I am. New Boston is
very pretty, and the people are very nice. But you know
how it is; it is bad to lose one's home.”
“My dear, I can't help laughing at your grand misfortune,”
said the Doctor. “We are something like the Hebrews
when they lost Pharaoh king of Egypt, or like people
who lose a sinking wreck by getting on a sound vessel.
Besides, our happy home turned us out of doors.”
The Doctor felt that he had a right to abuse his own,
especially after it had ill-treated him.
“Were you absolutely exiled, sir?” asked Colburne.
“I had to take sides. Those unhappy Chinese allow no
neutrals—nothing but themselves, the central flowery people,
and outside barbarians. They have fed on the poor
blacks until they can't abide a man who isn't a cannibal.
He is a reproach to them, and they must make away with
him. They remind me of a cracker whom I met at a cross
road tavern in one of my journeys through the north of
Georgia. This man, a red-nosed, tobacco-drizzling, whiskey-perfumed
when I declined, got furious and wanted to fight me. I
told him that I never drank whiskey and that it made me
sick, and finally suceeeded in pacifying him without touching
his poison. In fact he made me a kind of apology for
having offered to cut my throat. `Wa'al, fact is, stranger,'
said he, `I,' (laying an accent as strong as his liquor
on the personal pronoun) `I use whiskey.'—You understand
the inference, I suppose: a man who refused whiskey
was a contradiction, a reproach to his personality: such a
man he could not suffer to live. It was the Brooks and
Sumner affair over again. Brooks says, `Fact is I believe
in slavery,' and immediately hits Sumner over the head
for not believing in it.”
“Something like my grandfather, who, when he had to
diet, used to want the whole family to live on dry toast,”
observed Colburne. “For the time being he believed in
the universal propriety and necessity of toast.”
“Were you in danger of violence before you left New
Orleans?” he presently asked. “I beg pardon if I am too
curious.”
“Violence? Why, not precisely; not immediate violence.
The breaking-off point was this. I must explain
that I dabble in chemistry as well as mineralogy. Now in
all that city of raw materialism, of cotton-bale and sugar-hogshead
instinct—I can't call it intelligence—there was
not a man of southern principles who knew enough of chemistry
to make a fuse. They wanted to possess themselves
of the United States forts in their State. They supposed
that they would be obliged to shell them. The shells they
had plundered from the United States arsenal; but the
fuses were wanting. A military committee requested me
to fabricate them. Of course I was driven to make an immediate
choice between rebellion and loyalty. I took the
first steamboat to New York, getting off just in time to
escape the system of surveillance which the vigilance committees
established.”
It may seem odd to some sensible people that this learned
gentleman of over fifty should expose his own history
so freely to a young fellow whom he had not seen until
half an hour before. But it was a part of the Doctor's
character to suppose that humanity took an interest in him
just as he took an interest in all humanity; and his natural
frankness had been increased by contact with the prevailing
communicativeness of his open-hearted fellow-citizens
of the South. I dare say that he would have unfolded
the tale of his exile to an intelligent stage-driver by whom
he might have chanced to sit, with as little hesitation as
he poured it into the ears of this graduate of a distinguished
university and representative of a staid puritanical
aristocracy. He had no thought of claiming admiration
for his self-sacrificing loyalty. His story was worth telling,
not because it was connected with his interests, but
because it had to do with his sentiments and convictions.
Why should he not relate it to a stranger who was evidently
capable of sympathising with those sentiments and
appreciating those convictions?
But there was another reason for the Doctor's frankness.
At that time every circumstance of the opening civil war,
every item of life that came from hostile South to indignant
North, was regarded by all as a species of public
property. If you put down your name on a hotel register
as arrived from Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, New Orleans,
or any other point south of Mason & Dixon's line,
you were immediately addressed and catechised. People
wanted to know how you escaped, and why you tried to
escape; and were ready to accord you any credit you demanded
for perilous adventures and patriotic motives;
and did not perceive it nor think a bit ill of you if you
showed yourself somewhat of a romancer and braggart.
And you, on the other hand, did not object to telling your
story, but let it out as naturally as a man just rescued
from drowning opens his heart to the sympathising crowd
which greets him on the river bank.
