CAPTAIN COLBURNE AS MR. COLBURNE.
During three months Colburne rested from marches, battles, fatigues,
emotions. He was temporarily so worn out in body and mind that he could
not even rally vigor enough to take an interest in any but the greatest
of the majestic passing events. It is to be considered that he had been
case-hardened by war to all ordinary agitations; that exposure to cannon
and musketry had so calloused him as that he could read newspapers with
tranquillity. Accordingly he troubled himself very little about the
world; and it got along at an amazing rate without his assistance. There
were no more Marengos in the Shenandoah Valley, but there was a Waterloo
near Petersburg, and an Ulm near Raleigh, and an assassination of a
greater than William of Orange at Washington, and over all a grand,
re-united, triumphant republic.
As to the battles Colburne only read the editorial summaries and
official reports, and did not seem to care much for "our own
correspondent's" picturesque particulars. Give him the positions, the
dispositions, the leaders, the general results, and he knew how to infer
the minutiæ. To some of his civilian friends, the brother abolitionists
of former days, this calmness seemed like indifference to the victories
of his country; and such was the eagerness and hotness of the times that
some of them charged him with want of patriotism, sympathy with the
rebels, copperheadism, etc. One day he came into the Ravenel parlor with
a smile on his face, but betraying in his manner something of the
irritability of weakness and latent fever.
"I have heard a most astonishing thing," he said. "I have been called a
Copperhead. I who fought three years, marched the skin off my feet,
have been wounded, starved, broken down in field service, am a
Copperhead. The man who inferred it ought to know; he has lived among
Copperheads for the last three years. He has never been in the
army--never smelled a pinch of rebel powder. There were no Copperheads
at the front; they were all here, at the rear, where he was. He ought to
know them, and he says that I am one of them. Isn't it amazing!"
"How did he discover it?" asked the Doctor.
"We were talking about the war. This man--who has never heard a bullet
whistle, please remember--asserted that the rebel soldiers were cowards,
and asked my opinion. I demurred. He insisted and grew warm. 'But,' said
I, 'don't you see that you spoil my glory? Here I have been in the field
three years, finding these rebels a very even match in fighting. If they
are cowards, I am a poltroon. The inference hurts me, and therefore I
deny the premise.' I think that my argument aggravated him. He repeated
positively that the rebels were cowards, and that whoever asserted the
contrary was a southern sympathiser. 'But,' said I, 'the rebel armies
differ from ours chiefly in being more purely American. Is it the
greater proportion of native blood which causes the cowardice?'
Thereupon I had the Copperhead brand put upon my forehead, and was
excommunicated from the paradise of loyalty. I consider it rather
stunning. I was the only practical abolitionist in the company--the only
man who had freed a negro, or caused the death of a slaveholder. Doctor,
you too must be a Copperhead. You have suffered a good deal for the
cause of freedom and country; but I don't believe that you consider the
rebel armies packs of cowards."
The Doctor noted the excitement of his young friend, and observed to
himself, "Remittent malarious fever."
"I get along very easily with these earnest people," he added aloud.
"They say more than they strictly believe, because their feelings are
stronger than can be spoken. They are pretty tart; but they are mere
buttermilk or lemonade compared with the nitric acid which I used to
find in Louisiana; they speak hard things, but they don't stick you
under the fifth rib with a bowie-knife. Thanks to my social training in
the South, I am able to say to a man who abuses me for my opinions,
'Sir, I am profoundly grateful to you for not cutting my throat from ear
to ear. I shall never forget your politeness.'"
The nervous fretfulness apparent in Colburne's manner on this occasion
passed away as health and strength returned. Another phenomenon of his
recovered vigor was that he began to show a stronger passion for the
society of Mrs. Carter than he had exhibited when he first returned from
the wars. On his well days he made a span with young Whitewood at the
baby wagon; only it was observable that, after a few trials, they came
to a tacit understanding to take turns in this duty; so that when one
was there, the other kept away, in a magnanimous, man fashion. Colburne
found Mrs. Carter, in the main, a much more serious person in temper
than when he bade her good-bye in Thibodeaux. The interest which this
shadow of sadness gave her in his eyes, or, perhaps I should say, the
interest with which she invested the subject of sadness in his mind, may
be inferred from the somewhat wordy fervor of the following passage,
which he penned about this time in his common-place book.
