DOMESTIC HAPPINESS, IN SPITE OF ADVERSE CIRCUMSTANCES.
When Colburne reached Port Hudson, it had capitulated; the stars and
stripes were flying in place of the stars and bars. With a smile of
triumph he climbed the steep path which zig-zagged up the almost
precipitous breast--earth changing into stone--of the gigantic bluff
which formed the river front of the fortress. At the summit was a
plateau of nearly three-quarters of a mile in diameter, verdant with
turf and groves, and pleasantly rolling in surface. He had never been
here before; he and twelve thousand others had tried to come here on the
27th of May, but had failed; and he paused to take a long look at the
spot and its surroundings. Not a sign of fortification was visible,
except five or six small semi-lunes of earth at different points along
the edge of the bluff, behind which were mounted as many monstrous guns,
some smooth-bore, some rifled. Solid shot from these giants had sunk the
Mississippi, and crippled all of Farragut's fleet but two in his
audacious rush up the river. Shells from them had flown clean over the
bluff, and sought out the farthest camps of Banks's army, bursting with
a sonorous, hollow thunder which seemed to shake earth and atmosphere.
On the land side the long lines of earthworks which had so steadily and
bloodily repulsed our columns were all below the line of sight, hidden
by the undulations of the ground, or by the forest. The turf was torn
and pitted by the bombardments; two-hundred-pound shells, thrown by the
long rifles of the fleet, lay here and there, some in fragments, some
unexploded; the church, the store, and half a dozen houses, which
constituted the village, were more or less shattered. The bullets of the
Union sharpshooters had reached as far as here, and had even gone quite
over and fallen into the Mississippi. A gaunt, dirty woman told Colburne
that on the spot where he stood a soldier of the garrison had been
killed by a chance rifle-ball while drinking a glass of beer. Leaving
his cicerone, he joined a party of officers who were lounging in the
shade of a tree, and inquired for the residence of Colonel Carter.
"Here you are," answered a lieutenant, pointing to the nearest house.
"Can I do any thing for you, Captain? I am his aid. I wouldn't advise
you to call on him unless you have something very particular to say.
Every body has been celebrating the surrender, and the Colonel isn't
exactly in a state for business."
Colburne hesitated; but he had letters from Carter's wife and
father-in-law, and of course he must see him, drunk or sober. At that
moment he heard a voice that he recognized; a voice that had demanded
and obtained what he had not dared to ask for--a voice that, as he well
knew, _she_ longed for as the sweetest of earth's music.
"Hi! hi!" said the Colonel, making his appearance upon the unpainted,
warped, paralytic verandah of his dwelling. Through the low-cut window
from which he issued could be seen a sloppy table, with bottles and
glasses, and the laughing faces of two bold-browed, slatternly girls,
the one seventeen, the other twenty. He had on an old dressing-gown,
fastened around his waist with a sword-belt, and his trousers hung loose
about the heels of a pair of dirty slippers. His face was flushed and
his eyes bloodshot; he was winking, leering, and slightly unsteady.
Colburne slunk behind a tree, humiliated for his sake, and ready to rave
or weep as he thought of the young wife to whom this man's mere name was
a comfort.
"Hi! hi!" repeated Carter. "Where are all these fellows?"
The aid advanced and saluted. "Do you want any one, Colonel?"
"No, no. Don't want any one. What for? Celebrate it alone. Man enough
for it."
Presently catching the eye of another officer, he again chuckled, "Hi!
hi!"
The person thus addressed approached and saluted.
"I say," observed the Colonel, "I got letters last night addressed
General Carter--Brigadier-General John T. Carter. What do you think of
that?"
"I hope it means promotion," said the officer. "Colonel, do you think we
shall go into quarters?"
"No, no; no go into quarters; no go into quarters for us. Played
out--quarters. In ole, ole times, after fought a big battle, used to
stop--look out good quarters, and stop. But now nix cum rouse the stop."
