 | CHAPTER IV.
THE DRAMATIC PERSONAGES GO ON A PIC-NIC, AND STUDY
THE WAYS OF NEW BOSTON. Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty |  |
4. CHAPTER IV.
THE DRAMATIC PERSONAGES GO ON A PIC-NIC, AND STUDY
THE WAYS OF NEW BOSTON.
When the Lieutenant-Colonel awoke in the morning he
did not feel much like going on a pic-nic. He had a slight
ache in the top of his head, a huskiness in the throat, a
woolliness on the tongue, a feverishness in the cuticle, and
a crawling tremulousness in the muscles, as though the
molecules of his flesh were separately alive and intertwining
themselves. He drowsily called to mind a red-nosed
old gentleman whom he had seen at a bar, trying in vain
to gather up his change with shaky fingers, and at last
exclaiming, “Curse the change!” and walking off hastily
in evident mortification.
“Ah, Carter! you will come to that yet,” thought the
Lieutenant-Colonel.—“To be sure,” he added after a
moment, “this sobering one's self by main strength of will,
as I did last night, is an extra trial, and enough to shake
any man's system.—But how about breakfast and that
confounded pic-nic?” was his next reflection. “Carter, temperance
man as you are, you must take a cocktail, or you
won't be able to eat a mouthful this morning.”
He rang; ordered an eye-opener, stiff; swallowed it, and
looked at his watch. Eight; never mind; he would wash
and shave; then decide between breakfast and pic-nic.
Thanks to his martial education he was a rapid dresser,
and it still lacked a quarter of nine when he appeared in
the dining saloon. He had time therefore to eat a mutton
chop, but he only looked at it with a disgusted eye, his
stomach being satisfied with a roll and a cup of coffee.
In the outer hall he lighted a segar, but after smoking
about an inch of it, threw the rest away. It was decidedly
get a full breath of out of door air.
“Is my hamper ready?” he said to one of the hall-boys.
“Sir?”
“My hamper, confound you;” repeated the Lieutenant
Colonel, who was more irritable than usual this morning.
“The basket that I ordered last night. Go and ask the
clerk.”
“Yes, sir,” said the boy when he returned. “It's all
right, sir. There it is, sir, behind the door.”
The omnibus, a little late of course, appeared about a
quarter past nine. Besides Colburne it contained three
ladies, two of about twenty-five and one of thirty-five, accompanied
by an equal number of beardless, slender,
jauntily dressed youths whom the Lieutenant-Colonel took
for the ladies' younger brothers, inferring that pic-nics were
family affairs in New Boston. Surveying these juvenile
gentlemen with some contempt, he was about to say to
Colburne, “Very sorry, my dear fellow, but really don't
feel well enough to go out to-day,” when he caught sight
of Miss Ravenel.
“Are you going?” she asked with a blush which was
so indescribably flattering that he instantly responded,
“Yes, indeed.”
Behind Miss Ravenel came the doctor, who immediately
inquired after Carter's health with an air of friendly interest
that contrasted curiously with the glance of suspicion
which he bent on him as soon as his back was
turned. Libbie hastened into the omnibus, very much
afraid that her father would order her back to her room.
It was only by dint of earnest begging that she had obtained
his leave to join the pic-nic, and she knew that he
had given it without suspecting that this sherry-loving
army gentleman would be of the party.
“But where are your matrons, Mr. Colburne?” asked
the doctor. “I see only young ladies, who themselves
need matronizing.”
The beauty of thirty-five looked graciously at him, and
judged him a perfect gentleman.
“Mrs. Whitewood goes out in her own carriage,” an
swered Colburne.
The Doctor bowed, professed himself delighted with the
arrangements, wished them all a pleasant excursion, and
turned away with a smiling face which became exceedingly
serious as he walked slowly up stairs. It was not
thus that young ladies were allowed to go a pleasuring
at New Orleans. The severe proprieties of French manners
with regard to demoiselles were in considerable favor
there. Her mother never would have been caught in this
way, he thought, and was anxious and repentant and angry
with himself, until his daughter returned.
In the omnibus Colburne did the introductions; and now
Carter discovered that the beardless young gentlemen
were not the brothers of the ladies, but most evidently
their cavaliers; and was therefore left to infer that the
beaux of New Boston are blessed with an immortal youth,
or rather childhood. He could hardly help laughing aloud
to think how he had been caught in such a nursery sort of
pic-nic. He glanced from one downy face to another
with a cool, mocking look which no one understood but
Miss Ravenel, who was the only other person in the party
to whom the sight of such juvenile gallants was a rarity.
She bit her lips to repress a smile, and desperately opened
the conversation.
“I am so anxious to see the Eagle's Nest,” she said to
one of the students.
“Oh! you never saw it?” he replied.
There were two things in this response which surprised
Miss Ravenel. In the first place the young gentleman
blushed violently at being addressed; in the second, he
spoke in a very hoarse and weak tone, his voice being not
yet established. Unable to think of anything further to
say, he turned for aid to the maiden of thirty-five, between
whom and himself there was a tender feeling, as
pins by commencing a conversation on the wooden-spoon
exhibition.
“What is the wooden-spoon?” asked Lillie.
“It is a burlesque honor in college,” answered the youth.
“It used to be given to the stupidest fellow in the graduating
class. Now it's given to the jolliest fellow—most
popular fellow—smartest fellow, that doesn't take a real
honor.”
“Allow me to ask, sir, are you a candidate?” inquired
the Lieutenant-Colonel.
Miss Ravenel cringed at this unprovoked and not very
brilliant brutality. The collegian merely stammered “No,
sir,” and blushed immoderately. He was too much puzzled
by the other's impassable stare to comprehend the
sneer at once; but he studied it much during the day, and
that night writhed over the memory of it till towards
morning. Both Carter and the lady of thirty-five ought to
have been ashamed of themselves for taking unfair advantage
of the simplicity and sensitiveness of this lad; but the
feminine sinner had at least this excuse, that it was the
angelic spirit of love, and not the demonaic spirit of scorn,
which prompted her conduct. Perceiving that her boy
was being abused, she inveigled him into a corner of the
vehicle, where they could talk together without interruption.
The conversation of lovers is not usually interesting
to outsiders except as a subject of laughter; it is frequently
stale and flat to a degree which seems incomprehensible
when you consider the strong feelings of the interlocutors.
This is the ordinary sort of thing, at least in New Boston:—
Lady. (smiling) Did you go out yesterday?
Gent. (smiling) Yes.
Lady. Where?
Gent. Only down to the post-office.
Lady. Many people in the streets?
Gent. Not very many.
And all the while the two persons are not thinking of
the walk, nor of the post-office, nor of the people in the
streets, nor of anything of which they speak. They are
thinking of each other; they are prattling merely to be
near each other; they are so full of each other that they
cannot talk of foreign subjects interestingly; and so the
babble has a meaning which the unsympathetic bye-stander
does not comprehend.
After circulating through the city to pick up the various
invited ones, the omnibus was joined by a second omnibus
and two or three family rockaways. The little fleet
of vehicles then sailed into the country, and at the end of
an hour's voyage came to anchor under the lee of a wooded
cliff called the Eagle's Nest, which was the projected
site of the pic-nic. Up the long slope which formed the
back of the cliff, a number of baskets and demijohns were
carried by the youthful beaux of the party with a child-like
zeal which older gallants might not have exhibited.
Carter's weighty hamper was taken care of by a couple
of juniors, who jumped to the task on learning that it belonged
to a United States army officer. He offered repeatedly
to relieve them, but they would not suffer it. In a
roundabout and inarticulate manner they were exhibiting
the fervent patriotism of the time, as well as that perpetual
worship which young men pay to their superiors in
age and knowledge of the world. And oh! how was virtue
rewarded when the basket was opened and its contents
displayed! It was not for the roast chicken that the
two frolicsome juniors cared: the companion baskets
around were crammed with edibles of all manner of
flesh and fowl; it was the sight of six bottles of champagne
which made their eyes rejoice. But with a holy
horror equal to their wicked joy did all the matrons of
the party, and indeed more than half of the younger people,
stare. Carter's champagne was the only spirit of a
vinous or ardent nature present. And when he produced
two bunches of segars from his pockets and proceeded to
Immediately there were opposing partisans in the pic-nic:
those who meant to take a glass of champagne and smoke
a segar, if it were only for the wicked fun of the thing;
and those who meant, not only that they would not smoke
nor drink themselves, but that nobody else should. These
last formed little groups and discussed the affair with
conscientious bitterness. But what to do? The atrocity
puzzled them by its very novelty. The memory of woman
did not go back to the time when an aristocratic New Boston
pic-nic had been so desecrated. I say the memory of
woman advisedly and upon arithmetical calculation; for
in this party the age of the males averaged at least five
years less than that of the females.
“Why don't you stop it, Mrs. Whitewood?” said the
maiden of thirty-five, with girlish enthusiasm. “You are
the oldest person here.” (Mrs. Whitewood did not look
particularly flattered by this statement.) “You have a
perfect right to order anything.” (Mrs. Whitewood looked
as if she would like to order the young lady to let her
alone.) “If I were you, I would step out there and say,
Gentlemen, this must be stopped.”
Mrs. Whitewood might have replied, Why don't you
say it yourself?—you are old enough. But she did not;
such sarcastic observations never occurred to her good-natured
soul; nor, had she been endowed with thousands
of similar conceits, would she have dared utter one. It
was impossible to rub her up to the business of confronting
and putting down the adherents of the champagne
basket. She did think of speaking to Lieutenant-Colonel
Carter privately about it, but before she could decide
in what terms to address him, the last bottle had been
cracked, and then of course it was useless to say anything.
So in much horror of spirit and with many self-reproaches
for her weakness, she gazed helplessly upon what she
considered a scene of wicked revelry. In fact there was
champagne made a pretty strong dose for the unaccustomed
heads of the dozen lads and three or four young
ladies who finished them. Carter himself, cloyed with
the surfeit of yesterday, took almost nothing, to the wonder,
and even, I suspect, to the disappointment of the
temperance party. But he made himself dreadfully obnoxious
by urging his Sillery upon every one, including
the Whitewoods and the maiden of thirty-five. The latter
declined the proffered glass with an air of virtuous indignation
which struck him as uncivil, more particularly as
it evoked a triumphant smile from the adherents of lemonade.
With a cruelty without parallel, and for which I
shall not attempt to excuse him, he immediately offered
the bumper to the young gentleman on whose arm the
lady leaned, with the observation, “Madam, I hope you
will allow your son to take a little.”
The unhappy couple walked away in a speechless condition.
The two juniors heretofore mentioned burst into
hysterical gulphs of laughter, and then pretended that it
was a simultaneous attack of coughing. There were no
more attempts to put down the audacious army gentleman,
and he was accorded that elbow-room which we all
grant to a bull in a china-shop. He was himself somewhat
shocked by the sensation which he had produced.
“What an awful row!” he whispered to Colburne. “I
have plunged this nursery into a state of civil war. When
you said pic-nic, how could I suppose that it was a Sabbath-school
excursion? By the way, it isn't Sunday, is
it? Do you always do it this way in New Boston? But
you are not immaculate. You do some things here which
would draw down the frown of society in other places.
Look at those couples—a young fellow and a girl—strolling
off by themselves among the thickets. Some of them
have been out of sight for half an hour. I should think it
would make talk. I should think Mrs. Whitewood, who
seems to be matron in chief, would stop it. I tell you, it
except among the lower classes. You don't catch our young
Louisianienne making a dryad of herself. I heard one of
these lads ask her to take a walk in the grove on top of the
hill, and I saw her decline with a blush which certainly
expressed astonishment, and, I think, indignation. Now
how the devil can these old girls, who have lived long
enough to be able to put two and two together, be so
dem'd inconsistent? After regarding me with horror for
offering them a glass of champagne, they will commit imprudences
which make them appear as if they had drunk
a bottle of it. And yet, just look. I have too much delicacy
to ask one of those young ones to stroll off with me
in the bushes.—Won't you have a segar? I don't believe
Miss Ravenel objects to tobacco. They smoke in Louisiana;
yes, and they chew and drink, too. Shocking fast set.
I really hope the child never will marry down there. I
take an interest in her. You and I will go out there some
day, and reconquer her patrimony, and put her in possession
of it, and then ask her which she will have.”
