COLONEL CARTER MAKES AN ASTRONOMICAL EXPEDITION WITH A DANGEROUS FELLOW
TRAVELLER.
A prospect of flat peace and boundless prosperity is tiresome to the
human eye. Although it is morally agreeable to think about the domestic
happiness and innocence of the Carters, as sketched in a late chapter,
there is danger that the subject might easily prove tiresome to the
reader, and moreover it is difficult to write upon it. I announce
therefore with intellectual satisfaction that our Colonel is summoned to
the trial of bidding good-bye to his wife, and undertaking a journey to
Washington.
It was his own work and for his own interests. He felt the necessity of
adding to his income, and desired the honor and claimed the justice of
promotion. High Authority in the department admitted that the star of a
brigadier was not too high a reward for this brave man, thoroughly
instructed officer, model colonel. High Authority was tired of
gerrymandering seniorities so as to give a superb brigade of three
thousand men to the West Point veteran, Carter, and a skeleton division
of nine hundred men to the ex-major-general of militia, ex-mayor of
Pompoosuc, Brigadier-General John Snooks. Accordingly when the Colonel
applied for a month's leave of absence, with the understood purpose of
sueing for an acknowledgment of his services, High Authority made him
bearer of dispatches to Washington, so that, being on duty, he might pay
his travelling expenses out of the Government pocket. The same mail
which brought him his order informed him that a steamer would sail for
the north on the next day but one. Acting with the rapidity which always
marked his movements when he had once decided on his course, he took the
next morning's train for New Orleans, first pressing his wife for many
times to his breast and kissing away such of her tears as he could stay
to witness. To good angels, and other people capable of appreciating
such things, it would have been a pretty though pathetic spectacle to
see this slender, blonde-haired girl clinging to the strong, bronzed,
richly colored man with the burning black eyes.
"Oh, what shall I do without you?" she moaned. "What shall I do with
myself?"
"My dear little child," he said, "you will do just what you like. If you
choose to stay here and keep house, Captain Colburne will see that you
are cared for. Perhaps it may be best, however, to join your father.
Here are two hundred dollars, all the money that I have except what is
necessary to take me to New Orleans. I shall get a month's pay there.
Don't settle any bills. Tell people that I will attend to them when I
come back.--There. Don't keep me, my dear one. Don't make me lose the
train."
So he went, driving to the railroad in an ambulance, while Lillie looked
after him with tearful eyes, and waved her handkerchief and kissed her
hand till he was out of sight. At first she decided that she would
remain at Thibodeaux and think of her husband in every room of the
house, and every walk of the garden; but after two days she found
herself so miserably lonesome that she shut up the cottage, went to New
Orleans and threw herself upon her father for consolation. Having told
so much in anticipation we will go back to the Colonel. The two hundred
dollars which he left with his wife had been borrowed from the willing
Colburne. Carter had no pay due him as he had hinted, but he hoped to
obtain a month's advance from a paymaster, or, failing in that, to
borrow from some one, say the commanding general. In fact, one hundred
and fifty dollars, abstracted from Government funds, I fear, were
furnished him by a neglected quartermaster, who likewise wanted
promotion and was willing to run this risk for the sake of securing the
benign influences of Carter's future star. With this friend in need the
Colonel took the first glass of plain whiskey which he had swallowed in
three months. To this followed other glasses, proffered by other
friends, whose importunity he could not now resist, although yesterday
he had repulsed them with ease. Every brother colonel, every
appreciating brigadier, seemed possessed of Satan to lead him to a bar
or to his own quarters and there to toast his health, or his luck, or
his star. It was "Here's how!" and "Here's towards you!" from ten
o'clock in the morning when he got his money, until four in the
afternoon when he sprang on board the Creole just as she loosed her
moorings from the shaky posts of the tattered wooden wharf. Being in
that state of exhilaration which enabled Tam O'Shanter to gaze on the
witches of Alloway kirk-yard without flinching, the Colonel was neither
astonished nor alarmed at encountering on the quarter-deck the calm,
beautiful, dangerous eyes of Madame Larue. The day before he would have
been almost willing to lose the steamer rather than travel with her.
