"He is," says one of these epistles, "a low-bred, conceited, unreasonable, domineering ass, who by instinct detests a gentleman and a man of education. He will issue an order contrary to the Regulations, and fly into a rage if a captain represents its illegality. I have got his ill-will in this way, I presume, as well perhaps as by knowing how to spell correctly. His orders, circulars, etc., are perfect curiosities of literature until they are corrected by his clerk, who is a private soldier. Sometimes I am almost tired of obeying and respecting my inferiors; and I certainly shall not continue to serve a day after the war is over."
However, these matters are now by-gones, Gazaway being out of the regiment. I mention them chiefly to show the manliness of character which this intelligent and educated young officer exhibited in remaining in the service notwithstanding moral annoyances more painful to bear than marches and battles. He is still enthusiastic; has not by any means had fighting enough; wants to go to Virginia in order to be in the thickest of it. He is disappointed at not receiving promotion; but bears it bravely and uncomplainingly, for the sake of the nation; bears it as he does sickness, starvation, blistered feet and wounds.
CHAPTER XXVII. 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.