Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty Part 22

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

"Oh!--_That_ man!--I can't--I won't."

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

"I can _not_ consent. I will _not_ consent. It is _not_ my duty. Oh, Lillie! how could you choose the very man of all that--! I tell you this must not be. It must stop here. I have _no_ confidence in him. He will _not_ make you happy. He will make you miserable. I tell you that you will regret the day that you marry him to the last moment of your life.

My child," (persuasively) "you _must_ believe me. You _must_ trust my judgment. Will you not be persuaded? Will you not stop where you are?"

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

"Oh papa! _Why_ do you hate him so?"

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

"But why?--_why?_ Perhaps he can explain it. Tell him what you think, papa. I am sure he can explain every thing."

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

Never having really feared what had come to pa.s.s, but only given occasional thought to it as a possible though improbable calamity, he had not inquired strictly into Carter's manner of life, and so had nothing definite to allege against him. At the same time he knew perfectly well from trifling circ.u.mstances, incidental remarks, general air and bearing, that he was one of the cla.s.s known in the world as "men about town:" a cla.s.s not only obnoxious to the Doctor's moral sentiments as the antipodes of his own purity, but also as being a natural product of that slaveholding system which he regarded as a compendium of injustice and wickedness; a cla.s.s the members of which were constantly coming to grief and bringing sorrow upon those who held them in affection. He knew them; he had watched and disliked them since his childhood; he was familiar by unpleasant observation with their language, feelings, and doings; he knew where they began, how they went on, and in what sort they ended. The calamities which they wrought for themselves and all who were connected with them he had witnessed in a hundred similar, and, so to speak, reflected instances. He remembered young Hammersley, who had sunk down in drunken paralysis and burned his feet to a crisp at his father's fire. Young Ellicot had dashed out his brains by leaping from a fourth story window in a fit of delirium tremens. Tom Akers was shot dead while drunk by a negro whom he had horribly tortured. Fred Sanderson beat his wife until she left him, spent his property at bars and gaming-tables and died in Cuba with Walker. Others he recollected, by the dozen, it seemed to him, who had fallen, wild with whiskey, in grog-shop broils or savage street rencontres. Those who lived to grow old had slave-born children, whom they either shamelessly acknowledged, or more shamelessly ignored, and perhaps sold at the auction-block. They were drunkards, gamblers, adulterers, murderers. Of such was the kingdom of h.e.l.l. And this man, to whom his only child, his Lillie, had entrusted her heart, was, he feared, he almost knew, one of that same cla.s.s, although not, it was to be hoped, so deeply stained with the brutish forms of vice which flow directly from slavery. He could not entrust her to him; he could not accept him as a son. At the same time he could not in this interview make any distinct charges against his life and character. Accordingly his talk was vague, incoherent, and sounded to Lillie like the frettings of groundless prejudice. The painful interview lasted above an hour, and, so far as concerned a decision, ended precisely where it began.

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

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

For two hours or more the Doctor continued his miserable walk up and down the study, from the door to the window, from corner to corner, occasionally stopping to rest a tired body which yet had no longing for slumber. He went back over his daughter's life, beginning with the infantile days when he used to send the servant away from the cradle in which she lay, and rock it himself for the pure pleasure of watching her. He remembered how she had expanded into the whole of his heart when her mother died. He thought how solely he had loved her since that bereavement, and how her love for him had grown with her growth and strengthened with every maturing power of her spirit. In the enthusiasm, the confidence of this recollection, he did not doubt at moments but that he could win her back to himself from this misplaced affection. She was so young yet, her heart must be so pliable yet, that he could surely influence her. As this comforting hope stole through him he felt a desire to look at her. Yes, he must see her again before he could get to sleep; he would go gently to her room and gaze at her without waking her. Putting on his slippers, he crept softly up stairs and opened her door without noise. By the light of a dying candle he saw Lillie in her night dress, sitting up in bed and wiping the tears from her cheeks with her hands.

