The chaplain was charmed to agree with her. He thought her the most hopefully religious catholic that he had ever met; he also thought her the wittiest, the most graceful, and on the whole the handsomest. Her eyes alone were enough to deceive him: they were inexhaustible greenrooms of sparkling masks and disguises; and he was especially taken with the Madonnesque gaze which issued from their recesses. He was bamboozled also by the prim, broad, white collar, like a surplice, which she put on expressly to attract him; by the demure air of childlike piety which clothed her like a mantle; by her deference to his opinion; by her teachable spirit. Perhaps he may also have been pleased with her plump shoulders and round arms, and he certainly did glance at them occasionally as their outlines showed through the transparent muslin; but he said nothing of them in his talks concerning Mrs. Larue with his room-mate the Major.
"J'ai apprivoisé le prêtre," she observed laughingly to Carter. "I have assured myself a firm friend in his reverence. He will defend me the character always. He has asked me to visit his family, and promised to call to see me at New York. Madame La Prêtresse is to call also. He is quite capable of praying me to stand godmother to his next child. If he were not married, I should have an offer. I believe I could bring him to elope with me in a fortnight."
"Why don't you?" asked Carter. "It would make a scandal that would amuse you," he added somewhat bitterly, for he was at times disgusted by her heartlessness.
"No, my dear," she replied gently, pressing his arm. "I am quite satisfied with my one conquest. It is all I desire in the world."
They were leaning against the taffrail, listening to the gurgling of the waters in the luminous wake and watching the black lines of the masts waving against the starlit sky.
"You are silent," she observed. "Why are you so sad?"
"I am thinking of my wife," he replied, almost sullenly.
"Poor Lillie! I wish she were here," said Mrs. Larue.
"My God! what a woman you are!" exclaimed the Colonel. "Don't you know that I should be ashamed to look her in the face?"
"My dear, why do you distress yourself so? You can love her still. I am not exacting. I only want a corner in your heart. If I might, I would demand the whole; but I know I could not have it. You ought not to be unhappy; that is my part in the drama. I have sacrificed much. What have you sacrificed? A man risks nothing, loses nothing, in these affairs du cœur. He has a bonne fortune, voilà tout."
Carter was heavy laden in secret with his bonne fortune. He was glad when the voyage ended, and he could leave Mrs. Larue at New York, with a pleasing chance that he might never meet her again, and a hope that he had heard the last of her sainte passion de l'amour. Of course he was obliged, before he quitted her, to see that she was established in a good boarding house, and to introduce her to one or two respectable families among his old acquaintance in the city. Of course also he said nothing to these families about her propensities towards the divin sens and the sainte passion. She quickly made herself a character as a southern loyalist, and as such became quite a pet in society. Before she had been a week in the city she was an inmate of the household of the Rev. Dr. Whitehead, a noted theologian and leading abolitionist, who worked untiringly at the seemingly easy task of converting her from the errors of slavery and papacy. It somewhat scandalized his graver parishioners, especially those of Copperhead tendencies, that he should patronize so gay a lady. But the Reverend Doctor did not see her pranks, and did not believe the tale when others related them. How could he when she looked the picture of a saint, dressed entirely in black and white, wore her hair plain a la Madonne, and talked theology with those earnest eyes, and that childlike smile? To the last he honestly regarded her as very nigh unto the kingdom of heaven. It was to shield her from envious slanders, to cover her with the ægis of his great and venerable name, that the warm-hearted, unsuspicious old gentleman dedicated to her his little work on moral reform, entitled "St. Mary Magdalen." How ecstatically Mrs. Larue laughed over this book when she got to her own room with it, after the presentation! She had not had such a paroxysm of merriment before, since she was a child; for during all her adult life she had been too blasee to laugh often with profound heartiness and honesty: her gayety had been superficial, like most of her other expressions of feeling. I can imagine that she looked very attractive in her spasm of jollity, with her black eyes sparkling, her brunette cheeks flushed, her jetty streams of hair waving and her darkly roseate arms and shoulders bare in the process of undressing. Before she went to bed she put the book in an envelope addressed to Carter, and wrote a playful letter to accompany it, signed "Your best and most loving friend, St. Marie Madeleine."
CHAPTER XXVIII. THE COLONEL CONTINUES TO BE LED INTO TEMPTATION.
On the cars between New York and Washington Carter encountered the Governor of Barataria. After the customary compliments had been exchanged, after the Governor had acknowledged the services of the famous Tenth, and the Colonel had eulogized the good old State, the latter spoke of the vacant lieutenant-colonelcy in the regiment, and asked that it might be given to Colburne.
"But I have promised that to Mr. Gazaway," said the Governor, looking slightly troubled.
"To Gazaway!" roared Carter in wrathful astonishment. "What! to the same Gazaway? Why—Governor—are you aware—are you perfectly aware why he left the regiment?"
The Governor's countenance became still more troubled, but did not lose its habitual expression of mild obstinacy.
"I know—I know," he said softly. "It is a very miserable affair."
"Miserable! It is to the last degree scandalous. I never heard of anything so utterly contemptible as this fellow's behavior. You certainly cannot know—— If you did, you wouldn't think of letting this infernal poltroon back into the regiment. He ought to have been court-martialed. It is a cursed shame that he was not shot for misbehavior in presence of the enemy. Let me tell you his story."
The Governor had an air which seemed to say that it would be of no use to tell him anything; but he folded his hands, bowed his head, crossed his legs, put a pastille in his mouth, and meekly composed himself to listen.
