"You see, sir, I am wounded," continued Van Zandt. "They gave me a welt at Port Hudson, and they gave me another at Pleasant Hill."
"My dear sir, you will catch your death, standing under the dripping in that way," said the Doctor.
"Thank you, sir," replied Van Zandt, changing his position. "No great harm, however. Water, sir, doesn't hurt me, unless it gets into my whiskey. Exteriorly it is simply disagreeable; interiorly the same, as well as injurious. Not that I am opposed to bathing. On the contrary, it is my practice to take a sponge bath every morning—that is, when I don't sleep within musket range of the enemy. Well, as I was saying, they gave me a welt at Pleasant Hill—a mere flesh wound through the thigh—nothing worth blathering about—and I was sent to St. James Hospital. I can't stand the hospital. I don't fancy the fare at the milk-toast table, sir. (This with a grimace of unutterable disgust.) I took out a two-legged leave of absence to-day, and went over to the Lake House; lost my horse there, and had to foot it back to the city. That is how I came to have the pleasure of listening to your conversation here, sir. But I believe I was speaking of General Carter. Some miserable light wine which I had the folly to drink at the Lake has muddled my head, I fancy. Plain whisky is the only safe thing. Allow me to recommend you to stick to it. I wish we had a canteen of honest commissary now; we could pass the night very comfortably, sir. But I was speaking of General Carter, and his qualities as an officer. Ah! I remember. I mentioned a letter. And, by Jove! here it is in my breast-pocket, soaked with this cursed water. If you will have the goodness to peruse it, you will see that I am not exaggerating when I boast of the conquests of my superior officer. The lady frankly owns up to the fact that she has surrendered to him; no capitulation, no terms, no honors of war; unconditional surrender, by Jove! a U. S. G. surrender. It is an unreserved coming down of the coon."
"It is one of Lillie's letters," thought Ravenel. "This drunkard does not know that the General is married, and mistakes the frank affection of a wife for the illicit passion of an intriguante. It is best that I should expose the mistake and prevent further misrepresentation."
He took the moist, blurred sheet, unfolded it, and found the envelope carefully doubled up inside. It was addressed to "Colonel J. T. Carter," with the addition in one corner of the word "personal." The handwriting was not Lillie's, but a large, round hand, foreign in style, and, as he judged, feigned. Glancing at the chirography of the note itself, he immediately recognized, as he thought, the small, close, neat penmanship of Mrs. Larue. Van Zandt was too drunk to notice how pale the Doctor turned, and how his hand trembled.
"By Jove! I am tired," said the Bacchanal. "I shall, with your permission, take the d—st nap that ever was heard of since the days of the seven sleepers. Don't be alarmed, sir, at my snoring. I go off like a steamboat bursting its boiler."
Tearing a couple of boards from the wall of the shanty, he laid them side by side in one corner, selected a blackened stone from the fire-place for a pillow, put his cap on it, stretched himself out with an inebriated smile, and was fast asleep before the Doctor had decided whether he would or would not read the letter. He was most anxious to establish innocence; if there was any guilt, he did not want to know it. He ran over all of Mrs. Larue's conduct since the marriage, and could not call to mind a single circumstance which had excited in him a suspicion of evil. She was coquettish, and, he feared, unprincipled; but he could not believe that she was desperately wicked. Nevertheless, as he did not understand the woman, as he erroneously supposed her to be of an ardent, impulsive nature, he thought it possible that she had been fascinated by the presence of such a masculine being as Carter. Of him as yet he had no suspicion: no, he could not have been false, even in thought, to his young wife; or, as Ravenel phrased it to himself, "to my daughter." He would read the letter and probe the ugly mystery and discover the falsity of its terrors. As he unfolded the paper he was checked by the thought that to peruse unbidden a lady's correspondence was hardly honorable. But there was a reply to that: the mischief of publicity had already commenced; the sleeping drunkard there had read the letter. After all, it might be a mere joke, a burlesque, an April-Fool affair; and if so, it was properly his business to discover it and to make the explanation to Van Zandt. And if, on the other hand, it should be really a confession of criminal feeling, it was his duty to be informed of that also, in order that he might be able to protect the domestic peace of his daughter.
He read the letter through, and then sat down on the door-sill, regardless of the driving rain. There was no charitable doubt possible in the matter; the writer was a guilty woman, and she addressed a guilty man. The letter alluded clearly and even grossly to past assignations, and fixed the day and hour for a future one. Carter's name did not appear except on the envelope; but his avocations and business hours were alluded to; the fact of their voyage together to New York was mentioned; there was no doubt that he was the man. The Doctor was more miserable than he remembered to have been before since the death of his wife. After half an hour of wretched meditation, walking meanwhile up and down the puddles which had collected on the earthen floor of the shanty, he became aware that the rain had ceased, and set out on his miserable walk homeward.
Should he destroy the letter? Should he give it to Mrs. Larue and crush her? Should he send it to Carter? Should he show it to Lillie? How could he answer any one of these horrible questions? What right had Fate to put such questions to him? It was not his crime.
On reaching home he changed his wet clothes, put the billet in his pocket-book, sat down to the dinner-table and tried to seem cheerful. But Lillie soon asked him, "What is the matter with you, papa?"