University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.
MISS RAVENEL BECOMES ACQUAINTED WITH LIEUTENANT-COLONEL
CARTER.

Mr. Colburne was not tardy in calling on the Ravenels
nor careless in improving chances of encountering them by
seeming accident. His modesty made him afraid of being
tiresome, and his sensitiveness of being ridiculous; but
neither the one terror nor the other prevented him from inflicting
a good deal of his society upon the interesting exiles.
Three weeks after his introduction it was his good
fortune to be invited to meet them at a dinner party given
them by Professor Whitewood of his own Alma Mater, the
celebrated Winslow University.

The Whitewood house was of an architecture so common

in New Boston that in describing it I run no risk of
identifying it to the curious. Exteriorly it was a square
box of brick, stuccoed to represent granite; interiorly it
consisted of four rooms on each floor, divided by a hall up
and down the centre. This was the original construction,
to which had been added a greenhouse, into which you
passed through the parlor, carefully balanced by a study
into which you passed through the library. Trim, regular,
geometrical, one half of the structure weighing to an
ounce just as much as the other half, and the whole perhaps
forming some exact fraction of the entire avoirdupois
of the globe, the very furniture distributed at measured
distances, it was precisely such a building as the New Boston
soul would naturally create for itself. Miss Ravenel
noticed this with a quickness of perception as to the relations
of mind and matter which astonished and amused
Mr. Colburne.

“If I should be transported on Aladdin's carpet,” she
said, “fast asleep, to some unknown country, and should
wake up and find myself in such a house as this, I should
know that I was in New Boston. How the Professor must
enjoy himself here! This room is exactly twenty feet one
way by twenty feet the other. Then the hall is just ten
feet across by just forty in length. The Professor can look
at it and say, Four times ten is forty. Then the greenhouse
and the study balance each other like the paddle-boxes
of a steamer. Why will you all be so square?”

“But how shall we become triangular, or circular, or
star-shaped, or cruciform?” asked Colburne. “And what
would be the good of it if we should get into those forms?”

“You would be so much more picturesque. I should
enjoy myself so much more in looking at you.”

“I am so sorry you don't like us.”

“How it grieves you!” laughed the young lady. A
flush of rose mounted her cheek as she said this; but I
must beg the reader to recollect that Miss Ravenel blushed
at anything and nothing.

“Now here are buildings of all shapes and colors,” she
proceeded, turning over the leaves of a photographic album
which contained views of Venetian architecture. “Don't
you see that these were not built by New Bostonians?”

They were in the library, whither Miss Whitewood had
conducted them to exhibit her father's fine collection of
photographs and engravings. A shy but hospitable and
thoughtful maiden, incapable of striking up a flirtation of
her own, and with not a selfish matrimonial in her head,
but still quite able to sympathise with the loves of others,
Miss Whitewood had seated her two guests at their art
banquet, and then had gently withdrawn herself from the
study so that they might talk of what they chose without
restraint. It was already reported, with or without reason,
that Mr. Colburne was interested in the fascinating
young exile from Louisiana, and that she was not so indifferent
to him as she evidently was to most of the New
Boston beaux. This was the reason why that awkward
but good Miss Whitewood, twenty-five years old and
without a suitor, be it remembered, had brought them into
the quiet of the study. Meantime the door was wide
open into the hall, and exactly opposite to it was another
door wide open into the parlor, where, in full view of the
young people, sat all the old people, meaning thereby Doctor
Ravenel, Professor Whitewood, Mrs. Whitewood, and
her prematurely middle-aged daughter. The three New
Bostonians were listening with evident delight to the fluent
and zealous Louisianian. But, instead of entering upon
his conversation, which consisted chiefly of lively satire
and declamation directed against slavery and its rebellious
partizans, let us revert for a tiresome moment or two,
while dinner is preparing and other guests are arriving, to
the subject on which Miss Ravenel has been teasing Mr.
Colburne.

