Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty Part 15

"C'est effrayant," replied Mrs. Larue. "But you are out of fas.h.i.+on to weep. We have given over that feminine weakness, _ma chere_. That fountain is dry. The inhumanities of these Yankee Vandals have driven us into a despair too profound for tears. We do not flatter Beast Butler with a sob."

Although she talked so strongly she did not seem more than half in earnest. A half smile lurked around her lips of deep rose-color, and her bright, almond-shaped black eyes sparkled with interest rather than with pa.s.sion. By the way, she was not a venerable personage, and not properly Lillie's aunt, but only the widow of the late Mrs. Ravenel's brother, not more than thirty-three years of age and still decidedly pretty. Her complexion was dark, pale and a little too thick, but it was relieved by the jet black of her regular eye-brows and of her ma.s.ses of wavy hair.

Her face was oval, her nose, straight, her lips thin but nicely modeled, her chin little and dimpled; her expression was generally gay and coquettish, but amazingly variable and capable of running through a vast gamut of sentiments, including affection, melancholy and piety. Though short she was well built, with a deep, healthy chest, splendid arms and finely turned ankles. She did not strike a careless observer as handsome, but she bore close examination with advantage. The Doctor instinctively suspected her; did not think her a safe woman to have about, although he could allege no overtly wicked act against her; and had brought up Lillie to be shy of her society. Nevertheless it was impossible just now to keep her at a distance, for he would probably be much away from home, and it was necessary to leave his daughter with some one.

In politics, if not in other things, Mrs. Larue was as double-faced as Ja.n.u.s. To undoubted secessionists she talked bitterly, coa.r.s.ely, scandalously against the northerners. If advisable she could go on about Picayune Butler, Beast Butler, Traitor Farragut, Vandal Yankees, wooden-nutmeg heroes, mudsills, nasty tinkers, n.i.g.g.e.r-wors.h.i.+ppers, amalgamationists, &c. &c. from nine o'clock in the morning when she got up, till midnight when she went to bed. At the same time she could call in a quiet way on the mayor or the commanding General to wheedle protection out of them by playing her fine eyes and smiling and flattering. Knowing the bad social repute of the Ravenels as Unionists, she would not invite them into her own roomy house; but she was pleased to have them in their own dwelling next door, because they might at a pinch serve her as friends at the Butler court. On the principle of justice to Satan, I must say that she was no fair sample of the proud and stiff-necked slaveholding aristocracy of Louisiana. Neither was she one of the patriotic and puritan few who shared the Doctor's sympathies and principles. As she came of an old French Creole family, and her husband had been a lawyer of note and an ultra southern politician, she belonged, like the Ravenels, to the patrician order of New Orleans, only that she was counted among the Soule set, while her relatives had gone over to the Barker faction. She had not been reduced to beggary by the advent of the Yankees; her estate was not in the now worthless investments of negroes, plantations, steamboats, or railroads, but in bank stock; and the New Orleans banks, though robbed of their specie by the flying Lovell, still made their paper pa.s.s and commanded a market for their shares. But Mrs. Larue was disturbed lest she might in some unforeseen manner follow the general rush to ruin; and thus, in respect to the Vandal invaders, she was at once a little timorous and a little savage.

The conversation between niece and youthful aunt was interrupted by a call from Mrs. and Miss Langdon, two stern, thin, pale ladies in black, without hoops, highly aristocratic and inexorably rebellious. They started when they saw the young lady; then recovered themselves and looked on her with unacquainted eyes. Miss Larue made haste, smiling inwardly, to introduce her cousin Miss Ravenel.

Ah, indeed, Miss Ravenel! They remembered having met Miss Ravenel formerly. But really they had not expected to see her in New Orleans.

They supposed that she had taken up her residence at the north with her father.

