“And what do YOU think of the scheme, Miss Louisa?” demanded their patroness, turning short round upon that quiet lady with a good deal of energy both of look and voice.
“I shall think it a very nice scheme, Mrs. O — Mrs. Allen Barnaby, if it won’t be making ourselves too troublesome to you,” replied the meek spinster, blushing a little.
“Oh! Very well, then, that business is settled, and you may get ready to pack yourselves up pretty quickly; for I don’t mean to stay in this horrid hot place many day’s longer, I promise you.” And then hinting that though the corridor was the coolest place in the house, the two Miss Perkinses somehow or other contrived to make it hot by sitting there, she got up, nodded a farewell, and departed. —
CHAPTER XXIV.
IT happened in the course of the following two or three days, all of which were very fully occupied in paying and receiving visits by the Allen Barnaby party, that Mr. Egerton found himself standing one evening, quite accidental!, behind Major Allen Barnaby, while that gentleman was engaged at écarté at a tolerably high stake, in one of the most fashionable drawing-rooms of New Orleans. Being behind the major, it followed, of course, from the established habits of the two affectionately-attached individuals, that he was opposite to his elegant son-in-law, Don Tornorino, who never failed to be so placed when his respected father-in-law amused himself by playing at cards. Frederic Egerton himself was no great card-player, and knew as little, or rather less, perhaps, about it than most people; nevertheless, he had not remained very long in this position before he saw, or fancied that he saw, certain looks of intelligence steal from beneath the heavy black eyelashes of the Don towards the major. Of course, the moment he conceived this idea, he naturally began to observe more closely; but the doing so did not greatly assist him in positively ascertaining whether the fact were so or not. If it were, it was impossible to refuse to Patty’s darling all the credit that could possibly belong to a most dextrously skilful performance of the task. For if at one moment the glance of his eye evidently fell direct upon the major, it wandered so idly the next, here, there, and everywhere, that it was almost impossible to suppose him engaged in any occupation, loyal or disloyal, that demanded attention.
In this manner Egerton was kept in a state of great uncertainty respecting the fact of collusion, or no collusion, between the parties upon whom accident had thus made him a spy, and for a longer space than it is usual for a loiterer to remain in any one place. But at length, one of the young ladies of the family invited him to listen to a song about to be sung in the next room, and he was then obliged to depart without having at all satisfied his mind one way or the other.
Though there is something rather irritating to curiosity in such a doubt as this, Frederic Egerton cared too little about any of the parties, to have kept it long in his remembrance, had not other circumstances occurred to revive it there. Why Mr. Frederic Egerton was still at New Orleans, he would himself have found it extremely difficult to say; but though his laundress had been punctual in the most exemplary degree, and though Cleopatra had obeyed all the commands intended to accelerate his departure, with the most scrupulous exactness, there he was still, and probably quite as unable to give any satisfactory answer to a question respecting his future, as to a question respecting his past movements.
For some reason or other, it might be on account of his handsome person and pleasing address, Mr. Egerton had been invited to all the parties that were going on; and as at this particular moment everything English seemed the rage at New Orleans, thanks to the charming Mrs. Allen Barnaby, he had been told by several of the country gentlemen whose houses were about to be opened to the authoress, that his company at the same time would be considered as a very agreeable addition to the English circle. His answer to all these civilities had uniformly been that he doubted whether he should be still in the country, but that it would give him great pleasure, that he was exceedingly obliged, and so forth. When it happened, however, that a similar invitation was given him by Colonel Beauchamp, and very civilly seconded by his wife, his reply was not so ready. Considering his intense aversion to Mrs. Allen Barnaby, her husband, daughter, her daughter’s husband, and her friend Miss Matilda, and considering that he perfectly well knew that they were all to be of the party, it seems strange that he should have felt any hesitation about giving a decided refusal to such an invitation the very moment he received it. On the contrary, however, though he certainly coloured a little, which looked as if he felt somewhat embarrassed by the invitation, he replied very distinctly that he should have great pleasure in waiting upon them.