"This Gazaway is the greatest coward that I ever saw," pursued the Colonel. "I positively think he must be the greatest coward that ever lived. At Georgia Landing he left his horse, and dodged, and ducked, and squatted behind the line in such a contemptible way that I came near rapping him over the head with the flat of my sabre. At Camp Beasland he shammed sick, and skulked about the hospitals, whimpering for medicine. I sent in charges against him then; but they got lost, I believe, on the march; at any rate, they never turned up. At Port Hudson I released him from arrest, and ordered him into the fight, hoping he would get shot. I privately told the surgeon not to excuse him, and I told the blackguard himself that he must face the music. But he ran away the moment the brigade came under fire. He was picked up at the hospital by the provost-guard, and sent to the regiment in its advanced position. The officers refused to obey his orders unless he proved his courage first by taking a rifle and fighting in the trenches. They equipped him, but he wouldn't fight. He trembled from head to foot, said he didn't know how to load his gun, said he was sick, cried. Then they kicked him out of camp—actually and literally booted him out—put the leather to him, sir. That is the last time that he was seen with the regiment. He was next picked up in the hospitals of New Orleans, and sent to the front by Emory, who would have shot him if he had known what he was. He was in command of Fort Winthrop, and wanted to surrender at the first summons. Nothing but the high spirit of his officers, and the gallantry of the whole garrison, saved the fort from its own commander. I tell you, sir, that he is a redemptionless sneak. He is a disgrace to the regiment, and to the State, and to the country. He is a disgrace to every man in both services—to every man who calls himself an American. And you propose to restore him to the regiment!"
The Governor sighed, and looked very sad, but at the same time as meekly determined as Moses.
"My dear Colonel, I knew it all," he said. "But I think I am right. I think I am acting out our American principle—the greatest good of the greatest number. I must beg your patient hearing and your secrecy. In the first place, Gazaway is not to keep the commission. It is merely given to whitewash him. He will accept it, and then resign it. That is all understood."
"But what the —— do you want to whitewash him for? He ought to be gibbeted."
"I know. Very true. But see here. We must carry the elections. We must have the government supported by the people. We must give the administration a clear majority in both houses of Congress. Otherwise, you see, Copperheadism and Secession, false peace and rebellion will triumph."
"But the way to carry the elections is to whip the rebels, my God!—to have the best officers and the best army, and win all the victories, my God!"
The Governor smiled as if from habit, but pursued his own course of reasoning resolutely, without noticing the new argument. His spunk was rising a little, and he had no small amount of domination in him, notwithstanding his amiability.
"Now Gazaway's Congressional district is a close one," he continued, "and we fear that his assistance is necessary to enable us to carry it. I grieve to think that it is so. It is not our fault. It is the fault of those men who will vote a disloyal ticket. Well, he demands that we shall whitewash him by giving him a step up from his old commission. On that condition he agrees to insure us the district. Then he is to resign."
"My God! what a disgraceful muddle!" was Carter's indignant comment.
The Governor looked almost provoked at seeing that the Colonel would not appreciate his difficulties and necessities.
"I sacrifice my own feelings in this matter," he insisted. "I assure you that it is a most painful step for me to take."
He forgot that he was also sacrificing the feelings of Captain Colburne and of other deserving officers in the gallant Tenth.
"I wouldn't take the step," returned the Colonel. "I'd let the election go to hell before I'd take it. If that is the way elections are carried, let us have done with them, and pray for a despotism."
After this speech there was a silence of some minutes. Each of these men was a wonder to the other; each of them ought to have been a wonder to himself. The Governor knew that Carter was a roué, a hard drinker, something of a Dugald Dalgetty; and he could not understand his professional chivalry, his passion for the honor of the service, his bitter hatred of cowards. The Colonel knew the Governor's upright moral character as an individual, and was amazed that such a man could condescend to what he considered dirty trickery. In one respect, Carter had the highest moral standpoints. He did wrong to please himself, but it was under the pressure of overwhelming impulse, and he paid for it in frank remorse. The other did wrong after calm deliberation, sadly regretting the alleged necessity, but chloroforming his conscience with the plea of that necessity. He was at bottom a well-intentioned and honorable man, but blinded by long confinement in the dark labyrinths of political intrigue, as the fishes of the Mammoth Cave are eyeless through the lack of light. He would have shrunk with horror from Carter had he known of that affair with Madame Larue. At the same time he could commission a known coward above the heads of heroes, to carry a Congressional district. And, in order that we may not be too hard upon him, let us consider his difficulties; let us suppose that he had elevated the Bayard and thrown the Bardolph overboard. In the first place all the wire-pullers of his following would have been down upon him with arguments and appeals, begging him in the name of the party, of the country, of liberty, not to lose the election. His own candidate in the doubtful district, an old and intimate friend, would have said, "You have ruined my chances." All the capitalists and manufacturers who depended on this candidate to get this or that axe sharpened on the Congressional grindstone, would have added their outcries to the lamentation. Thinking of all this, and thinking too of the Copperheads, and what they would be sure to do if they triumphed, he felt that what he had decided on was for the best, and that he must do it. Gazaway must have the lieutenant-colonelcy until the spring election was over; and then, and not before, he must make way for some honorable man and brave officer.
"But how can this fellow have such a political influence?" queried the Colonel. "It ought to be easy enough to expose him in the newspapers, and smash him."
"The two hundred men or so who vote as he says never read the newspapers, and wouldn't believe the exposure."
"There is the majority left," observed Carter, after another pause. "Captain Colburne might have that—if he would take promotion under Gazaway."
"I have given that to my nephew, Captain Rathbun," said the Governor, blushing.
He was not ashamed of his political log-rolling with a vulgar coward, but he was a little discomposed at confessing his very pardonable and perhaps justifiable nepotism.
"Captain Rathbun," he pursued hastily, "has been strongly recommended by all the superior officers of his corps. There is no chance of promotion in the cavalry, as our State has only furnished three companies. I have therefore transferred him to the infantry, and I placed him in your regiment because there were two vacancies."
"Then my recommendation goes for nothing," said Carter, in gloomy discontent.
"Really, Colonel, I must have some authority in these matters. I am called commander-in-chief of the forces of the State. I am sorry if it annoys you. But there will be—I assure you there will soon be—a vacancy for Captain Colburne."
"But he will have to come in under your nephew, I suppose."
"I suppose so. I don't see how it can be otherwise. But it will be no disgrace to him, I assure you. He will find Major Rathbun an admirable officer and a comrade perfectly to his taste. He graduated from the University only a year after Captain Colburne."
"Excuse me if I leave you for half an hour," observed Carter, without attempting to conceal his disgust. "I want to step into the smoking-car and take a segar."
