EUGENE LEROY AND ALFRED LORRAINE.
Nearly twenty years before the war, two young men, of French and Spanish
descent, sat conversing on a large verandah which surrounded an ancient
home on the Mississippi River. It was French in its style of
architecture, large and rambling, with no hint of modern improvements.
The owner of the house was the only heir of a Creole planter. He had
come into possession of an inheritance consisting of vast baronial
estates, bank stock, and a large number of slaves. Eugene Leroy, being
deprived of his parents, was left, at an early age, to the care of a
distant relative, who had sent him to school and college, and who
occasionally invited him to spend his vacations at his home. But Eugene
generally declined his invitations, as he preferred spending his
vacations at the watering places in the North, with their fashionable
and not always innocent gayeties. Young, vivacious, impulsive, and
undisciplined, without the restraining influence of a mother's love or
the guidance of a father's hand, Leroy found himself, when his college
days were over, in the dangerous position of a young man with vast
possessions, abundant leisure, unsettled principles, and uncontrolled
desires. He had no other object than to extract from life its most
seductive draughts of ease and pleasure. His companion, who sat opposite
him on the verandah, quietly smoking a cigar, was a remote cousin, a
few years older than himself, the warmth of whose Southern temperament
had been modified by an infusion of Northern blood.
Eugene was careless, liberal, and impatient of details, while his
companion and cousin, Alfred Lorraine, was selfish, eager, keen, and
alert; also hard, cold, methodical, and ever ready to grasp the main
chance. Yet, notwithstanding the difference between them, they had
formed a warm friendship for each other.
"Alfred," said Eugene, "I am going to be married."
Lorraine opened his eyes with sudden wonder, and exclaimed: "Well,
that's the latest thing out! Who is the fortunate lady who has bound you
with her silken fetters? Is it one of those beautiful Creole girls who
were visiting Augustine's plantation last winter? I watched you during
our visit there and thought that you could not be proof against their
attractions. Which is your choice? It would puzzle me to judge between
the two. They had splendid eyes, dark, luminous, and languishing; lovely
complexions and magnificent hair. Both were delightful in their manners,
refined and cultured, with an air of vivacity mingled with their repose
of manner which was perfectly charming. As the law only allows us one,
which is your choice? Miss Annette has more force than her sister, and
if I could afford the luxury of a wife she would be my choice."
"Ah, Alf," said Eugene, "I see that you are a practical business man. In
marrying you want a wife to assist you as an efficient plantation
mistress. One who would tolerate no waste in the kitchen and no disorder
in the parlor."
"Exactly so," responded Lorraine; "I am too poor to marry a mere parlor
ornament. You can afford to do it; I cannot."
"Nonsense, if I were as poor as a church mouse I would marry the woman I
love."
"Very fine sentiments," said Lorraine, "and were I as rich as you I
would indulge in them also. You know, when my father died I had great
expectations. We had always lived in good style, and I never thought for
a moment he was not a rich man, but when his estate was settled I found
it was greatly involved, and I was forced to face an uncertain future,
with scarcely a dollar to call my own. Land, negroes, cattle, and horses
all went under the hammer. The only thing I retained was the education I
received at the North; that was my father's best investment, and all my
stock in trade. With that only as an outfit, it would be madness for me
to think of marrying one of those lovely girls. They remind me of
beautiful canary birds, charming and pretty, but not fitted for the wear
and tear of plantation life. Well, which is your choice?"
"Neither," replied Eugene.
"Then, is it that magnificent looking widow from New Orleans, whom we
met before you had that terrible spell of sickness and to whom you
appeared so devoted?"
"Not at all. I have not heard from her since that summer. She was
fascinating and handsome, but fearfully high strung."
"Were you afraid of her?"
"No; but I valued my happiness too much to trust it in her hands."
"Sour grapes!" said Lorraine.
"No! but I think that slavery and the lack of outside interests are
beginning to tell on the lives of our women. They lean too much on their
slaves, have too much irresponsible power in their hands, are narrowed
and compressed by the routine of plantation life and the lack of
intellectual stimulus."
"Yes, Eugene, when I see what other women are doing in the fields of
literature and art, I cannot help thinking an amount of brain power has
been held in check among us. Yet I cannot abide those Northern women,
with their suffrage views and abolition cant. They just shock me."
"But your mother was a Northern woman," said Eugene.
"Yes; but she got bravely over her Northern ideas. As I remember her,
she was just as much a Southerner as if she had been to the manor born.
She came here as a school-teacher, but soon after she came she married
my father. He was easy and indulgent with his servants, and held them
with a very loose rein. But my mother was firm and energetic. She made
the niggers move around. No shirking nor dawdling with her. When my
father died, she took matters in hand, but she only outlived him a few
months. If she had lived I believe that she would have retrieved our
fortune. I know that she had more executive ability than my father. He
was very squeamish about selling his servants, but she would have put
every one of them in her pocket before permitting them to eat her out of
house and home. But whom _are_ you going to marry?"
"A young lady who graduates from a Northern seminary next week,"
responded Eugene.
