CHAPTER XLVII.

“Poor Mr. Frobisher!” gasped one.

“Isn’t it too cruel!” gurgled the other.

Presently Mr. Whacker returned, looking rather disconcerted. Charley had said, “In a moment, Uncle Tom;” but his flushed face, and his voice, pitched in a strange key, as it were, rather upset his old friend; and he had retreated rather precipitately, a little troubled in mind (he knew not why), but none the wiser for what he had seen.

“Won’t they come in to hear the adagio?” asked one of the gigglers. The little hypocrite had brought her features under control with an effort, and had even managed to throw into her voice an accent of sympathetic solicitude.

“Not even to hear theadagio!” echoed her pal, with reproachful emphasis.

“They seem to be engaged,” said Uncle Tom, simply.

At this the gigglers giggled uproariously.

“The simpletons!” sighed my grandfather, bending upon them a look wherein the glory of his dark eyes was veiled with a gentle pathos that ever dimmed them when he looked upon happiness and youth. “Laugh while you may! You will have plenty of time for tears in the journey of life, poor things. In this poor world, my daughters, the height of foolishness is often the summit of wisdom. Laugh on.” And he placed his hands upon their sunny heads, as though to bless them and to avert the omen. And they, with one accord, arose, and, throwing around his neck a tangleof shining arms, stood on tiptoe and kissed him. And he went his way, none the wiser,—went his way in that simplicity of age which is more touching than that of childhood; since it has known once—and forgotten. And between his departing form and their eyes, that laughed no longer, there arose a mist that seemed to lend a tender halo to his gray hairs—and they blessed him in turn.

“Mr. Frobisher,” said Alice, halting in front of the door, “I think we should go in.”

“Go in?” repeated Charley, with a rather dazed look.

Things weresointeresting on the piazza!

“Yes, wemust!”

Could he be mistaken? No, there was an unmistakable something in that pull upon his arm that said,Come with me.

“Not now; just one brief moment!”

“Yes,now. We might hurt Uncle Tom’s feelings.”

“We!” Did she mean it? Charley gave a quick, inquiring glance. She raised her eyes and met his with a kind of shrinking frankness.

“You say,” said Charley, “that we must go in to hear the adagio; but—tell me—just one little word: while they are playing that, may my heart beat in the frolic rhythm of the scherzo?”

She made no reply, nor raised her head; but the same gentle pull upon his arm seemed to say,—and plainer than before,—Come with me.

“Tell me, dearest?”

“Oh, don’t bother people so!”

Then, for the first time, her face, pallid before, was suffused with a sudden glory of roses.

[1]Reading the final proofs of this book, I find, bracketed into the text, sundry satirical observations at my expense; signed, some by Charley, others by Alice, who had undertaken to relieve me of the drudgery of the first proofs. Rather than bother the printer, I have suffered many of them to remain—for what they are worth!—J. B. W.[And I suffer this astounding note to remain for whatitis worth.—Ed.]

[1]

Reading the final proofs of this book, I find, bracketed into the text, sundry satirical observations at my expense; signed, some by Charley, others by Alice, who had undertaken to relieve me of the drudgery of the first proofs. Rather than bother the printer, I have suffered many of them to remain—for what they are worth!—J. B. W.[And I suffer this astounding note to remain for whatitis worth.—Ed.]

The reader can hardly be more amazed at the last chapter than is the writer,—amazed not so much at its contents as at its existence. I agree, at the close of the forty-fifth chapter, to exclude all save the loves of the Don from these pages, and then devote the whole of the forty-sixth to the amours of Charley and Alice! I break a promise almost in the act of making it. Some explanation seems proper, and one lies close at hand.

Your modern Genius is an out-and-out business man. He may be trusted to furnish his publisher just so many chapters, just so many pages, paragraphs, lines, words, as shall precisely fill the space allotted him in the magazine. Nor baker with his loaves, nor grocer with his herring, could be more exact. Pegasus no longer champs his bit, as of old, nor paws the earth. He goes in shafts, in these days, and is warranted not to kick in harness. He trots up to your front door, goods are delivered, and he jogs off to another customer, his flanks cool, no foam upon rein.

Now, I, being a mere Bushwhacker, bestride, of course, an untrained, shaggy mustang,—an animal sorely given to buck-jumping and to unaccountable bursts in every direction save along the beaten track. And how, pray, am I to know, astride such a disreputable prairie-Pegasus, whither I am going, and how far; and when, if ever, I may hope to return?

The average reader would probably accept this apology, but as I am (in a small way) a disciple of Epaminondas (who, as every school-boy knows, would not fib, even in jest), I shall not offer it in palliation of my conduct. The true explanation (and therefore the only one that that unique Grecian would have thought of giving) is to be found in the rather peculiar way in which this story is being written.

The romantic among my readers doubtless pictureme to themselves seated in my arm-chair, my feet encased in embroidered slippers, my graceful person (for they did not believe me when I admitted that I was fat) wrapped in the folds of a rich dressing-gown. My intellectual brow is half shaded by my long hair, half illumined by the pale light of the midnight lamp. Meantime, with upturned eyes I await inspiration.

This, though a pretty enough picture, is not such as would have earned the approval of the hero who first taught the Spartans how to yield; for, on the contrary, this tale, so far, has been put together in a very different fashion—and as follows:

Whenever Charley and Alice are accessible to me,—when, that is, either they are spending a few weeks in Richmond, or I can run down to Leicester for a little holiday,—it is understood that we three are to get together, alone, of course, and at such hours as we are least liable to interruption. The door is then locked (never double-locked,—to Alice’s great regret,—for she says that this precaution is invariable in novels; but, for the life of us, none of the three could ever find out how to double-lock a door), and we begin talking over those old times, Alice and Charley doing most of it. For, as the reader may recall, either one or the other of them was an eye-witness of most of the scenes depicted in this volume. My part in the transactions is simple. From time to time I contribute some little incident which may have come within my personal knowledge; but, as a rule, I confine myself to taking notes; by the aid of which, I, in my leisure moments, draw up, between meetings, as clear a narrative as I can; and this being submitted to my coadjutors, is brought into its final shape by the combined efforts of the trio.

This method of composition explains, though I fear it will not excuse, what many readers will deem a grave defect in our joint production. Confined to what either Alice or Charley or myself saw or heard with our mere outward eyes or ears, there was obviously no place in these pages for any of that subtle analysis of thoughts, that deep insight into feelings, that far-reaching penetrationinto the inmost recesses of the mind and heart, that marks modern Genius.

But it is just on this point that Charley and I have had battle after battle with Alice. She will insist on Insight, on Analysis. People must be told, by the ream, what Mary felt, what the Don thought; and she cites novel after novel to fortify her position.

“Why do you bring up those books,” said Charley, one day. “Are we writing a novel, pray? We are writing, as I understand it, a—by the way, Jack-Whack, whatarewe writing—for instance?”