This invitation had been given and accepted before the evening on which a suspicion of unfair play, on the part of the major, had arisen in the mind of Mr. Egerton. Had it been otherwise, it is possible that a natural distaste to being thrown into the society of any one of whom it was possible to conceive such an idea, might have caused him to give a different answer; but as matters now stood, the young Englishman felt more disposed to protect the hospitable American planter than to turn away from him, and as a first step towards doing so, determined to have a little conversation with Annie’s pale protégée, Louisa, for the purpose, if possible, of learning something concerning the position held by the Barnaby family at home. Not, indeed, that he wanted the gentle spinster’s evidence to convince him that the father, mother, and daughter were not, as perhaps he would have phrased it, “de nous autres,” nor that the son-in-law was not a true-blooded Hidalgo, nor that his friend Louisa herself, or her fair sister, were not ladies particularly well educated or highly bred. All this he might have trusted to his mother-wit to decide for him; but he thought it worth while to discover, if possible, whether the military chef of the party had or had not enjoyed the reputation of being an honest man.
It required no very difficult manoeuvring to induce the grateful Louisa to walk out upon the convenient terrace with him, even though the doing so involved the necessity of an evident and obvious tete-a-tete between them, under the shelter as usual of a blooming orange-tree.
“How do you like this warm climate, Miss Perkins?” he began. “I think you seem to suffer from it less than most of us.”
“It does not make me ill at all, Mr. Egerton,” she replied; “but I suppose all English people would like a little more cool air if they could get it.”
“Undoubtedly. Have your friends the Barnabys been used to such a climate as this before? I rather suppose not, from their appearing so greatly oppressed by it.”
“Upon my word that is more than I am able to say,” returned Miss Louisa; “for, notwithstanding we have got so very intimate, we have not known them long.”
“Indeed! I rather imagined you were related,” said Egerton.
“Not at all, sir; not the least in the world,” she replied. “Then you must think them very amiable people, Miss Perkins, to set off on so long an expedition with them,” he observed.
Miss Louisa was rather at a loss how to reply to this observation; for, in fact, it was during but a short portion of their not long acquaintance that she had been beguiled by her good-nature into thinking any one of them amiable at all; yet though she hesitated about saying this in so many words, she had quite tact enough to feel that this good, kind young gentleman (whom she had made her mind up to be certain, was violently in love with her young friend and ally Annie Beauchamp) was not at all likely to admire or approve the ways and manners of the Barnaby race more than she did herself, and it was more from esteem for him than any love of gossip, and less still of any unkind feeling, that she answered —
“I don’t know about that, Mr. Egerton. My sister Matilda thought she should like to see something of this country, and its ways, which she thought likely, I believe, to be greatly different from ours, and that it was that brought us across the sea.”
“That was very sisterly and good-natured on your part, Miss Louisa,” he replied; “but do you not think it was rather a dangerous experiment for two single ladies to put them
selves under the protection of a gentleman whom they knew so little of? You must forgive my speaking so freely, Miss Perkins, on the score of my being a countryman.”
“Indeed, sir, it needs no excuse; on the contrary, I take it exceedingly kind of you, and I won’t deny but what I think your remark seems a very just one. To be sure, we seem to be very comfortable just now, because all the American ladies and gentlemen seem inclined to be so civil to us on account of Mrs. O — I mean Mrs. Allen Barnaby’s writing a book about them.”
“What name was it, Miss Louisa, that you were going to give her?” said Egerton; “something beginning with an O.”
Though Miss Louisa Perkins had been certainly desired not to refer in any way to the former appellation of the major, it did not occur to her as possible that Mr. Egerton should take any unfair advantage of him on account of his having changed his name, and she therefore replied with perfect frankness —
“I was going to say the name O’Donagough, sir. They used to call themselves O’Donagough when we first knew them, which is now rather better than a year ago.”
“O’Donagough?” repeated Egerton, musingly. “Is it an Irish name?”
“I don’t know anything about that, Mr. Egerton,” she replied.
“We made acquaintance with them first at Brighton, where, as I dare say you know, sir, a great many strangers are always coming and going without knowing very much about one another. But this I must say for Major and Mrs. O’Donagough, and their daughter Miss Patty as she then was, that we saw them in the very best of society. Indeed they were very nearly related to some of the highest company there. Perhaps you may have heard of General Hubert, sir? He seemed to be a gentleman very well known by all the higher sort of people.”
“General Hubert?” repeated Egerton, with a stare of great astonishment. “These Barnabys, as they now call themselves, related to General Hubert? I cannot help thinking that you are mistaken about that, Miss Louisa. I do not think it likely that General Hubert should be related to these — to this family that you are with.”
“I don’t think it does seem very likely, sir, myself,” replied Miss Louisa, very ingenuously; “but yet I do assure you it is quite true, for I was in their company myself, and my sister Matilda with me, when General Hubert, and Mrs. Hubert, and young Mr. Hubert the son, and old Mrs. Compton, Mrs. Hubert’s aunt, all came to drink tea and pass the evening with Major and Mrs. O’Donagough, as they were called then at Brighton. And my sister Matilda made the tea; so you see, sir, that I could not very well be mistaken.”
“’Tis very strange,” said Egerton, looking almost as much mystified as the Danish prince himself when using the same words.
“But certainly, Miss Perkins,” he added, after a few moments’ consideration, “I do not see how it is possible you could be mistaken about it.”
“Oh no, sir, you may quite take my word for it, that I’m not at all mistaken about this relationship. And what’s more,” continued Miss Louisa, with natural eagerness to convince her companion that she was making no blunder in her statement, “what’s more, Mr. Egerton, I have been at a party in their house in Curzon-street, in London, when not only General Hubert and his lady and daughter were there too, but ever so many more ladies and gentlemen also, who were, I believe, related to the general or his lady. A Mr and Mrs. Stephenson were some of them. Perhaps, sir, you may know the names of Mr and Mrs. Stephenson, too?”
“Certainly I do,” replied Egerton, his puzzle becoming greater as his belief strengthened, as to the correctness of Miss Louisa’s statement. “Did the Huberts and Stephensons know these friends of yours by the name of Barnaby as well as by that of O’Donagough?”
Miss Perkins reflected for a moment before she answered, and then replied —
“Upon my word I don’t know about that — I don’t much think they ever were called Barnaby till they came away.”
“May I ask you, Miss Perkins,” resumed the persevering Egerton, “if you know the reason which induced the major to change his name?”
This question seemed to awaken the simple-minded Louisa to the impropriety she had been guilty of in so frankly stating to a perfect stranger a circumstance which she had been especially desired to conceal, and she stammered, blushed, and faltered considerably before she determined how to reply to it; but at length she said in an accent calculated to remove suspicion, if anything could —
“I believe, Mr. Egerton, I have done what they would think very wrong in talking about it at all; but though I must say the doing it at first was just thoughtless and nothing else, yet your kindness, sir, in seeming to care a little about us, because of our being English, makes me feel as if I had done no more than right neither; and this much I think I ought to say over and into the bargain, and that is, that Mrs. Allen Barnaby, as we call her now, did tell me, and my sister Matilda, the whole history why it was that the major thought it best to change his name, and that it was rather for his honour than the reverse, and what many a gentleman, I believe, would be proud to tell of.”
The name of General Hubert, however, probably did more than this simple testimony of the worthy Louisa’s opinion on this point, towards persuading Mr. Egerton that he was mistaken as to the notion he had formed respecting the major’s style of play. Nevertheless, not even this could altogether remove a vague feeling of doubt upon the subject, by no means indicative of very high personal esteem for his well-connected countryman. And it gave him satisfaction to think, as he meditated upon the visit he was so unexpectedly engaged to make, to Colonel Beauchamp, that at least he should in some sort be able to repay his hospitality by giving a little attention to the game, if it should happen that he and the military consort of the authoress should chance to play together during the time his own visit lasted.