Now, in the fearlessness of plain whiskey, he shook both her hands with
impetuous warmth and said, "'Pon honor, Mrs. Larue, perfectly delighted
to see you."
"And so am I delighted," she answered with a flash of unfeigned pleasure
in her eyes, which might have alarmed the Carter of yesterday but which
gratified the Carter of to-day.
"Now I shall have a cavalier," she continued, allowing him to pull her
down on a seat by his side. "Now I shall have a protector and adviser. I
have had such need of one. Did you know that I was going on this boat? I
am so flattered if you meant to accompany me! I am going north to
invest my little property. I still fear that it is not safe here. No one
knows what may happen here. As soon as I could sell for a convenable
sum, I resolved to go north. I shall expect you to be my counsellor how
to invest."
Carter laughed boisterously.
"My dear, I never invested a picayune in my life," he said.
She noticed the term of endearment and the fact of semi-intoxication,
but she was not vexed nor alarmed by either. She was tolerably well
accustomed to drunken gentlemen, and she was not easily hurt by
love-making, no matter how vigorous.
"You have always invested in the Bank of Love," she remarked with one of
those amatory glances which black eyes, it seems to me, can make more
effective than blue ones.
"And in monte and faro, and bluff and euchre," he added, laughing loudly
again. "In wine bills, and hotel bills, and tailors' bills, and all
sorts of negatives."
The debts which weighed somewhat heavily yesterday were mere
comicalities and piquancies of life to-day.
"Oh! you are a terrible personage. I fear you are not the protector I
ought to choose."
He made no reply, feeling vaguely that the conversation was growing
dangerous, and sending back a thought to his wife like a cry for help.
Mrs. Larue divined his alarm and changed the subject.
"What makes you voyage north?" she asked with a knowing smile. "Are you
in search of a new planet?"
Through his plain whiskey the Colonel could not see her joke on the star
which he was seeking, but he was still clever enough to shun the
confession that he was on an expedition in search of promotion.
"I am bearer of dispatches," he said. "Nothing to do now in Louisiana. I
shall be back before any more fighting comes off."
"Shall you? I am enchanted of it. I shall return soon, and hope to make
the voyage with you. I am not going to forsake New Orleans. I love the
city well enough--and more, I cannot sell my house. Remember, you must
let me know when you return, and arrange yourself to come on my
steamer."
Next morning, in possession of his sober senses, Carter endeavored to
detach himself a little from Mrs. Larue, impelled to this seeming lack
of chivalry by remembrance of his wife, and mistrust of his own power of
self-government. But this prudent course soon appeared to be impossible
for a variety of reasons. In the first place it happened, whether by
chance or through her forethought he did not know, that their
state-rooms opened on the same narrow passage. In the second place, he
was the only acquaintance that Mrs. Larue had on board, and there was
not another lady to take her up, the Creole being a Government
transport, and civilian travel being in those times rare between New
York and New Orleans. Moreover, the other passengers were in his
estimation low, or at least plain people, such as sutlers, speculators,
and rough volunteer officers--so that, if he left her, she was alone,
and could not even venture on deck for a breath of fresh air. At any
rate, that was the way that she chose to put it, although there was not
the least danger that she would be insulted, and although, had Carter
been absent, she would not have failed to strike up a flirtation with
some other representative of my noble sex. Finally, he was obliged to
consider that she was a relative of his wife. Thus before the second day
was over, he found himself under bonds of courtesy to be the constant
attendant of Mrs. Larue. They sat together next the head of the table,
the lady being protected from the ignoble crowd of volunteers by the
Colonel on one side, and the captain of the Creole on the other.
Opposite them were a major and a chaplain, highly respectable persons so
far as one could judge from their conversation, but who never got a
word, rarely a look, from Mrs. Larue or Carter. The captain talked,
first with one party, then with the other, but never with both at once.
