Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty

by John William De Forest

  CHAPTER V.

  THE DRAMATIC PERSONAGES GET NEWS FROM BULL RUN.

  "Papa, are we going to stay in New Boston forever?" asked Miss Ravenel.

  "My dear, I am afraid we shall both have to die some day, after which wecan't expect to stay here, pleasant as it might be," replied the Doctor.

  "Nonsense, papa! You know what I mean. Are you going to make New Bostona permanent place of residence?"

  "How can I tell, my dear? We can't go back to New Orleans at present;and where else should we go? You know that I must consult economy in mychoice of a residence. My bank deposits are not monstrous, and there isno telling how long I may be cut off from my resources. New Bostonpresents two advantages; it gives me some employment and it is tolerablycheap. Through the friendliness of these excellent professors I am keptconstantly busy, and am not paid so very badly, though I can't say thatI am in any danger of growing suddenly rich. Then I have the run of theuniversity library, which is a great thing. Finally, where else in theUnited States should we find a prettier or pleasanter little city?"

  "The people are dreadfully poky."

  "My daughter, I wish you would have the goodness to converse with me inEnglish. I never became thoroughly familiar with the Gold Coastdialects, and not even with the court language of Ashantee."

  "It isn't Ashantee at all. Everybody says poky; and it is real poky inyou to pretend not to understand it; don't you think so yourself now?Besides these New Bostonians are so ferociously federal! I can't say aword for the South but the women glare at me as though they wanted tohang me on a sour apple tree, like Jeff Davis."

  "My dear, if one of these loyal ladies should say a word for her ownlawful government in New Orleans, she would be worse than glared at. Idoubt whether the wild-mannered cut-throats of your native city wouldlet her off with plain hanging. Let us thank Heaven that we are amongcivilized people who only glare at us, and do not stick us under thefifth rib, when we differ with them in opinion."

  "Oh papa! how bitter you are on the southerners! It seems to me you mustforget that you were born in South Carolina and have lived twenty-fiveyears in Louisiana."

  "Oh! oh! the beautiful reason for defending organized barbarism! SupposeI had had the misfortune of being born in the Isle of Pines; would youhave me therefore be the apologist of piracy? I do hope that I amperfectly free from the prejudices and trammels of geographicalmorality. My body was born amidst slavery, but my conscience soon foundthe underground railroad. I am not boasting; at least I hope not. I havehad no plantations, no patrimony of human flesh; very few temptations,in short, to bow down to the divinity of Ashantee. I sincerely thankHeaven for these three things, that I never owned a slave, that I waseducated at the north, and that I have been able to visit the freecivilization of Europe."

  "But why did you live in Louisiana if it was such a Sodom, papa?"

  "Ah! there you have me. Perhaps it was because I had an expensivedaughter to support, and could pick up four or five thousand dollars ayear there easier than anywhere else. But you see I am suffering forhaving given my countenance to sin. I have escaped out of the burningcity, like Lot, with only my family. It is my daily wonder, Lillie, thatyou are not turned into a pillar of salt. The only reason probably isthat the age of miracles is over."

  "Papa, when I am as old as you are, and you are as young as I am, I'llsatirize you dreadfully.--Well, if we are going to live in New Boston,why can't we keep house?"

  "It costs more for two people to keep house than to board. Ourfurniture, rent, food, fuel, lights and servants would come to more thanthe eighteen dollars a week which we pay here, now that we have given upour parlor. In a civilized country elbow-room is expensive."

  "But is it exactly nice to stay forever in a hotel? English travellersmake such an outcry about American families living in hotels."

  "I know. At the bottom it is bad. But it is a sad necessity of Americansociety. So long as we have untrained servants--black barbarians at theSouth and mutinous foreigners at the North--many American housekeeperswill throw down their keys in despair and rush for refuge to the hotels.And numbers produce respectability, at least in a democracy."

  "So we must give up the idea of a nice little house all to ourselves."

