Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty

by John William De Forest

  CHAPTER XXXIII.

  LILLIE DEVOTES HERSELF ENTIRELY TO THE RISING GENERATION.

  Lillie wished to return, at least for a while, to her old quarters inthe New Boston House. A desire to go back by association to some part ofher life which had been happy may have influenced her in this choice;and she was so quietly earnest in it that her father yielded, althoughhe feared that the recollections connected with the place would increaseher melancholy. They had been there only three days when he read with ashock the newspaper report of the battle of Cane River, and the death of"the lamented General Carter." He did not dare mention it to her, andsought to keep the journals out of her reach. This was easy enough, forshe never went out alone, rarely spoke to any one but her father, anddevoted her time mostly to her child and her sewing. But about a weekafter their arrival, as the Doctor came in to dinner from a morning'sreading in the college library, he found her weeping quietly over aletter which lay open in her lap. She handed it to him, merely saying,"Oh, papa!"

  He glanced through it hastily; it was Colburne's account of Carter'sdeath.

  "I knew this, my dear," he said. "But I did not dare to tell you. I hopeyou are able to bear it. There is a great deal to bear in this world.But it is for our good."

  "Oh, I don't know," she replied with a weary air. She was thinking, notof his general consolations, but of his hope that she could endure hertrial; for a trial it was, this sudden death of her husband, though shehad thought of him of late only as separated from her forever. After ashort silence she sobbed, "I am so sorry I quarreled with him. I wish Ihad written to him that I was not angry."

  She went on crying, but not passionately, nor with a show of unendurablesorrow. From that time, as he watched the patient tranquillity of hergrief, the Doctor conceived a firm hope that she would not bepermanently crushed by her afflictions. She kept the letter in her ownwriting desk, and read it many times when alone; sometimes laying itdown with a start to take up the unconscious giggling comforter in thecradle; sometimes telling him what it all meant, and what her tearsmeant, saying, "Poor baby! Baby's papa is dead."

  Only once did an expression savoring of anger at any one force its waythrough her lips.

  "I don't see why I should have been made miserable because others arewicked," she said.

  "It is one of the necessary consequences of living," answered theDoctor. "Other people's sins are sometimes brought to our doors, just asother people's infants are sometimes left there in baskets. God hasordained that we shall help bear the burdens of our fellow creatures,even down to the consequences of their crimes. It is one way of teachingus not to sin. I have had my small share of this unpleasant labor. Ilost my home and my income because a few men wanted to found aslave-driving oligarchy on the ruins of their country."

  "We have had nothing but trials," sighed Lillie.

  "Oh yes," said the Doctor. "Life in the average is a mass of happiness,only dotted here and there by trials. Our pleasures are so many thatthey grow monotonous and are overlooked."

  I must now include the history of eight months in a few pages. TheDoctor, ignorant of the steamboat transaction, allowed his daughter todraw the money which she had left behind on deposit, considering thatCarter's child unquestionably had a right to it. Through the goodoffices of that amiable sinner, Mrs. Larue (of which he was equallyunaware), he was enabled to let his house in New Orleans as a Governmentoffice. Thus provided with ready money and a small quarterly payment, heresumed his literary and scientific labors, translating from a FrenchEncyclopedia for a New York publisher, and occasionally securing a jobof mineralogical discovery. The familiar life of former days, whenfather and daughter were all and all to each other, slowly revived,saddened by recollections, but made joyful also by the new affectionwhich they shared. As out of the brazen vase of the Arabian Nights arosethe malignant Jinn whose head touched the clouds, and whose voice madethe earth tremble, so out of the cradle of Ravvie arose an influence,perhaps a veritable angel, whose crown was in the heavens, and whosepower brought down consolation. There was no cause of innerestrangement; nothing on which father and child could not feel alike.Ravenel had found some difficulty in liking his daughter's husband, buthe had none at all in loving his daughter's baby. So, agreeing on allsubjects of much importance to either, and disposed by affection and oldhabit to take a strong interest in each other's affairs, they easilyreturned to their former ways of much domestic small-talk. Happily forLillie she was not taciturn, but a prattler, and by nature alight-hearted one. Now prattlers, like workers of all kinds, physicaland moral, unconsciously dodge by their activity a great many shafts ofsuffering which hit their quieter brothers and sisters. A widow whoorders her mourning, and waits for it with folded hand and closed lips,is likely to be more melancholy than a widow who must trim her gowns,and make up her caps with her own fingers, and who is thereby impelledto talk of them to her mother, sisters, and other born sympathisers. Itwas a symptom of returning health of mind when Lillie could lingerbefore the glass, arrange her hair with the old taste, put on a new capdaintily and say, "Papa, how does that look?"