"_The Dignity of Sorrow._ Grand is the heart which is ennobled, not
crushed, by sorrow; by mighty sorrows worn, not as manacles, but as a
crown. Try to conceive the dignity of a soul which has suffered deeply
and borne its sufferings well, as compared with another soul which has
not suffered at all. Remember how we respect a veteran battle-ship--a
mere dead mass of timber, ropes, and iron--the Hartford--after her decks
have run with blood, and been torn by shot. No spectacle of new frigates
just from the stocks, moulded in the latest perfected form, can stir our
souls with sympathy like the sight of the battered hulk. Truly there is
something of divinity in the man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, even
when his body is but human, provided always that his soul has grown
purer by its trials."
At one time Colburne was somewhat anxious about Mrs. Carter lest her
character should become permanently sombre in consequence of lonely
brooding over her troubles. He remembered with pleasure her former
girlish gayety, and wished that it might be again her prevailing
expression.
"Do you think you see people enough?" he asked her. "I mean, a
sufficient variety of people. Monotony of intellectual diet is as bad
for the spirit as monotony of physical nourishment for the body."
"I am sure that papa and Mr. Whitewood constitute a variety," she
answered.
Colburne was not badly pleased with this speech, inasmuch as it seemed
to convey a slight slur upon Mr. Whitewood. He was so gratified, in
fact, that he lost sight of the subject of the conversation until she
recalled him to it.
"Do you think I am getting musty?" she inquired.
"Of course not. But there is danger in a long-continued uniformity of
spiritual surroundings: danger of running into a habit of reverie,
brooding, melancholy: danger of growing spiritually old."
"I know it. But what can a woman do? It is one of the inconveniences of
womanhood that we can't change our surroundings--not even our hoops--at
our own pleasure. We can't run out into the world and say, Amuse us."
"There are two worlds for the two sexes. A man's consists of all the
millions of earth and of future time--unless he becomes a captain in the
Tenth Barataria--then he stays where he began. A woman's consists of the
people whom she meets daily. But she can enlarge it; she can make it
comprehend more than papa and Mr. Whitewood."
"But not more than Ravvie," said Lillie.
As Colburne listened to this declaration he felt something like
jealousy of the baby, and something like indignation at Mrs. Carter.
What business had she to let herself be circumscribed by the limits of
such a diminutive creature? This was not the only time that Lillie shot
this single arrow in her quiver at Mr. Colburne. She talked a great deal
to him about Ravvie, believing all the while that she kept a strict rein
upon her maternal vanity, and did not mention the boy half as often as
she would have been justified in doing by his obesity and other
remarkable characteristics. I do not mean to intimate that the subject
absolutely and acrimoniously annoyed our hero. On the whole her maternal
fondness was a pleasant spectacle to him, especially when he drew the
inference that so good a mother would be sure to make an admirable wife.
Moreover his passion for pets easily flowed into an affection for this
infant, and the child increased the feeling by his grateful response to
the young bachelor's attentions. Mrs. Carter blushed more than once to
see her baby quit her and toddle across the room and greet Colburne's
entrance.
"Ravvie, come here," she would say. "You trouble people."
"No, no," protested Colburne, picking up the little man and setting him
on his shoulder. "I like to be troubled by people who love me."
Then after a slight pause, he added audaciously, "I never have been much
troubled in that way."
Mrs. Carter's blush deepened a shade or two at this observation. It was
one of those occasions on which a woman always says something as
mal-apropos as possible; and in accordance with this instinct of her
sex, she spoke of the Russian Plague, which was then a subject of gossip
in the papers.
"I am so afraid Ravvie will take it," she said. "I have heard that there
is a case next door, and I am really tempted to run away with him for a
week or two."
"I wouldn't," replied Colburne. "You might run into it somewhere else.
One case is not alarming. If I had forty children to be responsible for,
I wouldn't break up for a single case."
"If you had forty you mightn't be so frightened as if you had only one,"
remarked Mrs. Carter, seriously.
Then the Doctor came in, to declare in his cheerful way that there was
no Russian Plague in the city, and that, even if there were, it was no
great affair of a disease among a well-fed and cleanly population.
"We are more in danger of breaking out with national vanity," said he.
"They are singing anthems, choruses, pæans of praise to us across the
water. All the nations of Europe are welcoming our triumph, as the
daughters of Judea went out with cymbals and harps to greet the giant
killing David. Just listen to this."
Here he unfolded the Evening Post of the day, took off his eye-glasses,
put on his spectacles, and read extracts from European editorials
written on the occasion of the fall of Richmond and surrender of Lee.
"They are more flattering than Fourth of July orations," said Colburne.
"I feel as though I ought to go straight down to the sea-shore and make
a bow across the Atlantic. It is enough to make a spread peacock-tail
sprout upon every loyal American. I am not sure but that the next
generation will be furnished with the article, as being absolutely
necessary to express our consciousness of admiration. On the Darwinian
theory, you know; circumstances breed species."
