Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty Part 18

"A colonel!" exclaimed father and daughter.

"Yes, and a better colonel than half those in the service."

"On which side, Colonel Carter?" asked Miss Ravenel, who saw a small chance for vengeance.

"Good heavens! Do you suppose I am recruiting for rebel regiments?"

"I didn't know but Mrs. Larue might have brought you over."

The Colonel laughed obstreperously at the insinuation, not in the least dashed by its pertness.

"No, it's a loyal regiment; black in the face with loyalty. General Butler has decided on organizing a force out of the free colored population of the city."

"It isn't possible. Oh, what a shame!" exclaimed Lillie.

The Doctor said nothing, but leaned forward with marked interest.

"There is no secret about it," continued Carter. "The thing is decided on, and will be made public immediately. But it is a disagreeable affair to handle. It will make an awful outcry, here and every where. It wouldn't be wise to identify the Government too closely with it until it is sure to be a success. Consequently the darkies will be enrolled as militia--State troops, you see--just as your rebel friend Lovell, Miss Ravenel, enrolled them. Moreover, to give the arrangement a further local character it is thought best to have at least one of the regiments commanded by some well known citizen of New Orleans. I proposed this idea to the General, and he doesn't think badly of it. Now who will sacrifice himself for his country? Who will make the n.i.g.g.e.rs in uniform respectable? Doctor, will you do it?"

"Papa, you shall do no such thing," cried Lillie, thoroughly provoked.

Then, reproachfully, "Oh, Colonel Carter!" The Colonel laughed with immovable good humor, and surveyed her pretty wrath with calm admiration.

"Be quiet, my child," p.r.o.nounced the Doctor with an unusual tone of authority. "Colonel, I am interested, exceedingly interested in what you tell me. The idea is admirable. It will be a lasting honor to the man who conceived it."

"Oh, papa!" protested Lillie. She was slightly unionized, but not in the least abolitionized.

"I am delighted that General Butler has resolved to take the responsibility of it," continued the Doctor. "Our free negroes are really a respectable cla.s.s. Many of them are wealthy and well educated.

In the whole south General Butler could not have found another so favorable a place to try this experiment as New Orleans."

"I am glad you think so," answered the Colonel; but he said it with an air of no great enthusiasm. In fact how could an old army officer, a West Point military Brahmin and a Virginian gentleman look with favor at first sight on the plan of raising n.i.g.g.e.r regiments?

"But as for the colonelcy," continued the Doctor. "Are you positively serious in making me that proposition?"

"Positively."

"Why, I am no more fit to be a Colonel than I am to be a professor of Sanscrit and Chinese literature."

"That needn't stand in the way at all. That is of no consequence."

Ravenel laughed outright, and waited for an explanation.

"Your Lieutenant-Colonel and Major will be experienced officers--that is, for volunteers," said Carter. "They will know the drill, at any rate. Your part will be simply to give the thing a local coloring, as if the New Orleans people had got it up among themselves."

Here he burst into a horse-laugh at the idea of saddling Louisianians with the imputation of desiring and raising n.i.g.g.e.r soldiers for putting down the rebellion and slavery.

"You will have nothing to do with the regiment," he went on. "As soon as it is organized, or under way, you will be detached. You will be superintendent of negro education, or superintendent of negro labor, or something of that sort. You will have the rank and pay of Colonel, you see; but your work will be civil instead of military; it will be for the benefit of the n.i.g.g.e.rs."

"Oh, indeed!" answered the Doctor, his face for the first time showing that the proposition had for him a pole of attraction. "So officers can be detached for such purposes? It is perfectly honorable, is it?"

"Quite so. Army custom. About the same thing as making an officer a provost-marshal, or military governor, or mayor."

"Really, I am vastly tempted. I am vastly flattered and very grateful. I must think of it. I will consider it seriously."

In his philanthropic excitement he rose and walked the room for some minutes. The windows were open and admitted what little noise of population there was in the street, so that Miss Ravenel and the Colonel, sitting near each other, could exchange a few words without being overheard by the abstracted Doctor. I suspect that the young lady was more angry at this moment than on any previous occasion recorded in the present history. Colburne would have quailed before her evident excitement, but Colonel Carter, the widower, faced her with a smile of good-natured amus.e.m.e.nt. Seeing that there was no prospect of striking a panic into the foe, she made a flanking movement instead of a direct attack.

"What do you suppose the old army will think of the negro regiment plan?"

"_Vin ordinaire_, I suppose."

"Then how can you advise my father to go into a thing which you call _vin ordinaire_?" she demanded, her lips trembling with an agitation which was partly anger, and partly alarm at her own audacity.

As this was a question which Carter could not answer satisfactorily without telling her that he knew how poor her father was, and also knew what a bad thing poverty was, he made no reply, but rose and sauntered about the room with his thumbs in his vest pockets. And Lillie was so curiously in awe of this mature man, who said what he pleased and was silent when he pleased, that she made no further a.s.sault on him.

"I must confess," said the Doctor, resuming his seat, "that this is a most attractive and flattering proposition. I am vain enough to believe that I could be of use to this poor, ignorant, brutish, down-trodden, insulted, plundered race of pariahs and helots. If I could organize negro labor in Louisiana on a basis just and profitable to all parties, I should consider myself more honored than by being made President of the United States in ordinary times. If I could be the means of educating their darkened minds and consciences to a decent degree of Christian intelligence and virtue, I would not exchange my good name for that of a Paul or an Apollos. My only objection to this present plan is the colonelcy. I should be in a false position. I should feel myself to be ridiculous. Not that it is ridiculous to be a colonel," he explained, smiling, "but to wear the uniform and receive the pay of a colonel without being one--there is the satire. Now could not that point be evaded? Could I not be made superintendent of negro labor without being burdened with the military dignity? I really feel some conscientious scruples on the matter, quite aside from my desire not to appear absurd.

I should be willing to do the work for less pay, provided I could escape the livery. I am sorry to give you any trouble when I am already under such obligations. But would you have the kindness to inquire whether this superintendency could not be established without attaching to it the military position?"

"Certainly. But I foresee a difficulty. Will the General dare to found such an office, and set aside public money for its salary? I suppose he has no legal right to do it. Detach an officer for the purpose--that is all very simple and allowable; it's army fashion. But when it comes to founding new civil offices, you trench upon State or Federal authority.

Besides, this superintendency of negro labor is going to be a heavy thing, and the General may want to keep it directly under his own thumb, as he can do if the superintendent is an army officer. However, I will ask your question. And, if the civil office can be founded, you will accept it; is it not so?"

"I do accept. Most gratefully, most proudly."

"But how if the superintendency can't be had without the colonelcy?"

"Why, then I--I fear I shall be forced to decline. I really don't feel that I can place myself in a false position. Only don't suppose that I am unconscious of my profound obligations to you."

"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 a.s.sume 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 n.i.g.g.e.rs, 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 n.o.ble 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 enn.o.ble 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.

"You should never quarrel with a pig because he is a pig," said he. "The only wise way is not to suppose that you can make a lap-dog of him, and not to invite him into your parlor. These poor people have been brought up to hate and maltreat every body who does not agree with their opinions. If the Apostle Paul should come here, they would knock him on the head for making a brother of Onesimus."

"But I can't bear to be treated so," answered the vexed young lady. "I don't want to be knocked on the head, nor to have you knocked on the head. I don't even want them to think what they do about me. I wish I had the supreme power for a day or two."