  "I am afraid so, unless I should happen to find diamonds in the basalticformation of the Eagle's Nest."

  The Doctor falls to his writing, and Miss Ravenel to her embroidery.Presently the young lady, without having anything in particular to say,is conscious of a desire for further conversation, and, after searchingfor a subject, begins as follows.

  "Papa, have you been in the parlor this morning?"

  "Yes, my dear," answers papa, scratching away desperately with hisold-fashioned quill pen.

  "Whom did you see there?"

  "See?--Where?--Oh, I saw Mr. Andrew Smith," says the Doctor, at firstabsent-minded, then looking a little quizzical.

  "What did he have to say?"

  "Why, my dear, he spoke so low that I couldn't hear what he said."

  "He did!" responds Miss Ravenel, all interest. "What did that mean? Whydidn't you ask him to repeat it?"

  "Because, my dear, he wasn't talking to me; he was talking to Mrs.Smith."

  Here Miss Ravenel perceives that her habitual curiosity is being madefun of, and replies, "Papa, you ought to be ashamed of yourself."

  "My child, you _must_ give me some chance to write," retorts the Doctor;"or else you must learn to sit a little in your own room. Of course Iprefer to have you here, but I do demand that you accord me someinfinitesimal degree of consideration."

  Father and daughter used to have many conversations not very dissimilarto the above. It was a constant prattle when they were together, unlessthe Doctor raised the standard of revolt and refused to talk in orderthat he might work. Ever since Lillie's earliest recollection they hadbeen on these same terms of sociability, companionship, almost equality.The intimacy and democracy of the relation arose partly from theDoctor's extreme fondness for children and young people, and partly fromthe fact that he had lost his wife early, so that in his household lifehe had for years depended for sympathy upon his daughter.

  Twice or thrice every morning the Doctor was obliged to remonstrateagainst Lillie's talkativeness, something after the manner of anaffectionate old cat who allows her pussy to jump on her back and biteher ears for a half hour together, but finally imposes quiet by avelvety and harmless cuffing. Occasionally he avenged himself for heruntimely demands on his attention by reading to her what he considered asuccessful passage of the article which he might then be composing. Inthis, however, he had not the least intention of punishment, butsupposed that he was conferring a pleasure. It was an essential elementof this genial, social, sympathetic nature to believe that whateverinterested him would necessarily interest those whom he loved and eventhose with whom he simply came in contact. When Lillie offeredcorrections on his style, which happened frequently, he rarely hesitatedto accept them. Vanity he had none, or at any rate displayed none,except on two subjects, his daughter and his scientific fame. As a proofof this last he gloried in an extensive correspondence with European_savants_, and made Lillie read every one of those queer-shaped letters,written on semi-transparent paper and with foreign stamps and postmarkson their envelopes, which reached him from across the Atlantic. Althoughmedicine was his profession and had provided him with bread, he hadlatterly fallen in love with mineralogy, and in his vacation wanderingsthough that mountainous belt which runs from the Carolinas westward toArkansas and Missouri he had discovered some new species which wereeagerly sought for by the directors of celebrated European collections.Great was his delight at receiving in New Boston a weighty box ofspecimens which he had shipped as freight from New Orleans just previousto his own departure, but which for two months he had mourned over aslost. It dowered him with an embarrassment of riches. During a week hisbed, sofa, table, wash-stand, chairs and floor were littered with thescraps of paper and tufts of cotton and of Spanish moss which had servedas
wrappers, and with hundreds of crystals, ores and other minerals.Over this confusion the Doctor domineered with a face wrinkled by happyanxiety, laying down one queer-colored pebble to pick up another,pronouncing this a Smithite and that a Brownite trying his blowpipe onthem and then his hammer, and covering all the furniture with a layerof learned smudge and dust and gravel.

  "Papa, you have puckered your forehead up till it is like a bakedapple," Lillie would remonstrate. "You look more than five thousandyears old; you look as though you might be the grandfather of all themummies. Now do leave off bothering those poor Smithites and Hivites andAmelekites, and come and take a walk."

