Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty

by John William De Forest

"Because the subject has irresistible charms; because it is connected with your past, and perhaps with your future."

Now if Carter had looked in the least as he spoke, I fear that Miss Lillie would have been flattered and gratified. But he did not; he had a quizzing smile on his audacious face; he seemed to be talking to her as he would to a child of fourteen. Being a woman of eighteen, and sensitive, she was not pleased by his confident familiarity, and in her inexperience she showed her annoyance perhaps a little more plainly than was quite dignified. After watching her for a moment or two with his wide-open, unwinking eyes, he suddenly changed his tone, and addressed her with an air of entirely satisfactory respect. The truth is that he could not help being at times semi-impertinent to young ladies; but then he had delicacy of breeding enough to know when he was so; he did not quiz them in mere boorish stupidity.

"I should be truly delighted," he said, "I should consider it one of the greatest honors possible to me—if I could do something towards opening your way back to your own home."

"Oh! I wish you could," she replied with enthusiasm. "I do so want to get back to Louisiana. But I don't want the South whipped. I want peace."

"Do you? That is a bad wish for me," observed Carter, with his characteristic frankness, coolly wondering to himself how he would be able to live without his colonelcy. As to how he could pay the thousand or two which he owed to tailors, shoemakers, restaurateurs and wine merchants, that was never to him a matter of marvel or of anxiety, or even of consideration.

In obedience to a curious instinct which exists in at least some feminine natures, Miss Ravenel liked the Colonel, or at least felt that she could like him, just in proportion as she feared him. A man who can make some women tremble, can, if he chooses, make them love. Pure and modest as this girl of eighteen was, she could, and I fear, would have fallen desperately in love with this toughened worldling, had he, with his despotic temperament, resolutely willed it. In justice to her it must be remembered that she knew little or nothing about his various naughty ways. In her presence he never swore, nor got the worse for liquor, nor alluded to scenes of dissipation. At church he decorously put down his head while one could count twenty, and made the responses with a politeness meant to be complimentary to the parties addressed. Her father hinted; but she thought him unreasonably prejudiced; she made what she considered the proper allowance for men who wore uniforms. She had very little idea of the stupendous discount which would have to be admitted before Colonel Carter could figure up as an angel of light, or even as a decently virtuous member of human society. She thought she stated the whole subject fairly when she admitted that he might be "fast;" but she had an innocently inadequate conception of the meaning which the masculine sex attaches to that epithet. She applied it to him chiefly because he had the monumental self-possession, the graceful audacity, the free and easy fluency, the little ways, the general air, of certain men in New Orleans who had been pointed out to her as "fast," and concerning whom there were dubious whisperings among elderly dowagers, but of whom she actually knew little more than that they had good manners and were favorites with most ladies. She had learned to consider the type a satisfactory one, without at all appreciating its moral signification. That Colonel Carter had been downright wicked and was still capable of being so under a moderate pressure of temptation, she did not believe with any realizing and saving faith. Balzac says that very corrupt people are generally very agreeable; and it may be that this extraordinary fact is capable of a simple and sufficient explanation. They are scared and do not take things seriously; they do not contradict you on this propriety and that belief, because they care nothing about proprieties and beliefs; they love nothing, hate nothing, and are as easy to wear as old slippers. The strict moralist and pietest, on the other hand, is as hard and unyielding as a boot just from the hands of the maker; you must conform to his model, or he will conscientiously pinch your moral corns in a most grievous manner; he cannot grant you a hair's-breadth without bursting his uppers and endangering his sole. But pleasant as our corrupt friends are apt to be, you must not trust your affections and your happiness to them, or you may find that you have cast your pearls before the unclean.

These reflections are not perhaps of the newest, but they are just as true as when they were first promulgated.

Concerning the possible flirtation to which I have alluded Doctor Ravenel was constantly ill at ease. If he found on returning from a walk that Lillie had received a call from the Colonel during his absence, he was secretly worried and sometimes openly peevish for hours afterward. He would break out upon that sort of people, though always without mentioning names; and the absent Carter would receive a severe lashing over the back of some gentleman whom Lillie had known or heard of in New Orleans.

"I don't see how I ever lived among such a disreputable population," he would say. "I look upon myself sometimes as a man who has just come from a twenty-five year's residence among the wealthy and genteel pirates of the Isle of Pines. I actually feel that I have no claims upon a decent society to be received as a respectable character. If a New Boston man should refuse to shake hands with me on the ground that my associations had not been what they should be, I could not find it in my heart to disagree with him. Among that people I used to wonder at the patience of the Almighty. I obtained a conception of his long-suffering mercies such as I could not have obtained in a virtuous community. Just look at that Colonel McAllister, who used to be the brightest ornament of New Orleans fashion. A mass of corruption! The immoral odor of him must have been an offense to the heavens. I can imagine the angels and glorified spirits looking down at him with disgust, and actually holding their noses, like the king in Orcagna's picture when he comes across the dead body. There never was a subject brought into our dissecting room so abominable to the physical senses as that man was to the moral sense."