"Certainly," bowed the Governor, and resumed his newspaper. He was used to such unpleasant interviews as this; and after drawing a tired sigh over it, he was all tranquillity again. The Colonel was too profoundly infuriated to return to his companion during the rest of the journey, much as he wanted his influence to back up his own application for promotion.
"Horrible shame, by Jove!" he muttered, while chewing rather than smoking his segar. "I wish the whole thing was in the hands of the War Department. Damn the States and their rights! I wish, by (this and that) that we were centralized."
Thus illogically ruminated the West Pointer; not seeing that the good is not bad merely because it may be abused; not seeing that Centralism is sure to be more corrupt than Federalism. The reader knows that such cases as that of Gazaway were not common. They existed, but they were exceptional; they were sporadic, and not symptomatic. In general the military nominations of the Governor did honor to his heart and his head. It was Colburne's accidental misfortune that his State contained one or two doubtful districts, and that one of them was in the hands, or was supposed to be in the hands, of his contemptible superior officer. In almost any other Baratarian regiment the intelligent, educated, brave and honorable young captain would have been sure of promotion.
Carter was troubled with a foreboding that his own claims would meet with as little recognition as those of Colburne. He took plain whiskeys at nearly every stopping-place, and reached Washington more than half drunk, but still in low spirits. Sobered and rested by a night's sleep, he delivered his dispatches, was bowed out by General Halleck, and then sought out a resident Congressional friend, and held a frank colloquy with him concerning the attainment of the desired star.
"You see, Colonel, that you are a marked man," said the M. C. "You have been known to say that the war will last five years."
"Well, it will. It has lasted nearly three, and it will kick for two more. I ought to be promoted, by (this and that) for my sagacity."
"Just so," laughed the M. C. "But you won't be. The trouble is that you say just what the Copperheads say; and you get credit for the same motives. It is urged, moreover, that men like you discourage the nation and cheer the rebels."
"By Jove! I'd like to see the rebel who would be cheered by the news that the war will last two years longer."
The honorable member laughed again, in recognition of the hit, and proceeded:
"Then there is that old filibustering affair. When you went into that you were not so good a prophet as you are now; and in fact it is a very unfortunate affair at present; it stands in your way confoundedly. In fact, you are not a favorite with our left wing—our radicals. The President is all right. The War Department is all right. They admit your faithfulness, ability and services. It is the Senate that knocks you. I am afraid you will have to wait for something to turn up. In fact, I don't see my way to a confirmation yet."
Carter swore, groaned, and chewed his cigar to a pulp.
"But don't be discouraged," pursued the M. C. "We have brought over two or three of the radicals to your side. Three or four more will do the job. Then we can get a nomination with assurance of a confirmation. I promise you it shall be attended to at the first chance. But you must come out strong against slavery. Abolition is your card. New converts must be zealous, you know."
"By Jove, I am strong. I didn't believe in arming the negro once; but I do now. It was a good movement. I'll take a black brigade."
"Will you? Then you can have a white one, I guess. By the way, perhaps you can do something for yourself. A good many of the Members are in town already. I'll take you around—show you to friends and enemies. In fact you can do something for yourself."
Carter did something in the way of treating, giving game-suppers, flattering and talking anti-slavery, smiling outwardly the while, but within full of bitterness. It seemed to him a gross injustice that the destiny of a man who had fought should be ruled by people who slept in good beds every night and had never heard a bullet whistle. He thought that he was demeaning himself by bowing down to members of Congress and State wire-pullers; but he was driven to it by his professional rage for promotion, and still more urgently by the necessity of increasing his income. When he left Washington after the two weeks' stay which was permitted to him, his nomination to a brigadiership was promised, and he had strong hopes of obtaining the Senatorial confirmation. At New York he called on Mrs. Larue. He had not meant to do it when he quitted the virtuous capital of the nation, but as he approached her he felt drawn towards her by something stronger than the engine. Moreover, he thought to himself that she might do something for his promotion if she could be induced to go to Washington and try the ponderosity of the United States Senate with that powerful social lever of hers, la sainte passion, etc.
"Why didn't you tell me this before?" she exclaimed. "Why were you not frank with me, mon ami? I would have gone. I would have worked day and night for you. I would have had such fun! It would have been delicious to humbug those abolitionist Senators. I would have been the ruin of Mr. Sumnaire and Mr. Weelsone. There would have been yet more books dedicated to Sainte Marie Madeleine."
She burst into a laugh at these jolly ideas, and waltzed about the room with a mimicry of love-making in her eyes and gestures.
"But I can not go alone, you perceive; do you not?" she resumed, sitting down by his side and laying one hand caressingly on his shoulder. "I should have no position alone, and there is not the time for me to create one. Moreover, I have paid for my passage to New Orleans in the Mississippi."
"Well, we shall be together," said Carter. "That is my boat. But what a cursed fool I was in not taking you to Washington!"
"Certainly you were, mon ami. It is most regrettable. It is désespérant."
As far as these two were concerned, the voyage south was much like the latter part of the voyage north, except that Carter suffered less from self-reproach, and was generally in higher spirits. He had not money enough left to pay for his meals and wine, but he did not hesitate to borrow a hundred dollars from the widow, and she lent it with her usual amiability.
"You shall have all I can spare," she said. "I only wish to live and dress comme il faut. You are always welcome to what remains."
What could the unfortunate man do but be grateful? Mrs. Larue began to govern him with a mild and insinuating domination; and, strange to say, her empire was not altogether injurious. She corrected him of a number of the bearish ways which he had insensibly acquired by life in the army, and which his wife had not dared to call his attention to, worshipping him too sincerely. She laughed him out of his swearing, and scolded him out of most of his drinking. She mended his stockings, trimmed the frayed ends of his necktie, saw to it that his clothes were brushed; in short, she greatly improved his personal appearance, which had grown somewhat shabby under the influences of travelling and carousing; for the Colonel was one of those innumerable male creatures who always go to seediness as soon as womankind ceases to care for them. With him she had no more need of coquetries and sentimental prattle; and she treated him very much as a wife of five years' standing treats her husband. She was amiable, pains-taking, petting, slightly exacting, slightly critical, moderately chatty, moderately loving. They led a peaceable, domestic sort of life, without much regard to secrecy, without much terror at the continual danger of discovery. They were old sinners enough to feel and behave much like innocent people. Carter's remorse, it must be observed, had arisen entirely from his affection for his wife, and his shame at having proved unworthy of her affectionate confidence, and not at all from any sense of doing an injury to Mrs. Larue, nor from a tenderness of conscience concerning the abstract question of right and wrong. Consequently, after the first humiliation of his fall was a little numbed by time, he could be quite comfortable in spirit.