  "Very well, my dear," answers papa, scratching away at his translation.Then, remembering what his child had suffered, and transferring histhoughts to the subject which she proffers for consideration, he adds,"It seems to me that it is unnecessarily stiff and parchment like. Itlooks as if it was made of stearine."

  "Why, that's the material," says Lillie. "Of course it looks stiff; itought to."

  "But why not have some other material?" queries the Doctor, who is asdull as men usually are in matters of the female toilet. "Why not usewhite silk, or something?"

  "Silk, papa!" exclaims Lillie, and laughs heartily. "Who ever heard ofusing silk for mourning?"

  Woe to women when they give up making their own dresses and take tofemale tailors! Five will then die of broken hearts, of ennui, ofemptiness of life, where one dies now.

  But her great diverter and comforter was still her child. Like mostwomen she was born for maternity more distinctly and positively eventhan for love. She had not given up her dolls until she was fourteen;and then she had put them reverentially and tenderly away in a trunkwhere she could occasionally go and look at them; and less than sevenyears later she had a living doll, her own, her soul's doll, to care forand worship. It was charming to see this slender, Diana-like form,overloaded and leaning, but still bearing, with an affection which wascareless of fatigue, the disproportionate weight of that healthy,succulent, ponderous Ravvie. His pink face, and short flaxen hair bobbedabout her shoulders, and his chubby hands played with her nose, lips,hair, and white collars. When he went out on an airing she almost alwayswent with him, and sometimes took the sole charge of his wicker wagon,proud to drag it because of its illustrious burden. Ravvie had apromenade in the morning with mamma and nurse, and another late in theafternoon with mamma and grandpapa. Lillie meant to make him healthy bykeeping him constantly in the open air, and burning him brown in thesunshine, after the sensible fashion of southern nurseries, and inconsonance with the teaching of her father. The old Irish nurse, aveteran and enthusiast in her profession, had more than one contest withthis provokingly devoted mother. Not that Rosann objected to the childbeing out; she would have been glad to have him in the wicker wagon frombreakfast to dinner, and from dinner to sundown; but she wanted to bethe sole guide and companion of his wanderings. When, therefore she wasordered to stay at home and do the small washing and ironing, while themistress went off with the baby, she set up an indignant ullaloo, andthreatened departure without warning. Sometimes Lillie was satirical andsaid, "Rosann, since you can't nurse the baby, I hope you will allow meto do so."

  To which Rosann, with Irish readiness, and with an apologetic titter,would reply, "An' since God allows ye to do it, ma'am, I don't see as Ican make an objection."

  "I would turn her away if she wasn't so fond of Ravvie," affirmed Lilliein a pet. "She is the most selfish creature that I ever saw. She wantshim the whole time. I declare, papa, I only
keep her out of pity. Ibelieve it would break her heart to deprive her of the child."

  "It's a very odd sort of selfishness," observed the Doctor. "Most peoplewould call it devotion, self-abnegation, or something of that sort."

  "But he isn't her child," answered Lillie, half vexed, half smiling."She thinks he is. I actually believe she thinks that she had him. Butshe didn't. I did."