"I think you are very selfish," said Lorraine. "You might have invited
a fellow to go with you to be your best man."
"The wedding is to be strictly private. The lady whom I am to marry has
negro blood in her veins."
"The devil she has!" exclaimed Lorraine, starting to his feet, and
looking incredulously on the face of Leroy. "Are you in earnest? Surely
you must be jesting."
"I am certainly in earnest," answered Eugene Leroy. "I mean every word I
say."
"Oh, it can't be possible! Are you mad?" exclaimed Lorraine.
"Never was saner in my life."
"What under heaven could have possessed you to do such a foolish thing?
Where did she come from."
"Right here, on this plantation. But I have educated and manumitted her,
and I intend marrying her."
"Why, Eugene, it is impossible that you can have an idea of marrying one
of your slaves. Why, man, she is your property, to have and to hold to
all intents and purposes. Are you not satisfied with the power and
possession the law gives you?"
"No. Although the law makes her helpless in my hands, to me her
defenselessness is her best defense."
"Eugene, we have known each other all of our lives, and, although I have
always regarded you as eccentric, I never saw you so completely off your
balance before. The idea of you, with your proud family name, your vast
wealth in land and negroes, intending to marry one of them, is a mystery
I cannot solve. Do explain to me why you are going to take this
extremely strange and foolish step."
"You never saw Marie?"
"No; and I don't want to."
"She is very beautiful. In the North no one would suspect that she has
one drop of negro blood in her veins, but here, where I am known, to
marry her is to lose caste. I could live with her, and not incur much if
any social opprobrium. Society would wink at the transgression, even if
after she had become the mother of my children I should cast her off and
send her and them to the auction block."
"Men," replied Lorraine, "would merely shrug their shoulders; women
would say you had been sowing your wild oats. Your money, like charity,
would cover a multitude of faults."
"But if I make her my lawful wife and recognize her children as my
legitimate heirs, I subject myself to social ostracism and a senseless
persecution. We Americans boast of freedom, and yet here is a woman whom
I love as I never loved any other human being, but both law and public
opinion debar me from following the inclination of my heart. She is
beautiful, faithful, and pure, and yet all that society will tolerate is
what I would scorn to do."
"But has not society the right to guard the purity of its blood by the
rigid exclusion of an alien race?"
"Excluding it! How?" asked Eugene.
"By debarring it from social intercourse."
"Perhaps it has," continued Eugene, "but should not society have a
greater ban for those who, by consorting with an alien race, rob their
offspring of a right to their names and to an inheritance in their
property, and who fix their social status among an enslaved and outcast
race? Don't eye me so curiously; I am not losing my senses."
"I think you have done that already," said Lorraine. "Don't you know
that if she is as fair as a lily, beautiful as a houri, and chaste as
ice, that still she is a negro?"
"Oh, come now; she isn't much of a negro."
"It doesn't matter, however. One drop of negro blood in her veins curses
all the rest."
"I know it," said Eugene, sadly, "but I have weighed the consequences,
and am prepared to take them."
"Well, Eugene, your course is _so_ singular! I do wish that you would
tell me why you take this unprecedented step?"
Eugene laid aside his cigar, looked thoughtfully at Lorraine, and said,
"Well, Alfred, as we are kinsmen and life-long friends, I will not
resent your asking my reason for doing that which seems to you the
climax of absurdity, and if you will have the patience to listen I will
tell you."
"Proceed, I am all attention."
"My father died," said Eugene, "as you know, when I was too young to
know his loss or feel his care and, being an only child, I was petted
and spoiled. I grew up to be wayward, self-indulgent, proud, and
imperious. I went from home and made many friends both at college and in
foreign lands. I was well supplied with money and, never having been
forced to earn it, was ignorant of its value and careless of its use. My
lavish expenditures and liberal benefactions attracted to me a number
of parasites, and men older than myself led me into the paths of vice,
and taught me how to gather the flowers of sin which blossom around the
borders of hell. In a word, I left my home unwarned and unarmed against
the seductions of vice. I returned an initiated devotee to debasing
pleasures. Years of my life were passed in foreign lands; years in which
my soul slumbered and seemed pervaded with a moral paralysis; years, the
memory of which fills my soul with sorrow and shame. I went to the
capitals of the old world to see life, but in seeing life I became
acquainted with death, the death of true manliness and self-respect. You
look astonished; but I tell you, Alf, there is many a poor clod-hopper,
on whom are the dust and grime of unremitting toil, who feels more
self-respect and true manliness than many of us with our family
prestige, social position, and proud ancestral halls. After I had lived
abroad for years, I returned a broken-down young man, prematurely old,
my constitution a perfect wreck. A life of folly and dissipation was
telling fearfully upon me. My friends shrank from me in dismay. I was
sick nigh unto death, and had it not been for Marie's care I am certain
that I should have died. She followed me down to the borders of the
grave, and won me back to life and health. I was slow in recovering and,
during the time, I had ample space for reflection, and the past unrolled
itself before me. I resolved, over the wreck and ruin of my past life,
to build a better and brighter future. Marie had a voice of remarkable
sweetness, although it lacked culture. Often when I was nervous and
restless I would have her sing some of those weird and plaintive
melodies which she had learned from the plantation negroes. Sometimes I
encouraged her to talk, and I was surprised at the native vigor of her
intellect. By degrees I became acquainted with her history. She was all
alone in the world. She had no recollection of her father, but
remembered being torn from her mother while clinging to her dress. The
trader who bought her mother did not wish to buy her. She remembered
having a brother, with whom she used to play, but she had been separated
from him also, and since then had lost all trace of them. After she was
sold from her mother she became the property of an excellent old lady,
who seems to have been very careful to imbue her mind with good
principles; a woman who loved purity, not only for her own daughters,
but also for the defenseless girls in her home. I believe it was the
lady's intention to have freed Marie at her death, but she died
suddenly, and, the estate being involved, she was sold with it and fell
into the hands of my agent. I became deeply interested in her when I
heard her story, and began to pity her."