Back he reeled through the window, to sit down to his whiskey and water,
amidst the laughter and rather scornful blandishments of the Secession
lasses.
Nevertheless I must see him, decided Colburne. "Ask Colonel Carter," he
said to an orderly, "if he can receive Captain Colburne, who brings
letters and messages from Mrs. Carter."
In a minute the man returned, saluted and said, "The Colonel sends his
compliments and asks you to walk in, sir."
When Colburne entered Carter's presence he found him somewhat sobered in
manner; and although the bottles and glasses were still on the table,
the bold-faced girls had disappeared.
"Captain, sit down. Take glass plain whiskey," were the Colonel's first
words. "Good for your arm--good for every thing. Glad you got off
without a--cut-off."
He would have used the word amputation, only he knew that his tongue
could not manage it.
"Thank you, Colonel. Here are two letters, sir, from Mrs. Carter and the
Doctor. Just as I was leaving, when it was too late to write, Mrs.
Carter charged me to say to you that her father had decided to go at
once to New Orleans, so that your letters must be directed to her
there."
"I understand," answered Carter slowly and with the solemnity of
enforced sobriety. "Thank you."
He broke open his wife's letter and glanced hurriedly through it.
"Captain, I'm 'bliged to you," he said. "You've saved my wife from
im-prisn--ment. She's 'bliged to you. You're noble fellah. I charge
myself with your pro--mosh'n."
It was so painful to see him struggle in that humiliating manner to
appear sober, that Colburne cut short the interview by pretexting a
necessity of reporting immediately to his regiment.
"Come to-morrow," said Carter. "All right to-morrow. Business to-morrow.
To-day--celebrash'n."
The Colonel, although not aware of the fact, was far advanced in the way
of the drunkard. He had long since passed the period when it was
necessary to stimulate his appetite for spirituous liquors by sugar,
lemon-peel, bitters and other condiments. He had lived through the era
of fancy drinks, and entered the cycle of confirmed plain whiskey. At
the New Orleans bars he did not call for the fascinating mixtures for
which those establishments are famous; he ran his mind's eye wearily
over the milk-punches, claret-punches, sherry-cobblers, apple-toddies,
tom-and-jerries, brandy-slings, and gin-cocktails; then said in a
slightly hoarse _basso profondo_, "Give me some plain whiskey." He had
swallowed a great deal of strong drink during the siege, and since the
surrender he had not known a sober waking moment. His appetite was poor,
especially at breakfast. His face was constantly flushed, his body had
an appearance of being bloated, and his hands were tremulous.
Nevertheless, obedient to a delusion common to men of his habits, he did
not consider himself a hard drinker. He acknowledged that he got
intoxicated at times and thoroughly, but he thought not more frequently
or thoroughly than the average of good fellows. He was kept in
countenance by a great host of comrade inebriates in the old service and
in the new, in the navy as well as in the army, in high civilian
position and at the front, in short throughout almost every grade and
class of American society. He could point to men whose talents and
public virtues the nation honors, and say, "They get as drunk as I do,
and as often." He could point to such cases on this side of the water
and on the other. Does anybody remember the orgies of the _viri clari et
venerabili_, who gathered at Boston to celebrate the obsequies of John
Quincy Adams, and at Charleston to lament over the remains of John C.
Calhoun? Does anybody remember the dinner speeches on board of Sir
Charles Napier's flagship, just before the Baltic fleet set out for
Cronstadt? Latterly this vice has increased upon us in America, thanks
to the reaction against the Maine liquor law, thanks to the war. Perhaps
it is for the best; perhaps it is a good thing that hundreds of leading
Americans and hundreds of thousands of led Americans should be
drunkards; it may be, in some incomprehensible manner, for the interest
of humanity. To my unenlightened mind the contrary seems probable; but I
am liable to error, and sober at this moment of writing: a pint of
whiskey might illuminate me to see behind the veil. It is wonderful to
me, a member of the guzzling Anglo-Saxon race, that the abstemious Latin
nations have not yet got the better of us. Nothing can account for it,
unless it is that spiritual, and intellectual, and political tyranny
more than counterbalance the advantages of temperance. Boozing John
Bull and Jonathan have kept an upper hand because their geographical
conditions have enabled them to remain free; and on their impregnable
islands and separated quarters of the globe they have besotted
themselves for centuries with political impunity.