“A symph—”

“Exactly so! We are composing a Symphonic Monograph,—precisely. Now show me, in the whole range of literature, one solitary instance of a writer of symph—ic—graphs—”

Charley was not stammering. He has of late years almost entirely freed himself from this infirmity. The verbal fragments above represented escaped from alternate corners of his mouth, Alice having dammed the main channel of utterance in the most extraordinary manner. [It was a way she had. During the composition of this entire work, whenever Charley has seemed on the point of saying something that she was pleased to consider humorous, she would fly at him in the most barefaced manner, shaking with laughter, and cut him off. Then Charley glances at me, and tries to frown: “Oh, it is nobody but Jack,” says she.]

“Besides,” went on Charley, without even wiping his lips, “you know perfectly well, Alice, that you always skip that stuff. Look me in the eyes,” said he, seizing her firmly by the wrist,—“look me in the eyes and deny it!”

“Yes, but I am but a plain body, without pretensions; whereas people of ideas, of culture, you know—”

“Then you admit that where you come to pages, solid pages of Insight, you incontinently skip them for those passages where the characters are either acting or speaking? Is it not so, you little humbug?”

“But should we not always seek the praise of the judicious?”

“Oh, the simplicity of your soul, to imagine that we are making a book for the edification of the wise! As I understand it, Jack-Whack, it is composed exclusively for the delectation of—”

Alice held up her hand.

“Of the majority,” added Charley. [Interruption, remonstrance, confusion. “Pshaw! who minds Jack?”]

“The fact is,” resumed Charley, with traces of a hypocritical frown still lingering on his features,—“the fact is, all that kind of stuff which you profess to admire, but confess you never read, reminds one of the annotations of the classics for schools. They are not intended to instruct the boys, but are written by one pedant to astound other pedants. By the way, Jack, a capital idea strikes me. It will give our book such a taking and original air. Suppose we go through it from beginning to end, and simply cut out all theskipienda,—every line of it,—and leave only what is intended to be read?”

“And then publish it in the kingdom of Liliput?” inquired Alice.

This, then, my reader, is the way we talk while we write this story; some account of which I thought might interest you; and it was after a discussion like that just recorded that we three agreed (by a strictly party vote of two to one) that our lovers must, for the rest of the book, be reduced to a single pair. We reached this decision at the conclusion of our labors on the forty-fifth chapter. We also settled it to our own satisfaction, that by the time our future readers had reached this stage in our story, they would probably be consumed with curiosity to know whether it was Lucy or Mary, that, with the Don, was to constitute that favored pair. The fact is, it had now begun to dawn upon us that (althoughweknew better) we had actually given the supposed reader some right to look upon our mysterious hero as an emissary from Utah. So putting our heads together, we decided that it was time that he showed his colors. With a view to forwarding this end, therefore, I requested Alice and Charley to give me some account of a certain interviewhad between them, when the former had endeavored to discover from him which of the two girls had captured the Don. For Alice had often told me that she had made up her mind, on the night before that dinner at Oakhurst, to make an attack on the redoubtable Mr. Frobisher on that day, with this information in view. And she had formed this resolution owing to something that had occurred between Mary and herself.

It appears that on the night previous to this dinner, that reserve which Mary had shown Alice ever since the Don had crossed her path had suddenly given way. The two girls had gone to bed together, as was their wont. The Don’s visits to Oakhurst had been growing in frequency, and it was understood that this dinner was given in his honor.

“What, aren’t you asleep yet?” said Alice.

“No,” said Mary. Something in her voice touched her friend.

“You must not lie awake in this way,” said Alice. And she began to pass her fingers across Mary’s forehead and through her hair.

It was a simple action, but Mary broke down under it. Throwing her arms around her life-long friend, she pressed her convulsively to her bosom, and hiding her face in her pillow, wept in silence. After a while they began to talk, and they talked all night, as I am told that sex and age not unfrequently do. Alice arose next morning with a fixed determination to unravel the mystery that was giving her friend so much pain. Mr. Frobisher could make things plain, if he would. But would he? At any rate, she would try; for she was a plucky little soul. And so, when Charley had offered her his arm, that day, after dinner, for a promenade on the piazza, she felt that she had her opportunity. But it would appear that Charley had been looking for an opportunity himself; and so, the other day, when I asked this couple to let me have an account of the matter, with a view to the forty-sixth chapter of the Symphonic Monograph, it leaked out that Master Charles had, on this occasion, taken upAlice’s time not in telling her whom the Don loved, but whom Charles adored. This discovery, coming upon me so suddenly, upset my determination to exclude the loves of Charley and Alice from our story, and I called for an account of the courtship. For I felt assured that an authentic account of the first and only love-making of Charles The Silent would be the most delicious morsel in the whole Monograph. But at the merest allusion to such a thing, Alice blushed in the most becoming way; and when Charley, clearing his throat and putting on a bold look, made as though he were about to begin, her face became as scarlet; and rising from her seat she gave him the most dignified look that I have ever seen in those merry-glancing hazel eyes. Thereupon Charley and I laughed so heartily that Alice saw that she had been taken in by her husband’s serious face. “I thought not!” said she, laughing in turn. But the idea of a chapter given to the amours of Charles The Silent and Alice The Merry had seized upon my mind with so strong a fascination that I could not shake it off; and, as soon as I reached my bachelor quarters that night, I seized my pen. My eyes were soon in a fine phrensy rolling, I presume; for in the forty-sixth, orGalaxyChapter, as I call it, from the numerous stars with which it is bespangled, distinct traces of Genius may be detected by the practised eye (with my assistance).

What I mean is, that chapter was composed in the manner in which true Creative Genius is in the habit of composing, as I understand; made, that is, out of the whole cloth,—woven of strands of air. But even here, though mounted on a genuine (though borrowed) earth-spurning Pegasus, I have not swerved far from the line that the great Bœotian would have marked out for me. Charley’s courtship was quite real. It was the words only that I have had to invent, left in the lurch as I was by my two collaborators. And I was going to add that, in all probability, Charley made use of not one of those I have put in his mouth, when I recalled a coincidence so singular that I feel that the reader is entitled to hear of it. When I read to mycoadjutors my version of their amours, their merriment was uproarious. Charley, I may mention, who only smiled when he was a bachelor, has, since his marriage, grown stout and taken to laughing. So far as he was concerned, my putting the word “abyss” in his mouth was the master-stroke of the whole chapter.

“Why,” said he, choking with laughter, “I am sure I never made use of the word in my whole life!”

“Neither had you ever before in your life made love to a girl,” I objected.

“Don’t be too sure of that!” said Charley, with a knowing look.

“H’m!” put in Alice.

“What makes the thing so truly delicious,” said Charley, “is the lachrymose and woe-begone figure you make me cut; whereas—”

“Ah?” said Alice, bridling up.

“Whereas a chirpier lover than—”

“Chirpy! oh!”

