"Here is my fate," he said when he called on the following evening, and handed her two official documents, the one relieving him from his position as Military Governor, the other assigning him to the command of a brigade.
"Now you must go into the battle again," she said, making a struggle to preserve her self-possession.
"I am sorry,—on your account."
At this answer her effort at stoicism and maidenly dignity failed; she dropped her head and hid her face in the sewing work on which she had been engaged. This was too much for Carter, to whom love had been a rejuvenation and almost a regeneration, so that he was as gentle, virginal, and sensitive as if he had never known the hardening experiences of a soldier and a man about town. Sitting down beside his betrothed, he pressed her temples with both his hands and kissed the light, flossy, amber-colored ripples of her hair. He could feel the half-suppressed sobs which trembled through her frame, breaking softly and noiselessly, like summer waves dying on a reedy shore. How he longed to soothe her by grasping all her being into his and making her altogether his own! He was on the point of falling before the temptation which he had that morning resolved to resist. He knew that he ought not to marry, with only his colonelcy as a support; yet he was about to urge an immediate marriage, and would have done so had he spoken. Lillie would not have refused him: it would not have been in the nature of woman: what girl would put off a lover who was going to the battle-field? Nothing prevented the consummation of this imprudence but a ring at the door-bell. Miss Ravenel sprang up and fled from the parlor, fearful of being caught with tears on her cheeks and her hair disordered. Mrs. Larue entered, gave the Colonel a saucy courtesy, cast a keen sidelong glance at his serious countenance, repressed apparently some flippant remark which was on her lips, begged him to excuse her for a few moments, and slid out of the room.
"Confound her!" muttered the Colonel, indignant at Madame without cause, merely because he had been interrupted.
By the time that Lillie had dried her eyes, washed her face and composed herself so far as to dare return to the parlor, Mrs. Larue, ignorant of the good or mischief that she was accomplishing, was there also. Consequently, although Carter stayed late into the evening, there was no second opportunity for the perilous trial of a tête-a-tête farewell.
Next day he went by the first train to Thibodeaux. As commanding officer of a brigade he exhibited his usual energy, practical ability, and beneficent despotism. The colonels were ordered to make immediate inspections of their regiments, and to send in reports of articles necessary to complete the equipment of their men, with requisitions for the same on the brigade quartermaster. During several consecutive days he personally went the rounds of his grand guards and outlying videttes, choosing for this purpose midnight, or a wet storm, or any other time when he suspected that men or officers might relax their vigilance. In such a pelting rain, as if the Father of Waters had been taken up to heaven and poured back into Louisiana, he came upon a picket of five men who had sought refuge in some empty sugar-hogsheads. The closed-up heads were toward the road, because from that direction came the wind; and such was the pattering and howling of the tempest, that the men did not hear the tramp of the approaching horse. Reining up, the Colonel shouted, "Surrender! The first man that stirs, dies!"
Not a soul moved or answered. For a minute or two Carter sat motionless, smiling grimly, with the water streaming down his face and uniform. Then he ordered: "Come out here, one of you. I want to see what this picket is made of."
A corporal crawled out, leaving his gun behind him in the recumbent hogshead. His face was pale at his first appearance, but it turned paler still when he recognized his brigade commander.
"I—I thought it was a secesh," he stammered.