"The Europeans seem to have more enthusiastic views of us than we do of
ourselves," observed Lillie. "I never thought of our being such a grand
nation as Monsieur Laboulaye paints us. You never did, papa."
"I never had occasion to till now," said the Doctor. "As long as we were
bedraggled in slavery there was not much room for honest, intelligent
pride of country. It is different now. These Europeans judge us aright;
we have done a stupendous thing. They are outside of the struggle, and
can survey its proportions with the eyes with which our descendants will
see it. I think I can discover a little of its grandeur. It is the fifth
act in the grand drama of human liberty. First, the Christian
revelation. Second, the Protestant reformation. Third, the war of
American Independence. Fourth, the French revolution. Fifth, the
struggle for the freedom of all men, without distinction of race and
color; this Democratic struggle which confirms the masses in an equality
with the few. We have taught a greater lesson than all of us think or
understand. Once again we have reminded the world of Democracy, the
futility of oligarchies, the outlawry of Cæsarism."
"In the long run the right conquers," moralized Colburne.
"Yes, as that pure and wise martyr to the cause of freedom, President
Lincoln, said four years ago, right makes might. A just system of labor
has produced power, and an unjust system has produced weakness. The
North, living by free industry, has twenty millions of people, and
wealth inexhaustible. The South, living by slavery, has twelve millions,
one half of whom are paupers and secret enemies. The right always
conquers because it always becomes the strongest. In that sense 'the
hand of God' is identical with 'the heaviest battalions.' Another thing
which strikes me is the intensity of character which our people have
developed. We are no longer a mere collection of thirty millions of
bores, as Carlyle called us. There never was greater vigor or range.
Look at Booth, the new Judas Iscariot. Look at Blackburn, who packed up
yellow fever rags with the hope of poisoning a continent. What a sweep,
what a gamut, from these satanic wretches to Abraham Lincoln! a purer,
wiser and greater than Socrates, whom he reminds one of by his plain
sense and homely humor. In these days--the days of Lincoln, Grant and
Sherman--faith in the imagination--faith in the supernatural origin of
humanity--becomes possible. We see men who are demoniacal and men who
are divine. I can now go back to my childhood, and read Plutarch as I
then read him, believing that wondrous men have lived because I see that
they do live. I can now understand the Paradise Lost, for I have beheld
Heaven fighting with Hell."
"The national debt will be awful," observes Lillie, after the brief
pause which naturally follows the Doctor's Cynicism. "Three thousand
millions! What will my share be?"
"We will pay it off," says the Doctor, "in a series of operatic
entertainments, at a hundred thousand dollars the dress seats--back
seats fifty thousand."
"The southern character will be improved by the struggle," observed
Colburne, after another silence. "They will be sweetened by adversity,
as their persimmons are by frost. Besides, it is such a calming thing to
have one's fight out! It draws off the bad blood. But what are we to do
about punishing the masses? I go for punishing only the leaders."
"Yes," coincided the Doctor. "They are the responsible criminals. It is
astonishing how imperiously strong characters govern weak ones. You will
often meet with a man who absolutely enters into and possesses other
men, making them talk, act and feel as if they were himself. He puts
them on and wears them, as a soldier crab puts on and wears an empty
shell. For instance, you hear a man talking treason; you look at him and
say, 'It is that poor fool, Cracker.' But all the while it is Planter,
who, being stronger minded than Cracker, dwells in him and blasphemes
out of his windows. Planter is the living crab, and Cracker is the dead
shell. The question comes up, 'Which shall we hang, and which shall we
pardon?' I say, hang Planter, and tell Cracker to get to work. Planter
gone, some better man will occupy Cracker and make him speak and live
virtuously."
But strange as it may seem, unpatriotic as it may seem, there was a
subject which interested Colburne more than these great matters. It was
a woman, a widow, a mother, who, as he supposed, still mourned her dead
husband, and only loved among the living her father and her child. How
imperiously, for wise ends, we are governed by the passion of sex for
sex, in spite of the superficial pleas of selfish reason and interest!
What other quality, physical or moral, have we that could take the place
of this beneficently despotic instinct? Do you believe that conscience,
sense of duty, philanthropy, would induce men and women to bear with
each other--to bring children into the world--to save the race from
extinction? Strike out the affection of sex for sex, and earth would be,
first a hell, then a desert. God is not very far from every one of us.
The nation was not more certainly guided by the hand of Providence in
overthrowing slavery, than was this man in loving this woman. I do not
suspect that any one of these reflections entered the mind of Colburne,
although he was intellectually quite capable of such a small amount of
philosophy. We never, or hardly ever think of applying general
principles to our own cases; and he believed, as a matter of course,
that he liked Mrs. Carter simply because she was individually loveable.