He was a polite and considerate man, accustomed to his delicate official
position as a host, and he saw that he would not be thanked for making
the conversation general. Except to him, to Carter, and to the servants,
Mrs. Larue did not speak one word during the first seven days of the
passage. All the volunteer officers admired her nun-like demeanor. Kept
afar off, and with no other woman in sight, they began to worship her,
much as the brigade at Thibodeaux adored that solitary planet of
loveliness, Mrs. Carter. The fact that she was a widow, which crept out
in some inexplicable manner, only heightened the enthusiasm.
"By Heavens!" declared one flustered Captain, "if I only had Colonel
before my name, and a hundred thousand dollars after it, I would rush to
her and say, 'Madame, are you inconsolable? _Could_ I persuade you to
forget the dear departed?'"
While these gentlemen worshipped her, Carter hoped she would get
sea-sick. This great, brawny, boisterous, domineering, heroic fighter
had just enough moral vitality to know when he was in danger of falling,
and to wish for safety. Those were perilous hours at evening, when the
ship swept steadily through a lulling whisper of waters, when a trail of
foamy phosphorescense, like a transitory Milky Way, followed in pursuit,
when a broad bar of rippling light ran straight out to the setting moon,
when the decks were deserted except by slumberers, and Mrs. Larue
persisted in dallying. The temptation of darkness, the temptation of
solitude, the fever which begins to turn sleepless brains at midnight,
made this her possible hour of coquettish conquest. She varied from
delicately phrased sentimentalities to hoydenish physical impertinences.
He was not permitted for five minutes together to forget that she was a
bodily, as well as a spiritual presence. He was not checked in any
transitory license of speech or gesture. Meantime she quoted fine
rhapsodies from Balzac, and repeated telling situations from Dumas le
Jeune, and commented on both in the interest of the _sainte passion de
l'amour_. Once, after a few moments of silence and revery, she said with
an air of earnest feeling, "Is it not a horrible fate for a
woman--solitude? Do you not pity me? Thirty years old, a widow, and
childless! No one to love; no right to love any one."
She changed into French now, as she frequently did when she was animated
and wished to express herself freely. Such talk as this sounds unnatural
in the language of the Anglo-Saxon, but is not so unbecoming to the
tongue of the Gauls.
"A woman to whom the affections are forbidden, is deprived of the use of
more than half her being. Whatever her possibilities, she is denied all
expansion beyond a certain limit. She may not explore, much less use,
her own heart. It contains chambers of joy which she can only guess of,
and into which she must not enter. There is a nursery of affections
there, but she can only stand with her ear to the door, trying to hear
the sweet prattle within. There is an innermost chapel, with an altar
all set for the communion of love, but no priest to invite her to the
holy banquet. She is capable of a mother's everlasting devotion, but she
scarcely dares suspect it. She is fitted to enter upon the tender
mysteries of wifehood, and yet she is constantly fearing that she shall
never meet a man whom she can love. That is the old maid, horrible name!
The widow is less ashamed, but she is more unhappy. She has been taught
her possibilities, and then suddenly forbidden the use of them."
Had the Colonel been acquainted with Michelet and his fellow rhapsodists
on women, he might have suspected Madame of a certain amount of
plagiarism. But he only thought her amazingly clever, at the same time
that he was unable to answer her in her own style.
"Why don't you marry?" he asked, striking with Anglo-Saxon practicality
at the root of the matter.
"Satirical question!" responded Madame, putting her face close to his,
doubtless in order to make her smile visible by moonlight. "It is not so
easy to marry in these frightful times. Besides,--shall I avow it?--what
if I cannot marry the man of my choice?"
"That's bad."
"What if he _would_ marry some one else?--Is it not a humiliating
confession?--Do you know what is left to a woman then? Either hidden
love, or spiritual self-murder. Which is the greater of the two crimes?