New Boston is not a lively nor a sociable place. The
principal reason for this is that it is inhabited chiefly by
New Englanders. Puritanism, the prevailing faith of that

land and race, is not only not favorable but is absolutely
noxious to social gayeties, amenities and graces. I say
this in sorrow and not in anger, for New England is the
land of my birth and Puritanism is the creed of my progenitors.
And I add as a mere matter of justice, that, deficient
as the New Bostonians are in timely smiles and appropriate
compliments, bare as they are of jollities and angular
in manners and opinions, they have strong sympathies
for what is clearly right, and can become enthusiastic
in a matter of conscience and benevolence. If they
have not learned how to love the beautiful, they know how
to love the good and true. But Puritanism is not the only
reason why the New Bostonians are socially stiff and unsympathetic.
The city is divided into more than the ordinary
number of cliques and coteries, and they are hedged
from each other by an unusually thorny spirit of repulsion.
From times now far beyond the memory of the oldest inhabitant,
the capsheaf in the social pyramid has been allotted
by common consent, without much opposition on the
part of the other inhabitants, to the president and professors
of Winslow University, their families, and the few
whom they choose to honor with their intimacy. In early
days this learned institution was chiefly theological and its
magnates all clerical; and it was inevitable that men bearing
the priestly dignity should hold high rank in a puritan
community. Eighty or a hundred years ago, moreover,
the professor, with his salary of a thousand dollars yearly
was a nabob of wealth in a city where there were not
ten merchants and not one retired capitalist who could
boast an equal income. Finally, learning is a title to consideration
which always has been and still is recognized
by the majority of respectable Americans. An objectionable
feature of this sacred inner circle of society is that it
contains none of those seraphim called young gentlemen.
The sons of the professors, excepting the few who become
tutors and eventually succeed their fathers, leave New
Boston for larger fields of enterprise; the daughters of the
professors, enamored of learning and its votaries alone,
will not dance, nor pic-nic, much less intermarry, with the
children of shop-keepers, shippers and manufacturers; and
thus it happens that almost the only beaux whom you will
discover at the parties given in this Upper Five Hundred
are slender and beardless undergraduates.

From the time of Colburne's introduction to the Ravenels
it was the desire of his heart to make New Boston a
pleasant place to them; and by dint of spreading abroad
the fame of their patriotism and its ennobling meed of
martyrdom, he was able, in those excitable days, to infect
with the same fancy all his relatives and most of his acquaintances;
so that in a short time the exiles received
quite a number of hospitable calls and invitations. The
Doctor, travelled man of the world as he was, made no
sort of difficulty in enjoying or seeming to enjoy these attentions.
If he did not sincerely and heartily relish the
New Bostonians, so different in flavor of manner and education
from the society in which he had been educated, he
at least made them one and all believe that they were luxuries
to his palate. He became shortly the most popular
man for a dinner party or an evening conversazione that
was ever known in that city of geometry and puritanism.
Except when they had wandered outside of New Boston,
or rather, I should say, outside of New England, and got
across the ocean, or south of Mason and Dixon's line,
these good and grave burghers had never beheld such a
radiant, smiling, universally sympathetic and perennially
sociable gentleman of fifty as Ravenel. A most interesting
spectacle was it to see him meet and greet one of the
elder magnates of the university, usually a solid and sincere
but shy and somewhat unintelligible person, who always
meant three or four times as much as he said or
looked, and whose ice melted away from him leaving him
free to smile, as our southern friend fervently grasped his
frigid hand and beamed with tropical warmth into his
arctic spirit. Such a greeting was as exhilarating as a pint

of sherry to the sad, sedentary scholar, who had just come
from a weary day's grubbing among Hebrew roots, and
whose afternoon recreation had been a walk in the city
cemetery.

There were not wanting good people who feared the
Doctor; who were suspicious of this inexhaustible courtesy
and alarmed at these conversational powers of fascination;
who doubted whether poison might not infect the pleasant
talk, as malaria fills the orange-scented air of Louisiana.

“I consider him a very dangerous man; he might do a
great deal of harm if he chose,” remarked one of those
conscientious but uncharitable ladies whom I have regarded
since my childhood with a mixture of veneration and
dislike. Thin-lipped, hollow-cheeked, narrow-chested, with
only one lung and an intermittent digestion, without a
single rounded outline or graceful movement, she was a sad
example of what the New England east winds can do in
enfeebling and distorting the human form divine. Such
are too many of the New Boston women when they reach
that middle age which should be physically an era of
adipose, and morally of charity. Even her smile was a
woful phenomenon; it seemed to be rather a symptom of
pain than an expression of pleasure; it was a kind of griping
smile, like that of an infant with the colic.

