Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty Part 32

Creatures in the guise of womanhood laughed and told their little children to laugh at the pallid faces which showed from the ambulances as they went and returned in frequent journeys between the levee and the hospitals. The officers and men of the garrison were sad, stern and threatening in aspect. The few citizens who had declared for the Union cowered by themselves and exchanged whispers of gloomy foreboding.

In St. Stephen's Hospital Colburne found something of that comfort which a wounded man needs. His arm was dressed for the second time; his ragged uniform, stiff with blood and dirt, was removed; he was sponged from head to foot and laid in the first sheets which he had seen for months.

There were three other wounded officers in the room, each on his own cot, each stripped stark naked and covered only by a sheet. A Major of a Connecticut regiment, who had received a grapeshot through the lungs, smiled at Colburne's arm and whispered, "Flea-bite." Then he pointed to the horrible orifice in his own breast, through which the blood and breath could be seen to bubble whenever the dressings were removed, and nodded with another feeble but heroic smile which seemed to say, "This is no flea-bite." Iced water appeared to be the only exterior medicament in use, and the hospital nurses were constantly drenching the dressings with this simple panacea of wise old Mother Nature. But in this early stage of the great agony, before the citizens had found it in their hearts to act the part of the Good Samaritan, there was a lack of attendance. Happy were those officers who had their servants with them, like the Connecticut Major, or who, like Colburne, had strength and members left to take care of their own hurts. He soon hit upon a device to lessen his self-healing labors. He got a nurse to drive a hook into the ceiling and suspend his quart cup of ice to it by a triangle of strings, so that it might hang about six inches above his wounded arm, and shed its dew of consolation and health without trouble to himself.

In his fever he was childishly anxious about his quart cup; he was afraid that the surgeon, the nurse, the visitors, would hit it and make it swing. That arm was a little world of pain; it radiated pain as the sun radiates light.

For the first time in his life he drank freely of strong liquors.

Whiskey was the internal panacea of the hospital, as iced water was the outward one. Every time that the Surgeon visited the four officers he sent a nurse for four milk punches, and if they wanted other stimulants, such as claret or porter, they could have them for the asking. The generosity of the Government, and the sublime beneficence of the Sanitary Commission supplied every necessary and many luxuries. Colburne was on his feet in forty-eight hours after his arrival, ashamed to lie in bed under the eyes of that mangled and heroic Major. He was promoted to the milk-toast table, and then to the apple-sauce table. Holding his tin cup over his arm, he made frequent rounds of the hospital, cheering up the wounded, and finding not a little pleasure in watching the progress of individual cases. He never acquired a taste, as many did, for frequenting the operating-room, and (as Van Zandt phrased it) seeing them butcher. This _chevalier sans peur_, who on the battle-field could face death and look upon ranks of slain unblenchingly, was at heart as soft as a woman, and never saw a surgeon's knife touch living flesh without a sensation of faintness.

He often accompanied the Chief Surgeon in his tours of inspection. A wonder of practical philanthropy was this queer, cheerful, indefatigable Doctor Jackson, as brisk and inspiriting as a mountain breeze, tireless in body, fervent in spirit, a benediction with the rank of Major. Iced water, whiskey, nourishment and encouragement were his cure-alls. There were surgeons who themselves drank the claret and brandy of the Sanitary Commission, and gave the remnant to their friends; who poured the consolidated milk of the Sanitary Commission on the canned peaches of the Sanitary Commission and put the grateful mess into their personal stomachs; and who, having thus comforted themselves, went out with a pleasant smile to see their patients eat bread without peaches and drink coffee without milk. But Dr. Jackson was not one of these self-centred individuals; he had fibres of sympathy which reached into the lives of others, especially of the wretched. As he pa.s.sed through the crowded wards all those sick eyes turned to him as to a sun of strength and hope. He never left a wounded man, however near to death, but the poor fellow brightened up with a confidence of speedy recovery.

"Must cheer 'em--must cheer 'em," he muttered to Colburne. "Courage is a great medicine--best in the world. Works miracles--yes, miracles."

"Why! how _are_ you, my old boy?" he said aloud, stopping before a patient with a ball in the breast. "You look as hearty as a buck this morning. Getting on wonderfully."

