Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty

by John William De Forest

"What an old trump of a Don Quixote!" mused the Colonel as he lit his segar in the street for the walk homeward. "It's devilish handsome conduct in him; but, by Jove! I don't believe the old fellow can afford it. I'm afraid it will be up-hill work for him to get a decent living in this wicked world, however he may succeed in the next."

A few minutes later a cold chill of worldly wisdom struck through his enthusiasm.

"He hasn't starved long enough to bring him to his milk," he thought. "When he gets down to his last dollar, and a thousand or two below it, he won't be so particular as to how he lines his pockets."

The Colonel almost felt that a civilian had no right to such a delicate and costly sense of honor. He would have been rather glad to have the Doctor enter into some of these schemes for getting money, inasmuch as this same filthy lucre was all that Miss Ravenel needed to make her a very attractive partie. The next day he repaired at the earliest office hours to head-quarters, and plead earnestly to have the proposed superintendency founded on the basis of a civil office, the salary to be furnished by the State, or by the city, or by a per-centage levied on the wages of the negroes. But the Proconsul did not like to assume such a responsibility, and moreover would not sympathise with the Doctor's fastidiousness on the subject of the uniform. The Colonel hurried back to Ravenel and urged him to accept the military appointment. He repeated to him, "Remember, this is a matter of twenty-six hundred a year," with a pertinacity which was the same as to say, "You know that you cannot afford to refuse such a salary." The Doctor did not dispute the correctness of the insinuation, but persisted with smiling obstinacy in declining the eagles. I am inclined to think that he was somewhat unreasonable on the subject, and that the Colonel was not far from right in being secretly a little angry with him. The latter did not care a straw for the niggers, but he desired very earnestly to put the Ravenels on the road to fortune, and he foresaw that a superintendent of colored labor would infallibly be tempted by very considerable side earnings and perquisites. Even Miss Lillie was rather disappointed at the failure of the project. To arm negroes, to command a colored regiment, was abolitionistic and abominable; but to set the same negroes to work on a hundred plantations, would be playing the southerner, the planter, the sugar aristocrat, on a magnificent scale; and she thought also that in this business her father might do ever so much good, and make for himself a noble name in Louisiana, by restoring thousands of runaway field-hands to their lawful owners. Let us not be too severe upon the barbarian beliefs of this civilized young lady. She had not the same geographical reasons for loving human liberty in the abstract that we have who were nurtured in the truly free and democratic North. Moreover, for some reason which I shall not trouble myself to discover, all women love aristocracies.

The Ravenel funds were getting low, and the Doctor, despairing of finding profitable occupation in depopulated New Orleans, was thinking seriously of returning to New Boston, when High Authority sent him an appointment as superintendent of a city hospital, with a salary of fifteen hundred dollars.

"I can do that," he said jubilantly as he showed the appointment to Carter, unaware that the latter had been the means of obtaining it. "My medical education will come in play there, and I shall feel that I am acting in my own character. It will not be so grand a field of usefulness as that which you so kindly offered me, but it will perhaps approximate more nearly to my abilities."

"It is a captain's pay instead of a colonel's," laughed Carter. "I don't know any body who would make such a choice except you and young Colburne, who supposes that he isn't fit to be a field officer. Some day head-quarters will perhaps be able to do better by you. When the Western Railroad is recovered—the railroad in which you hold property—there will be the superintendency of that, probably a matter of some three or four thousand dollars a year."

"But I couldn't do it," objected the Doctor, thereby drawing another laugh from his interlocutor.

He was perfectly satisfied with his fifteen hundred, although it was so miserably inferior to the annual six thousand which he used to draw from his scientific labors in and out of the defunct college. As long as he could live and retain his self-respect, he was not much disposed to grumble at Providence. Things in general were going well; the rebellion would be put down; slavery would perish in the struggle; truth and justice would prevail. The certainty of these results formed in his estimation a part of his personal estate—a wealth which was invisible, it is true, but none the less real, inexhaustible and consolatory—a wealth which was sufficient to enrich and ennoble every true-hearted American citizen.

When it was known throughout the city that he had accepted a position from the Federal authorities, the name of Ravenel became entirely hateful to those who only a few years before accorded it their friendship and respect. The hostile gulf between Lillie and her old friends yawned into such a vast abyss, that few words were ever exchanged across it; and even those that did occasionally reach her anxious ears had a tone of anger which excited, sometimes her grief, and sometimes her resentment. The young lady's character was such that the resentment steadily gained on the grief, and she became from day to day less of a Secessionist and more of a Unionist. Her father laughed in his good-natured way to see how spited she was by this social ostracism.