“If he chose! What harm would he choose to do?”
expostulated Colburne, for whose ears this warning was
intended.

“I can't precisely make out whether he is orthodox or
not,” replied the inexorable lady. “And if he is heterodox,
what an awful power he has for deceiving and leading
away the minds of the young! He is altogether too
agreeable to win my confidence until I know that he is
guided and restrained by grace.”

“That is the most unjust thing that I ever heard of,”
broke out Colburne indignantly. “To condemn a man
because he is charming! If the converse of the rule is
true, Mrs. Ruggles—if unpleasant people are to be admired

because they are such—then some of us New Bostonians
ought to be objects of adoration.”

“I have my opinions, Mr. Colburne,” retorted the lady,
who was somewhat stung, although not clever enough to
comprehend how badly.

“It makes a great difference with an object who looks
at it,” continued the young man. “I sometimes wonder
what the ants think of us human beings. Do they understand
our capacities, duties and destinies? Or do they
look upon us from what might be called a pismire point of
view?”

Colburne could say such things because he was a popular
favorite. To people who, like the New Bostonians, did
not demand a high finish of manner, this young man was
charming. He was sympathetic, earnest in his feelings, as
frank as such a modest fellow could be, and among friends
had any quantity of expansion and animation. He would
get into a gale of jesting and laughter over a game of
whist, provided his fellow players were in anywise disposed
to be merry. On such occasions his eyes became
so bright and his cheeks so flushed that he seemed luminous
with good humor. His laugh was sonorous, hearty,
and contagious; and he was not at all fastidious as to
what he laughed at: it was sufficient for him if he saw
that you meant to be witty. In conversation he was very
pleasant, and had only one questionable trick, which was
a truly American habit of hyperbole. When he was excited
he had a droll, absent-minded way of running his
fingers through his wavy brown hair, until it stood up in
picturesque masses which were very becoming. His forehead
was broad and clear; his complexion moderately
light, with a strong color in the cheeks; his nose straight
and handsome, and other features sufficiently regular; his
eyes of a light hazel, and remarkable for their gentleness.
There was nothing hidden, nothing stern, in his expression
—you saw at a glance that he was the embodiment of
frankness and good nature. In person he was strongly

built, and he had increased his vigor by systematic exercise.
He had been one of the best gymnasts and oarsmen
in college, and still kept up his familiarity with swinging-bars
and racing shells. His firm white arms were well set
on broad shoulders and a full chest; and a pair of long,
vigorous legs completed an uncommonly fine figure. Pardonably
proud of the strength which he had in part created,
he loved to exhibit gymnastic feats, and to talk of
the matches in which he had been stroke-oar. It was the
only subject on which he exhibited personal vanity. To
sum up, he was considered in his set the finest and most
agreeable young man in New Boston.

Let us now return to the dinner of Professor Whitewood.
The party consisted of eight persons; the male
places being filled by Professor Whitewood, Doctor Ravenel,
Colburne, and a Lieutenant-Colonel Carter; the female
by Mrs. and Miss Whitewood, Miss Ravenel, and
John Whitewood, Jr. This last named individual, the
son and heir of the host, a youth of twenty years of age,
was a very proper person to fill the position of fourth lady.
Thin, pale and almost sallow, with pinched features surmounted
by a high and roomy forehead, tall, slender, narrow-chested
and fragile in form, shy, silent, and pure as
the timidest of girls, he was an example of what can be
done with youthful blood, muscle, mind and feeling by the
studious severities of a puritan university. Miss Ravenel,
accustomed to far more masculine men, felt a contempt for
him at the first glance, saying to herself, How dreadfully
ladylike! She was far better satisfied with the appearance
of the stranger, Lieutenant-Colonel Carter. A little
above the middle height he was, with a full chest, broad
shoulders and muscular arms, brown curling hair, and a
monstrous brown mustache, forehead not very high, nose
straight and chin dimpled, brown eyes at once audacious
and mirthful, and a dark rich complexion which made one
think of pipes of sherry wine as well as of years of sunburnt
adventure. When he was presented to her he

looked her full in the eyes with a bold flash of interest
which caused her to color from her forehead to her shoulders.
In age he might have been anywhere from thirty-three
to thirty-seven. In manner he was a thorough man
of the world without the insinuating suavity of her father,
but with all his self-possession and readiness.