"And I suppose love sprang from pity."
"I not only pitied her, but I learned to respect her. I had met with
beautiful women in the halls of wealth and fashion, both at home and
abroad, but there was something in her different from all my experience
of womanhood."
"I should think so," said Lorraine, with a sneer; "but I should like to
know what it was."
"It was something such as I have seen in old cathedrals, lighting up the
beauty of a saintly face. A light which the poet tells was never seen on
land or sea. I thought of this beautiful and defenseless girl adrift in
the power of a reckless man, who, with all the advantages of wealth and
education, had trailed his manhood in the dust, and she, with simple,
childlike faith in the Unseen, seemed to be so good and pure that she
commanded my respect and won my heart. In her presence every base and
unholy passion died, subdued by the supremacy of her virtue."
"Why, Eugene, what has come over you? Talking of the virtue of these
quadroon girls! You have lived so long in the North and abroad, that you
seem to have lost the cue of our Southern life. Don't you know that
these beautiful girls have been the curse of our homes? You have no idea
of the hearts which are wrung by their presence."
"But, Alfred, suppose it is so. Are they to blame for it? What can any
woman do when she is placed in the hands of an irresponsible master;
when she knows that resistance is vain? Yes, Alfred, I agree with you,
these women are the bane of our Southern civilization; but they are the
victims and we are the criminals."
"I think from the airs that some of them put on when they get a chance,
that they are very willing victims."
"So much the worse for our institution. If it is cruel to debase a
hapless victim, it is an increase of cruelty to make her contented with
her degradation. Let me tell you, Alf, you cannot wrong or degrade a
woman without wronging or degrading yourself."
"What is the matter with you, Eugene? Are you thinking of taking
priest's orders?"
"No, Alf," said Eugene, rising and rapidly pacing the floor, "you may
defend the system as much as you please, but you cannot deny that the
circumstances it creates, and the temptations it affords, are sapping
our strength and undermining our character."
"That may be true," said Lorraine, somewhat irritably, "but you had
better be careful how you air your Northern notions in public."
"Why so?"
"Because public opinion is too sensitive to tolerate any such
discussions."
"And is not that a proof that we are at fault with respect to our
institutions?"
"I don't know. I only know we are living in the midst of a magazine of
powder, and it is not safe to enter it with a lighted candle."
"Let me proceed with my story," continued Eugene. "During the long
months in which I was convalescing, I was left almost entirely to the
companionship of Marie. In my library I found a Bible, which I began to
read from curiosity, but my curiosity deepened into interest when I saw
the rapt expression on Marie's face. I saw in it a loving response to
sentiments to which I was a stranger. In the meantime my conscience was
awakened, and I scorned to take advantage of her defenselessness. I felt
that I owed my life to her faithful care, and I resolved to take her
North, manumit, educate, and marry her. I sent her to a Northern
academy, but as soon as some of the pupils found that she was colored,
objections were raised, and the principal was compelled to dismiss her.
During my search for a school I heard of one where three girls of mixed
blood were pursuing their studies, every one of whom would have been
ignominiously dismissed had their connection with the negro race been
known. But I determined to run no risks. I found a school where her
connection with the negro race would be no bar to her advancement. She
graduates next week, and I intend to marry her before I return home. She
was faithful when others were faithless, stood by me when others
deserted me to die in loneliness and neglect, and now I am about to
reward her care with all the love and devotion it is in my power to
bestow. That is why I am about to marry my faithful and devoted nurse,
who snatched me from the jaws of death. Now that I have told you my
story, what say you?"
"Madness and folly inconceivable!" exclaimed Lorraine.
"What to you is madness and folly is perfect sanity with me. After all,
Alf, is there not an amount of unreason in our prejudices?"
"That may be true; but I wasn't reasoned into it, and I do not expect to
be reasoned out of it."
"Will you accompany me North?"
"No; except to put you in an insane asylum. You are the greatest crank
out," said Lorraine, thoroughly disgusted.
"No, thank you; I'm all right. I expect to start North to-morrow. You
had better come and go."
"I would rather follow you to your grave," replied Lorraine, hotly,
while an expression of ineffable scorn passed over his cold, proud face.