But his uneasiness awakened at the sight of Lillie, and the pressure of her joyful embrace. The meeting, affectionate as it seemed on both sides, gave him a very miserable kind of happiness. He did not turn his eyes to Mrs. Larue, who stood by with a calm, pleased smile. He was led away in triumph; he was laid on the best sofa and worshipped; he was a king, and a god in the eyes of that pure wife; but he was a very unhappy, and shamefaced deity.
"Oh, what charming letters you wrote!" whispered Lillie. "How good you were to write so often, and to write such sweet things! They were such a comfort to me!"
Carter was a little consoled. He had written often and affectionately; he had tried in that way to make amends for a concealed wrong; and he was heartily glad to find that he had made her happy.
"Oh, my dear child!" he said. "I am so delighted if I have given you any pleasure!"
He spoke this with such a sigh, almost a groan, that she looked at him in wonder and anxiety.
"What is the matter, my darling?" she asked. "What makes you sad? Have you failed in getting your promotion? Never mind. I will love you to make up for it. I know, and you know, that you deserve it. We will be just as happy."
"Perhaps I have not altogether failed," he replied, glad to change the subject. "I have some hopes yet of getting good news."
"Oh, that will be so delightful! Won't it be nice to be prosperous as well as happy! I shall be so overjoyed on your account! I shall be too proud to live."
In his lonely meditations Carter frequently tried himself at the bar of his strange conscience, and struggled hard to gain a verdict of not guilty. What could a fellow do, he asked, when a woman would persist in flinging herself at his head? He honestly thought that most men would have done as he did; that no one but a religious fanatic could have resisted so much temptation; and that such resistance would have been altogether ungentlemanly. To atone for his wrong he was most tender to his wife; he followed her with attentions, and loaded her with presents. At the same time that he had a guilt upon his soul which might have killed her had she discovered it, he would not stint her wardrobe, nor forget to kiss her every time he went out, nor fail to bring her bouquets every evening. He has been known to leave his bed at midnight and walk the street for hours, driving away dogs whose howling prevented her from sleeping. Deeds like this were his penance, his expiation, his consolation.
He was now on duty in the city. High Authority, determined to make amends for the neglect with which this excellent officer was treated, offered him the best thing which it had now to give, the chief-quartermastership of the Department of the Gulf. His pay would thereby be largely increased in consequence of his legal commutations for rooms and fuel, besides which there was a chance of securing large extra-official gleanings from such a broad field of labor and responsibility. But Carter realized little out of his position. He could keep his accounts of Government property correctly; but except in his knowledge of returns, and vouchers, and his clerk-like accuracy, he was not properly speaking a man of business; that is to say, he had no faculty for making money. He was too professionally honorable to lend Government funds to speculators for the sake of a share of the profits. He would not descend to the well-known trickery of getting public property condemned to auction, and then buying it in for a song to sell it at an advance. In the case of a single wagon he might do something of the sort in order to rectify his balances in the item of wagons; or he might make a certificate of theft in a small affair of trousers or havresacks which had been lost through negligence, or issued without a receipt. But to such straits officers were frequently driven by the responsibility system; he sheltered himself under the plea of necessity; and did nothing worse. In fact, his position was a temptation without being a benefit.
It was a serious temptation. A great deal of money passed through his hands. He paid out, and received on account of the Government, thousands of dollars daily; and the mere handling of such considerable sums made him feel as if he were a great capitalist. Money was an every day, vulgar commodity, and he spent it with profusion. Before he had been in his place two months he was worm-eaten, leaky, sinking with debts. No one hesitated to trust a man who had charge over such an abounding source of wealth as the chief-quartermastership of the Department of the Gulf. He lived sumptuously, drank good wines, smoked the best cigars, and marketed for the Ravenel table in his own name, blaspheming the expense whether of cost or credit. Remembering that his wife needed gentle exercise, and had a right to every comfort which he could furnish, he gave her a carriage, and pair of ponies, and of course set up a coachman.
"Can you afford it, my dear?" asked Lillie, a little anxious, for she was aware of his tendency to extravagance.
"I can afford anything, my little one, rather than the loss of you," replied the Colonel after a moment's hesitation.
She wanted to believe that all was well, and therefore the task of convincing her was easy. Her trust was constant, and her adoration fervent; they were symptomatic of her physical condition; they were for the present laws of her nature. It was more than usually painful to her now to be separated long from her deity. When he went out it was, "Where are you going? When will you come back?"—When he returned it was, "How long you have been gone! Oh, I though you would come an hour ago?" It was childish, but she did not perceive it, and if she had, she could not have helped it. She clung to him, and longed after him because she must; there was a bond of unity between them which clasped her inmost life.
Meanwhile how about Mrs. Larue? No one could have been more discreet, more corruptly sagacious, more sunnily amiable, than this singular woman. She petted Lillie like a child, helped her in her abundant sewing labors, brought her as many bouquets as the Colonel himself, scolded her for imprudencies, forbade this dish and recommended that, laughed at her occasional despondencies, and cheered her as women know how to cheer each other. She seemed like the truest friend of the young woman whom she would not have hesitated much to rob of her husband, provided she could have wished to do it. This kindness was not hypocrisy, but simple, unforced good nature. It was natural, and therefore, agreeable to her to be amiable; and as she always did what she liked to do, she was a pattern of amiability. To have quarreled seriously with Lillie would have been a downright annoyance to her, and consequently she avoided every chance of a disagreement, so far at least as was consistent with her private pleasures. She had not the slightest notion of eloping with the Colonel; she did not take passions sufficiently au grand sérieux for that; she would not have isolated herself from society for any man.