Now Miss Ravenel was a rebel. Like all young people
and almost all women she was strictly local, narrowly
geographical in her feelings and opinions. She was colored
by the soil in which she had germinated and been nurtured;
and during that year no flower could be red, white
and blue in Louisiana. Accordingly the young lady listened
to the Doctor's story of his self-imposed exile and to
his sarcasms upon the people of her native city with certain
pretty little starts and sniffs of disapprobation which
reminded Colburne of the counterfeit spittings of a kitten
playing anger. She could not under any provocation
quarrel with her father, but she could perseveringly and
energetically disagree with his opinions. When he had
closed his tirade and history she broke forth in a defence
of her darling Dixie.
“Now, papa, you are too bad. Mr. Colburne, don't
you think he is too bad? Just see here. Louisiana is my
native State, and papa has lived there half his life. He
could not have been treated more kindly, nor have been
thought more of, than he was by those Ashantees, as he
calls them, until he took sides against them. If you never
lived with the southerners you don't know how pleasant
they are. I don't mean those rough creatures from Arkansas
and Texas, nor the stupid Acadians, nor the poor
white trash. There are low people everywhere. But I
do say that the better classes of Louisiana and Mississippi
and Georgia and South Carolina and Virginia, yes, and of
Tennessee and Kentucky, are right nice. If they don't
know all about chemistry and mineralogy, they can talk
delightfully to ladies. They are perfectly charming at receptions
and dinner parties. They are so hospitable, too,
and generous and courteous! Now I call that civilization.
I say that such people are civilized.”
“They have taught you Ashantee English, though,”
smiled the Doctor, who has not yet fully realized the fact
that his daughter has become a young lady, and ought no
longer to be criticised like a school girl. “I am afraid
means.”
“Oh, yes he will. Do try to understand it, Mr. Colburne,”
answers Miss Ravenel, coloring to her temples and
fluttering like a canary whose cage has been shaken, but
still smiling good-naturedly. Her father's satire, delivered
before a stranger, touched her, but could not irritate a
good temper softened by affection.
“I must be allowed to use those Ashantee phrases once
in a while,” she went on. “We learn them from our old
mammas; that is, you know, our nice old black nurses.
Well, I admit that the mammas are not grammarians. I
admit that Louisiana is not perfect. But it is my Louisiana.
And, papa, it ought to be your Louisiana. I think
we owe fealty to our State, and should go with it wherever
it goes. Don't you believe in State rights, Mr. Colburne?
Wouldn't you stand by Barataria in any and every
case?”
“Not against the Union, Miss Ravenel,” responded the
young man, unshaken in his loyalty even by that earnest
look and winning smile.
“Oh dear! how can you say so!” exclaims the lovely
advocate of secession. “I thought New Englanders—all
but Massachusetts people—would agree with us. Wasn't
the Hartford Convention held in New England?”
“I can't help admiring your knowledge of political history.
But the Hartford Convention is a byeword of reproach
among us now. We should as soon think of being
governed by the Blue Laws.”
At this declaration Miss Ravenel lost hope of converting
her auditor. She dropped back in her corner of the sofa,
clasping her hands and pouting her lips with a charming
earnestness of mild desperation.
Well, the evening passed away delightfully to the young
patriot, although it grieved his soul to find Miss Ravenel
such a traitor to the republic. It was nearly twelve when
he bade the strangers good night and apologized for staying
and hoped they would continue to live in New Boston.
He actually trembled with pleasure when Lillie at parting
gave him her hand in the frank southern fashion. And
after he had reached his cosy bedroom on the opposite side
of the public square he had to smoke a segar to compose
himself to sleep, and succeeded so ill in his attempt to
secure speedy slumber that he heard the town clock ring
out one and then two of the morning before he lost his
consciousness.
“Oh dear! papa, how he did hang on!” said Miss Ravenel
as soon as the door had shut behind him.
Certainly it was late, and she had a right to be impatient
with the visitor, especially as he was a Yankee and
an abolitionist. But Miss Ravenel, like most young ladies,
was a bit of a hypocrite in talking of young men, and was
not so very ill pleased at the bottom of her heart with the
hanging on of Mr. Colburne.
| CHAPTER I.
MR. EDWARD COLBURNE BECOMES ACQUAINTED WITH MISS
LILLIE RAVENEL. Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty | |