Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: "ASK YOUR SISTER," SHE REPLIED. "IT WAS HER PLAN."]
LOUISIANA
BY
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT
AUTHOR OF "HAWORTH'S," "THAT LASS O' LOWRIE'S," ETC.
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
743 AND 745 BROADWAY
1880
COPYRIGHT BY
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT,
1880.
(_All rights reserved._)
TROW'S
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING Co.,
201-213 East 12th St.,
NEW YORK.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
LOUISIANA
CHAPTER II.
WORTH
CHAPTER III.
"HE IS DIFFERENT"
CHAPTER IV.
A NEW TYPE
CHAPTER V.
"I HAVE HURT YOU"
CHAPTER VI.
THE ROAD TO THE RIGHT
CHAPTER VII.
"SHE AINT YERE"
CHAPTER VIII.
"NOTHING HAS HURT YOU"
CHAPTER IX.
"DON'T YE, LOUISIANNY?"
CHAPTER X.
THE GREAT WORLD
CHAPTER XI.
A RUSTY NAIL
CHAPTER XII.
"MEBBE"
CHAPTER XIII.
A NEW PLAN
CHAPTER XIV.
CONFESSIONS
CHAPTER XV.
"IANTHY!"
CHAPTER XVI.
"DON'T DO NO ONE A ONJESTICE"
CHAPTER XVII.
A LEAF
CHAPTER XVIII.
"HE KNEW THAT I LOVED YOU"
LOUISIANA.
CHAPTER I.
LOUISIANA.
Olivia Ferrol leaned back in her chair, her hands folded upon her lap.
People passed and repassed her as they promenaded the long "gallery,"
as it was called; they passed in couples, in trios; they talked with
unnecessary loudness, they laughed at their own and each other's jokes;
they flirted, they sentimentalized, they criticised each other, but
none of them showed any special interest in Olivia Ferrol, nor did Miss
Ferrol, on her part, show much interest in them.
She had been at Oakvale Springs for two weeks. She was alone, out of
her element, and knew nobody. The fact that she was a New Yorker, and
had never before been so far South, was rather against her. On her
arrival she had been glanced over and commented upon with candor.
"She is a Yankee," said the pretty and remarkably youthful-looking
mother of an apparently grown-up family from New Orleans. "You can see
it."
And though the remark was not meant to be exactly severe, Olivia felt
that it was very severe, indeed, under existing circumstances. She
heard it as she was giving her orders for breakfast to her own
particular jet-black and highly excitable waiter, and she felt guilty
at once and blushed, hastily taking a sip of ice-water to conceal her
confusion. When she went upstairs afterward she wrote a very
interesting letter to her brother in New York, and tried to make an
analysis of her sentiments for his edification.
"You advised me to come here because it would be novel as well as
beneficial," she wrote. "And it certainly is novel. I think I feel
like a Pariah--a little. I am aware that even the best bred and most
intelligent of them, hearing that I have always lived in New York, will
privately regret it if they like me and remember it if they dislike me.
Good-natured and warm-hearted as they seem among themselves, I am sure
it will be I who will have to make the advances--if advances are
made--and I must be very amiable, indeed, if I intend that they shall
like me."
But she had not been well enough at first to be in the humor to make
the advances, and consequently had not found her position an exciting
one. She had looked on until she had been able to rouse herself to
some pretty active likes and dislikes, but she knew no one.
She felt this afternoon as if this mild recreation of looking on had
begun rather to pall upon her, and she drew out her watch, glancing at
it with a little yawn.
"It is five o'clock," she said. "Very soon the band will make its
appearance, and it will bray until the stages come in. Yes, there it
is!"