On other subjects he could think and talk with perfect rationality; he
could even discourse transcendentally to her concerning her own heart
history. For instance, one day when she was sadder than usual, nervous,
irritable, and in imperious need of a sympathising confidant, she
alluded shyly to her sorrows, and, finding him willing to listen, added
frankly, "Oh, I have been so unhappy!"
It is rather strange that he did not seize the opportunity and say, "Let
me be your consoler." But he too was in a temporarily morbid state, his
mind unpractical with fever and weakness, wandering helplessly around
the ideas of trouble and consolation like a moth around the
bewilderment of a candle, and not able to perceive that the great
comforter of life is action, labor, duty.
"So have multitudes," he answered. "There is some comfort in that."
"How _can_ you say so?" she asked, turning upon him in astonishment.
"Look here," he answered. "There are ten thousand blossoms on an apple
tree, but not five hundred of them mature into fruit. So it is with us
human beings: a few succeed, the rest are failures. It is a part of the
method of God. He creates many, in order that some may be sure to reach
his proposed end. He abounds in means; he has more material than he
needs; he minds nothing but his results. You and I, even if we are
blighted blooms, must be content with knowing that his purposes are
certain to be fulfilled. If we fail, others will succeed, and in that
fact we can rejoice, forgetting ourselves."
"Oh! but that is very hard," said Lillie.
"Yes; it is. But what right have we to demand that we shall be happy?
That is a condition that we have no right and no power to make with the
Creator of the Universe. Our desire should be that we might be enabled
to make others happy. I wonder that this should seem hard doctrine to
you. Women, if I understand them, are full of self-abnegation, and live
through multitudes of self-sacrifices."
"And still it sounds hard," persisted Lillie. "I could not bear another
sacrifice."
She closed her eyes under an impulse of spiritual agony, as the thought
occurred to her that she might yet be called on to give up her child.
"I am sorry you have been unhappy," he said, much moved by the
expression of her face at this moment. "I have sympathised with you, oh,
so much! without ever saying a word before."
She did not stop him from taking her hand, and for a few moments did not
withdraw it from his grasp. Far deeper than the philosophy, which she
could understand but not feel, these simple and common-place words, just
such as any child might utter, stole into her heart, conveying a tearful
sense of comfort and eliciting a throb of gratitude.
But their conversation was not often of so melancholy and sentimental a
nature. She had more gay hours with this old friend during a few weeks
than she had had during six months previous to his arrival. She often
laughed when the tears were ready to start; but gradually the spirit of
laughter was expelling the spirit of tears. She was hardly sensible, I
suspect, how thoroughly he was winding himself into all her emotions,
her bygone griefs, her present consolations, her pitying remembrance of
her husband, her love for her father and child, her recollections of the
last four years, so full for her of life and feeling. His presence
recalled by turns all of these things, sweeping gently, like a hand
timid because of affection, over every chord of her heart. Man has great
power over a woman when he is so gifted or so circumstanced that he can
touch that strongest part of her nature, her sentiments.
However, it must not be supposed that Mr. Colburne was at this time
playing a very audible tune on Mrs. Carter's heart-strings, or that he
even distinctly intended to touch that delicate instrument. He was quite
aware that he must better his pecuniary condition before he could
honorably meddle in such lofty music.
"I must go to work," he said, after he had been at home nearly three
months. "I shall get so decayed with laziness that I sha'n't be able to
pick myself up. I shall cease to be respectable if I lounge any longer
than is absolutely necessary to restore my health."
"Yes, work is best," answered the Doctor. "It is our earthly glory and
blessing. It is a great comfort to think that the evil spirit of no-work
is pretty much exorcised from our nation. The victory of the North is at
bottom the triumph of laboring men living by their own industry, over
non-laboring men who wanted to live by the industry of others. Europe
sees this even more plainly than we do. All over that continent the
industrious classes hail the triumph of the North as their own victory.
Slavery meant in reality to create an idle nobility. Liberty has
established an industrious democracy. In working for our own living we
are obeying the teachings of this war, the triumphant spirit of our
country and age. The young man who is idle now belongs to bygone and
semi-barbarous centuries; he is more of an old fogy than the narrowest
minded farm-laborer or ditch-digging emigrant. What a prosperous hive
this will be now that it contains no class of drones! There was no hope
of good from slavery. It was like that side of the moon which never sees
the bright face of the Earth and whose night is always darkness, no
matter how the heavens revolve. Yes, we must all go to work. That is, we
must be useful and respectable. I am very glad for your sake that you
have studied a profession. A young man brought up in literary and
scientific circles is subject to the temptation of concluding that it
will be a fine thing to have no calling but letters. He is apt to think
that he will make his living by his pen. Now that is all wrong; it is
wrong because the pen is an uncertain means of existence; for no man
should voluntarily place himself in the condition of living from hand to
mouth. Every university man, as well as every other man, should learn a
profession, or a business, or a trade. Then, when he has something solid
to fall back upon, he may if he chooses try what he can do as a scholar
or author."