Colburne had not expected this alarming phenomenon.
He was clever enough to recognize the stranger's gigantic
social stature at a glance, and like the Israelitish spies in
the presence of the Amakim, he felt himself shrink to a
grasshopper mediocrity.

At table the company was arranged as follows. At the
head sat Mrs. Whitewood, with Dr. Ravenel on her right,
and Miss Whitewood on her left. At the foot was the
host, flanked on the right by Miss Ravenel and on the left
by Lieutenant-Colonel Carter. The two central side places
were occupied by young Whitewood and Colburne, the
latter being between Miss Whitewood and Miss Ravenel.
With a quickness of perception which I suspect he would
not have shown had not his heart been interested in the
question he immediately decided that Doctor Ravenel was
intended to go tete-a-tete with Mrs. Whitewood, and this
strange officer with Miss Ravenel, while he was to devote
himself to Miss Whitewood. The worrying thought drove
every brilliant idea from his head. He could no more talk
and be merry than could that hermaphrodite soul whose
lean body and cadaverous countenance fronted him on the
opposite side of the table. Miss Whitewood, who was
nearly as great a student as her brother, was almost as deficient
in the powers of speech; she made an effort, first in
the direction of the coming Presentation Day, then towards
somebody's notes on Cicero, finally upon the weather;
at last, with a woman's sympathetic divination, she
guessed the cause of Colburne's gloom, and sank into a
pitying silence. As for Mrs. Whitewood, amiable woman
and excellent housewife, though an invalid, her conversational
faculty consisted in listening. Thus nobody talked

except the Ravenels, Lieutenant-Colonel Carter, and Professor
Whitewood.

Colburne endeavored to conceal his troubled condition
by a smile of counterfeit interest in the conversation.
Then he grew ashamed of himself, and tearing off his fictitious
smirk, substituted a look of stern thought, thereby
exhibiting an honest countenance, but not one suitable to
the occasion. There was sherry on the table; not because
wine-bibbing was a habit of the Whitewoods, inasmuch as
the hostess had brought it out of the family medical stores
with a painful twinge of conscience; but there it was, in
deference to the supposed tastes of the army gentleman
and the strangers from the south. Colburne was tempted
to rouse himself with a glass of it, but did not, being a
pledged member of a temperance society. Instead of this
he made a gallant moral effort, and succeeded in talking
copiously to the junior Whitewood. But as what he said
is of little consequence to our story, let us go back a few
moments and learn what it was that had depressed his
spirits.

“I am delighted to meet some one from Louisiana, Miss
Ravenel,” said the Lieutenant-Colonel, after the master of
the house had said grace.

“Why? Are you a Louisianian?” asked the young lady
with a blush of interest which was the first thing that
troubled Colburne.

“Not precisely. I came very near calling myself such
at one time, I liked the State and the people so much. I
was stationed there for several years.”

“Indeed! At New Orleans?”

“Not so fortunate,” replied the Lieutenant Colonel with
a smile and a slight bow, which was as much as to say
that, if he had been stationed there, he might have hoped
for the happiness of knowing Miss Ravenel earlier. “I
was stationed in the arsenal at Baton Rouge.”

“I never was at Baton Rouge; I mean I never visited
there. I have passed there repeatedly in going up and

down the river, just while the boat made its landings, you
know. What a beautiful place it is! I don't mean the
buildings, but the situation, the bluffs.”

“Precisely. Great relief to get to Baton Rouge and
see a hill or two after staying in the lowlands.”

“Oh! don't say anything against the lowlands,” begged
Miss Ravenel.

“I won't,” promised the Lieutenant Colonel. “Give
you my word of honor I won't do it, not even in the strictest
privacy.”