Next day, as Carter had promised, he was able to attend to business. His
first act was to issue an order assigning Captain Colburne to his staff
as "Acting Assistant Adjutant-General, to be obeyed and respected
accordingly." When the young officer reported for duty he found the
Colonel sober, but stern and gloomy with the woful struggle against his
maniacal appetite, and shaky in body with the result of the bygone
debauch.
"Captain," said he, "I wish you would do me the favor to join my mess. I
want a temperance man. No more whiskey for one while!--By the way, I owe
you so much I never can repay you for saving my wife from those savages.
If admiration is any reward, you have it. My wife and her father both
overflow with your praises."
Colburne bowed and replied that he had done no more than his duty as an
officer and a gentleman.
"I am glad it was you who did it," replied the Colonel. "I don't know
any other person to whom I would so willingly be under such an
obligation."
It was certainly rather handsome in Carter that he should cheerfully
permit his wife to feel admiration and gratitude towards so handsome a
young man as Colburne.
"That infernal poltroon of a Gazaway!" he broke out presently. "I ought
to have cashiered him long ago. I'll have him court-martialed and shot.
By the way, he was perfectly well when you saw him, wasn't he?"
"I should think so. He looked like a champion of the heavy weights. The
mere reflection of his biceps was enough to break a looking-glass."
"I thought he had run away from the service altogether. He came up to
the regiment once during the siege. The officers kicked him out, and he
disappeared. Got in at some hospital, it seems--By (this and that) three
quarters of the hospitals are a disgrace to the service. They are
asylums for shirks and cowards. I wish you would make it your first
business to inform yourself of all Gazaway's sneakings--misbehavior in
presence of the enemy, you understand--violation of the fifty-second
article of war--and draw up charges against him. I want charges that
will shoot him."
Here I may as well anticipate the history of the Major. When the charges
against him were forwarded, he got wind of them, and, making a personal
appeal to high authority, pleaded hard for leave to resign on a
surgeon's certificate of physical disability. The request was granted
for some mysterious reason, probably of political origin; and this
vulgar poltroon left the army, and the department with no official
stigma on his character. On reaching Barataria he appealed to his
faithful old herd of followers and assailed Colonel Carter and Captain
Colburne as a couple of aristocrats who would not let a working man hold
a commission.
Two days subsequent to Colburne's arrival at Port Hudson the brigade
sailed to Fort Winthrop and from thence followed the trail of the
retreating Texans as far as Thibodeaux, where Carter established his
head-quarters. A week later, when the rebels were all across the
Atchafalaya and quiet once more prevailed in the Lafourche Interieur, he
sent to New Orleans for his wife, and established her in a pretty
cottage, with orange trees and a garden, in the outskirts of the little
French American city. The Doctor's plantation house had been burned, his
agricultural implements destroyed, and his cattle eaten or driven away
by the rebels, who put a devout zeal into the task of laying waste every
spot which had been desecrated by the labor of manumitted bondsmen. His
grand experiment of reorganizing southern industry being thus knocked on
the head, he had applied for and obtained his old position in the
hospital. Lillie wept at parting from him, but nevertheless flew to live
with her husband.
