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