"Johnson! Why, where was Patterson?"
"Patterson is an old traitor," shouted Whitewood, pushing wildly on his way as if too sick at heart to talk more.
"It is very sad," observed the Doctor gravely. The thought occurred to him that for his own interests he had better have stayed in New Orleans; but he lost sight of it immediately in his sorrow for the seeming calamity which had befallen country and liberty and the human race.
"Oh! it's horrible—horrible. I don't believe it. I can't believe it," groaned Colburne. "It's too much to bear. I must go home. It makes me too sick to talk."
CHAPTER VI. MR. COLBURNE SEES HIS WAY CLEAR TO BE A SOLDIER.
Stragglers arrived, and then the regiments. People were not angry with the beaten soldiers, but treated them with tenderness, gave them plentiful cold collations, and lavished indignation on their ragged shoddy uniforms. Then the little State, at first pulseless with despair, took a long breath of relief when it found that Beauregard had not occupied Washington, and set bravely about preparing for far bloodier battles than that of Bull Run.
Lieutenant-Colonel Carter did not return with his regiment; and Colburne read with a mixture of emotions that he had been wounded and taken prisoner while gallantly leading a charge. He marked the passage, and left the paper with his compliments for the Ravenels, after debating at the door of the hotel whether he should call on them, and deciding in the negative. Not being able as yet to appreciate that blessing in disguise, Bull Run, his loyal heart was very sad and sore over it, and he felt a thrill of something like horror whenever he thought of the joyful shriek with which Lillie had welcomed the shocking tidings. He was angry with her, or at least he tried to be. He called up his patriotism, that strongest of New England isms, and resolved that with a secessionist, a woman who wished ill to her country, he would not fall in love. But to be sure of this he must keep away from her; for thus much of love, or of perilous inclination at least, he already had to acknowledge; and moreover, while he was somewhat ashamed of the feeling, he still could not heartily desire to eradicate it. Troubled thus concerning the affairs of the country and of his own heart, he kept aloof from the Ravenels for three or four days. Then he said to himself that he had no cause for avoiding the Doctor, and that to do so was disgraceful treatment of a man who had proved his loyalty by taking up the cross of exile.
This story will probably have no readers so destitute of sympathy with the young and loving, as that they can not guess the result of Colburne's internal struggles. After two or three chance conversations with Ravenel he jumped, or to speak more accurately, he gently slid to the conclusion that it was absurd and unmanly to make a distinction in favor of the father and against the daughter. Quarrel with a woman; how ridiculous! how unchivalrous! He colored to the tips of his repentant ears as he thought of it and of what Miss Ravenel must think of it. He hastened to call on her before the breach which he had made between her and himself should become untraversable; for although the embargo on their intercourse had lasted only about a week, it already seemed to him a lapse of time measureable by months; and this very naturally, inasmuch as during that short interval he had lived a life of anguish as a man and a patriot. Accordingly the old intimacy was resumed, and the two young people seldom passed forty-eight hours apart. But of the rebellion they said little, and of Bull Run nothing. These were such sore subjects to him that he did not wish to speak of them except to the ear of sympathy; and she, divining his sensitiveness, would not give him pain notwithstanding that he was an abolitionist and a Yankee. If the Doctor, ignorant of what passed in these young hearts, turned the conversation on the war, Lillie became silent, and Colburne, appreciating her forbearance, tried to say very little. Thus without a compact, without an explanation, they accorded in a strain of mutual charity which predicted the ultimate conversion of one or the other.
Moreover, Colburne asked himself, what right had he to talk if he did not fight? If he wanted to answer this woman's outcry of delight over the rout of Bull Run, the place to do it was not a safe parlor, but a field of victorious battle. Why did he not act in accordance with these truly chivalrous sentiments? Why not fall into one of the new regiments which his gallant little State was organizing to continue the struggle? Why not march on with the soul of old John Brown, joining in the sublime though quaint chorus of, "We're coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more?"