CHAPTER XXV.
ALL preliminaries being thus far settled, Mrs. Allen Barnaby very gracefully gave Mrs. Colonel Beauchamp to understand that her anxiety to find herself at Big-Gang Bank would admit of no further delay, her notes having, in fact, exactly reached the point at which the sight of that “magnificent piece of social machinery, an actively organised slave plantation” (as Judge Johnson had elegantly described it in congress) was become absolutely necessary.
This was quite enough to set the active mind and body of Mrs. Beauchamp into such a state of excitement, as very speedily brought all preparations depending on«her to a conclusion; and even the soporific colonel himself was sufficiently awakened by the intelligence to make him, on hearing it, pronounce in a very decided tone, “My dear, the sooner we set off, the better.”
But the most remarkable phenomenon produced by these new arrangements, was the manner in which they were received by Annie; for though disappointed in her hopes of an expedition up the Mississippi; and doomed moreover to endure at her own home the presence of the whole Barnaby, plus Tornorino party, in the oppressive character of guests, it did not appear to vex her at all. It was, indeed, quite astonishing to see how well she bore it.
The business of departure therefore was both rapidly and smoothly brought to a conclusion. Mrs. Carmichael wheezed forth her hopes of seeing them all again, and Patty’s elegant and pious friend, Mrs. General Gregory, declared that nothing should prevent her forthwith repairing to their plantation mansion, in order to receive the whole party on their leaving Big-Gang Bank.
The journey produced no events particularly interesting, which might partly be owing to the lassitude produced by the heat of the weather; for though it was certainly a great relief to quit the glare of New Orleans for scenes in which they had trees instead of houses to look at, the exertion of travelling equalised the matter, and the Europeans of the party had little energy for anything beyond fanning themselves, and sipping iced lemonade from stage to stage as they proceeded.
At length, however, this unavoidable martyrdom was over, the melting journey at an end, and all the luxuries of a rich planter’s establishment around them.
In point of picturesque beauty, Big-Gang Bank
had little to boast of, being a wide-spreading brick edifice, situated in a large square inclosure of coarse, ill-kept grass, surrounded by a zigzag fence, and with nothing in sight but a considerable expanse of flat country, covered with sugar-canes, cotton-bushes, and rice-grounds, diversified at intervals by clusters of negro huts. The mansion itself consisted of a lofty centre, and two low wings, the former surmounted by a sort of pointed pediment, in the middle of which yawned a huge round aperture, containing the enormous dinner-bell. The wings, which had no second story, displayed a row of at least a dozen windows in each, and not only along this lengthy front, but round the whole building ran a deep portico, which being lined with orange-trees and pomegranates, redeemed it in some degree from the scorched-up aspect produced by the ill-complexioned material of the building and the defective verdure of the lawn which surrounded it.
But it was not on the expanse of her mansion, or on the beauty of the flowering shrubs which adorned it that Mrs. Beauchamp chiefly prided herself, though well aware that it was all very first-rate elegant. But her eye sparkled as the carriages containing her numerous guests drove up to the portico, and she perceived the centre door that was thrown open to receive them, crowded with gaily-clad negroes. About a dozen of these, male and female, ran forward as the equipages approached, ready to perform all offices, necessary and unnecessary, that might be required of them.
Their light summer garb, more picturesque than abundant, was for the most part white, perfectly clean, and set off to great advantage by the mixture of bright-coloured calico introduced into their girdles and turban-like head gear.
“You did not look, I expect, for such an elegant gang of domestic niggers in any private gentleman’s dwelling, did you, my dear lady?” said the smiling Mrs. Beauchamp, addressing her most important guest. “But these are not the one half of the household gang, and not any single one of them have any more to do with the canes, or the cotton, or the rice, than you have.”
Collected Works of Frances Trollope Page 354