Notwithstanding Mrs. Larue's sugar mask Lillie was at times disposed to fight her; not, however, in the slightest degree on account of her husband; only on account of her father. The sly Creole, partly for her own amusement indeed, but chiefly to divert suspicion from her familiarity with Carter, commenced a coquettish attack upon the Doctor. Lillie was sometimes in a desperate fright lest she should entrap him into a marriage. She thought that she understood Mrs. Larue perfectly, and she felt quite certain that she was by no means good enough for her father. In her estimation there never was a man, unless it might be her husband, who was so good, so noble, so charming as this parent of hers; and if she had been called on to select a wife for him, I doubt whether any woman could have passed the examination to which she would have subjected the candidates.
"I perfectly spoil you, papa," she said, laughing. "I pet you and admire you till I suppose I shall end by ruining you. If ever you go out into the world alone, what will become of you? You will miss my care dreadfully. You mustn't leave me; it's for your own good—hear? You mustn't trust yourself to anybody else—hear?"
"I hear, my child," answers the Doctor. "What a charming little Gold Coast accent you have!"
"Pshaw! It isn't negro at all. Everybody talks so. But I wonder if you are trying to change the subject."
"Really I wasn't aware of a subject being presented for my consideration."
"Oh, you don't understand, or you won't understand. I do believe you have a guilty conscience."
"A guilty conscience about what, my child? Have the kindness to speak plainly. My mind is getting feeble."
"Ain't you ashamed to ask me to speak plainly? I don't want to speak plainly. Do you actually want to have me?"
"If it wouldn't overpower your reason, I should like it. It would be such a convenience to me."
"Well, I mean, papa," said Lillie, coloring at her audacity, "that I don't like Mrs. Larue!"
"Don't like Mrs. Larue! Why, she is as kind to you as she can possibly be. I thought you were on the best of terms."
"I mean that I don't like her well enough to call her Mamma."
"Call her Mamma!" repeated the Doctor, staring over his spectacles in amazement. "You don't mean?—upon my honor, you are too nonsensical, Lillie."
"Am I? Oh, I am so delighted!" exclaimed Lillie eagerly. "But I was so afraid."
"Do you think I am in my dotage?" inquired the Doctor, almost indignant.
"No no, papa. Don't be vexed with me. I dare say it was very absurd in me. But I do think she is so artful and designing."
"She is a curious woman, we know," observed Ravenel. "She certainly has some—peculiarities."
Lillie laughed outright, and said, "Oh yes," with a gay little air of satire.
"But she is too young to think of me," pursued the Doctor. "She can't be more than twenty-five."
"Papa!!" protested Lillie. "She is thir—ty! Have you lost your memory?"
"Thirty! Is it possible? Really, I am growing old. I am constantly understating other people's ages. I have caught myself at it repeatedly. I don't know whether it is forgetfulness, or inability to realize the flight of time, or an instinctive effort to make myself out a modern by showing that my intimates are youthful. But I am constantly doing it. Do you recollect how I have laughed about Elderkin for this same trick? He is always relating anecdotes of his youth in a way which would lead you to suppose that the events happened some fifteen or twenty years ago. And yet he is seventy. I mustn't laugh at Elderkin any more."
"Nonsense!" said Lillie. "You are not a bit like him. He blacks his hair to correspond with his dates. He means to humbug people. And then you are not old."
"But, to return to Mrs. Larue," observed the Doctor. "She has a clear head; she is pretty sensible. She is not a woman to put herself in a false or ridiculous position. I really have not observed anything of what you hint."
"Oh no. Of course not. Men never do; they are so stupid! Of course you wouldn't observe anything until she went on her knees and made you a formal declaration. I was afraid you might say, 'Yes,' in your surprise."
"My dear, don't talk in that way of a lady. You degrade your own sex by such jesting."
However, the Doctor did in a quiet way put himself on his guard against Mrs. Larue; and Lillie, observing this, did also in a quiet way feel quite elated over the condition of things in the family. She was as happy as she had ever been, or could desire to be. It was a shocking state of deception; corruption lilied over with decorum and smiling amiability; whited sepulchres, apples of Sodom, blooming Upas. Carter saw Mrs. Larue as often as he wanted, and even much oftener, in a private room, which even his wife did not know of, in rear of his offices. Closely veiled she slipped in by a back entrance, and reappeared at the end of ten minutes, or an hour, or perhaps two hours. It was after such interviews had taken place that his wife welcomed him with those touching words. "Oh, where have you been? I thought you never would come."
He would have been glad to break the evil charm, but he was too far gone to be capable of virtuous effort.
CHAPTER XXIX. LILLIE REACHES THE APOTHEOSIS OF WOMANHOOD.
Woman is more intimately and irresponsibly a child of Nature than man. She comes oftener, more completely, and more evidently under the power of influences which she can neither direct nor resist, and which make use of her without consulting her inclination. Her part then is passive obedience and uncomplaining suffering, while through her the ends of life are accomplished. She has no choice but to accept her beneficent martyrdom. Like Jesus of Nazareth she agonizes that others may live; but unlike Him, she is impelled to it by a will higher than her own. At the same time, a loving spirit is given to her, so that she is consoled in her own anguish, and does not seriously desire that the cup may pass from her before she has drunk it to the dregs. She has the patience of the lower animals and of inanimate nature, ennobled by a heavenly joy of self-sacrifice, a divine pleasure in suffering for those whom she loves. She is both lower and higher than man, by instinct rather than by reason, from necessity rather than from choice.
