CHAPTER XXII.
THE YOUNG LADY WITH A CARPET-BAG.
“Pain has its own noble joy when it kindles a consciousness of life, before stagnant and torpid.”—John Sterling.
Children are quick to detect flaws in the genealogy of their associates. School-girls are quite as exclusive in their notions as our grown-up leaders of society. Woe to the candidate for companionship on whose domestic record there hangs a doubt!
Mrs. Gentry having felt it her duty to inform her pupils that Clara was not a lady, the latter was thenceforth “left out in the cold” by the little Brahmins of the seminary. She would sit, like a criminal, apart from the rest, or in play-hours seek the company, either of Esha or the mocking-bird.
One circumstance puzzled the other young ladies. They could not understand why, in the more showy accomplishments of music, singing, and dancing, more expense should be bestowed on Clara’s education than on theirs. The elegance and variety of her toilet excited at once their envy and their curiosity.
Clara, finding that she was held back from serious studies, gave her thoughts to them all the more resolutely, and excelled in them so far as to shock the conservative notions of Mrs. Gentry, who thought such acquisitions presumptuous in a slave. The pupils all tossed their little heads, and turned their backs, when Clara drew near. All but one. Laura Tremaine prized Clara’s counsels on questions of dress, and defied the jeers and frowns that would deter her from cultivating the acquaintance of one suspected of ignoble birth. Something almost like a friendship grew up between the two. Laura was the only daughter of a wealthy cotton-broker who resided the greater part of the year in New Orleans, at the St. Charles Hotel.
The two girls used to stroll through the garden with arms about each other’s waist. One day Clara, in a gush of candor, not only avowed herself an Abolitionist, but tried to convert Laura to the heresy. Quelle horreur! There was at once a cessation of the intimacy,—-Laura exacting a recantation which the little infidel proudly refused.
The disagreement had occurred only a few days before that flight of Clara’s in which we must now follow her. After parting from Esha, she walked for some distance, ignorant why she selected one direction rather than another, and having no clearly defined purpose as to her destination. She had promenaded thus about an hour, when she saw a barouche approaching. The occupant, a man, sat leaning lazily back with his feet up on the opposite cushions. A black driver and footman, both in livery, filled the lofty front seat. As the vehicle rolled on, Clara recognized Ratcliff. She shuddered and dropped her veil.
Fortunately he was half asleep, and did not see her.
Whither now? Of two streets she chose the more obscure. On she walked, and the carpet-bag began to be an encumbrance. The heat was oppressive. Occasionally a passer-by among the young men would say to an acquaintance, “Did you notice that figure?” One man offered to carry the bag. She declined his aid. On and on she walked. Whither and why? She could not explain. All at once it occurred to her she was wasting her strength in an objectless promenade.