The musical combination to which she referred was composed of six or
seven gentlemen of color who played upon brazen instruments, each in
different keys and different time. Three times a day they collected on
a rustic kiosk upon the lawn and played divers popular airs with an
intensity, fervor, and muscular power worthy of a better cause. They
straggled up as she spoke, took their places and began, and before they
had played many minutes the most exciting event of the day occurred, as
it always did somewhere about this hour. In the midst of the gem of
their collection was heard the rattle of wheels and the crack of whips,
and through the rapturous shouts of the juvenile guests, the two
venerable, rickety stages dashed up with a lumbering flourish, and a
spasmodic pretense of excitement, calculated to deceive only the
feeblest mind.
At the end of the gallery they checked themselves in their mad career,
the drivers making strenuous efforts to restrain the impetuosity of the
four steeds whose harness rattled against their ribs with an unpleasant
bony sound. Half a dozen waiters rushed forward, the doors were flung
open, the steps let down with a bang, the band brayed insanely, and the
passengers alighted.--"One, two, three, four," counted Olivia Ferrol,
mechanically, as the first vehicle unburdened itself. And then, as the
door of the second was opened: "One--only one: and a very young one,
too. Dear me! Poor girl!"
This exclamation might naturally have fallen from any quick-sighted and
sympathetic person. The solitary passenger of the second stage stood
among the crowd, hesitating, and plainly overwhelmed with timorousness.
Three waiters were wrestling with an ugly shawl, a dreadful shining
valise, and a painted wooden trunk, such as is seen in country stores.
In their enthusiastic desire to dispose creditably of these articles
they temporarily forgot the owner, who, after one desperate, timid
glance at them, looked round her in vain for succor. She was very
pretty and very young and very ill-dressed--her costume a bucolic
travesty on prevailing modes. She did not know where to go, and no one
thought of showing her; the loungers about the office stared at her;
she began to turn pale with embarrassment and timidity. Olivia Ferrol
left her chair and crossed the gallery. She spoke to a servant a
little sharply:
"Why not show the young lady into the parlor?" she said.
The girl heard, and looked at her helplessly, but with gratitude. The
waiter darted forward with hospitable rapture.
"Dis yeah's de way, miss," he said, "right inter de 'ception-room.
Foller me, ma'am."
Olivia returned to her seat. People were regarding her with curiosity,
but she was entirely oblivious of the fact.
"That is one of them," she was saying, mentally. "That is one of them,
and a very interesting type it is, too."
To render the peculiarities of this young woman clearer, it may be well
to reveal here something of her past life and surroundings. Her father
had been a literary man, her mother an illustrator of books and
magazine articles. From her earliest childhood she had been surrounded
by men and women of artistic or literary occupations, some who were
drudges, some who were geniuses, some who balanced between the two
extremes, and she had unconsciously learned the tricks of the trade.
She had been used to people who continually had their eyes open to
anything peculiar and interesting in human nature, who were enraptured
by the discovery of new types of men, women, and emotions. Since she
had been left an orphan she had lived with her brother, who had been
reporter, editor, contributor, critic, one after the other, until at
last he had established a very enviable reputation as a brilliant,
practical young fellow, who knew his business, and had a fine career
open to him. So it was natural that, having become interested in the
general friendly fashion of dissecting and studying every scrap of
human nature within reach, she had followed more illustrious examples,
and had become very critical upon the subject of "types" herself.
During her sojourn at Oakvale she had studied the North Carolinian
mountaineer "type" with the enthusiasm of an amateur. She had talked
to the women in sunbonnets who brought fruit to the hotel, and sat on
the steps and floor of the galleries awaiting the advent of customers
with a composure only to be equaled by the calmness of the noble
savage; she had walked and driven over the mountain roads, stopping at
wayside houses and entering into conversation with the owners until she
had become comparatively well known, even in the space of a fortnight,
and she had taken notes for her brother until she had roused him to
sharing her own interest in her discoveries.