He gave him an easy slap on the shoulder, as if he considered him a well man already. He knew just where to administer these slaps, and just how to graduate them to the invalid's weakness. After counting the man's pulse he smiled in his face with an air of astonishment and admiration, and proceeded, "Beautiful! Couldn't do it better if you had never got hit. Nurse, bring this man a milk-punch. That's all the medicine _he_ wants."

When they had got a few yards from the bed he sighed, jerked his thumb backward significantly, and whispered to Colburne, "No use. Can't save him. No vitality. Bone-yard to-morrow."

They stopped to examine another man who had been shot through the head from temple to temple, but without unseating life from its throne. His head, especially about the face, was swollen to an amazing magnitude; his eyes were as red as blood, and projected from their sockets, two awful lumps of inflammation. He was blind and deaf, but able to drink milk-punches, and still full of vital force.

"Fetch him round, I _guess_," whispered the Doctor with a smile of gratification. "Holds out beautiful."

"But he will always be blind, and probably idiotic."

"No. Not idiotic. Brain as sound as a nut. As for blindness, can't say.

Shouldn't wonder if he could use his peepers yet. Great doctor, old Nature--if you won't get in her way. Works miracles--miracles! Why, in the Peninsular campaign I sent off one man well, with a rifle-ball in his heart. _Must_ have been in his heart. There's your room-mate, the Major. Put a walking cane through him, and _he_ won't die. Could, but won't. Too good pluck to let go. Reg'lar bull terrier."

"How is my boy Jerry? The little Irish fellow with a shot in the groin."

"Ah, I remember. Empty bed to-morrow."

"You don't mean that there's no hope for him?"

"No, no. All right. I mean he'll get his legs and be about. No fear for that sort. Pluck enough to pull half a dozen men through. Those devil-may-care boys make capital soldiers, they get well so quick. This fellow will be stealing chickens in three weeks. I wouldn't bet that I _could_ kill him."

Thus in the very tolerable comfort of St. Stephen's Colburne escaped the six weeks of trying siege duty which his regiment had to perform before Port Hudson. The Tenth occupied a little hollow about one hundred and fifty yards from the rebel fortifications, protected in front by a high knoll, but exposed on the left to a fire which hit one or more every day. The men cut a terrace on their own side of the knoll, and then topped the crest with a double line of logs pierced for musketry, thus forming a solid and convenient breastwork. On both sides the sharpshooting began at daybreak and lasted till nightfall. On both sides the marksmanship grew to be fatally accurate. Men were shot dead through the loopholes as they took aim. If the crown of a hat or cap showed above the breast-work, it was pierced by a bullet. After the siege was over, a rebel officer, who had been stationed on this front, stated that most of his killed and wounded men had been hit just above the line of the forehead. Every morning at dawn, Carter, who had his quarters in the midst of the Tenth, was awakened by a spattering of musketry and the singing of Minie-b.a.l.l.s through the branches above his head, and even through the dry foliage of his own sylvan shanty. Now and then a shriek or oath indicated that a bullet had done its brutal work on some human frame. No crowd collected; the men were hardened to such tragedies; four or five bore the victim away; the rest asked, "Who is it?" One death which Carter witnessed was of so remarkable a character that he wrote an account of it to his wife, although not given to noting with much interest the minor and personal incidents of war.

"I had just finished breakfast, and was lying on my back smoking. A bullet whistled so unusually low as to attract my attention and struck with a loud smash in a tree about twenty feet from me. Between me and the tree a soldier, with his great coat rolled under his head for a pillow, lay on his back reading a newspaper which he held in both hands.

I remember smiling to myself to see this man start as the bullet pa.s.sed.

Some of his comrades left off playing cards and looked for it. The man who was reading remained perfectly still, his eyes fixed on the paper with a steadiness which I thought curious, considering the bustle around him. Presently I noticed that there were a few drops of blood on his neck, and that his face was paling. Calling to the card-players, who had resumed their game, I said, 'See to that man with the paper.' They went to him, spoke to him, touched him, and found him perfectly dead. The ball had struck him under the chin, traversed the neck, and cut the spinal column where it joins the brain, making a fearful hole through which the blood had already soaked his great-coat. It was this man's head, and not the tree, which had been struck with such a report. There he lay, still holding the New York Independent, with his eyes fixed on a sermon by Henry Ward Beecher. It was really quite a remarkable circ.u.mstance.

"By the way, you must not suppose, my dear little girl, that bullets often come so near me. I am as careful of myself as you exhort me to be."

