Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty. John William De Forest
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