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

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

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

"No; not angry. But so grieved!"

"Then may he not write to me?"

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

"Yes; he may write."

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

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

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

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

"Good night, dear papa," she murmured, with the sigh of a tired child.

"Forgive me."

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

"I have seen him," said the Doctor. "I told him what I told you. I told him that I must wait,--that I wanted time for reflection. I gave him to understand that it must not be considered an engagement. At the same time I allowed him to write to you. G.o.d forgive me if I have done wrong.

G.o.d pity us both."

Lillie did not think of asking if he had been civil to the Colonel; she knew that he would not and could not be discourteous to any human being. She made no answer to what he said except by going gently to him and kissing him.

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

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

Carrollton is one the suburban offshoots of New Orleans, and contains some two thousand inhabitants, mostly of the poorer cla.s.ses, and of Germanic lineage. Around it stretches the tame, rich, dead level which const.i.tutes southern Louisiana. The only raised ground is the levee; the only grand feature of the landscape is the Mississippi; all the rest is greenery, cypress groves, orange thickets, flowers, or bare flatness. As Lillie emerged from the brick and plaster railroad-station she saw the Tenth and its companion regiments along the levee, the men sitting down in their ranks and waiting patiently, after the manner of soldiers. The narrow open place between the river and the dusty little suburb was thronged with citizens;--German shopkeepers, silversmiths, &c., who were out of custom, and Irish laborers who were out of work;--poor women, (whose husbands were in the rebel army) selling miserable cakes and beer to the enlisted men; all, white as well as black, ragged, dirty, lounging, listless hopeless; none of them hostile, at least not in manner; a discouraged, subduced, stricken population. Against the bank were moored six steamboats, their smoke-stacks, and even their upper decks, overlooking the low landscape. They were not the famous floating palaces of the Mississippi, those had all been carried away by Lovell, or burnt at the wharves, or sunk in battle near the forts; these were smaller craft, such as formerly brought cotton down the Red River, or threaded the shallows between Lake Pontchartrain and Mobile. They looked more fragile even than northern steamboats; their boilers and machinery were unenclosed, visible, neglected, ugly; the superstructure was a card-house of stanchions and clapboards.

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

"Battalion!" the Colonel had commanded. "Shoulder arms. Right shoulder s.h.i.+ft arms. Right face."

He now spoke a few words to the adjutant, who repeated the orders to the captains, and then signalled to the drum-major. To the sound of drum and fife the right company, followed successively by the others from right to left, filed down the little slope with a regular, resounding tramp, and rapidly crowded one of the transports with blue uniforms and s.h.i.+ning rifles. How superb in Lillie's eyes was the Colonel, though his face was grim and his voice harsh with arbitrary power. She liked him for his bronzed color, his monstrous mustache, his air of matured manhood; yes, how much better she liked him for being thirty-five years old than if he had been only twenty-five! How much prouder of him was she because she was a little afraid of him, than if he had seemed one whom she might govern! Presently a brilliant blush rose like a sunrise upon her countenance. Carter had caught sight of them, and was approaching. A wave of his hand and a stare of his imperious eyes drove away the flock of negroes who had crowded their lookout. The interview was short, and to a listener would have been uninteresting, unless he had known the sentimental relations of the parties. The Doctor did nearly all of that part of the talking which was done in words; and his observations, if they were noted at all, probably seemed to the other two mere flatness and irrelevancy. He prophecied success to the expedition; he wished the Colonel success for the sake of the good cause; finally he warmed so far as to wish him personal success and safety. But what was even this to that other question of union or separation for life?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Doctor had little to say, and seemed quite sad; he was actually thinking how much easier he could have loved this one than the other.

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

"I won't say anything about being brought back on my s.h.i.+eld. I won't ever promise that there shall be enough left to fill a table-spoon."

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

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

Now came nearly a week of anxiety to Lillie and trouble to her father.

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