"I am sure you will find a great deal of material here," she wrote to
him. "You see how I have fallen a victim to that dreadful habit of
looking at everything in the light of material. A man is no longer a
man--he is 'material'; sorrow is not sorrow, joy is not joy--it is
'material.' There is something rather ghoulish in it. I wonder if
anatomists look at people's bodies as we do at their minds, and if to
them every one is a 'subject.' At present I am interested in a species
of girl I have discovered. Sometimes she belongs to the better
class--the farmers, who have a great deal of land and who are the rich
men of the community,--sometimes she lives in a log cabin with a mother
who smokes and chews tobacco, but in either case she is a surprise and
a mystery. She is always pretty, she is occasionally beautiful, and in
spite of her house, her people, her education or want of it, she is
instinctively a refined and delicately susceptible young person. She
has always been to some common school, where she has written
compositions on sentimental or touching subjects, and when she belongs
to the better class she takes a fashion magazine and tries to make her
dresses like those of the ladies in the colored plates, and, I may add,
frequently fails. I could write a volume about her, but I wont. When
your vacation arrives, come and see for yourself." It was of this
class Miss Ferrol was thinking when she said: "That is one of them, and
a very interesting type it is, too."
When she went in to the dining-room to partake of the six o'clock
supper, she glanced about her in search of the new arrival, but she had
not yet appeared. A few minutes later, however, she entered. She came
in slowly, looking straight before her, and trying very hard to appear
at ease. She was prettier than before, and worse dressed. She wore a
blue, much-ruffled muslin and a wide collar made of imitation lace.
She had tucked her sleeves up to her elbow with a band and bow of black
velvet, and her round, smooth young arms were adorable. She looked for
a vacant place, and, seeing none, stopped short, as if she did not know
what to do. Then some magnetic attraction drew her eye to Olivia
Ferrol's. After a moment's pause, she moved timidly toward her.
"I--I wish a waiter would come," she faltered.
At that moment one on the wing stopped in obedience to a gesture of
Miss Ferrol's--a delicate, authoritative movement of the head.
"Give this young lady that chair opposite me," she said.
The chair was drawn out with a flourish, the girl was seated, and the
bill of fare was placed in her hands.
"Thank you," she said, in a low, astonished voice.
Olivia smiled.
"That waiter is my own special and peculiar property," she said, "and I
rather pride myself on him."
But her guest scarcely seemed to comprehend her pleasantry. She looked
somewhat awkward.
"I--don't know much about waiters," she ventured. "I'm not used to
them, and I suppose they know it. I never was at a hotel before."
"You will soon get used to them," returned Miss Ferrol.
The girl fixed her eyes upon her with a questioning appeal. They were
the loveliest eyes she had ever seen, Miss Ferrol
thought--large-irised, and with wonderful long lashes fringing them and
curling upward, giving them a tender, very wide-open look. She seemed
suddenly to gain courage, and also to feel it her duty to account for
herself.
"I shouldn't have come here alone if I could have got father to come
with me," she revealed. "But he wouldn't come. He said it wasn't the
place for him. I haven't been very well since mother died, and he
thought I'd better try the Springs awhile. I don't think I shall like
it."
"I don't like it," replied Miss Ferrol, candidly, "but I dare say you
will when you know people."
The girl glanced rapidly and furtively over the crowded room, and then
her eyes fell.
"I shall never know them," she said, in a depressed undertone.
In secret Miss Ferrol felt a conviction that she was right; she had not
been presented under the right auspices.
"It is rather clever and sensitive in her to find it out so quickly,"
she thought. "Some girls would be more sanguine, and be led into
blunders."
They progressed pretty well during the meal. When it was over, and
Miss Ferrol rose, she became conscious that her companion was troubled
by some new difficulty, and a second thought suggested to her what its
nature was.
"Are you going to your room?" she asked.
"I don't know," said the girl, with the look of helpless appeal again.
"I don't know where else to go. I don't like to go out there"
(signifying the gallery) "alone."
"Why not come with me?" said Miss Ferrol. "Then we can promenade
together."