_Is_ the former a crime? Society says so. But are there not exceptions
to all rules, even moral ones? Love always has this great defence--that
nature prompts it, commands it. As for self-repression, asphyxia of the
heart, Nature never prompts that."
The logical conclusion of all this sentimental sophistry was clear
enough to Carter's intellect, although it did not deceive his
Anglo-Saxon conscience. He understood, briefly and in a matter of fact
way that Madame was quite willing to be his wife's rival. He was not yet
prepared to accept the offer; he only feared and anticipated that he
should be brought to accept it.
Mrs. Larue was a curious study. Her vices and virtues (for she had both)
were all instinctive, without a taint of education or effort. She did
just what she liked to do, unchecked by conscience or by anything but
prudence. She was as corrupt as possible without self-reproach, and as
amiable as possible without self-restraint. Her serenity was at all
times as unrippled as was that of Lillie in her happiest conditions. Her
temper was so sunny, her smile so ready, and her manner so flattering,
that few persons of the male sex could resist liking her. But she was
the detestation of most of her lady acquaintance--who were venomously
jealous of her attractions--or rather seductions--and abhorred her for
the unscrupulous manner in which she put them to use, abusing her in a
way which was enough to make a man rally to her rescue. She really cared
little for that _divin sens du génésiaque_ concerning which she prattled
so freely to her intimates; and therefore she was cool and sure in her
coquetries, at the same time that vanity gave her motive force which
some naughty flirts derive from passion. She took a pride in making
conquests of men, at no matter what personal sacrifice.
Carter saw where he was drifting to, and groaned over it in spirit, and
made resolutions which he broke in half an hour, and rowed desperately
against the tide, and then drifted again.
"A woman in the same house has so many devilish chances at a fellow," he
repeated to himself with a bitter laugh; and indeed he coarsely said as
much to Mrs. Larue, with a desperate hope of angering and alienating
her. She put on a meekly aggrieved air, drew away from him, and
answered, "That is unmanly in you. I did not think you could be so
dishonorable."
He was deeply humiliated, begged her pardon, swore that he was merely
jesting, and troubled himself much to obtain forgiveness. During the
whole of that day she was distant, dignified and silently reproachful.
Yet all the while she was not a bit angry with him; she was as malicious
as Mephistopheles, but she was also as even-tempered; moreover she was
flattered and elated by the evident desperation which drove him to the
impertinence. In his efforts to obtain a reconciliation Carter succeeded
so thoroughly that the scene took place late at night, his arm around
her waist and his lips touching her cheek. You must remember--charitably
or indignantly, as you please--that she was his wife's relative. From
this time forward he pretty much stopped his futile rowing against the
tide. He let Mrs. Larue take the helm and guide him down the current of
his own emotions, singing meanwhile her syren lyrics about _la sainte
passion_, etc. etc. There were hours, indeed, when he grated over reefs
of remorse. At the thought of his innocent, loving, trusting wife he
shut his eyes as if to keep out the gaze of a reproachful spectre,
clenched his hands as if trying to grasp some rope of escape, and cursed
himself for a fool and a villain. But it was a penitence without fruit,
a self-reproach without self-control.
Mrs. Larue treated him now with a familiar and confiding fondness which
he sometimes liked and sometimes not, according as the present or the
past had the strongest hold on his feelings.
"I am afraid that you do not always realize that we are one for life,"
she said in one of her earnest, French speaking moods. "You are my sworn
friend forever. You must never hate me; you cannot. You must never
change towards me; it would be a perjury of the heart. But I do not
doubt you, my dear friend. I have all confidence in you. Oh, I am so
happy in feeling that we are united in such an indissoluble concord of
sympathy."
Carter could only reply by taking her hand and pressing it in silence.
He was absolutely ashamed of himself that he was able to feel so little
and to say nothing.
"I never shall desire a husband," she proceeded. "I can now use all my
heart. What does a woman need more? How strangely Heaven has made us! A
woman is only happy when she is the slave, body and soul, of some man.
