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 one of his qualmish mornings, and he was glad to 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," answered 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 appeared openly later in the
day. She set him on his intellectual 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 demoniac
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
distribute them, the moral excitation reached its height. 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 a good deal of jollity and racket. The six bottles of
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 wouldn't do in New York or Philadelphia, or any such
place, 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 the local peculiarities of New
Boston. This afternoon she 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 shopkeeper'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 hasn't 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 talk of two young persons of the opposite sexes. In
the 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 of the army was agreeable to her, and that
his farewell 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 couple of 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 the meaning of the words. They have heard of respectable
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 be razed and got out of the
way, like any other obstacle 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."