And here, from mere lack of space rather than of interesting matter, I must close my extracts from this incomparably elongated letter. I question, by the way, whether Colburne would have covered so much paper had he not been reasonably justified in imagining a pretty family picture of the Doctor reading and Miss Ravenel listening.
CHAPTER X. THE RAVENELS FIND CAPTAIN COLBURNE IN GOOD QUARTERS.
The spring and summer of 1862 was a time of such peace and pleasantness to the Tenth Barataria as if there had been no war. With the Major General commanding Carter was a favorite, as being a man who had seen service, a most efficient officer, an old regular and a West Pointer. The Tenth was a pet, as being clean, admirably accoutred, well-disciplined and thoroughly instructed in those formal niceties and watchful severities of guard duty which are harder to teach to new soldiers than the minutiæ of the manual, or the perplexities of field evolutions, or the grim earnestness of fighting. The Colonel was appointed Major of New Orleans, with a suspicion of something handsome in addition to his pay; the regiment was put on provost duty in the city, instead of being sent into the malarious mud of Camp Parapet or the feverish trenches of Vicksburgh. Colburne's letters of those days are full of braggadocio about the splendid condition of the Tenth and the peculiar favor with which it was viewed by the commanding general. Doctor Ravenel, in his admiration for the young captain, unwisely published some of these complacent epistles, thereby eliciting retorts and taunts from the literary champions of rival regiments, the esprit du corps having already grown into a strong and touchy sentiment among the volunteer organizations.
In this new Capua, the only lap of luxury that our armies found during the war, Carter, a curious compound of hardihood and sybaritism, forgot that he wanted to be Hannibal, and that he had not yet fought his Cannæ. He gave himself up to lazy pleasures, and even allowed his officers to run to the same, in which they were not much discountenanced by the commanding general, whose grim, practical humor was perhaps gratified by the spectacle of freeborn mudsills dwelling in the palaces and emptying the wine-cellars of a rebellious aristocracy. If, indeed, an undesirable cub over-stepped some vague boundary, he found himself court-martialed and dismissed the service. But the mass of the regimental officers, being jealous in their light duties and not prominently obnoxious in character, were permitted to live in such circumstances of comfort as they chose to gather about them from the property of self-exiled secessionists. Thus the regiment went through the season: no battles, no marches, no privations, no exposures, no anxieties: not even any weakening loss from the perilous climate. That terrible guardian angel of the land, Yellow Jack, would not come to realize the fond predictions of the inhabitants and abolish the alien garrison as a similar seraph destroyed the host of Sennacherib.
"Don't you find it hot?" said a citizen to Captain Colburne. "You'll find it too much for you yet."
"Pshaw!" answered the defiant youth. "I've seen it hotter than this in Barataria with two feet of snow on the ground."
During the spring Colburne wrote several long letters to the Doctor, with his mind, you may believe, fixed more on Miss Ravenel than on his nominal correspondent. It was a case of moral strabismus, which like many a physical squint, was not without its beauty, and was even quite charming to the gaze of sentimental sympathy. It was a sly carom on the father, with the intention of pocketing the daughter, but done with a hand rendered so timorous by anxiety that the blows seemed to be struck at random. The Captain enjoyed this correspondence; at times he felt all by himself as if he were talking with the young lady; his hazel eyes sparkled and his clear cheeks flushed with the excitement of the imaginary interview; he dropped his pen and pushed up his wavy brown hair into careless tangles, as was his wont in gleesome conversation. But this happiness was not without its counterweight of trouble, so that there might be no failure of equilibrium in the moral balance of the universe. After Colburne had received two responses to his epistles, there ensued a silence which caused him many lugubrious misgivings. Were the Ravenels sick or dead? Had they gone to Canada or Europe to escape the jealous and exacting loyalty of New England? Were they offended at something which he had written? Was Lillie to be married to young Whitewood, or some other conveniently propinquitous admirer?
The truth is that the Doctor had obtained a permit from the government to go to New Orleans, and that the letter in which he informed Colburne of his plan had miscarried, as frequently happened to letters in those days of wide-spread confusion. On a certain scorching day in June he knocked at the door of the neat little brick house which had been assigned to the Captain as his quarters. It was opened by an officer in the uniform of a second-lieutenant, a man of remarkable presence, very dark and saturnine in visage, tall and broad-shouldered and huge chested, with the limbs of a Heenan and the ringing bass voice of a Susini. He informed the visitor that Captain Colburne was out, but insisted with an amicable boisterousness upon his entering. He had an elaborate and ostentatious courtesy of manner which puzzled the Doctor, who could not decide whether he was a born and bred gentleman or a professional gambler.
"Nearly dinner time, sir," he said in a rolling deep tone like mellow thunder. "The Captain will be in soon for that good and sufficient reason. You will dine with us, I hope. Give you some capital wine, sir, out of Monsieur Soulé's own cave. Take this oaken arm-chair, sir, and allow me to relieve you of your chapeau. What name, may I ask?—Ah! Doctor Ravenel.—My God, sir! the Captain has a letter for you. I saw it on his table a moment ago."