  "My dear, you havn't the least idea how necessary it is to push one'sdiscoveries to a certainty as quickly as possible," would answer theDoctor, meanwhile peering at a specimen through his magnifying glass."The world won't wait for me to take your time. If I don't work fastenough in my researches, it will set somebody else at the job. It makesno allowance for Louisiana ideas of leisure and,"--here he suddenlybreaks off his moralizing and exclaims, "My dear, this is _not_ aBrownite; it is a Robinsonite--a most unquestionable and superbRobinsonite."

  "Oh papa! I wish I was an unquestionable Robinsonite; then you wouldtake some sort of interest in me," says Miss Lillie.

  But the Doctor is lost in the ocean of his new discovery, and forfifteen minutes has not a word to say on any subject comprehensible tothe young lady.

  Two hours of every afternoon were devoted by father and daughter to along walk in company, sometimes a mere shopping or calling tour, butgenerally an excursion into the pure country of fields and forest as yetso easily reached from the centre of New Boston. The Doctor preserved areminiscence of his college botany, and attempted to impart some of hisknowledge of plants to Lillie. But she was a hopeless scholar; shepersisted in caring for little except human beings and such literatureas related directly to them, meaning thereby history, biography, novelsand poetry; she remained delightfully innocent of all the ologies.

  "You ought to have been born four thousand years ago, Lillie," heexclaimed in despair over some new instance of her incapacity to move inhis favorite grooves. "So far as you are concerned, Linnaeus, Humboldt,Lyell, Faraday, Agassiz and Dana might as well not have lived. I believeyou will go through life without more knowledge of science than justenough to distinguish between a plant and a pebble."

  "I do hope so, papa," replied the incorrigible and delightful ignoramus.

  When they met one of their acquaintance on these walks the Doctor wouldnot allow him to pass with a nod and a smile, after the unobtrusive NewBoston fashion. He would stop him, shake hands cordially, inquireearnestly after his health and family, and before parting contrive tosay something personally civil, if not complimentary; all of which wouldevidently flatter the New Bostonian, but would also as evidentlydiscompose him and turn his head, as being a man unaccustomed to muchsocial incense.

  "Papa, you trouble these people," Lillie would sometimes expostulate."They don't know where to put all your civilities and courtesies. Theydon't seem to have pockets for them."

  "My child, I am nothing more than ordinarily polite."

  "Nothing more than ordinary in Louisiana, but something veryextraordinary here. I have just thought why all the gentlemen one meetsat the South are so civil. It is because the uncivil ones are shot asfast as they are discovered."

  "There is something in that," admitted the Doctor. "I suppose duellinghas something to do with the superficial good manners current downthere. But just consider what an impolite thing shooting is in itself.To knock and jam and violently push a man into the other world is one ofthe most boorish and barbarous discourtesies that I can imagine. Howshould I like to be treated that way! I think I never should bereconciled to the fact or its author."

  "But these New Bostonians are so poky--so awfully serious."

  "I have some consideration for anti-jokers. They are not amusing, butthey are generally useful. It is well for the race, no doubt, to havemany persons always in solemn earnest. I don't know what the world wouldcome to if every body could see a joke. Possibly it might laugh itselfto death."

