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MISS RAVENEL'S CONVERSION
FROM
SECESSION TO LOYALTY.
BY J. W. DE FOREST,
AUTHOR OF "EUROPEAN ACQUAINTANCE," "SEACLIFF,"
ETC., ETC.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1867.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight
hundred and sixty-seven, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of
New York.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Mr. Edward Colburne becomes acquainted with Miss Lillie
Ravenel 7
II. Miss Ravenel becomes acquainted with Lieutenant Colonel
Carter 19
III. Mr. Colburne takes a Segar with Lieutenant Colonel Carter 34
IV. The Dramatic Personages go on a Picnic, and study the
Ways of New Boston 44
V. The Dramatic Personages get News from Bull Run 59
VI. Mr. Colburne sees his Way clear to be a Soldier 71
VII. Captain Colburne raises a Company, and Colonel Carter a
Regiment 84
VIII. The Brave bid "Good-by" to the Fair 99
IX. From New Boston to New Orleans, _viâ_ Fort Jackson 112
X. The Ravenels find Captain Colburne in good Quarters 125
XI. New Orleans Life and New Orleans Ladies 142
XII. Colonel Carter befriends the Ravenels 159
XIII. The Course of True Love begins to run rough 175
XIV. Lillie chooses for herself 191
XV. Lillie bids "Good-by" to the Lover whom she has chosen
and to the Lover whom she would not choose 203
XVI. Colonel Carter gains one Victory and Miss Ravenel another 218
XVII. Colonel Carter is entirely victorious before he begins his
Campaign 232
XVIII. Doctor Ravenel commences the Reorganization of Southern
Labor 247
XIX. The Reorganization of Southern Labor is continued with
Vigor 261
XX. Captain Colburne marches and fights with Credit 275
XXI. Captain Colburne has Occasion to see Life in a Hospital 289
XXII. Captain Colburne re-enforces the Ravenels in Time to
aid them in running away 303
XXIII. Captain Colburne covers the Retreat of the Southern
Labor Organization 319
XXIV. A desperate Attack and a successful Defense 333
XXV. Domestic Happiness in spite of adverse Circumstances 346
XXVI. Captain Colburne describes Camp and Field Life 360
XXVII. Colonel Carter makes an Astronomical Expedition with
a dangerous Fellow-traveler 371
XXVIII. The Colonel continues to be led into Temptation 385
XXIX. Lillie reaches the Apotheosis of Womanhood 401
XXX. Colonel Carter commits his first ungentlemanly Action 414
XXXI. A Torture which might have been spared 427
XXXII. A most logical Conclusion 440
XXXIII. Lillie devotes herself entirely to the Rising Generation 459
XXXIV. Lillie's Attention is recalled to the Risen Generation 473
XXXV. Captain Colburne as Mr. Colburne 489
XXXVI. A Brace of Offers 503
XXXVII. A Marriage 517
MISS RAVENEL'S CONVERSION.
CHAPTER I.
MR. EDWARD COLBURNE BECOMES ACQUAINTED WITH MISS LILLIE RAVENEL.
It was shortly after the capitulation of loyal Fort Sumter to rebellious
South Carolina that Mr. Edward Colburne of New Boston made the
acquaintance of Miss Lillie Ravenel of New Orleans.
An obscure American author remarks in one of his rejected articles,
(which he had the kindness to read to me from the manuscript) that every
great historical event reverberates in a very remarkable manner through
the fortunes of a multitude of private and even secluded individuals. No
volcanic eruption rends a mountain without stirring the existence of the
mountain's mice. It was unquestionably the southern rebellion which
brought Miss Ravenel and Mr. Colburne into interesting juxtaposition.
But for this gigantic political upturning it is probable that the young
lady would never have visited New Boston where the young gentleman then
lived, or, visiting it and meeting him there, would have been a person
of no necessary importance in his eyes. But how could a most loyal,
warm-hearted youth fail to be interested in a pretty and intelligent
girl who was exiled from her home because her father would not be a
rebel?
New Boston, by the way, is the capital city of the little Yankee State
of Barataria. I ask pardon for this geographical impertinence of
introducing a seventh State into New England, and solemnly affirm that I
do not mean to disturb thereby the congressional balance of the
republic. I make the arrangement with no political object, but solely
for my private convenience, so that I may tell my story freely without
being accused of misrepresenting this private individual, or insulting
that public functionary, or burlesquing any self-satisfied community.
Like Sancho Panza's famous island of the same name, Barataria was
surrounded by land, at least to a much greater extent than most islands.
