So, after all, my grandfather lost his opportunity of explaining to the Don how he came to build the Hall. No doubt he will do so as soon as the latter returns from his walk. But there are reasons why I prefer to give my own account of the matter. The truth is, I believe my narration will be more exactly in accordance with the facts of the case than Mr. Whacker’s would be. For, my grandfather (though as truthful as ever man was) having, like the rest of us, a great deal of human nature in him, did not always see very clearly what his own motives were; and, had he been asked why he had constructed this rather superfluous building, would have given an answer at variance with what Charley’s or mine would have been. Now, had either of us been questioned, confidentially, and apart from our friend, we would have unhesitatingly affirmed that he had built the Hall as a home for his quartet; but had he, perchance, overheard us, he would have denied this, and not without heat. And this is easily explicable.
On the whole subject of music—music, whether quartet or solo, vocal or instrumental—Mr. Whacker had grown sore, and as nearly irritable as his strong nature admitted of. His neighbors had worried him. They—and who shall wonder at it?—had naturally been filled with amazement—and, what is harder to bear—amusement—when their old friend had suddenly, at his time of life, burst out, as the homely phrase runs, in a fresh place,—and of this he could not but be aware; so that in the end he grew so sensitive under their jokes that he altogether gave over inviting even his nearest neighbors to be present at the Elmington musical performances. “Well, I hear your grandfather has got a new Dutchman,”—that was the way one old gentleman used to speak of the arrival at Elmington of each successive find of Waldteufel’s in Baltimore; andthen his sides would shake. Naturally enough, my grandfather grew more and more reticent, under the circumstances, as to his musical doings and projects.
Now, the Elmington mansion was, originally, like most of the residences of the Virginia gentry, a rather plain and ill-planned structure. I dare say it had never occurred to the ancestral Whacker who contrived it that any one of its rooms would ever be acoustically tested by a string quartet. At any rate, my grandfather found his parlor, with its thick carpet and heavy furniture, very unsatisfactory as a concert-room, and resolved to build a better. True, he himself never uttered a word to this effect. Like a skilful strategist, he kept his front and flanks well covered as he advanced upon his objective-point. He began his forward movement with some skill.
The Virginians of that day, as is well known, with a hospitality that defied all arithmetic, used to stow away in their houses more people in proportion to the number of the rooms than was at all justifiable,—and a marvellous good time they all had too,—the necessity for extra ventilation being met by the happy provision of nature, that no true Virginian ever shuts a door.
I am far from claiming, my dear boy, that these ancestors of yours were entitled to any credit for their hospitality. For, even in our day of Mere Progress, we have ascertained that this is but a semibarbarous virtue, while, in your day of Perfected Sweetness and Light, it will be classed, doubtless, among the entirely savage vices. I am writing neither eulogium nor apology. I draw pictures merely. You and your day must draw the moral.
Well, Field-Marshal Whacker began operations by throwing out the suggestion, every now and then, that the Library would be more comfortable to the young men who were sometimes crowded into it, on gala occasions (what a time they used to have!), if the bookcases and the great table were removed. But where to put them? He had often been puzzling his head of late, he would say, trying to contrive some addition to the house, but it was so built that he did not very well seehow it could be added to. After much beating about the bush, from time to time, at last the proposition for a separate building came. Charley, very naturally, could not see the necessity for this, considering we were but three; but, finding the old gentleman’s heart set on the project, he ceased to raise objections.
“It would be such a comfortable little nook to retire to.”
“Retire from whom, Uncle Tom?”
“Often, you know, our friends bring their children.”
“Very true.”
“It would be a good place to read or write in, when the house was full.”
“Exactly.”
“Certainly. And then, sometimes, when a lot of you young fellows got together, and wanted to have a ‘high old time,’ you could go out there, and I could go to bed and let you have it out. Don’t you see?”
“Capital.”
So it was settled.
“But, Charley, would not a single room, stuck out all alone in the yard, have rather a queer look?”
“Rather queer, I should say.”
“While we are about it, why not put two rooms under one roof?”
“Of course.”
