Part 13 (2/2)
MY DEAREST HARRY,--My sister was rejoiced to see me alive once more; but I feel like a stranger, for when I look at your sister I cannot realize that she is here where she does not belong. It is a visible contrast of two extremes, my family representing one, and Lucy, the other. The North and South will breakfast together to-morrow morning on buckwheat cakes and codfish b.a.l.l.s. Everybody loves your little rebel sister. Even the girl in the kitchen dotes on her, and looks lovingly on the dear girl while she is demolis.h.i.+ng the dainty dishes she has compounded for her delectation. I don't mean fish-b.a.l.l.s, for she hates them.
I know she thinks Lucy is an angel, while I suspect I am thought to be exactly the reverse, judging by the disagreeable, reluctant way she has of serving me. A woman who had been teaching the freedmen down in South Carolina came here last week to collect money for them. Everybody went to hear her speak, and Lucy just went along with the rest. It was a highly improper thing for a Southern girl to do. I knew it, but could not put my veto on it and make myself odious to the family, so I held my peace and let her go, though I should have been ashamed to be seen in such a place.
She told me all about it, however, and you have a right to be proud of your n.o.ble sister. She conquered her nerves and sat perched on a front seat and listened with great attention, and almost repeated the whole thing for me when she came home.
The woman dilated eloquently upon the awful sin of caste prejudice existing among the abominable South Carolina aristocrats, who, while they would accost and speak to the colored pupils, were so stuck up that they regarded the white teachers as no better than the dirt under their feet.
After the speech was over, they took up a collection, and when my sister told me she saw Lucy put in five dollars, I was just too provoked to say a word. To do this foolish thing after all our losses was too much--when she has ordered a new pelisse from New York, too! I could scarcely sleep for thinking of this folly. The cold weather gives me a despondency anyhow. It makes me think of my own home in the South, with all its comforts and the beautiful wood fires, now mine no longer. True, the house is mine, the dear Colonel gave me that, and the land, and the stock. There is the old family carriage and the horses; but it is bitter as wormwood and gall to have no one here to drive me out or do the smallest thing for me unless I pay out money which I no longer possess. It was a wicked thing to ruin and break up our homes like this, but, my dear boy, we must try to be content with what G.o.d sends. Our portion is not money, but water; an overflow of it in the river, and too many caterpillars in the cotton fields eating up our crops. You must be prepared to suffer poverty and affliction without slaves to polish your boots and rub down your horses.
You may even be obliged to chop kindling for me to cook with, before you are done.
The old purposes, habits and customs cannot be carried out any longer. You must not think of matrimony. You ought now to wait until you are thirty years old before you attempt to make a s.h.i.+pwreck of your life by marriage.
But I do know a perfect Hebe who would suit you exactly. She comes here often. Oh! she is a dainty warbler, not quite full-fledged, but superior, n.o.ble, magnificent in design, able to soar higher than any of those finiky, twittering little canaries you love to play with. A splendid ancestry, too, as ever lived, solid, wealthy men, though some of them are deteriorated by having married wives who were n.o.body. Some women dwarf men's souls by their own littleness. I hope you will not fall a victim to any such.
You must keep up the family prestige; your talents and a.s.sociations demand a foremost place, and you must refuse to commonize yourself with that low, ignorant, profane, dram-drinking set of young men around you. I do heartily despise them all, and have never received them in my house when I could help it. They would gladly drag you down to their own level if they could.
How these good New Englanders rejoice in the emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves!
All my friends and relations chuckle over it, so that it looks to me like malice triumphant. Lucy came out last Sunday in a beautiful new hat and pelisse from New York, looking like the daughter of a d.u.c.h.ess; and old cousin Althea said that she did not look that day as much like ruin as she had expected when she saw me and Lucy getting out of the carriage in our shabby old war clothes. That old thing is perfectly hateful and always was.
If our old servants are still with you, say ”howdie” to them for me. I hope Chloe has not run off with her freedom anywhere. She does make such nice waffles and French rolls. You must contrive some way to keep Chloe if I am expected to spend much time with you.
Your loving aunt, COLUMBIANA.
NUMBER 2.
MY DEAR HARRY,--Lucy has a beau. She denies the fact, but there is a gentleman here from New York who is an intimate friend of my brother, and he looks at your sister and watches her so eagerly, and does so many things to please her and to promote my comfort, that I am dead sure it is an elaborate case of love. I do not think him a suitable match for Lucy in every respect, but he is very useful to accompany us on excursions and he manages a pair of horses admirably, and it is convenient to have such a man around. We went to cousin Sabina Suns' yesterday, where we were all invited to dine and to meet the Bishop and Prof. Elliott. I made occasion to pa.s.s through the dining-room. Heaps of red currants in lovely cut-gla.s.s bowls, golden cream in abundance, white mountain cake and luscious peaches were set out for dessert, instead of the everlasting doughnuts and perpetual pie which you see everywhere. Not that I care for dessert. I knew we should have oyster soup and a pair of roasted fowls and all accompaniments of a regular dinner, for Sabina Suns' girl is the best cook I have found anywhere.
