Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty. John William De Forest
She was so simply kind and friendly in her feelings that she did not notice with any thrill of emotion the fervent pressure, the clinging as of despair, with which he held her hand for a few seconds. An hour afterward she remembered it suddenly, blushing as she interpreted to herself its significance, but with no sentiment either of love or anger.
"God bless you! God bless you!" repeated the Doctor, much moved. "Let me know as early and as often as possible of your welfare. Our best wishes go with you."
Colburne had found the interview so painful, so different from what his hopes had pictured it, that, under pretence of bidding farewell to other friends, he left the hotel half an hour before the arrival of his train. As he passed through the outer door he met the Colonel entering.
"Ah! paid you adieux?" said Carter in his rough-and-ready, jaunty way. "I must say good-bye to those nice people. Meet you at the train."
Colburne merely replied, "Very well sir," with a heart as gloomy as the sour February weather, and strolled away, not to take leave of any more friends, but to smoke an anchorite, uncomforting segar in the purlieus of the station.
"Delighted to have found you," said the Colonel intercepting the Ravenels as they were leaving the parlor for their rooms. "Miss Ravenel, I have neglected my duty for the sake of the pleasure—no, the pain, of bidding you good-bye."
The Doctor cringed at this speech, but expressed delight at the visit. Lillie adorned the occasion by a blush as sumptuous as a bouquet of roses, and led the way back to the parlor, defiant of her father's evident intention to shorten the scene by remaining standing in the hall. The Doctor, finding himself thus out-generalled, retorted by taking the lead in the conversation, and talked volubly for ten minutes of the magnificent appearance of the regiment as it marched through the city, of the probable length of the war, and of the differing characteristics of northerners and southerners. Meanwhile Miss Ravenel sat quietly, after the fashion of a French demoiselle, saying nothing, but perhaps thinking all the more dangerously. At last the Colonel broke loose from the father and resolutely addressed himself to the daughter.
"Miss Ravenel, I suppose that you have not a friendly wish to send with me."
"I don't know why I should have," she replied, "until I know that you are not going to harm my people. But I have no very bad wishes."
"Thank you for that," he said with a more serious air than usual. "I do sincerely desire that your feelings were such as that I could consider myself to be fighting your cause. Perhaps you will find before we get through that I am fighting it. If we should go to New Orleans—which is among the possibilities—it may be the means of restoring you to your home."
"Oh! I should thank you for that—almost. I should be tempted to feel that the end justified the means."
"Let me hope that I shall meet you there, or somewhere, soon," he added, rising.
His manner was certainly more earnest and impressive than it had ever been before in addressing her. The tremor of her hand was perceptible to the strong steady hand which took it, and her eyes dropped under the firm gaze which met them, and which for the first time, she thought, had an expression deeply significant to her.
"If she turns out to have any prospects"—thought the Colonel as he went down stairs. "If they ever get back their southern property"—
He left the sentence unfinished on the writing tablets of his soul, to light a segar. His impulses and passions were strong when once aroused, but on this subject they had only begun to awaken.
CHAPTER IX.
FROM NEW BOSTON TO NEW ORLEANS, VIA FORT JACKSON.
"By" (this and that)! swore Colonel Carter to himself when, twenty-four hours out from Sandy Hook, he opened his sealed orders in the privacy of his state-room. "Butler has got an expedition to himself. We are in for a round of Big Bethels as sure as" (this and that and the other.)
I wish it to be understood that I do not endorse the above criticism on the celebrated proconsul of Louisiana. I am not sketching the life of General Butler, but of Colonel Carter—I am not trying to show how things really were, but only how the Colonel looked at them.
Carter opened the door and looked into the cabin. There stood a particularly clean soldier of the Tenth, his uniform carefully brushed, his shoes, belts, cartridge-box and cap-pouch blacked, his buttons and brasses shining like morning suns, white cotton gloves on his hands, and his bayonet in its scabbard, but without a musket. Being the neatest man of all those detailed for guard that morning, he had been selected by the Adjutant as the Colonel's orderly. He saluted his commander by carrying his right hand open to his fore-piece, then well out to the right, then dropping it with the little finger against the seam of his trousers, meanwhile standing bolt upright with his heels well together. The Colonel surveyed him from top to toe with a look of approbation.
"Very well, orderly," said he. "Very clean and soldierly. Been in the old army, I see."
Here he gratified himself with another full-length inspection of this statue of neatness and speechless respect.
"Now go to the captain of the vessel," he added, "give him my compliments, and request him to step to my state-room."
The orderly saluted again, faced about as if on a pivot, and walked away.
"Here, come back, sir," called the Colonel. "What did I tell you?"
"You told me, sir, to give your compliments to the captain of the vessel, and request him to step to your state-room," replied the soldier.
"My God! he understood the first time," exclaimed the Colonel. "Been in the old army, I see. Quite right, sir; go on."
In a few minutes the marine functionary was closeted with the military potentiality.
"Sit down, Captain," said the Colonel. "Take a glass of wine."
"No, thank you, Colonel," said the Captain, a small, brown, quiet-mannered, taciturn man of forty-five, his iron-grey locks carefully oiled and brushed, and his dark-blue morning-suit as neat as possible. "I make it a rule at sea," he added, "never to take any thing but a bottle of porter at dinner."
"Very good: never get drunk on duty—good rule," laughed the Colonel. "Well, here are our orders. Look them over, Captain, if you please."
The Captain read, lifted his eyebrows with an air of comprehension, put the paper back in the envelope, returned it to the Colonel, and remarked, "Ship Island."
"It would be best to say nothing about it at present," observed Carter. "Some accident may yet send us back to New York, and then the thing would be known earlier than the War Department wants."
"Very good. I will lay the proper course, and say nothing."
And so, with a little further talk about cleaning quarters and cooking rations, the interview terminated. It was not till the transport was off the beach of Ship Island that the Tenth Barataria became aware of its destination. Meantime, taking advantage of a run of smooth weather, Carter disciplined his green regiment into a state of cleanliness, order and subserviency, which made it a wonder to itself. He had two daily inspections with regard to personal cleanliness, going through the companies himself, praising the neat and remorselessly punishing the dirty. "What do you mean by such hair as that, sir?" he would say, poking up a set of long locks with the hilt of his sabre. "Have it off before night, sir. Have it cut short and neatly combed by to-morrow morning."
For offences which to the freeborn American citizen seemed peccadilloes or even virtues, (such as saying to a second-lieutenant, "I am as good as you are,") men were seized up by the wrists to the rigging with their toes scarcely touching the deck. The soldiers had to obey orders without a word, to touch their caps to officers, to stop chaffing the sentinels, to keep off the quarter-deck, and out of the cabin.
"By (this and that) I'll teach them