"I shall re-open my law office," said Colburne.
"I wonder if it would be unhandsome or unfair," queried the Doctor, "if
I too should open an office and take such patients as might offer."
"I don't see it. I don't see it at all," responded Colburne.
"Nor do I, either--considering my necessities," said Ravenel, meanwhile
calculating internally how much longer his small cash capital would last
at the present rate of decrease.
Within a week after this conversation two offices were opened, and the
professional ranks of New Boston were reinforced by one doctor and one
lawyer.
"Papa, now that you have set up a sign," said Lillie, "I will trust you
entirely with Ravvie."
"Yes, women always ask after a sign," observed Ravenel. "It is
astonishing how much the sex believes in pretense and show. If I should
advertise myself--no matter how ignorant I might be--as a specialist in
female maladies, I could have all the lady invalids in New Boston for
patients. Positively I sometimes get out of patience with the sex for
its streaks of silliness. I am occasionally tempted to believe that the
greatest difficulty which man has overcome in climbing the heights of
civilization is the fact that he has had to tote women on his
shoulders."
"I thought you never used negro phrases, papa."
"I pass that one. Tote has a monosyllabic vigor about it which pleads
for it."
"You know Mrs. Poyser says that women are fools because they were made
to match the men."
"Mrs. Poyser was a very intelligent woman--well worthy of her son, Ike,"
returned the Doctor, who knew next to nothing of novels.
"Now go to your office," said Lillie, "and if Mrs. Poyser calls on you,
don't give her the pills meant for Mrs. Partington. They are different
ladies."
Colburne did not regret that he had been a soldier; he would not have
missed the battle of Cedar Creek alone for a thousand dollars; but he
sometimes reflected that if he had remained at home during the last
three years, he might now be in a lucrative practice. From his salary as
captain he had been able to lay up next to nothing. Nominally it was
fifteen hundred and sixty dollars; but the income tax took out thirty
dollars, and he had forfeited the monthly ten dollars allowed for
responsibility of arms, etc., during the time he was on staff duty; in
addition to which gold had been up to 290, diminishing the cash value of
his actual pay to less than five hundred dollars. Furthermore he had
lent largely to brother officers, and in consequence of the death of the
borrowers on heroic fields, had not always been repaid. Van Zandt owed
him two hundred dollars, and Carter had fallen before he could return
him a similar sum. Nevertheless, thanks to the industry and economy of a
father long since buried, the young man had a sufficient income to
support him while he could plant the slowly growing trees of business
and profit. He could live; but could he marry? Gold was falling, and so
were prices; but even before the war one thousand dollars a year would
not support two; and now it certainly would be insufficient for three.
He considered this question a great deal more than was necessary for a
man who meant to be a bachelor; and occasionally a recollection of
Whitewood's eighty thousand gave him a pang of envy, or jealousy, or
both together.
The lucre which he so earnestly desired, not for its own stupid sake,
but for the gratification of a secretly nursed purpose, began to flow in
upon him in small but constant driblets. Some enthusiastic people gave
him their small jobs in the way of conveyancing, etc., because he had
fought three years for his country; and at least, somewhat to his alarm,
a considerable case was thrust upon him, with a retaining fee which he
immediately banked as being too large for his pocket. Conscious that his
legal erudition was not great, he went to a former fellow student who
during the past four year had burrowed himself into a good practice, and
proposed that they should take the case in partnership.
"You shall be counsellor," said he, "and I will be advocate. You shall
furnish the law skeleton of the plea, and I will clothe it with appeals
to the gentlemen of the jury. I used to be famous for spouting, you
know; and I think I could ask a few questions."
"I will do it for a third," said the other, who was not himself a
pleader.
"Good!"
It was done and the case was gained. The pecuniary profits were divided,
but Colburne carried away all the popular fame, for he had spouted in
such a manner as quite to dissolve the gentlemen of the jury. The two
young men went into partnership on the basis afforded by their first
transaction, and were soon in possession of a promising if not an
opulent business. It began to seem possible that, at a not very distant
day, Colburne might mean something if he should say, "I endow thee with
my worldly goods."