She is happy, just in proportion to her obedience and self-sacrifice.
Then only she is aware of her full nature. She is relieved from prison
and permitted the joy of expansion. It is a seeming paradox, but it is
solemnly true."
Carter made no answer, not even by a look. He was thinking that his wife
never philosophised concerning her love, never analyzed her sentiments,
and a shock of self-reproach, as startling as the throb of a
heart-complaint, struck him as he called to mind her purity, trust and
affection. It is curious, by the way, that he suffered no remorse on
account of Mrs. Larue. In his opinion she fared no worse than she
deserved, and in fact fared precisely as she desired, only he had not
the nerve to tell her so. When, late one night, on the darkened and
deserted quarter-deck, she cried on his shoulder and whispered, "I am
afraid you don't love me--I have a right to claim your love," he felt no
affection, no gratitude, not even any profound pity. It annoyed him that
she should weep, and thus as it were reproach him, and thus trouble
still further his wretched happiness. He was not hypocrite enough to
say, "I _do_ love you;" he could only kiss her repeatedly, penitently
and in silence. He still had a remnant of a conscience, and a mangled,
sore sense of honor. Nor should it be understood that Mrs. Larue's tears
were entirely hypocritical, although they arose from emotions which were
so trivial as to be somewhat difficult to handle, and so mixed that I
scarcely know how to assort them. In the first place she was not very
well that evening, and was oppressed by the despondency which all human
beings, especially women, suffer from when vitality throbs less
vigorously than usual. Moreover a little emotion of this sort was
desirable, firstly to complete the conquest of Carter by reminding him
how much she had sacrificed for him, and secondly to rehabilitate
herself in her own esteem by proving that she possessed a species of
conscience. No woman likes to believe herself hopelessly corrupt: when
she reaches that point she is subject to moral spasms which make
existence seem a horror; and we perhaps find her floating in the river,
or asphyxiated with charcoal. Therefore let no one be surprised at the
temporary tenderness, similar to compunction, which overcame Mrs. Larue.
Now that these two had that conscience which makes cowards of us all,
they dropped a portion of the reserve with which they had hitherto kept
their fellow-passengers at a distance. The captain was encouraged to
introduce his two neighbors, the major and chaplain; and Mrs. Larue cast
a few telling glances at the former and discussed theological subjects
with the latter. To one who knew her, and was not shocked by her
masquerades, nothing could be more diverting than the nun-like airs
which she put on _pour achalander le prêtre_. Carter and she laughed
heartily over them in their evening asides. She would have made a
capital actress in the natural comedy school known on the boards of the
Gymnase and at Wallack's, for it was an easy amusement to her to play a
variety of social characters. She had no strong emotions nor profound
principles of action, it is true, but she was sympathetic enough to
divine them, and clever enough to imitate their expression. Her manner
to the chaplain was so religiously respectful as to pull all the strings
of his unconscious vanity, personal and professional, so that he fell an
easy prey to her humbugging, declared that he considered her state of
mind deeply interesting, prayed for her in secret, and hoped to convert
her from the errors of papacy. Indeed her profession of faith was
promising if not finally satisfactory.
"I believe in the holy catholic church," she said. "But I am not
_dogmatique_. I think that others also may have the truth. Our faith,
yours and mine, is at bottom one, indivisible, uncontradictory. It is
only our human weakness which leads us to dispute with each other. We
dispute, not as to the faith, but as to who holds it. This is
uncharitable. It is like quarrelsome children."
The chaplain was charmed to agree with her. He thought her the most
hopefully religious catholic that he had ever met; he also thought her
the wittiest, the most graceful, and on the whole the handsomest. Her
eyes alone were enough to deceive him: they were inexhaustible
greenrooms of sparkling masks and disguises; and he was especially taken
with the Madonnesque gaze which issued from their recesses. He was
bamboozled also by the prim, broad, white collar, like a surplice, which
she put on expressly to attract him; by the demure air of childlike
piety which clothed her like a mantle; by her deference to his opinion;
by her teachable spirit. Perhaps he may also have been pleased with her
plump shoulders and round arms, and he certainly did glance at them
occasionally as their outlines showed through the transparent muslin;
but he said nothing of them in his talks concerning Mrs. Larue with his
room-mate the Major.