  She tossed her head with a pretty air of defiance, which was as much asto say that she was not ashamed of the feat.

  Long before Master Ravvie could say a word in any language, she hadcommenced the practice of talking to him only in French. He should be alinguist from his cradle; and she herself would be his teacher. When hegot old enough her father should instruct him in the sciences, and, ifhe chose to be a doctor, in the theory and practice of medicine. Theywould never send him to school, nor to college: thus they would savemoney, have him always by them and keep him from evil. Concerning thisproject she had long arguments with her father, who thought a boy shouldbe with boys, learn to rough it away from home, study human nature aswell as languages and sciences, and grow up with a circle of emulatorsand life comrades.

  "You will give up this little plan of yours," he said, "when he gets oldenough to make it necessary. When he is fifteen he won't wear the shellthat fits him now, and meantime we must let another one grow on his backagainst he needs it."

  But Lillie could not yet see that her child ought even to be separatedfrom her. She was constantly arranging, and re-arranging her imaginaryfuture in such ways as seemed best fitted to make him a permanentfeature of it. In every cloud-castle that she built he occupied acentral throne, with her father sitting on the right hand and she on theleft. Of course, however, she was chiefly occupied with his present,desiring to make it as delightful to him as possible.

  "I wonder if Ravvie would like the sea-shore," she said, on one of thefirst warm days of summer.

  "Why so?" asks papa.

  "Oh, it would be so pleasant to spend a week or so on the sea-shore. Ithink I could get a little fatter and stronger if I might have thesea-breeze and sea-bathing. I am tired of being so thin. Besides, itwould be such fun to take Ravvie down to the beach and see him stare atthe waves rolling in. How round his eyes would be! Do you remember howhe used to turn his head up when he was a month old, and stare at thesky with his eyes set like a doll-baby's. I wish I knew what he used tothink of it."

  "I presume he thought just about as much as the hollyhocks do when theyturn their faces toward the sun," says the Doctor.

  "For shame, papa! Do you compare him to a vegetable?"

  "Not now. But in those days he was only a grade above one. There wasn'tmuch in him but possibilities. Well; he may have perceived that the skywas very fine; but then the hollyhocks perceive as much."

  "What! don't you suppose he had a soul?"

  "Oh yes. He had a tongue too, but he hadn't learned to talk with it. Idoubt whether his soul was of much use to him in that stage of hisexistence."

  "Papa, it seems to me that you talk like an infidel. Now if Ravvie haddied when he was a month old, I should have expected to meet him inHeaven--that is, if I am ever fit to go there."

  "I have no doubt you would--no doubt of it," affirmed the Doctor withanimation. "I never intended to dispute the little man's immortality."

  "Then why did you call him a hollyhock?"

  "My dear, I take it all back. He isn't a hollyhock and never was."

  "If we can hire a house I want it in the suburbs," said Lillie, after ameditation. "I want it outside the city so that Ravvie can have plentyof air. His room must be on the sunny side, papa--hear?"

  "Yes," answered papa, who had also had his revery, probably concerningSmithites and Brownites.

  "You don't hear at all," said Lillie. "You don't pay any attention."

  "Well, my child, there is plenty of time. We sha'n't have a house forthe next five minutes."

  "I know it. Not for five years perhaps. But I want you to pay attentionwhen I am talking about Ravvie."