The months which she passed at Thibodeaux were the happiest that she had
ever known. The Colonel did not drink; was with her every moment that he
could spare from his duties; was strongly loving and noisily cheerful,
like a doting dragoon as he was; abounded with attentions and presents,
bouquets from the garden, and dresses from New Orleans; was uneasy to
make her comfortable, and exhibit his affection. The whole brigade knew
her, and delighted to look at her, drilling badly in consequence of
inattention when she cantered by on horseback. The sentinels, when not
watched by the lieutenant of the guard, gratified themselves and amused
her with the courteous pleasantry of presenting arms as she passed. Such
officers as were aristocratic enough or otherwise fortunate enough to
obtain a bowing acquaintance, still more to be invited to her receptions
and dinner parties, flattered her by their evident admiration and
devotion. A second lieutenant who once had a chance to shorten her
stirrup leather, alluded to it vain-gloriously for weeks afterward, and
received the nickname from his envious comrades of "Acting Assistant
Flunkey General, Second Brigade, First Division, Nineteenth Army Corps."
It made no difference with the happy youth; he had shortened the stirrup
of the being who was every body's admiration; and from his pedestal of
good fortune he smiled serenely at detraction. Lillie was the queen, the
goddess, the only queen and goddess, of the Lafourche Interieur. In the
whole district there was no other lady, except the wives of two
captains, who occupied a much lower heaven, and some bitter
Secessionists, who kept aloof from the army, and were besides wofully
scant in their graces and wardrobe. The adulation which she received did
not come from the highest human source, but it was unmixed, unshared,
whole-souled, constant. She thought it was the most delightful thing
conceivable to keep house, to be married, to be the wife of Colonel
Carter. If she had been twenty-five or thirty years old, a veteran of
society, I should be inclined to laugh at her for the child-like
pleasure she took in her conditions and surroundings; but only twenty,
hardly ever at a party, married without a wedding, married less than six
months, I sympathise with her, rejoice with her, in her unaccustomed
intoxication of happiness. It was curious to see how slowly she got
accustomed to her husband. For some time it seemed to her amazing and
almost incredible that any man should call himself by such a title, and
claim the familiarity and the rights which it implied. She frequently
blushed at encountering him, as if he were still a lover. If she met the
bold gaze of his wide-open brown eyes, she trembled with an inward
thrill, and wanted to say, "Please don't look at me so!" He could
tyrannize over her with his eyes; he could make her come to him and try
to hide from them by nestling her head on his shoulder; he used to
wonder at his power, and gratify his vanity as well as his affection, by
using it.
An officer of the staff, who believed in the marvels of the so-called
psychologists, observed the emotion awakened in the wife by the
husband's gaze, and mentioned it to Colburne as a proof of the actuality
of magnetíco-spiritualistic influence. The Captain was not convinced,
and felt a strong desire to box the officer's ears. What right had the
fellow to make the movements and inclinations of that woman's soul an
object of curiosity and a topic of conversation? He offered no reply to
the remark, and glared in a way which astonished the other, who had the
want of delicacy common to men of one idea. Colburne divined Mrs. Carter
too well to adopt the magnetic theory. Judging her nature out of the
depths of his own, he believed that love was the true and all-sufficient
explanation of her nervousness under the gaze of her husband. It was a
painful belief: firstly, for the very natural reason that he was not
himself the cause of the emotion; secondly, because he feared that the
Colonel might be a blight to the delicate affection which clasped him
with its tendrils.