There came a day to Lillie during which she lay between two worlds, not caring which she entered, submissive to whatever might be, patient though weeping with pain. Her father did not dare trust her to his own care, but called in his old friend and colleague, Doctor Elderkin. These two, with Carter, Mrs. Larue, and a hired nurse, did not quit the house for twenty-four hours, and all but the husband and father were almost constantly in the room of the invalid. The struggle was so long and severe that they thought it would end in death. Neither Mrs. Larue nor the nurse slept during the whole night, but relieved each other at the bedside, holding by turns the quivering, clutching hand of Lillie, and fanning the crimson cheeks and the brow covered with a cold sweat as of a death agony. The latent womanliness of Mrs. Larue, the tenderness which did actually exist in some small measure beneath her smooth surface of amiability and coquetry, was profoundly stirred by her instinctive sympathy for a suffering which was all feminine. She remembered that same anguish in her own life, and lived it over again. Every throe of the sick girl seemed to penetrate her own body. She thought of the child which had been given and taken years ago, and then she wiped away a tear, lest Lillie might see it and fear for herself. When she was not by the bedside she stood at the window, now looking for a glimpse of dawn as if that could bring any hope, and then turning to gaze at the tossing invalid.
The Doctor only once allowed Carter to enter the room. The very expansion of Lillie at sight of him, the eagerness with which her soul reached out to him for help, pity, love, was perilous. There was danger that she might say, "My dear, good-bye;" and in the exaltation of such an impulse she might have departed. As for him, he had never before witnessed a scene like this, and he never forgot it. His wife held both his hands, clasping them spasmodically, a broad spot of fever in either cheek, the veins of her forehead swollen, and her neck suffused, her eyes preternaturally open and never removed from his, her whole expression radiant with agony. The mortal pain, the supernatural expectation, the light of that other world which was so near, spiritualized her face, and made it unhumanly beautiful. He seemed to himself to be standing on earth and joining hands with her in heaven. He had never before reached so far; never so communed with another life. His own face was all of this world, stern with anxiety and perhaps remorse; for the moment was so agitating and imperious that he could not direct his emotions nor veil his expression. Happy for her that she had no suspicion of one thing which was in his heart. She believed that he was solely tortured by fear that she would die; and if she could have thought to speak, she would have comforted him. On her own account she did not desire to live; only for his sake, and for her father's, and perhaps a little for her child's. The old Doctor watched her, shook his head, signed to the husband to leave the room, and took his wife's hands in his place. As Carter went out Mrs. Larue followed him a few steps into the passage.
"What is between you and me must end," she whispered.
"Yes," he replied in the same tone, and went to his room somewhat comforted.
At seven in the morning he was awakened by a tremulous knocking at his door. Springing from the sofa, on which he had dozed for an hour or two without undressing, he opened, and encountered Mrs. Larue, pale with sleeplessness but smiling gaily.
"Venez," she said, speaking her mother tongue in her haste, and hastened noiselessly, like a swift sprite, back to the sick room. Carter followed, entered with a sense of awe, passed softly around the screen which half encircled the bed, and saw his wife and child lying side by side. Lillie was very pale; her face was still spiritualized by the Gethsemane of the night; but her eyes were still radiant with a purely human happiness. She was in eager haste to have him drink at the newly-opened fountain of joy. Even as he stooped to kiss her she could not wait, but turned her head towards the infant with a smile of exultation and said, "Look at him."
"But how are you?" he asked, anxiously; for a man does not at once forget his wife in his offspring; and Carter had a stain of remorse on his soul which he needed to wash away with rivers of tenderness.
"Oh, I am perfectly well," she answered. "Isn't he pretty?"
At that moment the child sneezed; the air of this world was too pungent.
"Oh, take him!" she exclaimed, looking for the nurse. "He is going to die."
The black woman lifted the boy and handed him to the father.
"Don't drop him," said Lillie. "Are you sure you can hold him? I wouldn't dare to take him."
As if she could have taken him! In her eagerness she forgot that she was sick, and talked as if she were in her full strength. Her eyes followed the infant so uneasily about the room that Elderkin motioned Carter to replace him on the bed.
"Now he won't fall," she said, cheerfully.—"It was only a sneeze," she added presently, with a little laugh which was like a gurgle, a purr of happiness. "I thought something was the matter with him."—Shortly afterward she asked, "How soon will he talk?"
"I am afraid not for two or three weeks, unless the weather is favorable," replied Elderkin, with a chuckle which under the circumstances was almost blasphemous.
"How strange that he can't talk!" she replied, without noticing the old gentleman's joke. "He looks so intelligent!"
"She wouldn't be a bit surprised to hear him sing an Italian opera," said Ravenel. "She has seen a miracle to-day. Nothing could astonish her."
Lillie did not laugh nor answer; nothing interested her which did not say, Baby! Baby was for the time the whole thought, the whole life, of this girl, who a little previous existed through her husband, and before that through her father. Each passion had been stronger than its predecessor; but now she had reached the culminating point of her womanhood: higher than Baby it was impossible for her to go. Even her father distressed and alarmed her a little by an affection for the newly-arrived divinity which lacked what she felt to be the proper reverence. Not content with worshiping afar off, he picked up the tiny god and carried him to the partial day of a curtained window, desiring, as he said, the honor of being the first to give him an idea.
"The first to give him an idea!" laughed the father. "Why, he looks as if he had been thinking for centuries. He looks five thousand years old."
Seeing that Lillie began to weary, the old Doctor replaced the deity on the pillow which served him for an altar, and turned the male worshipers out of the room.
"How delighted they are with him!" she said when the door had closed behind them. "Doctor, isn't he an uncommonly handsome child?" she added with the adorable simplicity of perfect love. "I thought babies were not pretty at first."
The room was now kept still. The mother and child lay side by side, reposing from their night-long struggle for life. The mother looked steadily at the infant; the infant looked with equal fixity at the window: each gazed and wondered at an unaccustomed glory. In a few minutes both dropped to sleep, overcome by fatigue, and by novel emotions, or sensations. For three days a succession of long slumbers, and of waking intervals similar to tranquilly delightful dreams, composed their existence. When they were thus reposed they tasted life with a more complete and delicious zest. Lillie entertained her husband and father for hours at a time with discoursing on the attributes of the baby, pointing out the different elements of his glory, and showing how he grew in graces. She was quite indifferent to their affectionate raillery; nothing could shake her faith in the illimitability of the new deity. They two, dear as they were, were nevertheless human, and were not so necessary as they had been to her faith in goodness, and her happiness in loving. So long as she had the baby to look at, she could pass the whole day without them, hardly wondering at their absence.