Lillie trembled with mortification and colored with anger. She felt with a shock that sentence of social ostracism had been pa.s.sed upon her because of her father's fidelity to the Union. Was this the reward that her love for her native city, her defence of Louisiana in the midst of Yankee-land, had deserved? Was she to be ignored, cut, satirized, because she was her father's daughter? She rebelled in spirit against such injustice and cruelty, and remained silent, simply expressing her feelings by a haughty bow. She disdained to enter upon any self-defence; she perceived that she could not, without pa.s.sing judgment upon her much adored papa; and finally she knew that she was too tremulous to speak with good effect. The Langdons and Mrs. Larue proceeded to discuss affairs political; metaphorically tying Beast Butler to a flaming stake and performing a scalp dance around it, making a drinking cup of his skull, quaffing from it refres.h.i.+ng draughts of Yankee blood. Lillie remembered that, disagreeably loyal as the New Boston ladies were, she had not heard from their lips any such conversational atrocities. She did not sympathize much when Mrs. Langdon entered on a lyrical recital of her own wrongs and sorrows. She was sorry, indeed, to hear that young Fred Langdon had been killed at Fort Jackson; but then the mother expressed such a squaw-like fury for revenge as quite shocked and rather disgusted our heroine; and moreover she could not forget how coolly she had been treated merely because she was her dear father's daughter. She actually felt inclined to laugh satirically when the two visitors proceeded to relate jointly and with a species of solemn ferocity how they had that morning snubbed a Yankee officer.

"The brute got up and offered us his seat in the cars. I didn't look at him. Neither of us looked at him. I said--we both said--'We accept nothing from Yankees.' I remained--we both remained--standing."

Such was the mild substance of the narrative, but it was horrible in the telling, with fierce little hisses and glares, sticking out from it like quills of the fretful porcupine. Miss Ravenel did not sympathize with the conduct of the fair snubbers, and I fear also that she desired to make them feel uncomfortable.

"Really," she observed, "I think it was right civil in him to give up his seat. I didn't know that they were so polite. I thought they treated the citizens with all sorts of indignities."

To this the Langdons vouchsafed no reply except by rising and taking their departure.

"Good-day, Miss Ravenel," they said. "So surprised ever to have seen you in New Orleans again!"

Nor did they ask her to visit them, as they very urgently did Mrs.

Larue. It seemed likely to Lillie that she would not find life in New Orleans so pleasant as she had expected. Half her old friends had disappeared, and the other half had turned to enemies. She was to be cut in the street, to be glared at in church, to be sneered at in the parlor, to be put on the defensive, to be obliged to fight for herself and her father. Her temper rose at the thought of such undeserved hardness, and she felt that if it continued long she should turn loyal for very spite.

Doctor Ravenel, returning from his interview with Colburne, met the Langdon ladies in the hall, and, although they hardly nodded, waited on them to the outer door with his habitual politeness. Lillie caught a glimpse of this from the parlor, and was infuriated by their incivility and his lack of resentment.

"Didn't they speak to you, papa?" she cried, running to him. "Then I would have let them find their own way out. What are you so patient for?"

"My dear, I am merely following the Christian example set me by these low Yankees whom we all hate so," said papa, smiling. "I have seen a couple of officers shamefully insulted to-day by a woman who calls herself a lady. They returned not a word, not even a look of retaliation."

"Yes, but--" replied Lillie, and after a moment's hesitation, concluded, "I wouldn't stand it."

"We must have some consideration, too, for people who have lost relatives, lost property, lost all, however their folly may have deserved punishment."

"Havn't _we_ lost property?" snapped the young lady.

"Do you ask for the sake of argument, or for information?"

"Well--I should really like to know--yes, for information," said Lillie, deciding to give up the argument, which was likely to be perplexing to a person who had feelings on both sides.

"Our railroad property," stated the Doctor, "won't be worth much until it is recovered from the hands of the rebels."

"But that is nearly all our property."

"Except this house."

"Yes, except the house. But how are we to live in the house without money?"

"My dear, let us trust G.o.d to provide. I hope to be so guided as to discover something to do. I have found a friend to-day. Captain Colburne will be here this evening."

"Oh! will he?" said the young lady, blus.h.i.+ng with pleasure.

It would be delightful to see any amicable visage in this city of enemies; and moreover she had never disputed that Captain Colburne, though a Yankee, was gentlemanly and agreeable; she had even admitted that he was handsome, though not so handsome as Colonel Carter. Mrs.

Larue was also gratified at the prospect of a male visitor. As Sam Weller might have phrased it, had he known the lady, a man was Mrs.

Larue's "particular wanity." The kitchen department of the Ravenels not being yet organized, they dined that day with their relative. The meal over, they went to their own house, Lillie to attend to housekeeping duties, and the Doctor to forget all trouble in a box of minerals.

Lillie's last words to Mrs. Larue had been, "You must spend the evening with us. This Captain Colburne is right pleasant."

"Is he? We will bring him over to the right side. When he gives up the blue uniform for the grey I shall adore him."

"I don't think he will change his coat easily."

In her own house she continued to think of the Captain's coat, and then of another coat, the same in color, but with two rows of b.u.t.tons.

"Who did you see out, papa?" she asked presently.

"Who did I see out? Mr. Colburne, as I told you."

"n.o.body else, papa?"

"I don't recollect," he said absent-mindedly, as he settled himself to a microscopic contemplation of a bit of ore.

"Don't wrinkle up your forehead so. I wish you wouldn't. It makes you look old enough to have come over with Christopher Columbus."

It was a part of her adoration of her father that she could not bear to see in him the least symptoms of increasing age.

"I don't think that I saw a single old acquaintance," said the Doctor, rubbing his head thoughtfully. "It is astonis.h.i.+ng how the high and mighty ones have disappeared from this city, where they used to suppose that they defied the civilized world. The barbarians didn't know what the civilized world could do to them. The conceited braggadocia of New Orleans a year ago is a most comical reminiscence now, in the midst of its speechless terror and submission. One can't help thinking of frogs sitting around their own puddle and trying to fill the universe with their roarings. Some urchin throws a stone into the puddle. You see fifty pairs of legs twinkle in the air, and the uproar is followed by silence. It was just so here. The United States pitched Farragut and Butler into the puddle of secession, and all our political roarers dived out of sight. Many of them are still here, but they keep their noses under water. By the way, I did see two of my old students, Bradley and John Akers. Bradley told me that the rebel authorities maintained a pretence of victory until the last moment, probably in order to keep the populace quiet while they got themselves and their property out of the city. He was actually reading an official bulletin stating that the Yankee fleet had been sunk in pa.s.sing the forts when he heard the bang, bang, bang of Farragut's cannonade at Chalmette. Akers was himself at Chalmette. He says that the Hartford came slowly around the bend below the fort with a most provoking composure. They immediately opened on her with all their artillery. She made no reply and began to turn. They thought she was about to run away, and hurrahed l.u.s.tily. Suddenly, whang! cras.h.!.+ she sent her whole broadside into them. Akers says that not a man of them waited for a second salute; they started for the woods in a body at full speed; he never saw such running. Their heels twinkled like the heels of the frog that I spoke of."

"But they made a good fight at the forts, papa."

"My dear, the devil makes a good fight against his Maker. But it small credit to him--it only proves his amazing stupidity."

"Papa," said Lillie after a few minutes of silence, "I think you might let those stones alone and take me out to walk."

"To-morrow, my child. It is nearly sunset now, and Mr. Colburne may come early."

A quarter of an hour later he laid aside his minerals and picked up his hat.

"Where are you going?" demanded Lillie eagerly and almost pettishly. It was a question that she never failed to put to him in that same semi-aggrieved tone every time that he essayed to leave her. She did not want him to go out unless she went in his company. If he would go, it was, "When will you come back?" and when he returned it was, "Where have you been?" and "Who did you see?" and "What did he say?" &c. &c. Never was a child so haunted by a pet sheep, or a handsome husband by a plain wife, as was this charming papa by his doating daughter.

"I am going to Dr. Elderkin's," said Ravenel. "I hear that he has been kind enough to store my electrical machine during our absence. He was out when I called on him this morning, but he was to be at home by six this evening. I am anxious to see the machine."

"Oh, papa, don't! How can you be so addled about your sciences! You are just like a little boy come home from a visit, and pulling over his playthings. Do let the machine go till to-morrow."

"My dear, consider how costly a plaything it is. I couldn't replace it for five hundred dollars."

"When will you come back?" demanded Lillie.