Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty. John William De Forest
have self-control enough not to explode when some one throws a live coal into it. The only time I ever got drunk clear through, I did it deliberately. I was to Cairo, caught there by a railroad breakdown, and had to stay over a night. Ever at Cairo? It is the dolefullest, cursedest place! If a man is excusable anywhere for drinking himself insensible, it is at Cairo, Illinois. The last thing I recollect of that evening is that I was sitting in the bar-room, feet against a pillar, debating whether I would go quite drunk, or make a fight and stay sober. I said to myself, It's Cairo, and let myself go. My next distinct recollection is that of waking up in a railroad car. I had been half conscious two or three times previously, but had gone to sleep again, without taking notice of my surroundings. This time I looked about me. My carpet-bag was between my feet, and my over-coat in the rack above my head. I looked at my watch; it was two in the afternoon. I turned to the gentleman who shared my seat and said, 'Sir, will you have the goodness to tell me where this train is going?' He stared, as you may suppose, but replied that we were going to Cincinnati. The devil we are! thought I; and I wanted to go to St. Louis. I afterwards came across a man who was able to tell me how I got on the train. He said that I came down at five in the morning, carpet-bag and over-coat in hand, settled my bill in the most rational manner possible, and took the omnibus to the railroad station. Now it's my belief that I could have staved off that drunken fit by obstinacy. I can stave this one off. You shall see."
He emptied his glass, lighted a fresh segar big enough to floor some men without other aid, and commenced walking the room, taking it diagonally from corner to corner, so as to gain a longer sweep.
"Don't stir," he said. "Don't mind me. Start another segar and try the ale. You won't? What an inhuman monster of abstinence!"
"That is the way they bring us up in New Boston. We are so temperate that we are disposed to outlaw the raising of rye."
"You mean in your set. There must be somebody in this city who gets jolly! there is everywhere, so far as I have travelled. You will find a great many fellows like me, and worse, in the old army. And good reason for it; just think of our life. All of us couldn't have nice places in charge of arsenals, or at Newport, or on Governor's Island. I was five years on the frontier and in California before I got to Baton Rouge; and that was not so very delightful, by the way, in yellow fever seasons. Now imagine yourself in command of a company garrisoning Fort Wallah-Wallah on the upper Missouri, seven hundred miles from an opera, or a library, or a lady, or a mince pie, or any other civilizing influence. The Captain is on detached service somewhere. You are the First Lieutenant, and your only companion is Brown the Second Lieutenant. You mustn't be on sociable terms with the men, because you are an officer and a gentleman. You have read your few books, and talked Brown dry. There is no shooting within five miles of the fort; and if you go beyond that distance, the Blackfeet will raise your hair. What is there to save you from suicide but old-rye? That's one way we come to drink so. You are lucky. You have had no temptations, or almost none, in this little Puritan city."
"There are some bad places and people here. I don't speak of it boastingly."
"Are there?" laughed Carter. "I'm delighted to hear it, by Jove! When my father went through college here, there wasn't a chance to learn anything wicked but hypocrisy. Chance enough for that, judging from the stories he told me. So old Whitewood is no longer the exact model of all the New Bostonians?"
"Not even in the University. There used to be such a solemn set of Professors that they couldn't be recognized in the cemetery because they had so much the air of tombstones. But that old dark-blue lot has nearly died out, and been succeeded by younger men of quite a pleasant cerulean tint. They have studied in Europe. They like Paris and Vienna, and other places that used to be so wicked; they don't think such very small lager of the German theologians; they accept geology, and discuss Darwin with patience."
"Don't get out of my range. Who the devil is Darwin? Never mind; I'll take him for granted; go on with your new-school Professors."
"Oh, I havn't much to say about them. They are quite agreeable. They are what I call men of the world—though I suppose I hardly know what a man of the world is. I dare say I am like the mouse who took the first dog that he saw for the elephant that he had heard of."
The Lieutenant-Colonel stopped his walk and surveyed him, hands in pockets, a smile on his lip, and a silent horse-laugh in his eye.
"Men of the world, are they? By Jove! Well; perhaps so; I havn't met them yet. But if it comes to pointing out men of the world, allow me to indicate our Louisiana friend, Ravenel. There's a fellow who can do the universally agreeable. You couldn't tell this evening which he liked best, Whitewood or me; and I'll be hanged if the same man can like both of us. When he was talking with the Professor he seemed to be saying to himself, 'Whitewood is my blue-book;' and when he was talking with me his whole countenance glowed with an expression which stated that 'Carter is the boy.' What a diplomatist he would make! I like him immensely. He has a charming daughter too; not beautiful exactly, but very charming."
Colburne felt an oppression which would not allow him to discuss the question. At the same time he was not indignant, but only astonished, perhaps also a little pleased, at the tone of indifference with which the other spoke of the young lady. His soul was so occupied with this new train of thought that I doubt whether he heard understandingly the conversation of his interlocutor for the next few minutes. Suddenly it struck him that Carter was entirely sober, in body and brain.
"Colonel, wouldn't you like to go on a pic-nic?" he asked abruptly.
"Pic-nic?—political thing? Why, yes; think I ought to like it; help along our regiment."
"No, no; not political. I'm sorry I gave you such an exalted expectation; now you'll be disappointed. I mean an affair of young ladies, beaux, baskets, paper parcels, sandwiches, cold tongue, biscuits and lemonade."
"Lemonade!" said Carter with a grimace. "Could a fellow smoke?"
"I take that liberty."
"Is Miss Ravenel going?"
"Yes."
"I accept. How do you go?"
"In an omnibus. I will see that you are taken up—say at nine o'clock to-morrow morning."
CHAPTER IV.
THE DRAMATIC PERSONAGES GO ON A PIC-NIC, AND STUDY THE WAYS OF NEW BOSTON.
When the Lieutenant-Colonel awoke in the morning he did not feel much like going on a pic-nic. He had a slight ache in the top of his head, a huskiness in the throat, a woolliness on the tongue, a feverishness in the cuticle, and a crawling tremulousness in the muscles, as though the molecules of his flesh were separately alive and intertwining themselves. He drowsily called to mind a red-nosed old gentleman whom he had seen at a bar, trying in vain to gather up his change with shaky fingers, and at last exclaiming, "Curse the change!" and walking off hastily in evident mortification.
"Ah, Carter! you will come to that yet," thought the Lieutenant-Colonel.—"To be sure," he added after a moment, "this sobering one's self by main strength of will, as I did last night, is an extra trial, and enough to shake any man's system.—But how about breakfast and that confounded pic-nic?" was his next reflection. "Carter, temperance man as you are, you must take a cocktail, or you won't be able to eat a mouthful this morning."
He rang; ordered an eye-opener, stiff; swallowed it, and looked at his watch. Eight; never mind; he would wash and shave; then decide between breakfast and pic-nic. Thanks to his martial education he was a rapid dresser, and it still lacked a quarter of nine when he appeared in the dining saloon. He had time therefore to eat a mutton chop, but he only looked at it with a disgusted eye, his stomach being satisfied with a roll and a cup of coffee. In the outer hall he lighted a segar, but after smoking about an inch of it, threw the rest away. It was decidedly one of his qualmish mornings, and he was glad to get a full breath of out of door air.
"Is my hamper ready?" he said to one of the hall-boys.
"Sir?"