Large plantations were opened, and the generous soil was tilled by swarms of colored slaves. Cotton-warehouses sprang up at every street-corner; and the snowy fleece from the chocolate-colored fields yielded fabulous fortunes to planters and merchants, to professional men, and to brokers and bankers. Indeed, no region in the world was ever more blessed with the fruits of well-directed and highly remunerative labor. Tallahassee had become the centre of a social system as unique as it was attractive. The homes of the city were mostly humble enough, in point of architectural pretensions; but there was about them an amplitude and stateliness characteristic of owners whose hospitality was known everywhere, and whose haughty exclusiveness was proverbial. In other words, these homes were open at all times, and for any number of days, weeks, and even months, to those who belonged to "good families," or who came bearing the written approval of any member of a "good family," and to no others. Here Prince Murat and his charming wife had found congenial friends, and had made their little, unpretentious house the gathering- place for a coterie of brilliant and cultured men and women. In fact, there was a courtliness, an air of high breeding, nay, a something closely approaching the manners and influence of hereditary nobility, which enclosed the region known as the Tallahassee country, as with an atmosphere of its own, into which all the peculiarities of the highest social life in the slaveholding States had been condensed with an intensification corresponding to the compression.
When the war came, it did not reach Tallahassee. Atlanta, Nashville, Savannah, Augusta, Charleston, Richmond, each a social and commercial centre peculiarly Southern, fell in the way of armies, and lay at the mercy of a triumphant soldiery; but the fair queen of Florida, beautiful, embowered, aristocratic Tallahassee, escaped such a fate. When the blare and thunder and crash of those four cataclysmal years had sunk into silence, she sat upon her high green hill, wrapped in her mantle of orange, fig, and live-oak trees, without a scar or a hurt visible. Her occupation was gone, however; and she folded her hands, and sat there quite silent, but unchanged. Her peasantry, the negroes and the Crackers, took possession of the vast plantations; and, under a system of tenantry ruinous to landlords and starving to laborers, began to enervate the famous chocolate fields by an exhausting system of tillage and utter neglect of fertilization.
Along with the new order of things came great political excitement, which in the black belt, as middle Florida was called, culminated in many a thrilling coup and lawless adventure in the field of partisan strife. The capital was the scene of the memorable "count" so disastrous to one party, so valuable to the other, and withal so disreputable to both.
Adventurers from all quarters of the United States, and especially from the East, hurried to Tallahassee with a view to riding into office upon the votes of the poor, ignorant, and kindly-natured freedmen.
Agriculture was almost wholly neglected by the educated inhabitants; and the depression of poverty was shown in their faces, their scant clothing, and their dilapidated carriages. Their fences were broken, their houses needed paint. The galling dilemma was offered them of choosing between manual labor and seedy, thriftless poverty. They refused to choose. They hoped to find some royal way out of the trouble.
Of course a re-action came; and many men who lately had been planter-princes, with hundreds of slaves and broad estates at command, turned themselves to petty merchandising or dickering in real estate. Some sold their plantations out in parcels, and with the money received therefor began banking and curbstone broking in a small way. Others started orange nurseries; and yet others went away to the West, hoping to regain their fortunes on the plains of Texas or in the mines of Colorado. Very many, however, clung to the old order of things. In fact, it may be said that Tallahassee held itself, as a community, aloof from any change. It was the one city of the South which stood as a perfect monument of the lordly days when Cotton was king.
Lawrence Cauthorne went to Tallahassee as the representative of an enterprising New York newspaper. He reached that dreamy city late in November, and immediately attracted attention on account of his striking personal appearance. He was tall, square-shouldered, heavy-limbed. His head was large, his hair and mustache flaxen white, just touched with yellow, his eyes and skin very dark. Quiet, almost silent, he began to go about the streets, with his hat drawn low over his forehead, and carrying in his left hand a heavy cane. He had taken comfortable apartments on the ground floor of the City Hotel, —the first two rooms to the left as you enter the main hall from the street veranda. This City Hotel is a picturesque old building, — a real ancient inn, — with long piazzas, and a peaked roof, broken up into queer little dormer windows. It is partly brick and partly frame, the latter very rickety, and runs in an ell shape along two broad streets, its main entrance facing the Capitol grounds. From its upper windows you may have a bird's-eye view of a wide stretch of surrounding country, beautifully rolling, forests and fields alternating, — a genuinely Piedmontese landscape, the like of which cannot be found otherwhere in America. Here and there, half hidden in their unkempt orchards, the still stately but rapidly decaying old country mansions may be seen; their weather-beaten chimneys and dilapidated porches pathetically suggesting the glory of the past.
Cauthorne had left some years behind him the romance period of his life. A man of thirty-eight, who has fought through the war of the Rebellion, who has experienced the terrors of Andersonville, who has been a war correspondent through the Franco-Prussian war, and has filled a like place in the late Russo-Turkish struggle, who has been often and desperately wounded, and who has recently published a quite successful and very brilliant novel, is not likely to lose much time in idle dreaming. Nevertheless, he found something in quiet, exclusive, sunshiny old Tallahassee and its bowery environs which brought back to him, as if on the wings of those balmy breezes, snatches of his old boyish sentiments. He wrote two or three little poems, so fresh and warm, so full of the tenderness and strength of youth, that they were copied everywhere. Coming with no letters which could open the tightly-closed door of Tallahassee social life to him, Cauthorne found little to break the pleasing monotony of his daily round of lonely rambles and professional writing, until the coming-together of the Florida Legislature, which filled the old inn to overflowing with a chattering, drinking, rollicking, intriguing crowd of men, who turned the quiet of the place into a roar of voices. His especial duty led him at once into close companionship with some of the leaders of this body. But his interest in political affairs did not interfere with his study of the social problem constantly thrust before him. He would have given a great deal for some means of throwing himself, for a time,^ into the midst of certain staid and aristocratic families. He knew their houses; he even knew their names, and the acreage of their plantations; nay, he had possessed himself of their antebellum history, their goings and comings, their princely extravagances, and profuse hospitalities. And now he desired nothing so much as an opportunity to studythis present transition phase of the most ultra and most cultured circle of old Southern families. What a charming novel he could make out of such materials as the study would furnish!
Late one afternoon, as he sat in a roomy chair, leaning easily back against the brick wall of the inn, under the overhanging roof of the colonnade, a carriage driven by a well- dressed colored man rolled slowly past. The top of the vehicle was thrown back, so that he had a good view of the inmates, — a gray- haired, white-bearded, slender old gentleman; a rather stout but prepossessing woman, who, by her face and a general likeness, was evidently the gentleman's sister; and a tall, beautiful girl, no doubt his daughter. Something almost pathetic in the threadbare cleanness of the man's attire, the faded cushions and curtains of the carriage, and the tattered trappings of the horses, contrasted oddly with the tasteful simpleness and newness of the girl's clothes, which, although made of cheap materials, were certainly in the very latest and most becoming fashion, as to shape and trimmings.
Cauthorne turned to the hotel-clerk, who chanced to be standing near, and who knew all about everybody in Tallahassee. "Who are they, Philips?" he inquired.
"That is Judge La Rue's family carriage, sir," replied Philips.
" I asked you about the persons in the carriage, and not about the ownership of the vehicle," dryly replied Cauthorne.
" Oh, yes, sir! beg pardon, sir: that is Judge La Rue and his family, sir."
" Where do they live?"
"At the north end of town, sir, — the old place in the grove where the Thomasville road comes in. A fine old place, sir, but going down: needs repairs."
"I have noticed that place," said Cauthorne. "It is a large house, far back in a tangled woody enclosure, with a rotten board fence around it."
"That's it, sir; and it was a place once to do one's eyes good. Judge La Rue used to live like a lord. He had his hundreds of negroes, and a half-dozen plantations. He used to spend his fifty thousand summering in the North every year. But his day is over. Takes his best licks to keep soul and body together now."
Cauthorne's eyes followed the slowly trundling carriage until it passed from sight around a corner among some giant live-oaks; then —
"She must have been young in the wartime," he said.
"The young lady, do you mean?" demanded Philips.
"Yes."
"Oh! she was a baby, you might say, a little toddling thing, when I volunteered. I remember seeing her in her nurse's arms. She's handsome, don't you think?"
Cauthorne's sense of propriety revolted at this point. He could not afford to discuss the young lady's personal appearance with the inn-clerk. So he rose, and went for a stroll in the upper streets of the city.
As he passed along the clean sidewalks, beneath the thick arch of the trees which line those broad, beautiful avenues, a number of carriages, not unlike the one we have described, went by. He glanced into each one to see if the tall girl was there. He very much wished to look at her again.
It easily fitted his mood to take the La Rue grounds within the circuit of his walk, and he was doubly repaid for his extended tramp by meeting the carriage at the rickety entrance- gate. Miss La Rue was not merely beautiful: she was lovely, she was sweet-faced and tender-eyed, healthy, a girl just going into strong young-womanhood. Cauthorne with one swift glance fixed her face and form forever in his memory. It was his strongest habit, this storing away for future use the forms, faces, and dress of such striking persons as chance threw in his way. But Miss La Rue made more than a passing impression on his mind. She seemed to him a type of a most interesting phase of Southern life; and this impression grew apace as the days went by. He saw her frequently, sometimes walking, sometimes riding a very round and evidently very old pony, sometimes at the Methodist church on Sundays, always well dressed, always bright and sweet, always more interesting than before. One morning he saw her standing in the garden at La Rue place, beside a huge banana- stalk. She had red flowers in her black hair, and at her throat. Her dark face and gentle gray eyes were turned suddenly upon him. He felt a thrill go through him. To his amazement she inclined her head, recognizing him with a smile and a movement of the lips. He lifted his hat, and bowed, half pausing where he was. Instantly a change flashed into the girl's face. She blushed in confusion, and turned away. Cauthorne walked on. The next moment he did a most unjustifiable thing; but it must be said in mitigation of his offence, that he did it involuntarily in the heat of sudden emotion. He turned and looked back, just in time to see Miss La Rue bringing a pair of eye-glasses to bear upon him. These she let fall instantly, and almost ran out of the garden.
Cauthorne understood the situation at once. Miss La Rue was near-sighted; and at first, not having on her glasses, had mistaken him for an acquaintance. A very natural blunder, and a harmless one. But if he had known, that, on account of the whiteness of his hair and mustache, she had thought him a very old friend of her father, he might not have laughed so complacently as he pursued his walk.
After this some days passed before he again saw the young lady; but it was no fault of his that he did not meet her several times. In fact, he tried very hard. Not that he dreamed of any tender passion likely to be fanned to flame by further exchange of glances; but she was a revelation to him, or rather she seemed capable of becoming one. As for possible love-making, it did not enter his thoughts. His calculations were all based on the somewhat sordid premises of literary utility. In other words, he thought he should like to put Miss La Rue into his novel. But how was he ever to know her? How could the barrier be broken down?
It was Cauthorne's way to brood over a question until some answer was found; but in the present instance there seemed no probability that any amount of brooding or philosophizing would serve his turn; for what is more unassailable than the social laws of a small, isolated, conservative city?
However, notwithstanding the great likelihood of his never being able even to speak to her, he almost doggedly sought in every direction for means of approaching her. One day he made sure he should at least succeed in rendering her a service which would entitle him to some pleasant consideration. He met her pony in a road just out of town, leisurely making its way homeward, with a lady's saddle empty on its back. He took the bridle, and led the docile creature back along the way it had come, until he found Miss La Rue just emerging from a little wood, where she had been gathering some fringes of Spanish moss, which she bore in her hands.
"He was running away from you, I believe," he said, bowing gravely, and offering her the reins of the bridle.
"Thank you, sir," she said. He was not sure that she so much as glanced at him. He fancied, however, that her cheeks flushed warmly. There was no room for another word. She led the pony straightway to a bank by the wayside, whence she mounted, and rode homeward.
Cauthorne could not resist the temptation to gaze after the gracefully swaying form of the girl, as the pony cantered off. She was very pleasingly dressed; and there was a freshness, so to speak, in her outline, like the freshness of a young rose-tree. A fragrance seemed to linger in the air round about where she had stood. Cauthorne was vexed. He could not brook this delay, this ever-present smack of defeat. It was a strong fence, but the pasture was incomparably tender and tempting. Could he ever climb over?