There was a cavalier dash in the gentleman's tone and
manner; he looked and spoke as if he felt himself quite
good enough for his company. And so he was, at least in
respect to descent and social position; for no family in
Virginia boasted a purer strain of old colonial blue blood
than the Carters. In addition the Lieutenant Colonel was
a gentleman by right of a graduation from West Point,
and of a commission in the regular service which dated
back to the times when there were no volunteers and few
civilian appointments, and when by consequence army officers
formed a caste of aristocratic military brahmins.
From the regular service, however, in which he had
been only a lieutenant, his name had vanished several
years previous. His lieutenant-colonelcy was a volunteer
commission issued by the governor of the State. It was in
the Second Barataria, a three-months' regiment, which
was shortly to distinguish itself by a masterly retreat
from Bull Run. Carter had injured his ancle by a fall
from his horse, and was away from the army on a sick
leave of twenty days, avoiding the hospitals of Washington,
and giving up his customary enjoyments in New York
for the sake of attending to business which will transpire
during this narrative. His leave had nearly expired, but
he had applied to the War Department for an extension of
ten days, and was awaiting an answer from that awful
headquarters with the utmost tranquillity. If he found
himself in the condition of being absent without leave,

he knew how to explain things to a military commission
or a board of inquiry.

The Lieutenant-Colonel liked the appearance of the
young person whom he had been invited to meet. In the
first place, he said to himself, she had a charming mixture
of girlish freshness and of the thorough-bred society air
which he considered indispensable to a lady. In the
second place she looked somewhat like his late wife; and
although he had been a wasteful and neglectful husband,
he still kept a moderately soft spot in his heart for the
memory of the departed one; not being in this respect
different, I understand, from the majority of widowers.
He saw that Miss Ravenel was willing to talk any kind
of nothing so long as she could talk of her native State,
and that therefore he could please her without much intellectual
strain or chance of rivalry. Consequently he
prattled and made prattle for some minutes about Louisiana.

“Were you acquainted with the McAllisters?” he
wanted to know. “Very natural that you shouldn't be.
They lived up the river, and seldom went to the city.
They had such a noble plantation, though! You could
enjoy the true, old-style, princely Louisiana hospitality
there. Splendid life, that of a southern planter. If I
hadn't been in the army—or rather, if I could have done
everything that I fancied, I should have become a sugar
planter. Of course I should have run myself out, for it
takes a frightful capital and some business faculty, or else
the best of luck. By the way, I am afraid those fine fellows
will all of them come to grief if this war continues
five or six years.”

“Five or six years!” exclaimed Professor Whitewood
in astonishment, but not in dismay, so utter was his incredulity.
“Do you suppose, Colonel, that the rebels can
resist for five or six years?”

“Why not? Ten or twelve millions of people on their
own ground, and difficult ground too, will make a terrific

resistance. They are as well prepared as we are, and better.
Frederic of Prussia wasn't conquered in seven years.
I don't see anything unreasonable in allowing these fellows
five or six. By the way,” he laughed, “I am giving
you an honest professional opinion. Talking outside—to
the rabble—talking as a patriot,” (here he laughed again)
“and not as an officer, I say three months. Do it in three
months, gentlemen!” he added, setting his head back and
swelling his chest in imitation of the conventional popular
orator.

Miss Ravenel laughed outright to hear the enemies of
her section satirized.

“But how will the South stand a contest of five or six
years?” queried the Professor.

“Oh, badly, of course; get whipped, of course; that is,
if we develope energy and military talent. We have the
resources to thrash them. War in the long run is pretty
much a matter of arithmetical calculation. Oh, Miss Ravenel,
I was about to ask you, did you know the Slidells?”

“Very slightly.”

“Why slightly? Didn't you like them? I thought
they were very agreeable people; though, to be sure,
they were parvenus.”

“They were very ultra, you know; and papa was of
the other party.”

“Oh, indeed!” said the Lieutenant-Colonel, turning his
head and surveying Ravenel with curiosity, not because
he was loyal, but because he was the young lady's papa.
“How I regret that I had no chance to make your father's
acquaintance in Louisiana. Give you my honor that I
wasn't so simple as to prefer Baton Rouge to New Orleans.
I tried to get ordered to the crescent city, but the War
Department was obdurate. I am confident,” he added,
with his audacious smile, half flattering and half quizzical,
“that if the Washington people had known all that I lost
by not getting to New Orleans, they would have relented.”