We were all sitting in the west drawing-room, and the Bishop had not yet arrived, when somehow we got upon the subject of the late unpleasantness, and Sabina Suns blurted out that Jefferson Davis was a traitor, and ought to be hanged. Tears came to Lucy's eyes and the blood mounted to her temples. She suddenly disappeared. I saw the fire in the child's eyes and felt the bitterness in her heart, though I said nothing to her, but I begged Sabina to spare our feelings, for I saw she had gone too far. In a few moments Lucy appeared with her hat and gloves and bade cousin Sabina Suns good-by, and went away before our astonishment had subsided.
I wanted Lucy to meet the Bishop and the young college professor of entomology. I had been telling her what a fine young man he was, of such a wealthy family, and it now became her to be on the lookout for some better establishment than any poor Southerner could offer. She is young and pays little attention to what I say. Sabina was rude and unkind, but the Bishop and Professor were coming, and then there was the dinner, so I remained and really had a splendid time, except for this unpleasant episode.
I intended to scold Lucy, but when I reached my sister's house I found it was no use. Lucy's fiery indignation would brook no reproof. She opened the flood-gates of her wrath upon Sabina without mercy. She said the woman had elevated one of her enormous feet upon the other as though such cruel language must inevitably be accompanied by some vulgar action, and her two feet so elevated seemed high enough for a common gallows post. To be candid, I was almost scared to death to see your sister so angry and spiteful. But I like a woman of spirit; it is not best, however, to run off on a tangent in the face of good company and a first-cla.s.s dinner. My dear Harry, I think you are better trained, and would have shown more common sense under the same circ.u.mstances.
The Hightowers, who have so often entertained me in New York, want their son Howard to come to the mountains or go somewhere to rest after he is graduated, and I have invited him to come up here as a sort of return hospitality for a long visit I made with them. The New York _beau_ is soon to leave. I could not understand that Lucy promoted his departure in any way, but I thought Howard would be useful. Not that I think he would be a more desirable _parti_ than the other, but it is handy to have a young fellow around to wait upon us or take us to different places. He will come next week, but I shall not apprise my sister, who might object at the last moment, though I am sure she will treat him well, as she does all my friends.
Lucy dressed herself with great elegance this evening. I did not think it was worth while to be wasting her best dry goods and her dear self on the people she was going to visit; and as I sat in her dressing-room and saw her laced up in her new lavender silk, which is supremely becoming to her lovely complexion, and then pin on a rich Brussels lace collar, I could not help reproving her by reminding her of her long deceased elder sister, who, I said, doubtless was looking down from heaven in sorrow and disapprobation of such vanities. ”Oh, Aunt Columbia!” said she, ”Nanny Jones was right when she said you had such a terrible way of throwing up a girl's dead kinfolks to her; please don't make me cry; I don't want to go to the party with red eyes.” Henry, that Jones girl ought never to have been invited to your uncle Joseph's house. She was an incorrigible piece, and was a great trial to me that month she spent with me.
I do hope you go regularly to church. It looks beautiful to see a high-bred young gentleman sitting in his father's pew. The desecration of the Sabbath in our Southern country is perfectly awful. I never could bear to see it. You know your uncle Joe, Christian as he proposes to be, will say to his wife: ”Julia, if you must have a cold dinner once a week, get it in on a week day; on Sunday I must have something better than usual, and it must be fresh and hot.” I frequently stopped there after church and dined with him, so I was well aware of this bad example, right in our own family, as it were.
One would think, after fighting through such a long, b.l.o.o.d.y war, that our young men would have done with all private killing and murdering, and would settle down at home and be industrious and peaceful; so I was all the more shocked to hear that young Joe McDonald had shot and killed Billy Whitfield, and all about a trifling little Texas pony. Joe actually had the impertinence to write to Lucy explaining that he only acted in self-defense, and begging her not to refuse to speak to him when she returned. She shall never answer his letter or look at him again with my consent. I tremble for you, my dear boy, subject as you are to such dreadful a.s.sociations, and I pray that you may be kept in safety from every evil-influence.
Make Chloe look after the poultry. If she sets some hens now, they (the chickens) will be ready for broiling by Christmas. You know how fond I am of young chickens for supper. I have eaten enough cold bread up here to last a lifetime. It may be good for dyspeptics, but I am not one.
Your loving aunt, COLUMBIANA.
NUMBER 3.
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