  Meantime the two were very popular in New Boston. As southern refugees,as martyrs in the cause of loyalty, as an organizer of free blacklabor, as the widow of a distinguished Union officer, both and each werepersonages whom the fervent Federalists of the little city delighted tohonor. As soon as they would receive calls or accept of newacquaintances they had all that they wanted. Professor Whitewood hadbeen killed at Chancellorsville, although bodily more than three hundredmiles from the field of battle; and his son was now worth eightythousand dollars, besides seven hundred dollars yearly from a tutorship,and the prospect of succeeding to his father's position. Thiswell-to-do, virtuous, amiable, and intelligent young gentleman was morethan suspected of being in love with the penniless widow. His sistermade the affair a subject of much meditation, and even of prayer, beinganxious above all things on earth, that her brother should be happy.Whitewood was more than once observed to drop his Hindustani, sidle outupon the green and beg the privilege of drawing Ravvie's baby-wagon; andwhat was particularly suspicious about the matter was, that he neverattempted to join Rosann in this manner, but only Mrs. Carter. Lilliecolored at the significance of the shyly-preferred request, and wouldnot consent to it, but nevertheless was not angry. Her bookish admirer'sinterest in her increased when he found that she aided her father in histranslations; for from his childhood he had been taught to like peoplevery much in proportion to their intellectuality and education. Ofevenings he was frequently to be seen in the little parlor of theRavenels on the fourth floor of the New Boston House. Lillie would havebeen glad to have him bring his sister, so that they four could make upa game of whist; but since the dawn of history no Whitewoods had everhandled a pack of cards, and the capacity of learning to do so was notin them. Moreover they still retained some of the old New Englandscruples of conscience on the subject. Whitewood talked quite as muchwith the Doctor as with Lillie; quite as much about minerals andchemistry as about subjects with which she was familiar; but it waseasy to see that, if he had known how, he would have made hisconversation altogether feminine. At precisely ten o'clock he rose witha start and sidled to the door; stuck there a few moments to add apostscript concerning science or classic literature; then with anotherstart opened the door, and said, "Good evening" after he was in thepassage.

  "How awkward he is!" Lillie would sometimes observe.

  "Yes--physically," was the Doctor's answer. "But not morally. I don'tsee that he tramples on any one's feelings, or breaks any one's heart."

  The visitor gone, father and daughter walked in the hall while Rosannopened the windows for ventilation. After that the baby's cradle wasdragged into the parlor with much ceremony, the whole family eitherdirecting or assisting; a mattress and blankets were produced from acloset and made up on the floor into a bed for the nurse; grandpapakissed both his children and went to his own room next door; and Lillieproceeded to undress, talking to Rosann about Ravvie.

  "An' do ye know, ma'am, what the little crater did to me to-day?" saysthe doting Irishwoman. "He jist pulled me spectacles off me nose an'stuck 'em in his own little mouth. He thought, mebbe, he could see withhis mouth. An' thin he lucked me full in the face as cunnin as could be,an' give the biggest jump that iver was. I tell ye, ma'am, babies issmarter now than they used to be."

  This remarkable anecdote, with the nurse's commentary, being repeated tothe Doctor in the morning, he philosophised as follows.

  "There may be something in Rosann's statement. It is not impossible thatthe babies of a civilized age are more exquisitely sensitive beings thanthe babies of antique barbarism. It may be that at my birth I was alittle ahead of my Gallic ancestor at his birth. Perhaps I was able tocompare two sensations as early in life as he was able to perceive asingle sensation. It might be something like this. He at the age of tendays would be capable of thinking, 'Milk is good.' I at the same agecould perhaps go so far as to think, 'Milk is better than Dally'sMixture.' Babies now-a-days have need of being cleverer than they usedto be.
They have more dangers to evade, more medicines to spit out."

  "I know what you mean," said Lillie. "You always did rebel againstDally. But what was I to do? He _would_ have the colic."

  "I know it! He would! But Dally couldn't help it. Don't, for pity'ssake, vitiate and torment your poor little angel's stomach, so new tothe atrocities of this world, with drugs. These mixers of baby medicinesought to be fed on nothing but their own nostrums. That would soon put astop to their inventions of the adversary."

  "Oh dear," sighed Lillie. "I don't know what to do with him sometimes. Iam _so_ afraid of not doing enough, or doing too much!"