His relations with both were the most familiar, the frankest, the
kindest. When Carter could not ride out with his wife, he detailed
Colburne for the agreeable duty. When Mrs. Carter made a visit to
headquarters, and did not find the Colonel there, she asked for the
adjutant-general. The friend sent the lady bouquets by the hands of the
husband. Carter knew to some extent how Colburne adored Lillie, but he
had a fine confidence in the purity and humility of the adoration, and
he trusted her to him as he would have trusted her to her father. The
Captain was not a member of the family: the cottage was too far from his
official duties to allow of that; but he dined there every Sunday, and
called there every other evening. Ravenel's letters to one or the other,
were the common property of both. If Lillie did not hear from her father
twice a week, and therefore became anxious about him, because it was the
yellow fever season, or because of the broad fact that man is mortal,
she applied to Colburne as well as to her husband for comforting
suggestions and assurances. In company with some chance fourth, these
three had the gayest evenings of whist and euchre. Lillie never looked
at her cards without exciting the laughter of the two men, by declaring
that she hadn't a thing in her hand--positively not a single
thing--couldn't take a trick--not one. She talked perpetually, told what
honors she held, stole glances at her opponent's hand, screamed with
delight when she won, and in short violated all the venerable rules of
whist. She forgot the run of the cards, trumped her partner's trick, led
diamonds when he had trashed on hearts, led the queen when she held ace
and king. To her trumps she held on firmly, never showing them till the
last moment, and scolding her partner if he called them out. She
invariably claimed the deal at the close of each hand, thereby getting
it oftener than she had a right to it. But she might do what she
pleased, sure that those who played with her would not complain. Was
she not queen and goddess, Semiramis and Juno? Who would rebel, even in
the slightest particular, against the dominion of a happiness which
overflowed in such gayety, such confidence in all around, such
unchangeable amiability?
She was in superb health of body, and spirit without a pain, or a sickly
moment, or a cloud of foreboding, or a thrill of pettishness. A physical
calmness so deliciously placid as to remind one of that spiritual peace
which passeth understanding, bore her gently through the summer, smiling
on all beholders. Do you remember the serene angel in the first picture
of Cole's Voyage of Life, who stands at the helm of the newly launched
bark, guiding it down the gentle river? It is the mother voyaging with
her child, whether before its birth or after. Just now she looked much
like this angel, only more frolicsomely happy. Her blue eyes sparkled
with the lustre of health so perfect that the mere consciousness of a
life was a pleasure. Her cheeks, usually showing more of the lily than
of the rose, were so radiant with color that it seemed as if every throb
of emotion might force the blood through the delicate skin. Her arms,
neck and shoulders were no longer Dianesque, but rounded, columnal,
Junonian. It was this novel, this almost superwomanly health which gave
her such an efflorescence of happiness, amiability and beauty.
She had repeatedly hinted to her husband that she had a secret to tell
him. When he asked what it was she blushed, laughed at him for the
question, and declared that he should never know it, that she had no
secret at all, that she had been joking. Then she wondered that he
should not guess it; thought it the strangest thing in the world that he
should not know it. At last she made her confession: made it to him
alone, with closed doors and in darkness; she could no more have told it
in the light of day than in the presence of a circle. Then for many
minutes she nestled close to him with wet cheeks and clinging arms,
listening eagerly to his assurances of love and devotion, hungering
unappeaseably for them, growing to him, one with him.
After this Carter treated his wife with increased tenderness. Nothing
that she desired was too good for her, or too difficult to get. He
sought to check the constant exercise which she delighted in, and
especially her long rides on horseback; and when with a sweet, laughing
wilfulness she defied his authority, he watched her with evident
anxiety. He wrote about it all to her father, and the consequence was a
visit from the Doctor. This combination of natural potentates was
victorious, and equestrianism was given up for walking and tending
flowers. At this time she had so much affection to spare that she
lavished treasures of it, not only on plants, but on birds, cats, dogs,
and ponies. Here Colburne drifted into the circle of her sympathies. He
was fond of pets, especially of weak ones, for instance liking cats
better than dogs, and liking them all the more because most people
abused and, as he contended, misunderstood them. He had stories to tell
of feline creatures who had loved him with a love like that of Jonathan
for David, passing the love of woman. There was the abnormally sensitive
Tabby who pined away with grief when his mother died, and the
uncomformably intelligent Tom who persisted in getting into his trunk
when he was packing it to go to the wars.
"I am confident," he asserted, "that Puss knew I was about to leave, and
wanted to be taken along."
Lillie did not question it; all love, even that of animals, seemed
natural to her; she felt (not thought) that love was the teacher of the
soul.
By the way, Colburne's passion for pets had deep roots in his character.