Colburne had already talked a good deal with Miss Ravenel.
She was so discouraging to the student beaux,
and Carter had been so general in his attentions with a
view to getting the champagne into circulation, that she
had fallen chiefly to the young lawyer. As to the women,
she did not much enjoy their conversation. At that time
everybody at the North was passionately loyal, especially
those who would not in any chance be called upon to fight
—and this loyalty was expressed towards persons of secessionist
proclivities with a frank energy which the latter
considered brutal incivility. From the male sex Miss
Ravenel obtained some compassion or polite forbearance,
but from her own very little; and the result was that she
avoided ladies, and might perhaps have been driven to
suffer the boy beaux, only that she could make sure of the
society of Colburne. Important as this young gentleman
was to her, she could not forbear teasing him concerning
was satirical upon the juvenile gallants.
“You seem to be the only man in New Boston,” she
said. “I suppose all the males are executed when they are
found guilty of being twenty-one. How came you to escape?
Perhaps you are the executioner. Why don't you
do your office on the Lieutenant-Colonel?”
“I should like to,” answered Colburne.
Miss Ravenel colored, but gave no other sign of comprehension.
“I don't like old beaux,” persisted Colburne.
“Oh! I do. When I left New Orleans I parted from a
beau of forty.”
“Forty! How could you come away?”
“Why, you know that I hated to leave New Orleans.”
“Yes; but I never knew the reason before. Did you
say forty?”
“Yes, sir; just forty. Is there anything strange in a
man of forty being agreeable? I don't see that you New
Bostonians find it difficult to like ladies of forty. But I
havn't told you the worst. I have another beau, whom I
like better than anybody, who is fifty-five.”
“Your father.”
“You are very clever. As you are so bright to-day
perhaps you can explain a mystery to me. Why is it that
these grown women are so fond of the society of these
students? They don't seem to care to get a word from
Lieutenant-Colonel Carter. I don't think they are crazy
after you. They are altogether absorbed in making the
time pass pleasantly to these boys.”
“It is so in all little university towns. Can't you understand
it? When a girl is fifteen a student is naturally a
more attractive object to her than a mechanic or a shop-keeper's
boy. She thinks that to be a student is the chief
end of man; that the world was created in order that
there might be students. Frequently he is a southerner;
and you know how charming southerners are.”
“Oh, I know all about it.”
“Well, the girl of fifteen takes a fancy to a freshman.
She flirts with him all through the four years of his under-graduate
course. Then he departs, promising to come
back, but never keeping his promise. Perhaps by this
time she is really attached to him; and that, or habit, or
her original taste for romance and strangers, gives her a
cant for life; she never flirts with anything but a student
afterwards; can't relish a man who has'nt a flavor of Greek
and Latin. Generally she sticks to the senior class. When
she gets into the thirties she sometimes enters the theological
seminary in search of prey. But she never likes
anything which hasn't a student smack. It reminds one
of the story that when a shark has once tasted human
flesh he will not eat any other unless driven to it by hunger.”
“What a brutal comparison!”
“One consequence of this fascination,” continued Colburne,
“is that New Boston is full of unmarried females.
There is a story in college that a student threw a stone at
a dog, and, missing him, hit seven old maids. On the
other hand there are some good results. These old girls
are bookish and mature, and their conversation is improving
to the under-graduates. They sacrifice themselves,
as woman's wont is, for the good of others.”
“If you ever come to New Orleans I will show you a
fascinating lady of thirty. She is my aunt—or cousin—I
hardly know which to call her—Mrs. Larue. She has
beautiful black hair and eyes. She is a true type of Louisiana.”
“And you are not. What right had you to be a blonde?”
“Because I am my father's daughter. His eyes are blue.
He came from the up-country of South Carolina. There
are plenty of blondes there.”