  Then the _argumentem ad hominem_ occurred to her: that _argumentem_which proves nothing, and which women love so well.

  "But you have given him things, papa. Don't you remember the red fluid?"

  "I never gave it to him," asserted the Doctor.

  "But you gave it to me to give to him--when you threw the Dally out ofthe window."

  "And do you know what the red fluid was?"

  "No. It did him good. It was just as powerful as the Dally. Consequentlyit must have been a drug."

  "It was pure water, slightly colored. That was all, upon my honor--as wesay down south. It used to amuse me to see you drop it according toprescription--five drops for a dose--very particular not to give himsix. He might have drunk the vial full."

  "Papa," said Lillie when she had fully realized this awful deception,"you have a great many sins to repent of."

  "Poisoning my own grandchild is not one of them, thank Heaven!"

  "But suppose Ravvie had become really sick?" she suggested moreseriously.

  "Ah! what a clear conscience I should have had! Nobody could have laidit to me."

  "How healthy, and strong, and big he is?" was her next observation. "Hewill be like you. I would bet anything that he will be six feet high."

  Ravenel laughed at a bet which would have to wait some sixteen oreighteen years for a decision, and said it reminded him of a SouthCarolinian who offered to wager that in the year two thousand slaverywould prevail the world over.

  "This whole subject of infancy's perceptions, and opinions is curious,"he observed presently. "What a world it would be, if it were exactly asthese little people see it! Yes, and what a world it would be, if itwere as we grown people see it in our different moods of depression,exhilaration, vanity, spite, and folly! I suppose that only Deity seesit truly."

  In this kind of life the spring grew into summer, the summer soberedinto autumn, and the autumn began to grow hoary with winter. Eightmonths of paternal affection received, and maternal cares bestowed haddecided that Lillie should neither die of her troubles nor suffer alife-long blighting of the soul. In bloom she was what she used to be;in expression alone had she suffered a change. Sometimes sudden flashesof profoundly felt pain troubled her eyes, as she thought of her ventureof love and its great shipwreck. She had not the slightest feeling ofanger toward her husband; she could not be angry with the buried fatherof her child. But she felt, and sometimes reproached herself for it,that his crime had made her grieve less over his death, just as hisdeath had led her to pardon his crime. She often prayed for him, notthat she believed in Purgatory and its deliverance, but rather becausethe act soothed painful yearnings which she could not dispel by reasonalone. Her devotional tendencies had been much increased by hertroubles. In fact, she was far more religious than some of the straiterNew Bostonians were able to believe when they knew that she playedwhist, and noted how tastefully she was dressed, and how charminglygraceful she was in social intercourse. She never went to sleep withoutreading a chapter in the Bible, and praying for her child, her father,and herself. It is possible that she may have forgotten the heathen, theJews, and the negroes. Well, she had not been educated to think much offar away people, but rather to interest herself in such as were near toher, and could be made daily happy or unhappy by her conduct. She almostoffended Mrs. Whitewood by admitting that she loved Ravvie a thousandtimes more than the ten tribes, or, as Mrs. W. called them, thewandering sheep of the house of Israel. Nor could this excellent ladyenlist her interest in favor of the doctrine of election, owing perhapsto the adverse remarks of Doctor Ravenel.

  "My dear madame," he said, "let us try to be good, repent of ourshort-comings, trust in the atonement, and leave such niceties to thosewhose business it is to discuss them. Doctrines are no more religionthan geological bird-tracks are animated nature. Doctrines are thefootprints of piety. You can learn by them where devout-minded men havetrod in their searchings after the truth. But they are not in themselvesreligion, and will not save souls."

  "But think of the great and good men who have made these doctrines thestudy and guide of their lives," said Mrs. Whitewood. "Think of ourPuritan forefathers."