  Frequently on these walks they were met and joined by Mr. Colburne. Thatyoung gentleman, frank as his clear hazel eyes and hearty laugh made himappear, was awkwardly sly in bringing about these ostensibly accidentalmeetings. Not that his clumsy male cunning deceived Miss Ravenel: shewas not by any means fond enough of him to fail to see through him; sheknew that he walked in her paths with malice aforethought. Her fatherdid not know it, nor suspect it, nor ever, by any innate consciousnessor outward hint, feel his attention drawn toward the circumstance. And,what was most absurd of all, Mr. Colburne persisted in fearing that theDoctor, that travelled and learned man of the world, guessed the secretof his slyness, but never once attributed that degree ofsharp-sightedness to the daughter. I sometimes get quite out of patiencewith the ugly sex, it is so densely stupid with regard to these littlesocial riddles. For example, it happened once at a party that whileColburne, who never danced, was talking to Miss Ravenel, anothergentleman claimed her hand for a quadrille. She took her place in theset, but first handed her fan to Colburne. Now every lady who observedthis action understood that Miss Ravenel had said to Colburne as plainlyas it was possible to express the thing without speaking or using force,that she wished him to return to her side as soon as the quadrille wasover, and that in fact she preferred his conversation to that of herdancing admirer. But this masculine blunderer comprehended nothing; hegrumbled to himself that he was to be put off with the honor of holdinga fan while the other fellow ran away with the owner; and so, shovingthe toy into his pocket, he absented himself for half an hour, to thejustifiable disapprobation of Miss Ravenel, who did not again give himany thing to hold for many evenings.

  But this was an exceptional piece of stupidity in Colburne, and probablyhe would not have been guilty of it but for a spasm of jealousy. He wasnot grossly deficient in social tact, any more than in naturalcleverness or in acquired information. Conversation, and very sensibleconversation too, flowed like a river when he came into confluence withthe Ravenels. The prevailing subject, as a matter of course, was therebellion. It was every body's subject; it was the nightmare by nightand the delirium by day of the American people; it was the one thingthat no one ignored and no one for an hour forgot. The twenty loyalmillions of the North shuddered with rage at the insolent wickedness ofthose conspirators who, merely that they might perpetuate human bondageand their own political supremacy, proposed to destroy the grandestsocial fabric that Liberty ever built, the city of refuge for oppressedraces, the hope of the nations. For men who through such a glorioustemple as this could rush with destroying torches and the cry of "Ruleor ruin," the North felt a horror more passionate than ever, on anyoccasion, for any cause, thrilled the bosom of any other people. Thisindignation was earnest and wide-spread in proportion to thecivilization of the century and the intelligence of the population. Thehundreds of telegraph lines and thousands of printing presses in theUnited States, sent the knowledge of every new treason, and thereverberation of every throb of patriotic anger, in a day to allAmericans outside of nurseries and lunatic asylums. The excitement ofGermany at the opening of the Thirty Years' War, of England previous tothe Cromwellian struggle, was torpid and partial in comparison withthis outburst of a modern, reading and swiftly-informed free democracy.As yet there was little bloodshed; the old respect for law andconfidence in the processes of reason could not at once die, and menstill endeavored to convince each other by argument while holding thepistol to each other's heads; but from the St. Lawrence to the Gulfthere was a spiritual preparedness for slaughter which was to end insuch murderous contests as should make ensanguined Europe rise from itsthousand battle-fields to stare in wonder.

  Women and children were as wild with the patriotic excitement as men.Some of the prettiest and gentlest-born ladies of New Boston waited in amixed crowd half the night at the railroad station to see the firstregiments pass towards Washin
gton, and flung their handkerchiefs, rings,pencil-cases, and other trinkets to the astonished country lads, to showthem how the heart of woman blessed the nation's defenders. In nosociety could you be ten minutes without hearing the words war, treason,rebellion. And so, the subject being every body's subject, the Ravenelsand Colburne frequently talked of it. It was quite a sad and sorecircumstance to the two gentlemen that the lady was a rebel. To a manwho prides himself on his superior capacity and commanding nature, (thatis to say, to almost every man in existence) there can be few greatergrievances than a woman whom he cannot convert; and more particularlyand painfully is this true when she bears some near relationship to him,as for instance that of a wife, sister, daughter and sweetheart. ThusRavenel the father and Colburne the admirer, fretted daily over theobstinate treasonableness of Miss Lillie. Patriotism she called it,declaring that Louisiana was her country, and that to it she owed herallegiance.