Not quite true, this soothing story; and the Colonel knew it to be false as he wrote it. He knew that he was in danger of death at any moment, but he had not the heart to tell his wife so, and make her unhappy.

CHAPTER XXII.

CAPTAIN COLBURNE REINFORCES THE RAVENELS IN TIME TO AID THEM IN RUNNING AWAY.

Colburne had been two or three weeks in the hospital when he was startled by seeing Doctor Ravenel advancing eagerly upon him with a face full of trouble. The Doctor had heard of the young man's hurt, and as his sensitive sympathy invariably exaggerated danger and suffering, especially if they concerned any one whom he loved, he had imagined the worst, and taken the first boat for New Orleans. On the other hand, Colburne surmised from that concerned countenance that the Doctor brought evil tidings of his daughter. Was she unhappy in her marriage, or widowed, or dead? He laughed outright, with a sense of relief equivalent to positive pleasure, when he learned that he alone was the cause of Ravenel's worry.

"I am getting along famously," said he. "Ask Doctor Jackson here. I am not sick at all above my left elbow. Below the elbow the arm seems to belong to some other man."

The Doctor shook his head with the resolute incredulity of a man who is too anxious not to expect the worst.

"But you can't continue to do well here. This air is infected. This great ma.s.s of inflammation, suppuration, mortification and death, has poisoned the atmosphere of the hospital. I scented it the moment I entered the door. Am I not right, Dr. Jackson?"

"Just so. Can't help it. Horrid weather for cases," replied the chief surgeon, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. "Air _is_ poisoned.

Wish to G.o.d I could get a fresh building. My patients would do better in shanties than they will here."

"I knew it," said Ravenel. "Now then, I am a country doctor. I can take this young man to a plantation, and give him pure air."

"That's what you want," observed Jackson, turning to Colburne. "Your arm don't need ice now. Water will do. Better go, I think. I'll see that you have a month's leave of absence. Come, you can go to Taylorsville, and still not miss a chance for fighting. Tried to send him north," he added, addressing Ravenel. "But he's foolish about it. Wants to see Port Hudson out--what you call a knight-errant."

Colburne was in a tremble, body and soul, at the thought of meeting Mrs.

Carter; he had never been so profoundly shaken by even the actuality of encountering Miss Ravenel. Most of us have been in love enough to understand all about it without explanation, and to feel no wonder at him because, after reeling mentally this way and that, he finally said, "I will go." Now and then there is a woman who cannot bear to look upon the man whom she has loved and lost, and who will turn quick corners and run down side streets to escape him, haunting him spiritually perhaps, but bodily keeping afar from him all her life. But stronger natures, who can endure the trial, frequently go to meet it, and seem to find some dolorous comfort in it. As regards Colburne, it may be that he would not have gone to Taylorsville had he not been weak and feverish, and felt a craving for that petting kindness which seems to be a necessity of invalids.

I doubt whether the life in Ravenel's house contributed much to advance his convalescence. His emotions were played upon too constantly and powerfully for the highest good of the temporarily shattered instrument.

He had supposed that he would undergo one great shock on meeting Mrs.

Carter, and that then his trouble would be over. The first thrill was not so potent as he expected; but it was succeeded by a constant unrest, like the burning of a slow fever; he was uneasy all day and slept badly at night. In the house he could not talk freely and gaily, because of Lillie's presence; and out of it he could not feel with calmness, because he was perpetually thinking of her. After all, it may have been the splinters of bone in the arm, quite as much as the arrow in the heart, which worried him. Of Mrs. Carter I must admit that she was not merciful; she made the doubly-wounded Captain talk a great deal of his Colonel. He might recite Carter's martial deeds and qualities as lengthily as he pleased, and recommence _da capo_ to recite them over again, not only without fatiguing her, but without exciting in her mind a thought that he was doing any thing remarkable. She was very much pleased, but she was not a bit grateful. Why should she be! It was perfectly natural to her mind that people should admire the Colonel, and talk much of his glory. Colburne performed this ill-paid task with infinite patience, sympathy, and self-sacrificing love; and no warrior was ever better sung in conversational epics than was Carter the successful by Colburne the disappointed. Under the rude oppression of this subject the bruised shrub exhaled daily sweetness. It is almost painful to contemplate these two loving hearts: the one sending its anxious sympathies a hundred miles away into the deadly trenches of Port Hudson; the other pouring out its sympathies for a present object, but covertly and without a thought of reward. If the pa.s.sionate affection of the woman is charming, the unrequited, unhoping love of the man is sublime.