"We are dethroned," said the Doctor to the Colonel. "We are a couple of Saturns who have made way for the new-born Jupiter."
"Nonsense!" smiled Lillie. "You think that you are going to spend all your time with your minerals now. You are perfectly happy in the idea. I sha'n't allow it."
"No. We must remain and be converts to the new revelation. Well, I suppose we sha'n't resist. We are ready to make our profession of faith at all times and in all places."
"This is the place," said Lillie. "Isn't he sweet?"
The grandfather knew a great deal better than either the father or mother how to handle the diminutive Jupiter. He took him from the pillow, carried him to the window, drew the curtain slowly, and laughed to see the solemn little eyes, after winking slowly, turn upward and fix themselves steadily on the broad, mild effulgence of the sky.
"He looks for the light, as plants and trees lean towards it," said he. "He is trying to see the heavenly mansions which he may some day inhabit. Nobody knows how soon. They get up their chariots very suddenly sometimes, these little Elijahs."
"Oh, don't talk so," implored Lillie. "He sha'n't die."
The Doctor was thinking of his own only boy, who had flown from the cradle to Heaven more than twenty years ago.
Aside from tenderness for his wife, Carter's principal emotion all this while was that of astonishment at his position. It cost him considerable mental effort, and stretch of imagination, to conceive himself a relative of the newcomer. He did not, like Lillie, love the child by passionate instinct; and he had not yet learned to love him as he had learned to love her. He was tender of the infant, as a creature whose weakness pleaded for his protection; but when it came to the question of affection, he had to confess that he loved him chiefly through his mother. He was a poor hand at fondling the boy, being always afraid of doing him some harm. He was better pleased to see him in Lillie's arms than to feel him in his own; the little burden was curiously warm and soft, but so evidently susceptible to injury as to be a terror.
"I would rather lead a storming party," he said. "I have been beaten in that sort of thing, and lived through it. But if I should drop this fellow—"
And here the warrior absolutely flinched at the thought of how he would feel in such a horrible case.
Now commenced a beautiful reciprocal education of mother and child. Each discovered every day new mysteries, new causes of admiration and love, in the other. Long before a childless man or even woman would have imagined signs of intelligence in the infant, the mother had not merely imagined but had actually discovered them. You would have been wrong if you had laughed incredulously when she said, "He begins to take notice." Of course her fondness led her into errors: she mistook symptoms of mere sensation for utterances of ideas; she perceived prophetically rather than by actual observation: but some things, some opening buds of intellect, she saw truly. She deceived herself when she thought that at the age of three weeks he knew his father; but at the same time she was quite correct in believing that he recognized and cried for his mother. This delighted her; she would let him cry for a moment, merely for the pleasure of being so desired; then she would fold him to her breast and be his comforter, his life. They were teachers, consolers, deities, the one to the other.
Her love gave a fresh inspiration to her religious feeling. Here was a new object of thanksgiving and prayer: an object so nearly divine that only Heaven could have sent it: an object so delicate that only Heaven could preserve it. For her baby she prayed with an intelligence, a feeling, a faith, such as she had never known before, not even when praying for her husband during his times of battle. It seemed certain to her that the merciful All-Father and the Son who gave himself for the world would sympathize compassionately with the innocence, and helplessness of her little child. These sentiments were not violent: she would have withered under the breath of any passionate emotion: they were as gentle and comforting as summer breezes from orange groves. Once only, during a slight accession of fever, there came something like a physical revelation; a room full of mysterious, dazzling light; a communication of some surprising, unutterable joy; an impression as of a divine voice, saying, "Thy sins are forgiven thee."
Forgiven of God, she wished also to be forgiven of man. The next morning, moved by the remembrance of the vision, although its exaltation had nearly vanished with the fall of the fever, she beckoned her husband to her, and with tears begged his pardon for some long since forgotten petulance. This was the hardest trial that Carter had yet undergone. To have her plead for his forgiveness was a reproach that he could hardly bear with self-possession. He must not confess—no such relief was there for his burdened spirit—but he sank on his knees in miserable penitence.
"Oh! forgive me," he said. "I am not half good enough for you. I am not worthy of your love. You must pray for me, my darling."
For the time she was his religion: his loving, chastening, though not all-seeing deity: uplifting and purifying him, even as she was exalted and sanctified by her child.
Her sick-bed happiness was checkered by some troubles. It was hard not to stir; not to be able to help herself; not to tend the baby. When her face was washed for her by the nurse, there would be places where it was not thoroughly dried, and which she sought to wipe by rubbing against the pillow. After a few trials of this sort she forbade the nurse to touch her, and installed her husband in the duty. It was actually a comfort to him to seek to humiliate himself by these dressing-maid services; and it seemed to him that he was thereby earning forgiveness for the crime which he dared not confess. He washed her face, took her meals in, and put them out, fed her with his own hands, fanned her by the hour, and all, she thought, as no one else could.
"How gentle you are!" she said, her eyes suddenly moistening with gratitude. "How nicely you wait on me! And to think that you have led a storming party! And I have seen men afraid of you! My dear, what did you ever mean by saying that you are not good enough for me? You are a hundred times better than I deserve."
Carter laid his forehead in her gently clasping hands without speaking.
"What are you going to call him?" he asked presently.
"Why, Ravenel;—didn't you know?" she answered with a smile.
She had been calling him Ravenel to herself for several days, without telling any one of it. It was a pleasure to think that she alone knew his name; that she had so much in him of an unshared, secret possession.
"Ravenel Carter," she repeated. "We can make that into Ravvie. Don't you like it?"
"I do," he answered. "It is the best name possible. It contains the name of at least one good man."
"Of two good men," she insisted. "A good husband and a good father."
Her first drive in the pony carriage was an ecstacy. By her side sat the nurse holding Ravvie, and opposite sat her husband and father. Presently she made the Colonel and the nurse change places.
"I want my child where I can see him, and my husband where I can lean against him," she said.
"I don't come in," observed the Doctor. "I am Monsieur De Trop—Mr. No Account."
"No you are not. I want you to look at Ravvie and me."
Soon she was anxious lest the child should catch cold by riding backwards.
