CHAPTER XXXI. A TORTURE WHICH MIGHT HAVE BEEN SPARED.
A week after the conflagration Carter received his commission as Brigadier-General. His first impression was one of exultation: his enemies and his adverse fate had been beaten; he was on the road to distinction; he could wear the silver star. Then came a feeling of despondency and fear, while he remembered the crime into which he had been driven, as he thought or tried to think, by the lack of this just recognition of his services. Oh the bitterness of good fortune, long desired, which comes too late!
"A month ago this might have saved me," he muttered, and then burst into curses upon his political opponents, his creditors, himself, all those who had brought about his ruin.
"My only crime! The only ungentlemanly act of my life!" was another phrase which dropped from his lips. Doubtless he thought so: many people of high social position hold a similarly mixed moral creed; they allow that a gentleman may be given to expensive immoralities, but not to money-getting ones; that he may indulge in wine, women, and play, but not in swindling. All over Europe this curious ethical distinction prevails, and very naturally, for it springs out of the conditions of a hereditary aristocracy, and makes allowance for the vices to which wealthy nobles are tempted, but not for vices to which they are not tempted. A feeble echo of it has traversed the ocean, and influenced some characters in America both for good and for evil.
Carter was almost astonished at the child-like joy, so contradictory to his own angry remorse, with which Lillie received the news of his promotion.
"Oh!—My General!" she said, coloring to her forehead with delight, after a single glance at the commission which he dropped into her lap. She rose up and gave him a mock military salute; then sprang at him and covered his bronzed face and long mustache with kisses.
"I am so happy! They have done you justice at last—a little justice. Oh, I am so glad and proud! I am going with you to buy the star. You shall let me choose it."
Then, her mind taking a forward leap of fifteen years, she added, "We will send Ravvie to West Point, and he shall be a general, too. He is going to be very intelligent. And brave, also. He isn't in the least timid."
Carter laughed for the first time since he had received the commission.
"My dear," said he, "Ravvie will probably become a general long after I have ceased to be one. I am a volunteer. I am only a general while the war lasts."