The Doctor perhaps saw what Lillie could not or would not see.

"My dear," he observed, "you must remember that Colonel Carter is not the husband of Captain Colburne."

"Oh papa!" she answered. "Do you suppose that he doesn't like to talk about Colonel Carter? Of course he does. He admires him, and likes him immensely."

"I dare say--I dare say. But nevertheless you give him very large doses of your husband."

"No, papa; not too large. He is such a good friend that I am sure he doesn't object. Just think how unkind it would be not to want to talk about my husband. You don't understand him if you think he is so shabby."

Nevertheless the Doctor was partially right, and shabby as it may have been, Colburne was no better for the conversation which so much gratified Mrs. Carter. His arm discharged its slivers of bone and healed steadily, but he was thin and pale, slept badly, and had a slow fever.

It must not be supposed that he wilfully brooded over his disappointment; much less that he was angry about it or felt any desire to avenge it. He was too sensible not to struggle against useless pinings; too gentle-hearted and honorable to be even tempted of base or cruel spirits. Not that he was a moral miracle; not that he was even a marvellously bright exception to the general run of humanity; on the contrary he was like many of us, especially when we are under the influence of elevating emotion. Some by me forgotten author has remarked that no earthly being is purer, more like the souls in paradise, than a young man during his first earnest love.

At one time Colburne entirely forgot himself in his sympathy for Mrs.

Carter. When the news came of the unsuccessful and murderous a.s.sault of the fourteenth of June, she was nearly crazy for three days because of her uncertainty concerning the fate of her husband. She must hear constantly from her comforters the a.s.surance that all was undoubtedly well; that, if the Colonel had been engaged in the fighting, he would certainly have been named in the official report; that, if he had received any harm, he would have been all the more sure of being mentioned, etc., etc. Clinging as if for life to these two men, she demanded all their strength to keep her out of the depths of despair.

Every day they went two or three times to the fort, one or other of them, to gather information from pa.s.sing boats concerning the new tragedy. Very honestly and earnestly gratified was Colburne when he was able to bring to Mrs. Carter a letter from her husband, written the day after the struggle, and saying that no harm had befallen him. How that letter was wept over, prayed over, held to a beating heart, and then to loving lips! The house was solemn all day with that immense and unspeakable joy.

Circ.u.mstances soon occurred which caused this lonely and anxious family to be troubled about its own safety. To carry on the siege of Port Hudson, Banks had been obliged to reduce the garrison of New Orleans and of its vast exterior line of defences (a hundred miles from the city on every side) to the lowest point consistent with safety. Meantime Taylor reorganized the remnant of his beaten army, raised new levies by conscription, procured reinforcements from Texas, and resumed the offensive. Brashear City on the Atchafalaya, with its immense ma.s.s of commissary stores, and garrison of raw Nine Months' men, was captured by surprise. A smart little battle was fought at Lafourche Crossing, near Thibodeaux, in which Greene's Texans charged with their usual brilliant impetuosity, but were repulsed by our men with fearful slaughter after a hand-to-hand struggle over the contested cannon. Nevertheless the Union troops soon retired before superior numbers, and Greene's wild mounted rangers were at liberty to patrol the Lafourche Interior.

"We can't stay here long," said Colburne, in the council of war in which the family talked these matters over. "Greene will come this way sooner or later. If he can take Fort Winthrop, he will thereby blockade the Mississippi, cut off Banks' supplies, and force him to raise the siege of Port Hudson. He is sure to try it sooner or later."

"Must we leave our plantation, then?" asked Ravenel in real anguish. To lose his home, his invested capital, pigs, chickens, prospective crop of vegetables, and, worse yet, of enlightened and enn.o.bled negroes, was indeed a torturing calamity. Had he known on the afternoon of that day, that before morning the s.h.a.ggy ponies and long, lank, dirty mosstroopers of Greene's brigade would be upon him, he would not have paused to examine the situation from so many different points of view. Colburne knew by experience the celerity of Texan rangers; he had chased them in forced marches from Brashear City to Alexandria without ever seeing a tail of their horses; and yet even he indulged in a false security.

"I think we have twelve hours before us," he observed. "To-morrow morning we shall have to get up and get, as the natives say. Still it's my opinion--I don't believe Mrs. Carter had better stay here; she ought to go to the fort to-night."