suppose they did," replied Carter carelessly, as if he saw nothing extraordinary in the idea. "Of course they did. They need all the help that they can get. In fact the rebel Secretary of War paid me the compliment of making me an offer of a regiment, with an assurance that promotion might be relied on. It was done so delicately that I couldn't be offended. In fact it was quite natural, and he probably thought it would be bad taste to omit it. I am a Virginian, you know; and then I was once engaged in some southern schemes and diplomacies—before this war broke out, you understand—oh, no connection with this war. However, I declined his offer. There's a patriot for you."
"I honor you, sir," said Colburne with a fervor which made the Lieutenant-Colonel grin. "You ought to be rewarded."
"Quite so," answered the other in his careless, half-joking style. "Well, I am rewarded. I received a letter yesterday afternoon from your Governor offering me a regiment. I had just finished an elegant dinner with some good fellows, and was going in for a roaring evening. But business before pleasure. I took a cold plunge bath and the next train for New Boston, getting here at midnight. I am off at ten to see his Excellency."
"I am sincerely delighted," exclaimed the young man. "I am delighted to hear that the Governor has had such good sense."
After a moment's hesitation he added anxiously, "Do you remember your invitation to me?"
"Certainly. What do you say to it now? Will you go with me?"
"I will," said Colburne emphatically. "I will try. I only fear that I can neither raise nor command a company."
"Never fear," answered Carter in a tone which pooh-poohed at doubt. "You are just the man. Come round to the bar with me, and let's drink success to our regiment. Oh, I recollect; you don't imbibe. Smoke a segar, then, while we talk it over. I tell you that you are just the man. Noblesse oblige. Any gentleman can make a good enough company officer in three months' practice. As to raising your men, I'll give you my best countenance, whatever that may amount to. And if you actually don't succeed in getting your quota, after all, why, we'll take somebody else's men. Examinations of officers and consolidations of companies bring all these things right, you know."
"I should be sorry to profit by any other man's influence and energy to his harm," answered the fastidious Colburne.
"Pshaw! it's all for the good of the service and of the country. Because a low fellow who keeps a saloon can treat and wheedle sixty or eighty stout fellows into the ranks, do you suppose that he ought to be commissioned an officer and a gentleman? I don't. It can't be in my regiment. Leave those things to me, and go to work without fear. Write to the Adjutant-General of the State to-day for a recruiting commission, and as soon as you get it, open an office. I guarantee that you shall be one of the Captains of the Tenth Barataria."
"Who are the other field officers?" asked Colburne.
"Not appointed yet. I am alone in my glory. I am the regiment. But the Lieutenant-Colonel and Major shall be of the right stamp. I mean to have a word to say as to the choice. I tell you that we'll have the bulliest regiment that ever sprang from the soil of New England."
"Well, I'll try. But I really fear that I shall just get my company recruited in time for the next war."
"Never fear," laughed Carter, as though war were a huge practical joke. "We are in for a four or five years' job of fighting."
"You don't mean it!" said the young man in amazement. "Why, we citizens are all so full of confidence. McClellan, every body says, is organizing a splendid army. Did Bull Run give you such an opinion of the superior fighting qualities of the southerners?"
"Not at all. Both sides fought timidly, as a rule, just as greenhorns naturally would do. The best description of the battle that I have heard was given in a single sentence by my old captain, Lamar, now in command of a Georgia regiment. Said he, 'There never was a more frightened set than our fellows—except your fellows.—Why, we outfought them in the morning; we had them fairly whipped until Johnston came up on our right. The retreat was a mathematical necessity; it was like saying, Two and two make four. When our line was turned, of course it had to retreat."
"Retreat!" groaned Colburne in bitterness over the recollection of that calamitous afternoon. "But you didn't see it. They ran shamefully, and never stopped short of Washington. One man reached New Boston inside of twenty-four hours. It was a panic unparalleled in history."
"Nonsense! Beg your pardon. Did you never read of Austerlitz and Jena and Waterloo? Our men did pretty well for militia. I didn't see the panic, to be sure;—I was picked up before that happened. But I have talked with some of our officers who did see it, and they told me that the papers exaggerated it absurdly. Newspaper correspondents ought not to be allowed in the army. They exaggerate every thing. If we had gained a victory, they would have made it out something greater than Waterloo. You must consider how easily inexperience is deceived. Just get the story of an upset from an old stage-driver, and then from a lady passenger; the first will tell it as quite an ordinary affair, and the second will make it out a tragedy. Now when some old grannies of congressmen and some young ladies of newspaper reporters, none of whom had ever seen either a victory or a defeat before, got entangled among half a dozen disordered regiments they naturally concluded that nothing like it had happened in history. I tell you that it wasn't unparalleled, and that it ought not to have been considered surprising. Whichever of those two green armies got repulsed was pretty sure to be routed. That was a very pretty manœuvre, though, that coming up of Johnston on our right. Patterson ought to be court-martialed for his stupidity."
"Stupidity! He is a traitor," exclaimed Colburne.
"Oh! oh!" expostulated the Colonel with a cough. "If we are to try all our dull old gentlemen as traitors, we shall have our hands full. That's something like hanging homely old women for witches.—By the way, how are the Allstons? I mean the—the Ravenels. Well, are they? Young lady as blooming and blushing as ever? Glad to hear it. Can't stop to call on them; my train goes in ten minutes.—I am delighted that you are going to fall in with me. Good bye for to-day."
Away he went, leaving Colburne in wonder over his contrasts of slanginess and gentility, his mingled audacity and insouciance of character, and all the picturesque ins and outs of his moral architecture, so different from the severe plainness of the spiritual temples common in New Boston. The young man would have preferred that his future Colonel should not drink and swear; but he would not puritanically decide that a man who drank and swore could not be a good officer. He did not know army men well enough to dare judge them with positiveness; and he certainly would not try them by the moral standards according to which he tried civilians. The facts that Carter was a professional soldier, and that he had shed his blood in the cause of the country, were sufficient to make Colburne regard with charity all his frank vices.
I must not allow the reader to suppose that I present Carter as a type of all regular officers. There were men in the old army who never tasted liquors, who never blasphemed, who did not waste their substance in riotous living, who could be accused of no evil practices, who were models of Christian gentlemen. The American service, as well as the English, had its Havelocks, its Headly Vicars, its Colonel Newcomes. Nevertheless I do venture to say that it had also a great many men whose moral habits were cut more or less on the Carter pattern, who swore after the fashion of the British army in Flanders, whose heads could carry drink like Dugald Dalgetty's, and who had even other vices concerning which my discreet pen is silent.
Within a week after the conversation above reported Colburne opened a recruiting office, advertised the "Putnam Rangers" largely, and adorned his doorway with a transparency representing Old Put in a brand-new uniform riding sword in hand down the stone steps of Horse-neck. His company, as yet in embryo, was one of the ten accepted out of the nineteen offered for Carter's regiment.