It was through Ravenel the father that Colburne made the acquaintance of
Miss Ravenel. In those days, not yet a soldier, but only a martially
disposed young lawyer and wrathful patriot, he used to visit the New
Boston House nearly every evening, running over all the journals in the
reading-room, devouring the telegraphic reports that were brought up hot
from the newspaper offices, and discussing the great political events of
the time with the heroes and sages of the city. One evening he found
nobody in the reading-room but a stranger, a tall gentleman of about
fifty, with a baldish head and a slight stoop in the shoulders, attired
in an English morning-suit of modest snuff-color. He was reading the New
York Evening Post through a rather dandified eyeglass. Presently he put
the eyeglass in his vest pocket, produced a pair of steel-bowed
spectacles, slipped them on his nose and resumed his reading with an air
of increased facility and satisfaction. He was thus engaged, and
Colburne was waiting for the Post, raging meanwhile over that copperhead
sheet, The New Boston Index, when there was a pleasant rustle of female
attire in the hall which led by the reading-room.
"Papa, put on your eyeglass," said a silver voice which Colburne liked.
"Do take off those horrid spectacles. They make you look as old as
Ararat."
"My dear, the eyeglass makes me feel as old as you say," responded papa.
"Well, stop reading then and come up stairs," was the young person's
next command. "I've had such an awful afternoon with those pokey people.
I want to tell you----"
Here she caught sight of Colburne regarding her fixedly in the mirror,
and with another rustle of vesture she suddenly slid beyond reach of the
angle of incidence and refraction.
The stranger laid down the Post in his lap, pocketed his spectacles,
and, looking about him, caught sight of Colburne.
"I beg your pardon, sir," said he with a frank, friendly, man of the
world sort of smile. "I have kept the evening paper a long time. Will
you have it?"
To our young gentleman the civility of this well-bred, middle-aged
personage was somewhat imposing, and consequently he made his best bow
and would not accept of the Post until positively assured that the other
had entirely done with it. Moreover he would not commence reading
immediately because that might seem like a tacit reproach; so he uttered
a few patriotic common-places on the news of the day, and thereby gave
occasion for this history.
"Yes, a sad struggle, a sad struggle--especially for the South,"
assented the unnamed gentleman. "You can't imagine how unprepared they
are for it. The South is just like the town's poor rebelling against the
authorities; the more successful they are, the more sure to be ruined."
While he spoke he looked in the young and strange face of his hearer
with as much seeming earnestness as if the latter had been an old
acquaintance whose opinions were of value to him. There was an amiable
fascination in the sympathetic grey eyes and the persuasive smile. He
caught Colburne's expression of interest and proceeded.
"Nobody can tell me anything about those unlucky, misguided people. I am
one of them by birth--I have lived among them nearly all my life--I know
them. They are as ill-informed as Hottentots. They have no more idea of
their relative strength as compared to that of the United States than
the Root-diggers of the Rocky Mountains. They are doomed to perish by
their own ignorance and madness."
"It will probably be a short struggle," said Colburne, speaking the
common belief of the North.
"I don't know--I don't know about that; we mustn't be too sure of that.
You must understand that they are barbarians, and that all barbarians
are obstinate and reckless. They will hold out like the Florida
Seminoles. They will resist like jackasses and heroes. They won't know
any better. They will be an honor to the fortitude and a sarcasm on the
intelligence of human nature. They will become an example in history of
much that is great, and all that is foolish."
"May I ask what part of the South you have resided in?" inquired
Colburne.
"I am a South Carolinian born. But I have lived in New Orleans for the
last twenty years, summers excepted. A man can't well live there the
year round. He must be away occasionally, to clear his system of its
malaria physical and moral. It is a Sodom. I consider it a proof of
depravity in any one to want to go there. But there was my work, and
there I staid--as little as possible. I staid till this stupid,
barbarous Ashantee rebellion drove me out."
"I am afraid you will be an exile for some time, sir," observed
Colburne, after a short silence during which he regarded the exiled
stranger with patriotic sympathy.
"I am afraid so," was the answer, uttered in a tone which implied
serious reflection if not sadness.
He remembers the lost home, the sacrificed wealth, the undeserved
hostility, the sentence of outlawry which should have been a meed of
honor, thought the enthusiastic young patriot. The voice of welcome
ought to greet him, the hand of friendship ought to aid him, here among
loyal men.
"I hope you stay some time in New Boston, sir," he observed aloud. "If
I can be of the slightest benefit to you, I shall be most happy. Allow
me to offer you my card, sir."