This conversation, the reader perceives, is not monumentally
grand or important. Next in flatness to the
ordinary talk of two lovers comes, I think, the ordinary
first place they are young, and therefore have few great
ideas to interchange and but limited ranges of experience
to compare; in the second place they are hampered and
embarrassed by the mute but potent consciousness of sex
and the alarming possibility of marriage. I am inclined
to give much credit to the saying that only married people
and vicious people are agreeably fluent in an assembly of
both sexes. When therefore I report the conversation of
these two uncorrupted young persons as being of a moderately
dull quality, I flatter myself that I am publishing the
very truth of nature. But it follows that we had best
finish with this pic-nic as soon as possible. We will suppose
the chickens and sandwiches eaten, the champagne
drunk, the segars smoked, the party gathered into the omnibusses
and rockaways, and the vehicle in which we are
chiefly interested at the door of the New Boston House.
As the Lieutenant-Colonel enters with Miss Ravenel a
waiter hands him a telegraphic message.
“Excuse me,” he says, and reads as they ascend the
stairs together. On the parlor floor he halts and takes
her hand with an air of more seriousness than he has yet
exhibited.
“Miss Ravenel, I must bid you good-bye. I am so sorry!
I leave for Washington immediately. My application for
extension of leave has been refused. I do sincerely hope
that I shall meet you again.”
“Good bye,” she simply said, not unaware that her
hand had been pressed, and for that reason unable or unwilling
to add more.
He left her there, hurried to his room, packed his valise,
and was off in twenty minutes; for when it was necessary
to move quick he could put on a rate of speed not easily
equalled.
Miss Ravenel walked to her father's room in deep meditation.
Without stating the fact in words she felt that
the presence of this mature, masculine, worldly gentleman
had been an unpleasant surprise. If he was inebriate, dissipated,
dangerous, it must be remembered that she did
not know it. In simply smelling of wine and segars he
had an odor of Louisiana, to which she had been accustomed
from childhood even in the grave society of her
father's choice, and which was naturally grateful to the
homesick sensibilities of the exiled girl.
For the last hour or two Doctor Ravenel had paced
his room in no little excitement. He was a notably industrious
man, and had devoted the day to writing an article
on the mineralogy of Arkansas; but even this labor, the
utterance of a life-long scientific enthusiasm, could not
divert him from what I may call maternal anxieties.
Why did I let her go on that silly expedition? he repeated
to himself. It is the last time; absolutely the last.
At this moment she entered the room and kissed him
with more than ordinary effusion. She meant to forestall
his expected reproof for her unexpectedly long absence;
moreover she felt a very little lonely and in need of unusual
affection in consequence of that farewell.
“My dear! how late you are!” said the unappeased
Doctor. “How could you stay out so? How could you
do it? The idea of staying out till dusk; I am astonished.
Really, girls have no prudence. They are no more fit to
take care of themselves amid the dangers and stupidities of
society than so many goslings among the wheels and hoofs
of a crowded street.”
Do not suppose that Miss Ravenel bore these reproofs
with the serene countenance of Fra Angelico's seraphs,
softly beaming out of a halo of eternal love. She was
very much mortified, very much hurt and even a little angry.
A hard word from her father was an exceeding
great trial to her. The tears came into her eyes and the
color into her cheeks and neck, while all her slender form
trembled, not visibly, but consciously, as if her veins were
filled with quicksilver.
“Late! Why, no papa!” (Running to the window and
pointing to the crimson west.) “Why, the sun is only
just gone down. Look for yourself, papa.”
“Well; that is too late. If for nothing else, just think
of the dew,—the chill. I am not pleased. I tell you,
Lillie, I am not pleased.”
“Now, papa, you are right hard. I do say you are right
cruel. How could I help myself? I couldn't come home
alone. I couldn't order the pic-nic to break up and come
home when I pleased. How could I? Just think of it,
papa.”
The Doctor was walking up and down the room with his
hands behind his back and his head bent forward. He had
hardly looked at his daughter: he never looked at her
when he scolded her. He gave her a side-glance now, and
seeing her eyes full of tears, he was unable to answer her
either good or evil. The earnestness of his affection for her
made him very sensitive and sore and cowardly, in case of
a misunderstanding. She was looking at him all the time
that she talked, her face full of her troubled eagerness to
exculpate herself; and now, though he said not a word, she
knew him well enough to see that he had relented from his
anger. Encouraged by this discovery she regained in a
moment or two her self-possession. She guessed the real
cause, or at least the strongest cause of his vexation, and
proceeded to dissipate it.
