The body was borne on a stretcher in rear of the victorious columns until they halted for the night, when it was buried in the private cemetery of a planter, in presence of Carter's former regiment. Among the spectators was Colburne, stricken with real grief as he thought of the bereaved wife. Throughout the army the regret was general and earnest over the loss of this brave and able officer, apparently just entering upon a career of long-deserved promotion. In a letter to Ravenel, Colburne related the particulars of Carter's death, and closed with a fervent eulogium on his character as a man and his services as a soldier, forgetting that he had sometimes drunk too deeply, and that there were suspicions against him of other vices. It is thus that young and generous spirits are apt to remember the dead, and it is thus always that a soldier laments for a worthy commander who has fallen on the field of honor.
CHAPTER XXXIII. LILLIE DEVOTES HERSELF ENTIRELY TO THE RISING GENERATION.
Lillie wished to return, at least for a while, to her old quarters in the New Boston House. A desire to go back by association to some part of her life which had been happy may have influenced her in this choice; and she was so quietly earnest in it that her father yielded, although he feared that the recollections connected with the place would increase her melancholy. They had been there only three days when he read with a shock the newspaper report of the battle of Cane River, and the death of "the lamented General Carter." He did not dare mention it to her, and sought to keep the journals out of her reach. This was easy enough, for she never went out alone, rarely spoke to any one but her father, and devoted her time mostly to her child and her sewing. But about a week after their arrival, as the Doctor came in to dinner from a morning's reading in the college library, he found her weeping quietly over a letter which lay open in her lap. She handed it to him, merely saying, "Oh, papa!"
He glanced through it hastily; it was Colburne's account of Carter's death.
"I knew this, my dear," he said. "But I did not dare to tell you. I hope you are able to bear it. There is a great deal to bear in this world. But it is for our good."
"Oh, I don't know," she replied with a weary air. She was thinking, not of his general consolations, but of his hope that she could endure her trial; for a trial it was, this sudden death of her husband, though she had thought of him of late only as separated from her forever. After a short silence she sobbed, "I am so sorry I quarreled with him. I wish I had written to him that I was not angry."
She went on crying, but not passionately, nor with a show of unendurable sorrow. From that time, as he watched the patient tranquillity of her grief, the Doctor conceived a firm hope that she would not be permanently crushed by her afflictions. She kept the letter in her own writing desk, and read it many times when alone; sometimes laying it down with a start to take up the unconscious giggling comforter in the cradle; sometimes telling him what it all meant, and what her tears meant, saying, "Poor baby! Baby's papa is dead."
Only once did an expression savoring of anger at any one force its way through her lips.