"Oh! Thank you. You are extremely kind," said the stranger. He bowed
very politely and smiled very cordially as he took the bit of
pasteboard; but at the same time there was a slight fixity of surprise
in his eye which made the sensitive Colburne color. He read the name on
the card; then, with a start as of reminiscence, glanced at it again;
then leaned forward and peered into the young man's face with an air of
eager curiosity.
"Are you--is it possible!--are you related to Doctor Edward Colburne of
this place who died fourteen or fifteen years ago?"
"I am his son, sir."
"Is it possible! I am delighted to meet you. I am most sincerely and
earnestly gratified. I knew your father well. I had particular occasion
to know him as a fellow beginner in mineralogy at a time when the
science was little studied in this country. We corresponded and
exchanged specimens. My name is Ravenel. I have been for twenty years
professor of theory and practice in the Medical College of New Orleans.
An excellent place for a dissecting class, by the way. So many negroes
are whipped to death, so many white gentlemen die in their boots, as the
saying is, that we rarely lack for subjects.--But you must have been
quite young when you had the misfortune--and science had the
misfortune--to lose your father. Really, you have quite his look about
the eyes and forehead. What profession may I ask?"
"Law," said Colburne, who was flushed with pleasure over the acquisition
of this charming acquaintance, so evidently to him a man of the world, a
savant, a philosopher, and a patriotic martyr.
"Law--that is a smattering of it--just enough to have an office and do
notary work."
"A good profession! A grand profession! But I should have expected your
father's son to be a physician or a mineralogist."
He took off his spectacles and surveyed Colburne's frank, handsome face
with evidently sincere interest. He seemed as much occupied with this
young stranger's history and prospects as he had been a moment before
with his own beliefs and exile.
At this stage of the conversation one of the hotel servants entered the
room and said, "Sir, the young lady wishes you would come up stairs, if
you please, sir."
"Oh, certainly," answered the stranger, or, as I may now call him, the
Doctor. "Mr. Colburne, come up to my room, if you are at leisure. I
shall be most happy to have a longer conversation with you."
Colburne was in the usual quandary of young and modest men on such
occasions. He wished to accept the invitation; he feared that he ought
not to take advantage of it; he did not know how to decline it. After a
lightning-like consideration of the _pros_ and _cons_, after a stealthy
glance at his toilet in the mirror, he showed the good sense and had the
good luck to follow Doctor Ravenel to his private parlor. As they
entered, the same silver voice which Colburne had heard below,
exclaimed, "Why papa! What has kept you so long? I have been as lonely
as a mouse in a trap."
"Lillie, let me introduce Mr. Colburne to you," answered papa. "My dear
sir, take this arm chair. It is much more comfortable than those awkward
mahogany uprights. Don't suppose that I want it. I prefer the sofa, I
really do."
Miss Ravenel, I suppose I ought to state in this exact place, was very
fair, with lively blue eyes and exceedingly handsome hair, very
luxuriant, very wavy and of a flossy blonde color lighted up by flashes
of amber. She was tall and rather slender, with a fine form and an
uncommon grace of manner and movement. Colburne was flattered by the
quick blush and pretty momentary flutter of embarrassment with which she
received him. This same irrepressible blush and flutter often interested
those male individuals who were fortunate enough to make Miss Ravenel's
acquaintance. Each young fellow thought that she was specially
interested in himself; that the depths of her womanly nature were
stirred into pleasurable excitement by his advent. And it was frequently
not altogether a mistake. Miss Ravenel was interested in people, in a
considerable number of people, and often at first sight. She had her
father's sympathetic character, as well as his graceful cordiality and
consequent charm of manner, the whole made more fascinating by being
veiled in a delicate gauze of womanly dignity. As to her being as lovely
as a houri, I confess that there were different opinions on that
question, and I do not care to settle it, as I of course might, by a
tyrannical affirmation.
It is curious how resolutely most persons demand that the heroine of a
story shall be extraordinarily handsome. And yet the heroine of many a
love affair in our own lives is not handsome; and most of us fall in
love, quite earnestly and permanently in love too, with rather plain
women. Why then should I strain my conscience by asserting broadly and
positively that Miss Ravenel was a first class beauty? But I do affirm
without hesitation that, like her father, she was socially charming. I
go farther: she was also very loveable and (I beg her pardon) very
capable of loving; although up to this time she did not feel sure that
she possessed either of these two qualities.
She had simply bowed with a welcoming smile and that flattering blush,
but without speaking or offering her hand, when Colburne was presented.
I suspect that she waited for her father to give her a key to the nature
of the interview and an intimation as to whether she should join in the
conversation. She was quite capable of such small forethought, and
Doctor Ravenel was worthy of the trust.