"No more danger one way than the other," said the Doctor. "The back of his head goes all around."
"I dare say his hair will protect him; won't it?" she asked.
"His hair is about as heavy as his whiskers," laughed the Doctor. "He is in no danger of Absalom's fate."
The nurse having pulled up a shawl in rear of the little bobbing head, Lillie was satisfied, and could turn her attention to other things. She laid her slender hand on her husband's knee, nestled against his strong shoulder and said, "Isn't it lovely—isn't the whole world beautiful!"
They had taken the nearest cut out of the city, and were passing a suburban mansion, the front yard of which was full of orange trees and flowers. A few weeks before she would have wanted to steal the flowers; now she eagerly asked her husband to get out and beg for some. When he returned with a gorgeous bouquet she was full of gratitude, exclaiming, "Oh, how lovely! Did you thank the people? I am so obliged to them. Did they see the child in the carriage?"
"Yes," said the Colonel, smiling with pleasure at her naïve delight. "The lady saw the child, and said this rose was for him."
Accordingly the rose, carefully stripped of all thorns, was put into the dimpled fist of Ravvie, who of course proceeded to suck it.
"He is smelling of it," cried Lillie, with a charming faith in the little god's precocity.
"He is trying it by his universal test—his all-sufficient crucible," said the Doctor. "Everything must go into that mouth. It is his only medium for acquiring knowledge at present. If it was large enough and he could reach far enough, he would investigate the nature of the solar system by means of it. It is lucky for the world that he is not sufficiently big to put the sun in his mouth. We should certainly find ourselves in darkness—not to mention that he might burn himself. My dear, I am afraid he will swallow some of the leaves," he added. "We must interfere. This is one of the emergencies when a grandfather has a right to exercise authority."
The rose was gently detached from Ravvie's fat grasp, and stuck in his little silk bonnet, his eyes following it till it disappeared.
"You see he is an eating animal," continued the Doctor. "That is pretty much all at present, and that is enough. He has no need of any more wisdom than what will enable him to demand nourishment and dispose of it; and God, in his great kindness towards infants, has not troubled him with any further revelations so far. God has provided us to do all the necessary thinking in his case. The infant is a mere swallower, digestor, and assimilator. He knows how to convert other substances into himself. He does it with energy, singleness of purpose, perseverance, and wonderful success. Nothing more is requisite. In eating he is performing the whole duty of man at his age. So far as he goes he is a masterpiece."
"But you are making a machine of him—an oyster," protested Lillie.
"Very like," said the Doctor. "Very like an oyster. His existence has a simplicity and unity very similar to that of the lower orders of creation. Of course I am not speaking of his possibilities. They are spiritual, grand, perhaps gigantic. If you could see the inferior face of his brain, you would be able to perceive even now the magnificent capacities of the as yet untuned instrument."
"Oh don't, papa!" implored Lillie. "You trouble me. Do they ever dissect babies?"
"Not such lively ones as this," said the Doctor, and proceeded to change the subject. "I never saw a healthier creature. I shouldn't wonder if he survived this war, which you used to say would last forty years. Perhaps he will be the man to finish it."
"I don't say so now. I didn't think my husband would be on the Union side when I said that. I think we shall beat them now."
"Since the miracle all other things seem possible," philosophised the Doctor.
I do not repeat the Colonel's talk. It was not so appropriate as that of the others to the occasion; for he knew little as yet of the profounder depths of womanly and infantile nature; his first marriage had been brief and childless. In fact, Carter was rather a silent man in family conclaves, unless the conversation turned on some branch of his profession, or the matters of ordinary existence. He occupied himself with watching alternately his wife and child; with wrapping up the former, and occasionally fondling the latter.
"How very warm he feels!—how amazingly he pulls hair!—I believe he wants to get my head in his mouth," are samples of his observations on the infant wonder. He felt that the baby was either below him or above him, he really could not tell which. Of his wife's position he was certain: she was far higher than his plane of existence: when she took his hand it was from the heavens.
From Mrs. Larue he was thoroughly detached, and with a joyful sense of relief, freedom, betterment. They talked very little with each other, and only on indifferent subjects and in the presence of others. It is possible that this separation would not have lasted if they had been thrown together unguarded, as had been the case on board the Creole; but here, caring for his infant and for the wife who had suffered so much and so sweetly for his sake, the Colonel felt no puissance of passionate temptation.
Mrs. Larue had no conscience, no sense of honor; but like many cold blooded people, she valued herself on her firmness. In an unwonted burst of enthusiasm she had told him that all must be over between them, and she meant to make her words good, no matter what he might desire. She was a little mortified to see how easily he had cut loose from her; but she knew how to explain it so as not to wound her vanity, nor tempt her to break her resolution.
"If he did not love his wife now, he would be a brute," she reflected. "And if he had had the possibilities of a brute in him, I never should have had a caprice for him. After all, I do not care much for the merely physical human being. C'est par le côte morale qu 'on s'empare de moi. Après tout je suis presque aussi pure dans les sentiments que ma petite cousine."
Meanwhile her self-restraint was something of a trial to her. At times she thought seriously of marrying again, with the idea of putting an end to these risky intrigues and harassing struggles. Perhaps it was under this impression that she wrote a letter to Colburne, informing him of the birth of Ravvie, and sketching some few items of the scene with a picturesqueness and sympathy that quite touched the young gentleman, astonished as he was at the frankness of the language.
"After all," she concluded, "married life has exquisite pleasures, as well as terrific possibilities of sorrow. I do not really know whether to advise a young man like you to take a wife or not. Whether you marry or remain single you will be sorry. I think that in either state the pains outweigh the pleasures. It follows that we are not to consider our own happiness, but to do what we think is for the happiness of others. Is not this the true secret of life?"
"Is it possible that I have been unjust?" queried Colburne. "Those are not the teachings of a corrupted nature."
He did not know and could not have conceived the unnatural conscience, the abnormal ideas of purity and duty, which this woman had created for her own use and comfort, out of elements that are beyond the ken of most New Englanders. He was the child of Puritanism, and she of Balzac's moral philosophy.