Strange True Stories of Louisiana Part 21

She was young, beautiful, and of calm temper. Her skin, says one who was present, was of dazzling clearness, her abundant hair was golden auburn, and in happy hours her eyes were as "soft as velvet." But when the leader of the band of men reached the stair-landing, threw his coat open, and showed the badge of the White League, her face had blanched and hardened to marble, and her eyes darkened to black as they glowed with indignation.

"We have come," said the White Leaguer, "to remove the colored pupils. You will call your school to order." To which the princ.i.p.al replied:

"You will permit me first to confer with my corps of a.s.sociates." He was a trifle disconcerted.

"Oh, certainly."

The teachers gathered in the princ.i.p.al's private room. Some were dumb, one broke into tears, another pleaded devotion to the princ.i.p.al, and one was just advising that the onus of all action be thrown upon the intruders, when the door was pushed open and the White Leaguer said:

"Ladies, we are waiting. a.s.semble the school; we are going to clean it out."

The pupils, many of them trembling, weeping, and terrified, were with difficulty brought to order in the a.s.sembly room. This place had once been Madame Lalaurie's dining-hall. A frieze of angels ran round its four walls, and, oddly, for some special past occasion, a legend in crimson and gold on the western side bore the words, "The Eye of G.o.d is on us."

"Gentlemen, the school is a.s.sembled," said the princ.i.p.al.

"Call the roll," was the reply, "and we will challenge each name."

It was done. As each name was called its young bearer rose and confronted her inquisitors. And the inquisitors began to blunder. Accusations of the fatal taint were met with denials and withdrawn with apologies. Sometimes it was truth, and sometimes pure arrogance and falsehood, that triumphed over these champions of instinctive racial antagonism. One dark girl shot up haughtily at the call of her name--

"I am of Indian blood, and can prove it!"

"You will not be disturbed."

"Coralie----," the princ.i.p.al next called. A thin girl of mixed blood and freckled face rose and said:

"My mother is white."

"Step aside!" commanded the White Leaguer.

"But by the law the color follows the mother, and so I am white."

"Step aside!" cried the man, in a fury. (In truth there was no such law.)

"Octavie ----."

A pretty, Oriental looking girl rises, silent, pale, but self-controlled.

"Are you colored?"

"Yes; I am colored." She moves aside.

"Marie O ----."

A girl very fair, but with crinkling hair and other signs of negro extraction, stands up and says:

"I am the sister of the Hon.----," naming a high Democratic official, "and I shall not leave this school."

"You may remain; your case will be investigated."

"Eugenie ----."

A modest girl, visibly of mixed race, rises, weeping silently.

"Step aside."

"Marcelline V----."

A bold-eyed girl of much African blood stands up and answers:

"I am not colored! We are Spanish, and _my brother will call on you and prove it."_ She is allowed to stay.

At length the roll-call is done. "Now, madam, you will dismiss these pupils that we have set aside, at once. We will go down and wait to see that they come out." The men tramped out of the room, went down-stairs, and rejoined the impatient crowd that was clamoring in the street.

Then followed a wild scene within the old house. Restraint was lost.

Terror ruled. The girls who had been ordered into the street sobbed and shrieked and begged:

"Oh, save us! We cannot go out there; the mob will kill us! What shall we do?"

One girl of grand and n.o.ble air, as dark and handsome as an East Indian princess, and standing first in her cla.s.s for scholarship, threw herself at her teacher's feet, crying, "Have pity on me, Miss ----!"

"My poor Leontine," replied the teacher, "what can I do? There are good 'colored' schools in the city; would it not have been wiser for your father to send you to one of them?"

But the girl rose up and answered:

"Must I go to school with my own servants to escape an unmerited disdain?"

And the teacher was silent, while the confusion increased.

"The shame of it will kill me!" cried gentle Eugenie L----. And thereupon, at last, a teacher, commonly one of the sternest in discipline, exclaimed:

"If Eugenie goes, Marcelline shall go, if I have to put her out myself!

Spanish, indeed! And Eugenie a pearl by the side of her!"

Just then Eugenie's father came. He had forced his way through the press in the street, and now stood bidding his child have courage and return with him the way he had come.

"Tie your veil close, Eugenie," said the teacher, "and they will not know you." And so they went, the father and the daughter. But they went alone.

None followed. This roused the crowd to noisy anger.

"Why don't the rest come?" it howled. But the teachers tried in vain to inspire the panic-stricken girls with courage to face the mob, and were in despair, when a school official arrived, and with calm and confident authority bade the expelled girls gather in ranks and follow him through the crowd. So they went out through the iron gates, the great leaves of which closed after them with a rasping of their key and shooting of their bolts, while a teacher said:

"Come; the reporters will soon be here. Let us go and see after Marguerite."

They found her in the room of the janitress, shut in and fast asleep.

"Do you think," one asked of the janitress, "that mere fright and the loss of that comb made this strong girl ill?"

"No. I think she must have guessed those men's errand, and her eye met the eye of some one who knew her."

"But what of that?"