Louisiana

Louisiana
Frances Burnett

Frances Hodgson Burnett

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."