“Why, Jack-Whack, if she did not love me the very first time she ever saw me,—love?—if she did not dote upon—”

“Dote indeed! Very well! very well! He felt sure, did he? Now, Jack, I’ll leave it to you. I’ll tell you just what he said, and let you decide whether they were the words of a ‘chirpy’ lover. Chirpy, indeed! Mr. Frobisher, you are too absurd! We were walking up and down the piazza, and I had on my green and white silk dress,—plaid, you know; and he said—the first thing he said was—I remember it as well as if it had been yesterday—”

I drew forth my pencil. Here, after all, providentially as it were, we were to have an authentic version of the amours of the silent man and her of the merry-glancing hazel eyes.

“My dear,” began Charley, with nervous haste, “we are interrupting Jack; let him go on with his reading.”

“Aha!” cried Alice, in triumph, “I thought—”

Here Alice detected Charley giving me, with his off eye, a wink so huge that its corrugations (like waves bursting over a breakwater) scaled the barrier of hisnose and betrayed what the other side of his face was at.

Charley ducked his head just in time; and immediately thereafter began a series of dextrous manœuvres among the chairs and other furniture in the room, in evading Alice’s persistent efforts to smooth out some of the wrinkles that wicked wink had wrought. At last he tumbled into his seat rather blown, and with one cheek redder than the other.

Amid such scenes as this has this tale been tacked together. Can the reader wonder at its harum-scarum way of getting itself told? Am I not driving a team of mustangs?

“They are all alike,” puffed Charley; “they love us to distraction, but we must not know it. Go on, my boy.”

I read on amid much hilarity; and it was such reception of this solitary effort of my individual muse that induced me to retain it in the body of the work. At last we came to the passage where occurred the coincidence to which I have alluded.

In my fabulous and starry account of the billing and cooing on the piazza, I make Charley ask,May my heart beat in the frolic rhythm of the scherzo?This—for why should I hide my harmless self-content from my friend, the reader?—this I don’t deny that I thought a very neat and unhackneyed way of asking a girl whether she gave you leave to consider yourself a happy dog. It was my little climax, and—I confess it—my heart fluttered a little as I drew near the passage, in anticipation of the plaudits I trusted to receive.

No clapping of hands. A dead silence, rather; and looking up, I saw my friends staring at one another.

“What’s the matter?” asked I, a little sheepishly. “I rather thought,” I stammered, “that—that that was—not so bad?”

“Mr. Frobisher, I am astonished at you!” [At that period it was not usual for Virginia wives to call their husbands by their Christian names.]

“Indeed, my dear—”

“You need not say one word! I should not have thought it of you, that’s all!”

“But, Alice—”

“Why, what’s the matter?” asked I, bewildered.

“Oh, nothing!” said Alice, with a toss of her head. “Jack-Whack, I’ll tell you; she thinks I have been blabbing to you.”

“Thinks!”

“But I have not!”

“Do you mean to tell me that Jack, without a hint from you—actually—” she hesitated.

“‘Frolic rhythm of the scherzo!’” I shouted, in joyous derision; “and you positively used that phrase, you sentimental old fraud!”

Charley turned very red,—redder still, when Alice, relieved of the suspicion that he had been revealing their little love-mysteries, laughed merrily at his discomfiture.

“It was not quite so b-b-b-b-ad as that. I admit the ‘scherzo’ part; b-b-b-ut ‘frolic rhythm’! I was not so many kinds of an idiot as that amounts to.”

And so—I swear it by the shades of Epaminondas—I had actually hit upon the very word,—and truth is again stranger than fiction.

Time was pressing. In another week these long-continued and long-to-be-remembered Christmas festivities would come to an end. Yesterday, Alice had failed to extract any information from Charley. To-day, she would make another effort.

Opportunities were not lacking,—abundant opportunities. Somehow, everything had changed. Yesterday, wherever Alice was, there was a cluster of merry faces. To-day, her mere appearance upon the piazza seemed to dissipate the groups that chanced to be sitting there. One by one, on one pretext or another, the young people would steal away; and it was astounding how often Charley constituted the sole social residuum. Charleythought it famous luck; but Alice detected distinct traces of design in this sudden avoidance of her society. “They seem to be engaged,”—she knew that innocent phrase of Uncle Tom’s was passing from mouth to mouth, and it annoyed her; for, at the period in question, it was fashionable for our Virginia girls to be ashamed of being engaged; and so deep-rooted was this feeling, that whereas we are assured by Cornelius Nepos that Epaminondas was such a lover of truth that he would not lie even in jest—but enough of the virtuous Theban—

Alice, then, being superior neither to her sex nor to her age, as I am glad to say, was half vexed at being so constantly left alone with Charley,—yet half willing to be so vexed. There was an innuendo, it is true, in the very absence of her companions; but then the soft rubbish that Charley was pouring into her pink ear!

Of all passions, love is the most selfish; not excepting hunger and thirst. Yesterday, Alice had been eager to speak with Charley, alone, in the interests of her friend Mary. To-day she has already had three talks with him; and although he had given her nothing more to do than to listen to the conjugation of one little verb, she had not thought of Mary once. Left together for the fourth time, they were sitting on the piazza; and Charley, having already exhausted and re-exhausted the other tenses, was about to tackle the pluperfect,—that is to say, having persuaded himself that it was true, he was beginning to explain to Alice how it was that, before he had ever seen her, and merely from what he had heard of her, etc., etc., etc. [Fib!Alice F.] Just at this juncture, Mary brushed past them. Charley raising his eyes and seeing in Mary’s a casual, kindly smile, returned it with interest,—the happy dog! Alice raised hers, and seeing the casual, kindly smile,—and more,—looked grave.

“What is the matter?” asked Charley.

Compared with your infatuated lover, your hawk is the merest bat.

Alice rose. “I want to have a talk with you. Let us walk down to ‘the Fateful.’”

“The Fateful”—“Fateful Argo,” to give the name in full—had been christened by Billy. It was neither more nor less than a large and strongly-built row-boat, which had been hauled up on the shore; and being old and leaky, had been abandoned there. It had become imbedded in the sand, and being protected from the wind by a dense clump of low-growing bushes, was a very pleasant resting-place for the romantic, in sunny winter weather. It has been sung that Venus sprang from the waves. The truth of the legend I can neither deny nor affirm; but it is certain that their gentle splashing had a strange intoxication for many a couple that ventured to take their seats in this “Fateful Argo.”

Alice took her seat in the stern, and Charley (although there were several other seats in good repair) sat beside her.

I think it will be allowed me that no book was ever freer than this from satirical reflections upon women (or, in fact, freer from reflections of every sort upon any and all subjects); but I am constrained to observe, just here, that it seems to me that they have, at times, a rather inconsequential way of talking. That is, you cannot always tell, from what they have just said, what is coming next.

“I have asked you,” began Alice, “to come with me to this retired spot that I may have a talk with you. I have a favor to—Mr. Frobisher, you must be beside yourself! And the piazza full of people!” [Shades of Epaminondas!A. Frobisher.]

That’s what I complain of. When they begin a sentence, you never know how it is going to end.

“On the contrary,—thank heaven!—I am beside you.”

“But you won’t be beside me long, if you don’t behave yourself. Don’t,—oh,don’t! Are youcrazy?”

“Perfectly,—and glad of it,” replied Charley, with brazen resignation.

“Well, then.” And with a supple grace disengaging herself from his proximity, so to speak, she whisked away to the seat in front.

That’s the reason I always did love women. Theirmemories are so short. No matter how angry they may be, if you will watch them while they are scolding you, you will see that they are forgiving you as fast as they can.

“You are perfectly outrageous!” said Alice; at the same time readjusting her collar,—and with both hands,—just to show how dreadfully provoked she was.

“Outrageous? Presently you will be calling me Argo-naughty,” said Charley. [This is too bad! I never made one in my life.Chs. F.]

Alice had purposed looking indignant for two or three consecutive seconds, but surprised by this totally unexpected sally, she burst out laughing. She had opened her batteries on the enemy, but, by ceasing to fire, she had revealed the exhaustion of her ammunition; and he, so far from being stampeded, showed symptoms of an advance. As a prudent captain, all that was left her was to retire. She took the seat next the prow. The enemy seized the vacated position.

“That seat is very rickety.”

“So I perceive,” remarked the enemy, rising and advancing.

“Oh, but there is not room on this for two. Go back to the stern.” And she threw out skirmishers.

The now exultant foe grasped one of the skirmishers in both his: “You will forgive me?”

“Oh, I suppose so, if you will go back to your seat, and behave yourself. Let go my hand.”

“You have promised it to me.”

“Yes, but indeed, Mr. Frobisher, the girls on the piazza—”

“The piazza is nearly a hundred yards away, bless its heart!”

“Indeed, indeed—therenow!” she suddenly added, with a stamp of her foot, “I told you so!”

When? When did she tell him so? That’s another reason I could never make a woman out.

It was then that Charley heard the sound of heavy footsteps crunching through the sand, and, turning his head, saw through the twilight an approaching figure almost at his elbow.

Alice, like most, though not all of her sex, was, as I have mentioned before, a woman. Raising her placid face and serene eyes, she pointed out to her companion, with the tip of her parasol, a gull that hurried above them in zigzag, onward flight. “Yes,” continued she,—or seemed to continue,—“she seems to be belated. I wonder where she will roost to-night? On some distant island, I suppose.”

“Sam, is that you? Sam is one of my men,—one of the best on my farm. Sam, this is Miss Alice—Miss Alice Carter.”

“Sarvant, mistiss,” said Samuel, hastily removing his hat and bowing, not without a certain rugged grace; while at the same time, by a backward obeisance of his vast foot, he sent rolling riverward a peck of shining sand.

“Well, Sam, any news from the farm?”

“Lor’, mahrster, d’yar never is no news over d’yar! I most inginerally comes over to Elminton when a-sarchin’ for de news.”

“And you want to make me believe that you walk over here every night for the news, do you? Sam is courting one of Uncle Tom’s women,” added Charley, addressing Alice. “I am in daily expectation of having him ask my consent to his nuptials.”

Sam threw back his head and gave one of those serene, melodious laughs (as though a French horn chuckled), the like of which, as I have said before, will probably never again be heard on this earth. “Lor’ bless me, young mistiss, what’s gone and put dat notion ’bout my courtin’ in Marse Charley head? I always tells ’em as how a nigger k’yahnt do no better’n walk in de steps o’ de mahrster, and Marse Charley and me is nigh onto one age; and Marse Charley ain’t married, leastwise not yet.”

“You mean to say,” said Alice, “that when Mr. Frobisher marries it will be time enough for you to think of taking a wife?”

“Adzackly, young mistiss, adzackly, dat’s it. But Lor’ me, I dunno, neither. I ain’t so sartin ’bout dat. Sam don’t want to be hurried up. He want to take hetime a-choosin’. A man got to watch hisself dese times. D’yar ain’t no sich gals as d’yar used to be. De fact is, ole Fidjinny has been picked over pretty close, and Sam ain’t after de rubbage dat de others done leff.”

“I am afraid you are rather hard to please, Sam?”

“Yes, mistiss, Samishard to please.” [Three weeks from this date Sam led to the altar a widow with one eye and eleven children,—making an even dozen,—who was lame of the left leg, black as the ace of spades, and old enough to be his mother.] “I won’t ’spute dat. Ain’t I patternin’ after Marse Charley? Slow and sho’ is de game Marse Charley play, and Sam’s a-treadin’ in he tracks. Lor’, mistiss, you wouldn’t believe how many beautiful young ladies has been a-fishin’ for him; but pshaw! dey mought as well ’a’ tried to land a porpoise wid a pin-hook!”

Encouraged by the smiles evoked by this bold comparison, Sam bloomed into metaphor:

“But he was not to be cotched, not he! Leastwise not by dem baits. ‘Never mind, Marse Charley,’ says I to myself, ‘never you mind. You g’long! Jess g’long a-splashin’ and a-cavortin’ and a-sniffin’!’ ’Fore Gaud dem’s my very words, ‘but d’yar’s a hook somewhar as will bring you to sho’ yet,’ says I; ‘and dat hook is baited wid de loveliest little minner,’—umgh-u-m-g-h! Heish! Don’t talk!”

Charley could scarcely suppress his delight. “And how soon,” said he, carelessly dropping his hand into his pocket,—“how soon am I to be landed?”

“How soon?” repeated Sam, leaning upon his heavy staff and reflecting with a diplomatic air. “How soon? Lor, mahrster, what for you ax a nigger dat question? How is a nigger to know? But I do believe,” said he, turning his back upon the river, and at the same time landing his metaphor, “dat you have done jumped over into de clover-field already, and you ain’t gwine to jump back no mo’.” (Here Charley withdrew his hand from his pocket and threw his arm casually behind him, across the gunwale of the Argo.) “Leastwise,” he added with a perceptible-imperceptibleglance at Alice,—“leastwise I don’t see how you could have de heart to do it.”

Here Charley gave a slight movement of his wrist, invisible to Alice; and Sam, with a few sidelong, careless steps, placed himself behind his master. He stooped and rose again, and Alice saw in his hand three or four oyster shells. These he dropped from time to time, pouring forth, meanwhile, a wealth of tropes and figures drawn from both land and sea; but the last shell seemed to fall into his pocket.

An Anglo-Saxon, if he have a well-born father, a careful mother, and half a dozen anxious maiden aunts, you shall sometimes see hammered into the similitude of a gentleman; but in your old Virginia negro good-breeding would seem to have been innate.

“Some says dat d’yar is as good fish in de sea as ever was cotched out of it; but I tells ’em, when you done pulled in one to suit you, you better row for de sho’ less a squall come and upsot de boat. Well, good-evenin’, Miss Alice, and good-evenin’, Marse Charley!” And with polite left foot and courteous right the black ploughman sent rolling the shining sand.

“There, now,” said Alice, “you see! What did I tell you?”

“Oh,” replied Charley, “Sam will keep dark!”

Yes, those were his very words! And Alice acknowledges that he made the one recorded above (though I see he has denied it). Such is ever the ruin wrought by love, even in the mind of a philosopher.

“By the way,” said Alice, as she stood with her feet upon the gunwale of the Argo, ready to spring, “in the rather mixed metaphors of honest Sam, which of us was the fish and which the hook? ‘Porpoise,’” quoted she, laughing, “I trust I don’t remind you of one?”

Charley, who stood in the sand, held one of Alice’s hands in each of his with a degree of pressure entirely incommensurate with the necessities of equilibrium: “✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻” sang he, with a rapt and fatuous smile. “✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ Absence of wings ✻ ✻ ✻ vision ✻ ✻✻ ✻ eyes beheld.” For, upon my word, the reader must not expect me to transcribe more than a word, here and there, of such jargon.

Yet, though my tongue be harsh, I do not in my heart blame Charley; for Alice, at all times a pretty girl, was, just at this moment, as she stood above him with the dark sky for a background, radiantly beautiful in his eyes. And more,—

She looked beautiful on purpose.

I repeat it,—she did it on purpose.

And here, though it is abhorrent to all my art-instincts to break the current of my story with anything like a thought, original or selected,—though I have promised the reader to place before him a succession of pictures merely, without even adding,This is Daniel, and,These are the Lions!—I feel that I have used an expression requiring an explanation. That explanation I cannot give save through the medium of what—disguise it how I will—wears the semblance of a thought.

Buckle, in his “History of Civilization in England,” lays it down that no man can write history without a knowledge of the physical sciences. Now it is equally true that no one can discuss human nature scientifically without an acquaintance with zoology. It is Darwin and the naturalists who have opened up this new field of inquiry; and Comparative Zoological Nature has now become as needful a study to the playwright and novelist as Comparative Anatomy is to the physiologist. For my own part, whenever I would know whether a certain proposition be true of man, I first inquire if it holds good as to the lower animals,—to speak as a man; and in the course of my desultory investigations on this line I have stumbled upon sundry valuable truths.

Among the convictions which I have reached in this way is the one which led me to say just now that our pretty little Alice, perched upon the gunwale of the Argo, bethought her of making poor Charley crazy with love, by simply looking very, very beautiful; and did so look accordingly, then and there. Ofthe mere fact there can be no doubt, since I have Charley’s word for that. [Fact.C. F.] [Goose!A. F.] [Who?J. B. W.] But a scientific explanation of the phenomenon can be given only by a student of Comparative Zoological Nature.

The way in which I hit upon the truth in question was as follows. A vexatious incident in my own private history had occurred just at the time when I had set myself the task of weaving this Monograph, and I was ruefully ruminating upon woman and her ways, and bringing up in my mind, and contrasting with her (in my Comparative Zoological fashion) all manner of birds and fishes and what not, when all of a sudden there popped into my head eels, and how marvellously slippery they were.

But, thought I, if you can but get your finger and thumb into their gills, you’ve got ’em; and if eels—

But straightway I lost heart; for I remembered, from my Darwin, that of gills—orbranchiæ, as he will persist in calling them—no traces have for ages been discovered in thegenushomo,—at least in the adult stage. Far from it; for the Egyptian mummies, even in their day, for example, got on perfectly without them.

The case was hopeless, therefore; but still I went on ruminating about women and eels and eels and women, in the most aimless and unprofitable fashion, till, wandering off from the eel of commerce and the pie, I chanced to think of the electric variety of that fish. Here faint streaks of dawn began to make themselves felt; and so, making a rapid excursion through the animal kingdom, and recalling the numberless appliances for offence, defence, and attraction to be observed therein, I returned flushed with victory. I had made a discovery. It is this. Just as the eel in question (theGymnotus electricus) has a reservoir of electricity, to be used when needed, so woman, I find, carries about her person more or less bottled beauty, which she has the singular power of raying forth at will.

More or less; in too many cases, less; but evolution, through selection, may ultimately mend that.

How, or by what mechanism they contrive to do this, is more than I can tell. We know, it is true, that theAnolis principalis(the so-called chameleon of the Gulf States) can change at will from dingy brown to a lovely pea-green, by reversing certain minute scales along its back; but to jump from this fact to the conclusion that the woman you saw at breakfast old and yellow, but youthful and rosy at the ball, indued all this glory by simply reversing her scales, is, in the present state of our knowledge, premature. Besides, we have just seen that the gills of the prehistoric sister have long since disappeared; so that the woman of the period may, upon investigation, turn out not to have any scales, minute or other, to reverse; so unsafe are analogies in matters of science.

But the fact remains (no other hypothesis covering all the observed phenomena) that women carry about their persons bottled beauty.

As to the thing itself, female beauty, I do not pretend to know any more about it than other people. That it is in its nature a poison has been notorious for thousands of years, attacking the male brain with incredible virulence. This pathological condition of that organ has been spoken of for ages as Love, as everybody knows. But what everybody does not know, is that woman possesses the power ofconcentratingthis toxic exhalation upon a doomed male,—dazzling him with what I may provisionally term beauty’s bull’s-eye lamp. Love isnotblind. Just the reverse. The lovelorn see what is invisible to others, that is all; the focussed rays of the most magical of all magic lanterns.

Before I made this discovery, I was continually wondering how most of the women I knew had managed to get married; but it is a great comfort to me now to know that they are all beautiful (in the eyes of their husbands).

Setting in motion, then, this subtle mechanism, which all women possess (though in some it don’t seem to work), Alice showered down upon Charley, from hazel eyes and sunny hair, from well-turned throat and dimpled hand, from undulating virgin form and momentaryankle-flash,—showered down upon him as she stood there graceful as a gazelle ready to spring, a sparkling wealth of youth and beauty.

No matter what Charley said.

“I am glad you think so,” said she, fluttering down from her perch.

The shining sand was deep; and that’s the reason they walked so slowly; and that’s the reason Alice clung so closely to his arm; and that’s the reason Charley thought he was walking on rosy morning clouds.

“Oh!” cried Alice,—and Charley’s face was corrugated with sudden care: had some envious shell dared bruise her alabaster toe?

“Did you hurt your foot, — — —est?”

“Oh, no; I just remembered that I had forgotten the very thing that I came to the Argo to talk over with you.”

“What was that?”

Alice looked perplexed.

“Tell me, — —ing; what is it?”

“I don’t know where to begin.”

“At the b-b-b-beginning, of course.”

“With some people I should; but do you know that you are a very queer creature?”

“Your fault; I was just like other people till I met you,—a little cracked ever since.”

“Oh, I like you that way.” And she gave his arm a little involuntary squeeze. [Nothing of the kind.Al.]

“How am I queer, then?”

“Well, you never tell people anything.”

“I have told you a good many things within the last day or two.”

“Only one thing, but that a good many times. But I am not a bit tired of hearing it.”

Here Charley gave her hand a voluntary little squeeze against his heart. [Inadequate statement of an actual occurrence.C. F.]

“The fact is, I want to ask you a question, and am actually afraid you won’t answer it. There, I knew you would not! A cloud passed over your face at thevery word question. You are so strange about some things!”

“Let’s hear the question; what is it about?”

“About the Don. There! Why, you are positively frowning!”

“Frowning!”

“Yes; your face hardened as soon as I uttered the word Don.”

“The Don! What am I supposed to know about him? Have not you known him as long as I, and longer?”

“Oh, I am not going to ask you who he is, or anything of that kind. I presume he alone knows that.” (Charley’s face grew serene.) “It is something entirely different. Is the Don—I know you will think it idle curiosity, but, indeed, indeed, it is not—is the Don—in love?”

“Is the Don in love?” cried Charley, with a sudden peal of laughter. “Is the Don in love? And that is the weighty question that you have made such a pother about! Is the Don in love!”

“That sounds more like my question than an answer to it.”

“Now, seriously, my —ous —ing, you did not expect me to answer such a question as that?”

“No, Ididn’t!” (A little snappishly.) “Any other man—under the circumstances—”

“Yes, I believe I am very different from other men, and it is well; for if every man were of my way of thinking, every girl in the world, save one, would be deserted; and soon there would be but one man left on earth,—such a Kilkenny fight would rage around that one girl!”

“I knew you would not answer my question.” (Notsnappishly.)

“How am I to know anything about it?”

“You and he are inseparable—”

“And hence he has made a confidant of me, and I am to betray him? No, he has never alluded to any such matter. Upon my word, I know nothing whatever upon the subject.”

“Indeed? You are a droll couple, to be sure,” and she looked up, admiringly, at one-half of the couple, “talking together for hours, and never telling one another anything! Well, then, I shall answer the question myself: The Don is in love: there!”

“What extraordinary creatures women are, to be sure! You ask a question, are vexed at getting no answer, and then answer it yourself! The Don is in love, then; but with whom?”

“That I don’t know; I only suspect. Oh, yes, I more than suspect; in fact, Iknow, but some of the girls don’t agree with me, and I want to know which side you are on.”

“On yours, of course—”

“No joking; I am in earnest. The question between us girls is this: it is plain to us all that he is in love—”

“Then, why on earth—”

“Don’t you know that when you wish to find out about one thing the best way is to ask about another?”

“That aphorism, I must confess, is entirely new to me.”

“Well, it is a household word with women.Of coursehe is in love; we—all of us girls, I mean—knowthat. But with whom? That is the question which divides us.”

“And you wish to put that conundrum to me? Indeed, I know nothing about it.”

“Nor suspect?”

Charley hesitated.

“Honor bright? Oh, don’t be so hateful!”

Charley smiled; Alice saw he was weakening.

“Oh,dotell me, which of the two?”

“Which of thetwo?” repeated Charley, looking puzzled. “Surely, you cannot be in earnest; for of all the men I know, Dory—the D-D-D-Don” [What, Charley, stammering on a mere lingu palatal!] “is the least likely to have two loves.”

“Dody, Dody! Why do you call him Dody?”

“I called him the Don,” said Charley, doggedly.

“And Dody, too! Why Dody? What a droll nickname!” And she laughed.

“You are mistaken; I did not call him Dody.”

“You didn’t?”

“No; but my tongue,” said Charley, coloring, “is like a mustang,—buck-jumps occasionally, and unseats its rider—herrider.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon!” said Alice, with tender earnestness, and gave his arm—this time consciously—an affectionate, apologetic squeeze. [I don’t deny it!Al Frob.]

“So the Don is not only a lover, but a double-barrelled one?”

“No, we don’t think that,” said Alice, laughing; “but there is a dispute among us which of two birds he wishes to bring down.”

“Which of two birds? Really, you puzzle me,” said Charley, reflecting. “I could guess the name of one, perhaps; but the other—I am completely at sea.” And he looked up in inquiry.

“Is it possible! How blind, blind, blind you men are! And yet they tell me that nothing ever escapes your lynx eyes! Why, Lucy and Mary, of course.”

“Lucy and Mary!” cried Charley, and, throwing back his head, he exploded with a shout of single-barrelled amazement.

“Wit and humor!” “Repeat, repeat, Alice!” cried voices from the piazza.

The strollers looked up in surprise at finding themselves so near the porch, while the occupants of this favorite lounging-place were in no less wonder at hearing Frobisher giving forth so unusual a sound. Alice swept the faces of her friends with a bright smile of greeting, but there was a certain preoccupation in her look. Charley’s laugh had startled her. “Unconscious wit, then;” and turning, she looked up into her companion’s face with a puzzled air.

It would seem that that sudden and unusual draft upon Charley’s cachinnatory apparatus had exhausted that mechanism, for he was not even smiling now, but in what is called a brown study. He slowly turned onhis heel as though to return to the Argo, or, rather, as if he had no intentions of any kind, his movements being directed by what Dr. Carpenter calls unconscious cerebration. Alice, holding her companion’s arm, turned upon him as a pivot (though with conscious cerebration, for she could almost feel upon the back of her head the smiles raying forth from the porch).

“Mary and Lucy, did you say?” inquired he, turning quickly upon her as though it had suddenly flashed upon him that he had not, perhaps, heard aright.

“Yes, Mr. Frobisher. What on earth is the matter?”

“What’s the matter? Why, nothing, of course. You simply amused me, that is all.” And smiling stiffly, he threw up his head with a sort of shake and made as though he would join the party on the porch.

This time Alice did not rotate on the pivot, but, standing firm, became the centre of revolution herself, and brought Charley to a “front face” again, by a sturdy pull upon his arm, and began to move slowly forward, as though to return to the Argo. “What is it?” asked she, looking up into his face with eager interest. “Dotell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“Why you act so strangely? Which of the two, then?”

These words threw Charley into his brown study again. Looking far away, with drawn lids, he was silent for some time. “Alice,” said he, turning slowly and looking into her eyes, “I am going to surprise you.”

“NeitherMary nor Lucy, you are going to say!” And her snowy bosom beat with thick-thronging breaths. “O-o-oh, I know,” cried she, with a look of pain. “He is married already!”

Yet why with a look of pain? Ought she not rather on her friend’s account to have rejoiced? But here was a hero evaporated; and in this humdrum treadmill of our life there issolittle of romance! And do we not all of us, men and children alike, strain our eyes against the darkened sky, regretful that the flashing but all too evanescent meteor has passed away into the abyss of night?

Charley smiled. “How fearfully and wonderfully is woman made! You first ask me for information which I do not possess, but which it appears you do, then answer your own question; then when I am about to say something, you tell me what I am about to say; and then—with a little shriek—discover the mare’s nest I am about to reveal! No, I was not going to say ‘neither Lucy nor Mary,’ nor yet that the Don was married. I was about to make a proposition to you. Are you reallyveryanxious to have it decided whether it is Mary or Lucy?”

“Very.”

“Then I know but one way: ask the Don himself.”

“The idea!” cried Alice, with a cheery laugh. “What!” added she, looking up into his face with great surprise, “surely you are not in earnest!”

“I am.”

“Mr. Frobisher!”

“I am. I said I was going to surprise you.”

Alice wheeled in front of him, and they stood looking into each other’s eyes. “Upon—my—word,” said she, slowly, “I believe you really mean it!”

“I do.”

“Mr. Frobisher! Then, if it be so important to you to know, why don’t you ask him yourself?”

“It is of no earthly importance to me to know; it is of importance to—to—to—him to be asked?”

“You awful sphinx! You will kill me with curiosity! But why not ask him yourself? Why put it on me?”

“Because,” said Charley, smiling,—“simply because it is your question; you want the answer to the riddle, not I!”

“That’s just the way with you men,” said Alice, smiling; “you affect to be lofty beings, superior to the foible, curiosity. And so you would make a cat’s paw of me?”

“Well, yes; for it is you who want the chestnuts.”

“And my fingers, therefore, are to be burnt; for this same Mr. Don is an awful somebody to approach.”

“To others, perhaps, but not to you; nor to me, either, perhaps; but the chestnuts are for you. Besides,as Dido said to her sister Anna, you know the approaches of the man and the happy moment. How often have I seen every one quaking with awe when you are attacking him with your saucy drolleries, and how charmed he always is, and how he laughs!”

“And poor dear mamma,” said Alice, with a tender smile, “how she shakes and weeps and weeps and shakes! Do you know, Mr. Frobisher, though I say it ‘as shouldn’t,’ I am not, by half, so giddy and brainless as I seem? Do you know why I cut up so many didoes? (By the way, I wonder whether that rather colloquial phrase has any reference to Æneas’s girl?) But it is the truth, that half the time that I am cutting my nonsensical capers, it is just to make mamma laugh. Ah, Mr. Frobisher, you have hardly known what a mother can be, and you will have to love mine! You won’t be able to help it.” And the cutter of capers and of didoes passed her hand across her eyes. “Look,” said she after a pause, “there she sits now, and beside the Don, too. Don’t she look serene? See how she is smiling at me over the banister!” And throwing herself into an attitude, she blew kiss after kiss to Her Serenity, in rapid succession, from alternate hands. “There! she is off. As her eyes are shut tight, she will not be able to see me for half a minute, and I will take the opportunity of telling you, for your comfort, that she does not think there is a man living half good enough for me. How do you feel?”

“I feel that she is right.”

“And I feel that she is twice wrong. First, because she does not know me, and secondly, because she does not know—somebody!” And skipping up the steps, she ran to her mother and bounced into her lap: “Are you glad to see me? Did you think I was never coming back?”

“A bad penny is sure—”

“Who’s a bad penny?” And taking the plump cheeks between her palms, she squeezed the serene features into all manner of grotesque and rapidly-changing shapes. “Who’s a bad penny? Isn’t she a beauty?” said she, twisting the now unresisting headso as to give the Don a full view of the streaming eyes and ludicrously projecting lips. “Behold those æsthetic lines! Ladies and gentlemen,” said she, turning, with a quick movement, her mother’s face in the opposite direction, “I call your attention to the Cupid’s bow so plainly discernible in the curves of that upper lip. Can you wonder that papa is a slave? By the way,” continued she in the same breath, and taking no heed of the general hilarity that she had aroused,—“by the way, Mr. Don, areyouglad to see me?” But without waiting for him to find words to reply, a quizzical look came into her face as she observed that with the beat of her mother’s laughter her own person was gently bobbing up and down, as though she rode a pacing horse: “Snow-bird on de ash-bank, snow-bird on de ash-bank, snow-bird on de ash-bank,” she began, in a sort of Runic rhythm, or shall we say in jig measure? “snow-bird on de ash-bank;” and from her curving wrists, drawn close together in front of her bosom, her limp hands swung and tossed, keeping time, jingling like muffled bells. The pacing horse now broke into a canter, and the canter became a gallop: “Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross, ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross! This steed is about to run away; discretion is the better part.” And springing from her mother’s lap, she stood before the Don.

“Have you prepared your answer yet? Areyouglad to see me once more?”

The Don put his hand upon his heart. Alice extended hers. The Don took it.

“You have not answered my question.”

“Words cannot ex—”

“Words? Who is talking about words?” And she extended her hand again. “Press that lily fair,—just one little squeeze. She—the rotund smiler—won’t be able to see for half a minute yet. Quick! She is wiping her eyes! Ah! ah! ah! Really and truly? Enough! Desist! We are observed!”

“She is the girl to tackle him!” thought Charley, wipinghiseyes.

Charley was right. She was the girl to tackle him, if he was to be tackled at all; but Charley knew that better than the reader, who has had merely a glimpse or so of the irrepressible Alice in her relations with the subject of this Monograph. For Charley had, as mentioned in the last chapter, witnessed innumerable scenes between the two, which had caused him to wipe his eyes and look as though something hurt him; that being his way of laughing before he was married. This being a Monograph, however, I have not felt at liberty to place those scenes before the reader; for a Monograph is, if I understand the term, a paper rigidly confined to one subject; alien topics being admitted only as illustrations throwing light on the main theme. So that the monotony of this narrative, which a hasty reader might attribute to poverty of invention, is in fact due to my rigidly artistic adherence to the Unities. A Monograph I promised, and a Monograph this shall be.

And the theme isnotLove.

“Then why did you not say so at first?” I hear you ask, my Ah Yung Whack,—hear you say this in plain English, for in your day all other languages will be as dead as that of Cicero.

I cannot blame you for asking the question, though the answer is ready.

Because I should else have found no readers among my contemporaries. The readers—that is, the people of leisure—of my day are mostly women and preachers (the third sex usually having all they can do to take care of the other two), and neither will bite freely at any bait save Love. They will nibble at the hook, but a game rush—bait, hook, and all, at a gulp—that is elicited only by a novel. Love is the bait now. Three hundred years ago it was Hate, theODIUM THEOLOGICUM. Three hundred years hence it will be—butI cannot guess what, and you willknow, my almond-eyed boy,—almond-eyed and yellow of skin, though swearing by Shakespeare, and perhaps by Magna Charta and Habeas Corpus.

If, indeed, in your day—but enough! and so fare thee well, Confucian of far Cathay!

The piazza after breakfast, next morning. A bright, sunny day in the beginning of February, with a voluptuousness in the air hinting at the approach of spring. “How beautiful and sparkling the river looks!” said one of the girls. “And just to think,” she added, with a little stamp of her little foot, “we must bid farewell to it so soon!”

“That reminds me,” said Alice, rising briskly from the rocking-chair, in which she reclined, drinking in the balmy air and bright talk in half-dozing silence. But the silence and half-closed eyes were those of pussy awaiting the appearance of Mistress Mouse.

“That reminds me.” And giving a quick glance at Charley, as she passed him, she marched with a rapid, business-like tread, straight up to the Don. Charley prepared to weep. I must mention, in passing, that his way of weeping over Alice differed from her mother’s in this, that when the tears stood in his eyes, those windows of the soul were wide open, thereby revealing the fact that his ribs ached; whereas Mrs. Carter’s being shut tight, it was left entirely to conjecture whether she wept from pain or pleasure.

Alice planted her little self square in front of the towering figure of the Don, and looked him in the eyes as though expecting him to begin the conversation.

“What now, sauce-box?” asked Mrs. Carter, quickly, as though she felt that if she delayed a moment longer she would become, as usual, speechless; and a premonitory shake or two passing through her jolly figure showed that her prudence was not ill-judged. “What are you up to now?”

“Well?” said Alice, with her eyes fixed on those of the Don.

Charley dried his with his handkerchief, for he wanted to see everything. The Don (I regret to have to usethe expression) was in a broad grin. As to Mrs. Carter, the faintest thread of hazel was still visible between the lids of her fast-closing orbs of light. Alice turned pettishly on her heel, and with her eyes retorted over her shoulder, twirled her thumbs.

It was evident that there was something amiss about Charley’s ribs. Not so with Mrs. Carter; for to any one surveying her person, ribs remained the merest hypothesis, based upon the analogy of other vertebrates; but the upper part of her spinal column gave way; that is, she lost control of her neck, and her head rested helplessly against the back of her chair.

“Well?”

“What an ornament is lost to the stage!” laughed the Don.

“The stage! Are we not enacting a real life-drama? and” (looking down) “to me a very serious one? And I have been looking for thedenouementso long—solong!”

“That only comes at the end of the play!”

“And did you not hear what Jennie said just now? Another short week only is left! The end of the play has come. There is but time to come before the footlights and say our last say!” She paused. “Hast thou naught to say to me?” resumed she, with averted eyes, and in a stage-whisper.

“Naught to say to thee?” replied he, falling into her vein. “Can’st believe thy slave so flinty-hearted?”

“Forbid the thought!” cried she, in melodramatic tone and gesture. “No; long have I felt that thou had’st some sweet whisper for me o’er-hungry ear, but thy bashful reticence—I deny it not—did breed in me girlish heart a most rantankerous doubt. Speak! Remove this doubt rantankerous! But st! One approaches! Let’s seek some secluded nook! Beholdest yon fateful Argo? On!” And passing her arm through his, she advanced down the piazza with the tread and look of an operatic gipsy-queen full of mezzo-soprano mystery, which she is to unveil before the foot-lights; while he, to the delight and amazement of the spectators, strode forward in the well-known wide, yet cautioustread of the approaching bandit; to which nothing was lacking save the muffling cloak and thepizzicatoon the double-basses.

Reaching the steps. “On!” cried she, flashing forth an arm. “Descend!”

“Encore! Encore!” shouted the audience, to which she deigned no reply, and the pair stepped upon the turf.

“Have you ever heard the ‘Daughter of the Regiment’?” asked she, halting and speaking in her natural manner. “But of course you have. Strange to relate, I have myself heard it twice. You remember the Rataplan duet? Of course. Well, I am what’s-her-name, and you are the old sergeant! Come!” And with that she strutted gayly off, rattling an imaginary drum with rare vivacity.

Again the Don was not to be outdone; rubadubbing, to the surprise of all, in a deep sonorous voice; strutting, who but he, and every inch a soldier.

Vociferous applause! The actors turned and bowed low.

“Unprecedented enthusiasm!” (whispered Alice) “the Gallery has tumbled into the Pit!”

Which was true; for the audience had rushed pell-mell upon the lawn, Mrs. Carter alone remaining upon the porch, unable, for the present, to rise, her chubby hands darting in every direction in vain search for her handkerchief.

For the moment the household service at Elmington was disorganized, and grinning heads protruded from the chamber windows. Let them grin on! In those days there was time for play, as well as for work.

“Umgh—umgh, heish!” ejaculated Uncle Dick, from his pantry window. “Miss Alice are a oner,Itell you!”

What our august butler meant by “hush!” I cannot say, as Zip had uttered no word. Perhaps he was shutting up some imaginary person, conceived as about to deny the proposition that Miss Alice was a “oner.”

“Hein?” (pronounce as though French), said Zip, walling up his eyes.

“Wash dem dishes, boy! Do you ’spose I was gwine for to ’dress no remarks to de likes of you ’bout a young mistiss? Mind you business, and stop gapin’ through de window!”

Moses made a show of obedience, rattling the plates together with unusual vigor; but for all that he craned his neck for a view of the lawn, keeping a weather eye out, the while, upon the ready right hand of his chief,—a man of summary methods with his subordinates.

“Come,” said Alice, “a repeat is demanded.” And away they went, rubadubbing back towards the piazza. “Rataplan! Rataplan! Rataplan!”

This time (on the antistrophe) Alice outdid herself. Tossing her head from side to side, with an inimitable mixture of reckless coquetry and military precision; her jaunty little figure stiffened and thrown back; tapping the ground with emphatic foot-falls, she was, in all save costume, an ideal vivandière. She glanced at Charley as she approached him.

“Rataplan! Rataplan! Rataplan!” thundered the Don.

“Rataplan! Rataplan! Rataplan!” chirped Alice.

In obedience to the glance he had received, Charley leaned forward; and just as she passed him a saucy toss of her head brought her lips within an inch or so of his attentive ear. “Rataplan!I’ve a plan, rataplan, plan, plan, plan;” and the couple reaching the steps, the Don bowed in acknowledgment of the joyous applause of the Pit; while Alice, her hand resting lightly in his, after the manner of prime donne, executed a series of the most elaborate courtesies ever witnessed on or off any stage.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, hasten to the sideshow! Within this tent,” said she, waving her hand towards the porch, “sits enthroned the Fat Woman, better known as The Great American Undulator. Only twenty-five cents, children a quarter of a dollar! A strictly moral show, and all for the benefit of the church! Unlike the fiendish hyena, her mocking laughter never curdles the blood of the living, whileshe ravens among the bones of the dead.Twen-ty-five cents!Warranted not to laugh aloud in any climate; but has been known to smile in the face of the fabled hyena aforesaid, well knowing that she has no bones, herself, for his midnight mockery.Children, a quar-ter of a dollar!Walk in, gentlemen, and take your sweethearts with you, and see The Unrivalled Anatomical Paradox, or The Boneless Vertebrate; known throughout this broad land as The Great American Undulator. A strictly moral show, only twenty-five cents, and all for the benefit of the church! Children—but I detain the primo basso,” said she, bowing gravely to that gentleman, as she passed her arm within his. “We will now hie us to the Fateful; since you insist on asking me, at that spot only, ‘what are the wild waves saying?’ or is it some other question, perhaps?—be still, my heart!”

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