“Papa, I think there must be something important going
on in the army. Lieutenant-Colonel Carter has
received a telegraph, and is going on by the next train.”
He halted in his walk and faced her with a childlike
smile of pleasure.
“Has he, indeed!” he said as gaily as if he had heard of
some piece of personal good fortune. Then, more gravely
and with a censorious countenance, “Quite time he went,
I should say. It doesn't look well for an officer to be
enjoying himself here in Barataria when his men may be
fighting in Virginia.”
Miss Ravenel thought of suggesting that the Lieutenant-Colonel
had been on sick leave, but concluded that
it would not be well to attempt his defence at the present
moment.
“Well Lillie,” resumed the Doctor, after taking a coupleof
leisurely turns up and down the room, “I don't know
but I have been unjust in blaming you for coming home
so late. I must confess that I don't see how you could
help it. The fault was not yours. It resulted from the
very nature of all such expeditions. It is one of the inconveniences
of pic-nics that common sense is never invited
or never has time to go. I wonder that Mrs.
Whitewood should permit such irrational procedures.”
The Doctor was somewhat apt to exaggerate, whether
in praise or blame, when he became interested in a subject.
“Well, well, I am chiefly in fault myself,” he concluded.
“It must be the last time. My dear, you had better take
off your things and get ready for tea.”
While Lillie was engaged on her toilette the Doctor cogitated,
and came to the conclusion that he must say something
against this Carter, but that he had better say it indirectly.
So, as they sauntered down stairs to the tea-table
he broke out upon the bibulous gentry of Louisiana.
“To-day's Herald will amuse you,” he said. “It contains
the proceedings of a meeting of the planters of St.
Dominic Parish. They are opposed to freedom. They
object to the nineteenth century. They mean to smash
the United States of America. And for all this they pledge
their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. It surpasses
all the jokes in Joe Miller. To think of those
whiskey-soaked, negro-whipping, man-slaughtering ruffians,
with a bottle of Louisiana rum in one hand and a cat-o'-nine-tails
in the other, a revolver in one pocket and a
bowie-knife in the other, drunken, swearing, gambling,
depraved as Satan, with their black wives and mulatto
children—to think of such ruffians prating about their
sacred honor! Why, they absolutely don't understand
communities possessing such a quality as honor, and they
feel bound to talk as if they possessed it. The pirates of
the Isle of Pines might as well pledge their honesty and
humanity. Their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred
honor! Their lives are not worth the powder that will
blow them out of existence. Their fortunes will be worth
less in a couple of years. And as for their sacred honor,
it is a pure figment of ignorant imaginations made delirious
by bad whiskey. That drinking is a ruinous vice.
When I see a man soaking himself with sherry at a
friend's table, after having previously soaked with whiskey
in some groggery, I think I see the devil behind his
chair putting the infernal mark on the back of his coat.
And it is such a common vice in Louisiana. There is
hardly a young man free from it. In the country districts,
when a young fellow is paying attention to a young lady,
the parents don't ask whether he is in the habit of getting
drunk; they take that for granted, and only concern
themselves to know whether he gets cross-drunk or amiable-drunk.
If the former, they have some hesitation; if
the latter, they consent to the match thankfully.”
Miss Ravenel understood perfectly that her father was
cutting at Lieutenant-Colonel Carter over the shoulders of
the convivial gentlemen of Louisiana. She thought him
unjust to both parties, but concluded that she would not
argue the question; being conscious that the subject was
rather too delicately near to her feelings to be discussed
without danger of disclosures.
“Well, they are rushing to their doom,” resumed the
Doctor, turning aside to general reflections, either because
such was the tendency of his mind, or because he thought
that he had demolished the Lieutenant-Colonel. “They
couldn't wait for whiskey to finish them, as it does other
barbarous races. They must call on the political mountains
to crush them. Their slaveholding Sodom will perish
for the lack of five just men, or a single just idea. It must
to the progress of humanity. It must make room for
something more consonant with the railroad, electric-telegraph,
printing-press, inductive philosophy, and practical
Christianity.”
| CHAPTER IV.
THE DRAMATIC PERSONAGES GO ON A PIC-NIC, AND STUDY
THE WAYS OF NEW BOSTON. Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty | |