JUDGE LA RUE'S mansion, as to its architecture, was a very plain building, three stories high, or rather two stories and a roof-story, the latter lighted by small dormer-windows. It was of brick stuccoed, as nearly all the better class of houses in middle Florida are, and, under the action of that very peculiar climate, had taken on a most venerable dark-gray color. It stood, as the reader has been told, on the northernmost outskirt of the city, in a little wood of some fifteen or twenty acres, on the west side of the street; and fronted south, its upper windows and verandas overlooking many of the most beautiful scenes in that country, which the Indians had named Tallahassee, — the high and lovely land. Once the grove in which it stood had been tended with scrupulous care, the trees neatly pruned, the vines trained, the shrubs and plants kept strictly within bounds. Now every thing had a wild, half-neglected look. The fence was shabby, the gates awry. On the north side of the enclosure stood the cabins, once so white and clean, where the household servants, to the number of twenty-five, used to live. The plantation-slaves, of course, never had been here, their quarters being out near Lake Jackson. These cabins were now literally falling down from disuse and consequent decay. The lands of the La Rue estate spread out for some miles, counting several thousand acres of the richest in the region, whilst the La Rue slaves had been numbered by hundreds. So vast a property, with no longer any reliable system of labor, had become unwieldy and unprofitable; but Judge La Rue had steadily refused to sell one foot of it, allowing it to grow up in brambles and sedge rather than see it parcelled out among Crackers and negroes. He had owned some railway-stock before the war, worthless then, which, when peace was declared, he found realizing him a small income. To this, by "renting out" certain portions of his estate he added as much more, which enabled him to live in a style somewhat better than most of his neighbors could affect. In other words, he kept a coachman, a gardener, some house-servants, a carriage and horses, gave little select dinners, insisted on entertaining such celebrated people as chanced to visit Tallahassee, and, in fact, maintained a creditable shadow of his old manner of living. In the mean time, however, the fences were disappearing from his plantation, and his grand old mansion was becoming more picturesque than comfortable.
Lucie La Rue remembered the old order of things in a shadowy sort of way. She was a year old when the war broke out, five years old when it ended. Her impressions of the glory of Tallahassee in ante-bellum days were strong; but they were at second hand, mere reflections of what her father and her brother and her aunt had seen and experienced, exaggerated as such things always are in the telling. Her mother had died in the mid-days of the war, leaving her to the care of her father's maiden sister, a highly educated spinster, as peculiar as she was cultured, as good at heart as she was exclusive in her social tastes.
Since the close of the war Lucie had been much of the time at a school in Georgia, for Florida is a State without a college of any sort; and she had once been on a visit for a few weeks in Richmond, Va., where she had relations. But she had really seen nothing of society proper. In this old house, as we have seen it, her life bounded by the hill-rimmed horizon of the Tallahassee country, with her father, her aunt, and her brother for companions, she had grown into that perfect loveliness which had made her the recipient of much tender attention from the best young men of the region, most noted and most favored among them Col. Arthur Vance, the rising lawyer and politician. Nor had Lucie's life been at all dull or unsatisfying. Her nature was simple and sincere, responding perfectly to every touch of the rich, warm influences of the climate, and the poetical power of the great change a few years had wrought within the bounds of her vision.
It was this perfect contentment, this beautiful unison, so to speak, between the girl and her surroundings, that had made Cauthorne say to himself, "She is a true type of the transition from the old order of things to the new."
Willard found life at the mansion far less irksome than he had feared. In fact, his reception had been so cordial, his initiation into the family routine so delicately managed, that he was happy before he knew it. Some very strong bond of friendship must have existed between Judge La Rue and Willard's father, to make the old Southerner say, —
"You seem like my own son, sir, being the son of my dear old friend. You are just like him, too, just like him. Ah, he's a rare man, sir, a rare man! He used to make my house gay with his wit. He was the life of it for many a winter. I shall be disappointed if you do not make yourself freely and perfectly at home." He had attended Willard to his room, a servant following with his baggage. "That's the very bed which your father slept in twenty years ago, the last winter he was here. I hope it will hold you as it did him, for many a happy season."
Some men would have mocked in their hearts at this profuse welcome; but Willard knew too well how his father loved this old man, and he was doubly sure of every word's tender sincerity.
Judge La Rue's sister, the stately old maiden who presided over his house, took a very practical view of this introducing of the young man into their home circle.
"You must look at it from every standpoint," she said to the judge, "but most particularly from one."
"And, my dear sister, what one is it?" he asked.
"The matrimonial one," was the laconic answer.
"Humph! I don't just see how that can come up. You know Lucie and Col. Vance" —
"Certainly, dear brother; but they are not engaged. Lucie says they are not," hastily spoke up the sister.
"Well, of course, not formally engaged; but it is all understood, you know. He and I have often discussed the matter," responded Judge La Rue.
"Well, you ought to know as well as I, that all your discussions and understandings of the matter with Col. Vance will not weigh a straw against a romantic love if it should spring up between this young Willard and Lucie. For my part, I think there may be danger."
The judge laughed, considered, and then laughed again.
"It would be hard on the colonel," he finally said. And the tone in which he said it gave Miss Julie La Rue to understand that her brother would not care a straw if the worst should come.
"We'll not trouble ourselves about that, Julie," he added: "Lucie can take care of that."
"Oh, no doubt of it! young girls usually can. I only mentioned the matter on your account. If you are willing to risk it so, there's not a word I can say against it, only if he should take Lucie away"—
The old man started, and actually grew pale. Her last sentence had struck him like a bullet. He met his sister's look with a feeble smile. It was easy to see that they both centred the whole world in Lucie. If he should take her away, meant the same as if he should snuff out the sun.
"He will talk to her about New York and Boston, and fill her mind full of the fascinating things of life in the great cities," said Miss La Rue; " and you know that nothing so charms a girl. You may depend upon it, there is danger."
The old man did not reply. He sat with downcast eyes and trembling lips, his childish fear of so dreadful a calamity as his sister predicted completely mastering him.
"It would never do, never do," he said at last. "Our flower would wither in the cold North, Julie."
"I should fear so," said Miss La Rue, nervously turning the small emerald on her finger. "And Mr. Willard seems to be a very accomplished and winning person, and — and much younger than Col. Vance."
"He is a delightful boy, just like his father, Julie," said the old man warmly, resting his wrinkled hands on his knees, and gazing at the floor. "He would"—
Just then Lucie entered the room, her face slightly flushed, her eyes very bright. She had a red flower at her throat. She carried her hat by its strings.
"Papa," she said, in a voice which fluttered like a bird getting out of a cage, "he wants to see Murat's grave. He has asked me to show him the way to the cemetery."
She paused, and glanced from her father to her aunt, as if struck with the solemnity of their faces. "Ought I to go?" she added quickly.
The silence following the question was too utter to last. Miss Julie La Rue looked up presently, and said, —
"I see no objection to"—
"Oh, no! certainly, go on. It would be rude to object. Go, child, of course," hastily interrupted the old man.
Lucie stood for a moment longer, idly swinging her hat. Her aunt was more than usually aware of her wonderful beauty and grace.
"Don't keep Mr. Willard waiting, if he is waiting, Lucie," she said gravely. "It will be tea-time soon."
"Oh! we cannot be long gone. It is such a short way, you know, and there's not much to see," replied Lucie, putting on her hat, and tying the strings under her chin.
"And so it begins," said Miss La Rue, when the girl was gone. "They'll turn each other's heads before they get back."
"You make it too strong, Julie," responded the judge. "Lucie has always been a sensible girl, I'm sure."
"Yes," said Miss La Rue, almost bitterly; "but he is just like his father."
And so the interview ended.