  It is worthy of passing remark how loyal the young are to the prevailingideas of the community in which they are nurtured. You will find adultrepublicans in England, but no infant ones; adults monarchists in ourown country, but not in our schools and nurseries. I have known anAmerican of fifty whose beliefs, prejudices and tastes were allEuropean, but who could not save his five children from being allYankee. Accordingly this young lady of nineteen, born and nurtured amongLouisianians, held firm for Louisiana in spite of the arguments of theadored papa and the rather agreeable admirer.

  The Doctor liked Colburne, and respected his intellect. He rarely tiredof talking with him on any subject, and concerning the war they could goon interminably. The only point on which they disagreed was the probablelength of the contest; the southerner prophecying that it would lastfive or six years, and the northerner that the rebels would succumb inas many months. Miss Ravenel sometimes said that the North would give upin a year, and sometimes that the war would last forty years, both ofwhich opinions she had heard sustained in New Orleans. But, whatever shesaid, she always believed in the superior pluck and warlike skill of thepeople of her own section.

  "Miss Ravenel," said Colburne, "I believe you think that all southernersare giants, so tall that they can't see a Yankee without lying down, andso pugnacious that they never go to church without praying for a chanceto fight somebody."

  She resented this satire by observing, "Mr. Colburne, if I believe ityou ought not to dispute it."

  I am inclined to think that the young man in these days rather damagedhis chances of winning the young lady's kind regards (to use a hackneyedand therefore decorous phrase) by his stubborn and passionate loyalty tothe old starry banner. It was impossible that the two should argue somuch on a subject which so deeply interested both without occasionallycoming to spiritual blows. But why should Mr. Colburne win the kindregards of Miss Ravenel? If she were his wife, how could he support her?

  He had little, and she had nothing.

  While they were talking over the war it went on. One balmy summer dayour little debating club of three sat in one of the small iron balconiesof the hotel, discussing the great battle which had been fought, andrumor said won, on the heights around Manassas Junction. For a week thecity had been wild about the 'on to Richmond' movement; and to-day theexcitement culminated in a general joy which was impatient for officialannouncements, flags, bells and cannon. It was true that there was onesuspicious circumstance; that for twenty-four hours no telegramsconcerning the fight had come over the wires from Washington; but,excepting a few habitual croakers and secret copperheads, who wereimmediately frowned into silence, no one predicted evil tidings. At thelast accounts "the grand army of the Potomac" was driving before it thetraitorous battalions of the South; McDowell had gained a great victory,and there was an end of rebellion.

  "I don't believe it--I don't believe it," Miss Ravenel repeatedlyasseverated, until her father scolded her for her absurd and disloyalincredulity.

  "The telegraph is in order again," observed Colburne. "I heard one ofthose men who just passed say so. Here comes somebody that we know.Whitewood!--I say, Whitewood! Any thing on the bulletin-board?"

  The pale young student looked up with a face of despair and eyes full oftears.

  "It's all up, Colburne," said he. "Our men are running, throwing awaytheir guns and every thing."

  His trembling voice hardly sufficed for even this short story of shameand disaster. Miss Ravenel, the desperate rebel, jumped to her feet witha nervous shriek of joy and then, catching her father's reproving eye,rushed up stairs and danced it out in her own room.

  "It's impossible!" remonstrated Colburne in such excitement that hisvoice was almost a scream. "Why, by the last accounts--"

  "Oh! that's all gone up," groaned Whitewood, who was in such a state ofgrief that he could hardly talk intelligibly. "We've got more. We've gotthe end of the battle. Johnson came up on our right, and we are whippedall to pieces."

  "Johnson! Why, where was Patterson?"

  "Patterson is an old traitor," shouted Whitewood, pushing wildly on hisway as if too sick at heart to talk more.

  "It is very sad," observed the Doctor gravely. The thought occurred tohim that for his own interests he had better have stayed in New Orleans;but he lost sight of it immediately in his sorrow for the seemingcalamity which had befallen country and liberty and the human race.

  "Oh! it's horrible--horrible. I don't believe it. I can't believe it,"groaned Colburne. "It's too much to bear. I must go home. It makes metoo sick to talk."