"_J'ai apprivoisé le prêtre_," she observed laughingly to Carter. "I
have assured myself a firm friend in his reverence. He will defend me
the character always. He has asked me to visit his family, and promised
to call to see me at New York. Madame La Prêtresse is to call also. He
is quite capable of praying me to stand godmother to his next child. If
he were not married, I should have an offer. I believe I could bring him
to elope with me in a fortnight."
"Why don't you?" asked Carter. "It would make a scandal that would amuse
you," he added somewhat bitterly, for he was at times disgusted by her
heartlessness.
"No, my dear," she replied gently, pressing his arm. "I am quite
satisfied with my one conquest. It is all I desire in the world."
They were leaning against the taffrail, listening to the gurgling of the
waters in the luminous wake and watching the black lines of the masts
waving against the starlit sky.
"You are silent," she observed. "Why are you so sad?"
"I am thinking of my wife," he replied, almost sullenly.
"Poor Lillie! I wish she were here," said Mrs. Larue.
"My God! what a woman you are!" exclaimed the Colonel. "Don't you know
that I should be ashamed to look her in the face?"
"My dear, why do you distress yourself so? You can love her still. I am
not exacting. I only want a corner in your heart. If I might, I would
demand the whole; but I know I could not have it. You ought not to be
unhappy; that is my part in the drama. I have sacrificed much. What have
you sacrificed? A man risks nothing, loses nothing, in these affairs _du
coeur_. He has a bonne fortune, _voilà tout_."
Carter was heavy laden in secret with his bonne fortune. He was glad
when the voyage ended, and he could leave Mrs. Larue at New York, with a
pleasing chance that he might never meet her again, and a hope that he
had heard the last of her _sainte passion de l'amour_. Of course he was
obliged, before he quitted her, to see that she was established in a
good boarding house, and to introduce her to one or two respectable
families among his old acquaintance in the city. Of course also he said
nothing to these families about her propensities towards the _divin
sens_ and the _sainte passion_. She quickly made herself a character as
a southern loyalist, and as such became quite a pet in society. Before
she had been a week in the city she was an inmate of the household of
the Rev. Dr. Whitehead, a noted theologian and leading abolitionist, who
worked untiringly at the seemingly easy task of converting her from the
errors of slavery and papacy. It somewhat scandalized his graver
parishioners, especially those of Copperhead tendencies, that he should
patronize so gay a lady. But the Reverend Doctor did not see her pranks,
and did not believe the tale when others related them. How could he when
she looked the picture of a saint, dressed entirely in black and white,
wore her hair plain _a la Madonne_, and talked theology with those
earnest eyes, and that childlike smile? To the last he honestly regarded
her as very nigh unto the kingdom of heaven. It was to shield her from
envious slanders, to cover her with the ægis of his great and venerable
name, that the warm-hearted, unsuspicious old gentleman dedicated to her
his little work on moral reform, entitled "St. Mary Magdalen." How
ecstatically Mrs. Larue laughed over this book when she got to her own
room with it, after the presentation! She had not had such a paroxysm of
merriment before, since she was a child; for during all her adult life
she had been too _blasee_ to laugh often with profound heartiness and
honesty: her gayety had been superficial, like most of her other
expressions of feeling. I can imagine that she looked very attractive in
her spasm of jollity, with her black eyes sparkling, her brunette
cheeks flushed, her jetty streams of hair waving and her darkly roseate
arms and shoulders bare in the process of undressing. Before she went to
bed she put the book in an envelope addressed to Carter, and wrote a
playful letter to accompany it, signed "Your best and most loving
friend, St. Marie Madeleine."