"Ah!" she said, with a little gasp of relief and gratitude. "Don't you
mind?"
"On the contrary, I shall be very glad of your society," Miss Ferrol
answered. "I am alone, too."
So they went out together and wandered slowly from one end of the
starlit gallery to the other, winding their way through the crowd that
promenaded, and, upon the whole, finding it rather pleasant.
"I shall have to take care of her," Miss Ferrol was deciding; "but I do
not think I shall mind the trouble."
The thing that touched her most was the girl's innocent trust in her
sincerity--her taking for granted that this stranger, who had been
polite to her, had been so not for worldly good breeding's sake, but
from true friendliness and extreme generosity of nature. Her first
shyness conquered, she related her whole history with the unreserve of
a child. Her father was a farmer, and she had always lived with him on
his farm. He had been too fond of her to allow her to leave home, and
she had never been "away to school."
"He has made a pet of me at home," she said. "I was the only one that
lived to be over eight years old. I am the eleventh. Ten died before
I was born, and it made father and mother worry a good deal over
me--and father was worse than mother. He said the time never seemed to
come when he could spare me. He is very good and kind--is father," she
added, in a hurried, soft-voiced way. "He's rough, but he's very good
and kind."
Before they parted for the night Miss Ferrol had the whole genealogical
tree by heart. They were an amazingly prolific family, it seemed.
There was Uncle Josiah, who had ten children, Uncle Leander, who had
fifteen, Aunt Amanda, who had twelve, and Aunt Nervy, whose belongings
comprised three sets of twins and an unlimited supply of odd numbers.
They went upstairs together and parted at Miss Ferrol's door, their
rooms being near each other.
The girl held out her hand.
"Good-night!" she said. "I'm so thankful I've got to know you."
Her eyes looked bigger and wider-open than ever; she smiled, showing
her even, sound, little white teeth. Under the bright light of the
lamp the freckles the day betrayed on her smooth skin were not to be
seen.
"Dear me!" thought Miss Ferrol. "How startlingly pretty, in spite of
the cotton lace and the dreadful polonaise!"
She touched her lightly on the shoulder.
"Why, you are as tall as I am!" she said.
"Yes," the girl replied, depressedly; "but I'm twice as broad."
"Oh no--no such thing." And then, with a delicate glance down over
her, she said--"It is your dress that makes you fancy so. Perhaps your
dressmaker does not understand your figure,"--as if such a failing was
the most natural and simple thing in the world, and needed only the
slightest rectifying.
"I have no dressmaker," the girl answered. "I make my things myself.
Perhaps that is it."
"It is a little dangerous, it is true," replied Miss Ferrol. "I have
been bold enough to try it myself, and I never succeeded. I could give
you the address of a very thorough woman if you lived in New York."
"But I don't live there, you see. I wish I did. I never shall,
though. Father could never spare me."
Another slight pause ensued, during which she looked admiringly at Miss
Ferrol. Then she said "good-night" again, and turned away.
But before she had crossed the corridor she stopped.
"I never told you my name," she said.
Miss Ferrol naturally expected she would announce it at once, but she
did not. An air of embarrassment fell upon her. She seemed almost
averse to speaking.
"Well," said Miss Ferrol, smiling, "what is it?"
She did not raise her eyes from the carpet as she replied, unsteadily:
"It's Louisiana."
Miss Ferrol answered her very composedly:
"The name of the state?"
"Yes. Father came from there."
"But you did not tell me your surname."
"Oh! that is Rogers. You--you didn't laugh. I thought you would."
"At the first name?" replied Miss Ferrol. "Oh no. It is unusual--but
names often are. And Louise is pretty."
"So it is," she said, brightening. "I never thought of that. I hate
Louisa. They will call it 'Lowizy,' or 'Lousyanny.' I could sign
myself Louise, couldn't I?"
"Yes," Miss Ferrol replied.
And then her _protegee_ said "good-night" for the third time, and
disappeared.