It sprang from his pitying fondness for the weak, and was closely
related to his sympathies with humanity. It extended to the feebler
members of his own race, such as children and old ladies, whom, he
befriended and petted whenever he could, and who in return granted him
their easily-won affection. For flowers, and in general for inanimate
nature, he cared little; never could be induced to study botany, nor to
understand why other people should study it; could not see any human
interest in it. Geology he liked, because it promised, he thought, some
knowledge of the early history of man, or at least of the grand cosmical
preparation for his advent. Astronomy was also interesting to him,
inasmuch as we may at some future time traverse sidereal spaces. The
most interesting star in the heavens, to his mind, was that one in the
Pleiades which is supposed to be the central sun of our solar and
planetary system. Around this all that he knew and all whom he loved
revolved, even including Mrs. Carter.
I presume that this summer was the happiest period in the life of the
Colonel. He was in fine health, thanks to his present temperate ways,
although they reduced his weight so rapidly that his wife thought he was
sick, and became alarmed about him. He frequently recommended marriage
to Colburne, and they had long conversations on the subject; not,
however, before Mrs. Carter, whose entrance always caused the Captain to
drop the subject. The Telemachus was as fully persuaded of the benefits,
happiness and duty of wedded life as the Mentor, and was much the best
theorizer.
"I believe," he said, "that neither man nor woman is a complete nature
by himself or herself, and that you must unite the two in one before
humanity is perfected, and, to use an Emersonianism, comes full circle.
The union is affection, and the consecration of it is marriage. You
remember Baron Munchausen's horse; how he was cut in two, and the halves
got on very poorly without each other; and how they were reunited with
mutual benefit. Now this is the history of every bachelor and single
woman, who having miserably tried for a while to go it alone, finally
coalesce happily in one flesh."
"By Jove, Captain, you talk like a philosopher," said the Colonel. "You
ought to write something. You ought to practice, too, according to your
preaching. There is Mrs. Larue, now. No," he added seriously. "Don't
take her. She isn't worthy of you. You deserve the best."
Colburne was a better conversationalist than Carter, except in the way
of small talk with comparative strangers, wherein the latter's
confidence in himself, strengthened by habits of authority, gave him an
easy freedom. Indeed, when Carter was actually brilliant in society, you
might be sure he had taken five or six plain whiskeys, and that five or
six more (what a head he sported!) would make him moderately drunk. If
my readers will go back to the dinner at Professor Whitewood's, and the
evening which followed it, and the next day's pic-nic when he was under
the influence of a whiskey fever, they will see the best that he could
do as a talker. With regard to subjects which implied ever so little
scholarship, the Colonel accorded the Captain a facile admiration which
at first astonished the latter. Talking one day of the earth-works of
Port Hudson, Colburne observed that the Romans threw up field
fortifications at the close of every day's march, one legion standing
under arms to protect the workmen, while another marched out and formed
line of battle to cover the foragers. If the brigade commander had ever
known these things, he had evidently forgotten them. He looked at
Colburne with undisguised astonishment, and set him down from that
moment as a fellow of infinite erudition. This was far from being the
only occasion on which the volunteer captain was led to notice the
narrow professional basis from which most of the officers of the old
service talked and thought. Now and then he met a philosopher like
Phelps, or a chemist like Franklin; but in general he found them as
little versed in the ways and ideas of the world as so many old
sea-captains; and even with regard to their own profession they were
narrowly practical and technical.
Amidst all these pleasant sentiments and conversings, Carter had his
perplexities and anxieties. He was spending more than his income, and
neither knew how to increase it, nor how to curtail his outlay. Besides
his colonel's pay he had no resources, unless indeed dunning letters
could be made into negotiable paper. He was not very sensitive on the
subject of these missives; and in fact he was what most people would
consider disgracefully callous to their influence; but he looked forward
with alarm to a time when his credit might fail altogether, and his wife
might suffer for luxuries.