It was perfectly clear to Miss Ravenel that he meant to

pay her a compliment. It occurred to her that she was
probably in short dresses when the gallant Lieutenant-Colonel
was on duty at Baton Rouge, and thus missed a
chance of seeing her in New Orleans. But she did not
allude to this ludicrous possibility; she only colored at his
audacity, and said, “Oh, it's such a lovely city! I think
it is far preferable to New York.”

“But is it not a very wicked city?” asked the host,
quite seriously.

“Mr. Whitewood! How can you say that to me, a native
of it?” she laughed.

“Jerusalem,” pursued the Professor, getting out of his
scrape with a kind of ponderous dexterity, like an elephant
backing off a shaky bridge, and taking his time about it,
like Noah spending a hundred and twenty years in building
his ark—“Jerusalem proved her wickedness by casting
out the prophets. It seems to me that your presence here,
and that of your father, as exiles, is sufficient proof of the
iniquity of New Orleans.”

“Upon my honor, Professor!” burst out the Lieutenant-Colonel,
“you beat the best man I ever saw at a compliment.”

It was now Professor Whitewood's pale and wrinkled
cheek which flushed, partly with gratification, partly with
embarrassment. His wife surveyed him in mild astonishment,
almost fearing that he had indulged in much sherry.

The Lieutenant-Colonel, by the way, had taken to the
wine in a style which showed that he was used to the
taste of it, and liked the effects. His conversation grew
more animated; his bass voice rang from end to end of
the table, startling Mrs. Whitewood; his fine brown eyes
flashed, and a few drops of perspiration beaded his brow.
It must not be supposed that the sherry alone could do as
much as this for so old a campaigner. That afternoon, as
he lounged and yawned in the reading-room of the New
Boston House, he had thought of Professor Whitewood's
invitation, and, feeling low-spirited and stupid, had concluded

not to go to the dinner, although in the morning he
had sent a note of acceptance. Then, feeling low-spirited
and stupid, as I said, he took a glass of ale, and subsequently
a stiffish whiskey-punch, following up the treatment
with a segar, which by producing a dryness of the
throat, induced him to try another whiskey-punch. Fortified
by twenty-five cents' worth of liquor (at the then
prices) he felt his ambition and industry revive. By Jove,
Carter, he said to himself, you must go to that dinner-party.
Whitewood is just one of those pious heavyweights
who can bring this puritanical governor to
terms. Put on your best toggery, Carter, and make your
bow, and say how-de-do.

Thus it was that when the Professor's sherry entered into
the Lieutenant-Colonel, it found an ally there which aided
it to produce the afore-mentioned signs of excitement.
Colburne, I grieve to say, almost rejoiced in detecting
these symptoms, thinking that surely Miss Ravenel would
not fancy a man who was, to say the least, inordinately
convivial. Alas! Miss Ravenel had been too much accustomed
to just such gentlemen in New Orleans society to
see anything disgusting or even surprising in the manner
of the Lieutenant-Colonel. She continued to prattle with
him in her pleasantest manner about Louisiana, not in the
least restrained by Colburne's presence, and only now and
then casting an anxious glance at her father; for Ravenel
the father, man of the world as he was, did not fancy the
bacchanalian New Orleans type of gentility, having observed
that it frequently brought itself and its wife and
children to grief.

The dinner lasted an hour and a half, by which time it
was nearly twilight. The ordinary prandial hour of the
Whitewoods, as well as of most fashionable New Boston
people, was not later than two o'clock in the afternoon,
but this had been considered a special occasion on account
of the far-off origin of some of the guests, and the meal had
therefore commenced at five. On leaving the table the

party went into the parlor and had coffee. Then Miss
Ravenel thought it wise to propitiate her father's searching
eye by quitting the Lieutenant-Colonel with his pleasant
wordly ways and his fascinating masculine maturity, and
going to visit the greenhouse in company with that pale
bit of human celery, John Whitewood. Carter politely
stood up to the rack for a while with Miss Whitewood,
but, finding it dry fodder to his taste, soon made his
adieux. Colburne shortly followed, in a state of mind to
question the goodness of Providence in permitting lieutenant-colonels.