  "I do," answered the Doctor. "I think highly of them. They have myprofoundest respect. We are still moving under the impetus which theygave to humanity. Dead as they are, they govern this continent. At thesame time they must have been disagreeable to live with. Their doctrinesmade them hard in thought and manner. When I think of their grimness,uncharity, inclemency, I am tempted to say that the sinners of thosedays were the salt of the earth. Of course, Mrs. Whitewood, it is only atemptation. I don't succumb to it. But now, as to these doctrines, as tomerely dogmatic religion, it reminds me of a story. This story goes (Idon't believe it), that an ingenious man, having found that a bandagedrawn tight around the waist will abate the pangs of hunger, set up aboarding-house on the idea. At breakfast the waiters strapped up eachboarder with a stout surcingle. At dinner the waistbelts were drawn upanother hole--or two, if you were hungry. At tea there was another pullon the buckle. The story proceeds that one dyspeptic old bachelor foundhimself much better by the evening of the second day, but that the otherguests rebelled and left the house in a body, denouncing the gentlemanlyproprietor as a humbug. Now some of our ethical purveyors remind me ofthis inventor. They put nothing into you; they give you no sustainingfood. They simply bind your soul, and now and then take up a hole inyour moral waistbelt."

  It is pretty certain that Lillie even felt more interest in CaptainColburne than in the vanished Hebrews. It will be remembered that shehas never ceased to like him since she met him, more than three yearsago, in this same New Boston House, which is now in some faint degreefragrant to her with his memory. Here commenced that loyal affectionwhich has followed her through her love for another, her marriage, andher maternity, and which has risked life to save her from captivity. Shewould be ungrateful if she did not prefer him in her heart to everyother human being except her father and Ravvie. Next to her intercoursewith this same parent and child, Colburne's letters were her chiefsocial pleasures. They were invariably directed to the Doctor; but ifshe got at them first, she had no hesitation about opening them. It washer business and pleasure also to file them for preservation.

  "If he never returns," she said, "I will write his life. But howhorrible to hear of him killed!"

  "In five months more his three years will be up," observed the Doctor."I hope that he will be protected through the perils that remain."

  "I hope so," echoed Lillie. "I wonder if the war will last long enoughto need Ravvie. He shall never go to West Point."

  "He is pretty certain not to go for the next fourteen years," saidRavenel, smiling at this long look ahead.

  Lillie sighed; she was thinking of her husband; it was West Point whichhad ruined his noble character; nothing else could account for such adownfall; and her child should not go there.

  In July (1864) they heard that the Nineteenth Corps had been transferredto Virginia, and during the autumn Colburne's letters describedSheridan's brilliant victories in the Shenandoah Valley. The Captain waspresent in the three pitched battles, and got an honorable mention forgallantry, but no promotion. Indeed advancement was impossible without atransfer, for, although his regiment had only two field-officers, it wasnow too much reduced in numbers to be entitled to a colonel. More thantwo-thirds of the rank and
file, and more than two-thirds of theofficers had fallen in those three savage struggles. Nevertheless theyoung man's letters were unflagging in their tone of elation, braggingof the bravery of his regiment, describing bayonet charges throughwhistling storms of hostile musketry, telling of captured flags andcannon by the half hundred, affectionate over his veteran corpscommander, and enthusiastic over his youthful general in chief.

  "Really, that is a most brilliant letter," observed Ravenel, afterlistening to Colburne's account of the victory of Cedar Creek. "That isthe most splendid battle-piece that ever was produced by any author,ancient or modern," he went on to say in his enthusiastic and somewhathyperbolical style. "Neither Tacitus nor Napier can equal it. Alison isall fudge and claptrap, with his granite squares of infantry and hisbillows of cavalry. One can understand Colburne. I know just how thatbattle of Cedar Creek was fought, and I almost think that I could fightsuch an one myself. There is cause and effect, and their relations toeach other, in his narrative. When he comes home I shall insist upon hiswriting a history of this war."

  "I wish he would," said Lillie, with a flash of interest for which sheblushed presently.