"Mr. Colburne is the son of Doctor Colburne, my dear," he observed as
soon as his guest was seated. "You have heard me speak of the Doctor's
premature and lamented death. I think myself very fortunate in meeting
his son."
"You are very kind to call on us, Mr. Colburne," said the silver voice
with a musical accent which almost amounted to a singsong. "I hope you
don't hate Southerners," she added with a smile which made Colburne feel
for a moment as if he could not heartily hate Beauregard, then the
representative man of the rebellion. "We are from Louisiana, you know."
"I regret to hear it," answered Colburne.
"Oh, don't pity us," she laughed. "It is not such a bad place."
"Please don't misunderstand me. I meant that I regret your exile from
your home."
"Thank you for that. I don't know whether papa will thank you or not. He
doesn't appreciate Louisiana. I don't believe he is conscious that he
has suffered a misfortune in being obliged to quit it. I am. New Boston
is very pretty, and the people are very nice. But you know how it is; it
is bad to lose one's home."
"My dear, I can't help laughing at your grand misfortune," said the
Doctor. "We are something like the Hebrews when they lost Pharaoh king
of Egypt, or like people who lose a sinking wreck by getting on a sound
vessel. Besides, our happy home turned us out of doors."
The Doctor felt that he had a right to abuse his own, especially after
it had ill-treated him.
"Were you absolutely exiled, sir?" asked Colburne.
"I had to take sides. Those unhappy Chinese allow no neutrals--nothing
but themselves, the central flowery people, and outside barbarians. They
have fed on the poor blacks until they can't abide a man who isn't a
cannibal. He is a reproach to them, and they must make away with him.
They remind me of a cracker whom I met at a cross road tavern in one of
my journeys through the north of Georgia. This man, a red-nosed,
tobacco-drizzling, whiskey-perfumed giant, invited me to drink with
him, and, when I declined, got furious and wanted to fight me. I told
him that I never drank whiskey and that it made me sick, and finally
succeeded in pacifying him without touching his poison. In fact he made
me a kind of apology for having offered to cut my throat. 'Wa'al, fact
is, stranger,' said he, '_I_,' (laying an accent as strong as his liquor
on the personal pronoun) '_I_ use whiskey.'--You understand the
inference, I suppose: a man who refused whiskey was a contradiction, a
reproach to his personality: such a man he could not suffer to live. It
was the Brooks and Sumner affair over again. Brooks says, 'Fact is _I_
believe in slavery,' and immediately hits Sumner over the head for not
believing in it."
"Something like my grandfather, who, when he had to diet, used to want
the whole family to live on dry toast," observed Colburne. "For the time
being he believed in the universal propriety and necessity of toast."
"Were you in danger of violence before you left New Orleans?" he
presently asked. "I beg pardon if I am too curious."
"Violence? Why, not precisely; not immediate violence. The breaking-off
point was this. I must explain that I dabble in chemistry as well as
mineralogy. Now in all that city of raw materialism, of cotton-bale and
sugar-hogshead instinct--I can't call it intelligence--there was not a
man of southern principles who knew enough of chemistry to make a fuse.
They wanted to possess themselves of the United States forts in their
State. They supposed that they would be obliged to shell them. The
shells they had plundered from the United States arsenal; but the fuses
were wanting. A military committee requested me to fabricate them. Of
course I was driven to make an immediate choice between rebellion and
loyalty. I took the first steamboat to New York, getting off just in
time to escape the system of surveillance which the vigilance committees
established."
It may seem odd to some sensible people that this learned gentleman of
over fifty should expose his own history so freely to a young fellow
whom he had not seen until half an hour before. But it was a part of the
Doctor's character to suppose that humanity took an interest in him just
as he took an interest in all humanity; and his natural frankness had
been increased by contact with the prevailing communicativeness of his
open-hearted fellow-citizens of the South. I dare say that he would have
unfolded the tale of his exile to an intelligent stage-driver by whom he
might have chanced to sit, with as little hesitation as he poured it
into the ears of this graduate of a distinguished university and
representative of a staid puritanical aristocracy. He had no thought of
claiming admiration for his self-sacrificing loyalty. His story was
worth telling, not because it was connected with his interests, but
because it had to do with his sentiments and convictions. Why should he
not relate it to a stranger who was evidently capable of sympathising
with those sentiments and appreciating those convictions?
