Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty

by John William De Forest

"Yes, this box knapsack is a good one for show," the Colonel admitted. "It is too large, however. When the men come to march they will find themselves overloaded. I shall have to make a final inspection and throw away a few tons of these extra-military gewgaws. What does a soldier want of black cravats and daguerreotypes and diaries and Testaments?"

"How cruelly practical you are!" said Lillie.

"Not in every thing," responded the Colonel with a sigh; and for some reason the young lady blushed profoundly at the answer.

Of course these visits, the regiment, the Reserve Brigade, and its destination were matters of frequent conversation at the Ravenel dwelling. Through some leak of indiscretion or treachery it transpired that Weitzel was to oust Mouton from the country between the Mississippi and the Atchafalaya, where he was a constant menace to New Orleans. The whole city, rebel and loyal, argued and quarreled about the chances of success. The Secessionists were rampant; they said that Mouton had fifteen thousand men; they offered to bet their piles that he would have New Orleans back in a month. At every notable corner and in front of every popular drinking saloon were groups of tall, dark, fierce-looking men, carrying heavy canes, who glared at Union officers and muttered about coming Union defeats. Pale brunette ladies flouted their skirts scornfully at sight of Federal uniforms, and flounced out of omnibusses and street cars defiled by their presence. These feminine politicians never visited Miss Ravenel, however intimately they might have known her before the war; and if they met her in the street they complimented her with the same look of hate which they vouchsafed to the flag of their country. With Madame Larue they were still on good terms, although they rarely called at her house for fear of encountering the Ravenels. This suited Madame's purposes precisely; she could thereby be Federal at home and Secessionist abroad.

"You know, my dears," she would say to the female Langdons and Soulés, "that one cannot undo one's self of one's own relatives. That would be unreasonable. So I am obliged to receive the Doctor and his poor daughter at my house. But I understand perfectly that their society must be to you disagreeable. Therefore I absolve you, though with pain, from returning my visits. But, my dears, I shall only call on you the more often. Do not be surprised," she would sometimes add, "if you see a Federal uniform enter my door from time to time. I have my objects. I flatter myself that I shall yet be of benefit to the good cause."

And in fact she did occasionally send to a certain secret junto scraps of information which she professed to have extracted from Union officers. This information was of no value; it is even probable that much of it was a deliberate figment of her imagination; but in this way she kept her political odor sweet in the nostrils of the city Secessionists.

In secret she cared for little more than to be on the safe side and keep her property. She laughed with delighted malice at the Doctor's sarcasms upon the absurdities of New Orleans politics, and the rottenness of New Orleans morals. She sympathized with Lillie's youthful indignation at her own social proscription. She flattered Carter's professional pride by predicting his success in the field. She satirized Colburne behind his back, and praised him to his face, for his Catonian principles. She was all things to all men, and made herself generally agreeable.

Meantime Lillie had become what she called a Federalist; for she was not yet so established in the faith as to style it Loyalist or Patriot. What girl would not have been thus converted, driven as she was from the mansion of secession by its bitter inmates, and drawn towards the opposing house by her father and her two admirers? Colonel Carter's visits were frequent and his influence strong and increasing, notwithstanding the Doctor's warning tirades. It made her uneasy, fretful and unhappy, to disagree with her father; but on the subject of this preference she positively could not hold his opinions. He seemed to her to be so unjust; she could not understand why he should be so bitterly and groundlessly prejudiced; the reasons which he hinted at glided off her like rain off a bird's feathers. She granted no faith to the insinuation that the Colonel was a bad man, nor, had she credited it, would she have inferred therefrom that he would make a bad husband. Let us not be astonished at the delusion of this intelligent and pure-minded young lady. I have witnessed more extraordinary assortments and choices than this. I have more than once seen an elegant, brilliant, highly-cultured girl make an inexplicable and hungry snap at a man who was stupidly, boorishly, viciously her inferior. The subtle and potent sense which draws the two sexes together is an inexorable despot.

The Colonel was one of its victims, although not quite bereft of reason. Still, if he did not offer himself to Miss Ravenel before going on this Lafourche expedition, it was simply from considerations of worldly prudence, or, as he phrased it to himself, out of regard to her happiness. He thought that his pay was insufficient to support her in the style to which she had been accustomed, and in which he wished his wife to live. That he would be rejected he did not much expect, being a veteran in love affairs, accustomed to conquer, and gifted by birthright with an audacious confidence. Nor did he so much as suspect that he was not good enough for her. His moral perceptions, not very keen perhaps by nature, had been still further calloused by thirty-five years of wandering in the wilderness of sin. Strange as it may seem to people of staid lives the Colonel did not even consider himself a fast man. He allowed that he drank; yes, that he sometimes drank more than was good for him; but, as he laughingly said, he never took more than his regulation quart a day; by which he meant that, according to the army standard, he was a temperate drinker. As to gambling, that was a gentleman's amusement, and moreover he had done very little of it in the last year or two. It was true that he had had various——; but then all men did that sort of thing at times and under temptation; they did it more or less openly, according as they were men of the world or hypocrites; if they said they didn't, they lied. The Colonel did not grant the least faith to the story of Joseph, or, allowing it to be true, for the sake of argument, he considered Joseph no gentleman. In short, after inspecting himself fairly and fully according to his lights, he concluded that he was rather honorable even in his vices. Had he not, for instance, entangled himself in that affair of the French boudoir chiefly to get Miss Ravenel out of his head, and so keep from leading her and himself into a poverty-stricken marriage? Thus, though he was very frank with himself, he still concluded that he was a tolerably good fellow. Yes; and there were many other persons who thought him good enough; men who knew his ways perfectly but could not see much matter of reproach in them.

In this state of opinion, and temper of feeling, the Colonel approached his last interview with Miss Ravenel. He meant to avoid the temptation of seeing her alone on this occasion; but when Mrs. Larue told him that he should have a private interview of half an hour he could not refuse the offer. It must not be supposed that Lillie was a party to the conspiracy. Madame alone originated, planned, and executed. She saw to it beforehand that the Doctor should be invited out; she stopped Colburne on the doorstep with a message that the ladies were not at home; lastly she slipped out of the parlor, dodged through the back passage into the Ravenel house, and remained there thirty minutes by the watch. It vexed this amiable creature a trifle that the Colonel should prefer Lillie; but since he would be so foolish, she was determined that he should make a marriage of it. Leaving her to these reflections as she walks the Doctor's studio, kicking his minerals about the carpet with her little feet, or watching at the window lest he should return unexpectedly, let us go back to Miss Ravenel and her still undecided lover. It was understood that the expedition was to sail the next day, although Carter had not said so, not being a man to tattle official secrets. When, therefore, he entered the house that evening, she felt a vague dread of him, as if half comprehending that the occasion might lead him to say something decisive of her future. Carter on his part knew that he would not be interrupted for a reasonable number of minutes; and as Mrs. Larue left the room the sense of opportunity rushed upon him like a flood of temptation. He forgot in an instant that she was poor, that he was poor and extravagant, and that a marriage would be the maddest of follies, compared with which all his by-gone extravagancies were acts of sedate wisdom. He was now what he always had been, and what people of strong passions very frequently are, the victim of chance and juxtaposition. He rose from the sofa where he had been sitting and worrying his cap, walked straight across the room with a firm step, like the resolute, irresistible advance of a veteran regiment, and took a chair beside her.