But there was another reason for the Doctor's frankness. At that time
every circumstance of the opening civil war, every item of life that
came from hostile South to indignant North, was regarded by all as a
species of public property. If you put down your name on a hotel
register as arrived from Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, New Orleans, or
any other point south of Mason & Dixon's line, you were immediately
addressed and catechised. People wanted to know how you escaped, and why
you tried to escape; and were ready to accord you any credit you
demanded for perilous adventures and patriotic motives; and did not
perceive it nor think a bit ill of you if you showed yourself somewhat
of a romancer and braggart. And you, on the other hand, did not object
to telling your story, but let it out as naturally as a man just rescued
from drowning opens his heart to the sympathising crowd which greets him
on the river bank.
Now Miss Ravenel was a rebel. Like all young people and almost all
women she was strictly local, narrowly geographical in her feelings and
opinions. She was colored by the soil in which she had germinated and
been nurtured; and during that year no flower could be red, white and
blue in Louisiana. Accordingly the young lady listened to the Doctor's
story of his self-imposed exile and to his sarcasms upon the people of
her native city with certain pretty little starts and sniffs of
disapprobation which reminded Colburne of the counterfeit spittings of a
kitten playing anger. She could not under any provocation quarrel with
her father, but she could perseveringly and energetically disagree with
his opinions. When he had closed his tirade and history she broke forth
in a defence of her darling Dixie.
"Now, papa, you are too bad. Mr. Colburne, don't you think he is too
bad? Just see here. Louisiana is my native State, and papa has lived
there half his life. He could not have been treated more kindly, nor
have been thought more of, than he was by those Ashantees, as he calls
them, until he took sides against them. If you never lived with the
southerners you don't know how pleasant they are. I don't mean those
rough creatures from Arkansas and Texas, nor the stupid Acadians, nor
the poor white trash. There are low people everywhere. But I do say that
the better classes of Louisiana and Mississippi and Georgia and South
Carolina and Virginia, yes, and of Tennessee and Kentucky, are right
nice. If they don't know all about chemistry and mineralogy, they can
talk delightfully to ladies. They are perfectly charming at receptions
and dinner parties. They are so hospitable, too, and generous and
courteous! Now I call that civilization. I say that such people are
civilized."
"They have taught you Ashantee English, though," smiled the Doctor, who
has not yet fully realized the fact that his daughter has become a young
lady, and ought no longer to be criticised like a school girl. "I am
afraid Mr. Colburne won't understand what 'right nice' means."
"Oh, yes he will. Do try to understand it, Mr. Colburne," answers Miss
Ravenel, coloring to her temples and fluttering like a canary whose cage
has been shaken, but still smiling good-naturedly. Her father's satire,
delivered before a stranger, touched her, but could not irritate a good
temper softened by affection.
"I must be allowed to use those Ashantee phrases once in a while," she
went on. "We learn them from our old mammas; that is, you know, our nice
old black nurses. Well, I admit that the mammas are not grammarians. I
admit that Louisiana is not perfect. But it is my Louisiana. And, papa,
it ought to be your Louisiana. I think we owe fealty to our State, and
should go with it wherever it goes. Don't you believe in State rights,
Mr. Colburne? Wouldn't you stand by Barataria in any and every case?"
"Not against the Union, Miss Ravenel," responded the young man, unshaken
in his loyalty even by that earnest look and winning smile.
"Oh dear! how can you say so!" exclaims the lovely advocate of
secession. "I thought New Englanders--all but Massachusetts
people--would agree with us. Wasn't the Hartford Convention held in New
England?"
"I can't help admiring your knowledge of political history. But the
Hartford Convention is a byeword of reproach among us now. We should as
soon think of being governed by the Blue Laws."
At this declaration Miss Ravenel lost hope of converting her auditor.
She dropped back in her corner of the sofa, clasping her hands and
pouting her lips with a charming earnestness of mild desperation.
Well, the evening passed away delightfully to the young patriot,
although it grieved his soul to find Miss Ravenel such a traitor to the
republic. It was nearly twelve when he bade the strangers good night and
apologized for staying so late, and accepted an invitation to call next
day, and hoped they would continue to live in New Boston. He actually
trembled with pleasure when Lillie at parting gave him her hand in the
frank southern fashion. And after he had reached his cosy bedroom on the
opposite side of the public square he had to smoke a segar to compose
himself to sleep, and succeeded so ill in his attempt to secure speedy
slumber that he heard the town clock ring out one and then two of the
morning before he lost his consciousness.
"Oh dear! papa, how he did hang on!" said Miss Ravenel as soon as the
door had shut behind him.
Certainly it was late, and she had a right to be impatient with the
visitor, especially as he was a Yankee and an abolitionist. But Miss
Ravenel, like most young ladies, was a bit of a hypocrite in talking of
young men, and was not so very ill pleased at the bottom of her heart
with the hanging on of Mr. Colburne.