“Don’t you think so? Then we’ll do it. Two rooms,—let me see.” And the wily old captain seemed to reflect. “As the rooms would be of only one story, the pitch should be high,—better artistic effect, you know.”
“Undoubtedly,” acquiesced Charley. And the crafty engineer meditated as to how to run his next and last parallel.
“But what kind of a room shall the second be? The first will be our Library, and, in case of a pinch, an extra guest-chamber, of course. But what are we to do with the second room? There’s the rub.”
“That’s a fact,” granted Charley between puffs; and the twain were silent for a little while.
“By Jove, I have it!” exclaimed my grandfather, slapping his thigh.
Charley looked up.
“We’ll make a ball-room of it.”
“A ball-room! Good Lord, Uncle Tom!” cried Charley, surprised, for a moment, out of his habitual calm.
“Why not?” asked Mr. Whacker, appealing with his eyes from Charley to me, and from me to Charley. “Why not a ball-room? Remember how many young people we frequently have here, especially Christmas time,—and you know they always dance.”
“I had forgotten that.”
“As it is, they must dance on a carpet, or else it must be taken up, and that is a great bother; whereas, with a nicely waxed floor! And then,” added my grandfather, casually,—running over the words as if of minor importance (’twas a regular masked battery),—“and then the fiddles would sound so much better in such a room.”
“Oho!” cried Charley.
“What?” quickly put in Mr. Whacker, slightly coloring.
“The boys and girls would enjoy it,” replied Charley, demurely.
“Enjoy it? I should think so!” exclaimed Mr. Whacker, relieved to feel that he had not uncovered his artillery.
And so my grandfather set about gathering suitable lumber for his “Library,” as he called it; but it was nearly two years before the structure was complete; so many trees did he find unsuitable, after they were felled, and so carefully did he season the planks, before they were deemed worthy of forming part of this sacred edifice. Nor, during all this time, did Mr. Whacker ever once allude to the “Ball-Room” as likely to prove a suitable place for his quartet performances. At last, in the month of November, 1858, just two years before the arrival of the Don at Elmington, the “Library” was finished, and we three were walking over the glittering waxed floor of Mr. Whacker’s so-called Ball-Room, admiring its proportions and the exquisite perfection of its joinery.
“Well, boys, we’ll christen her at Christmas. We’ll have one of the liveliest dancing-parties ever seen in the county. Suppose, Jack, you go over to the house and bring us a fiddle, and we shall see how she sounds.”
I brought the fiddle.
“Now, Charley, toss us off a reel.”
Charley dashed into a dancing tune, and played a few bars.
“Magnificent!” exclaimed Mr. Whacker, flushing with intense delight. “Did you ever hear such resonance!”
“Magnificent!” we echoed; and Charley resumed his playing.
“Do you know?” began he, pausing and raising his head from the fiddle,—but on he dashed again. “Do you know, Uncle Tom?” he resumed, biting his under-lip, as he gave a slight twist to a peg,—“Do you know, it occurs to me that this room—” the scamp winked at me with his off eye. “Listen!” And, placing the violin under his chin, he began to play a movement out of one of Mozart’s quartets. “How does that sound?” he asked, looking up into my grandfather’s face with an expression of innocence utterly brazen.
This simple question, and the simplicity with which it was put, covered our unsuspecting ancestor with confusion, though he himself could hardly have told why. Before he could recover himself sufficiently to reply, Charley went on,—
“Do you know, Uncle Tom, that it occurs to me that this room is the very place for our quartets? How strange that it should never have occurred to us before!” And turning to me, he bended upon me that stare of serene stolidity under which he was wont to mask his intense sense of the humorous. I had no such power of looking solemn and burying a smile deep down in my heart, as the pious Æneas used to do his grief, while he was fooling Sidonian Dido, poor thing; and so, as Charley and I had had many a quiet joke over my grandfather’s transparent secret, I burst out laughing.
“Why, don’t you agree with me?” demanded Charley with austere composure. “What do you think, Uncle Tom?”
“Our quartets? Well, now that you suggest it—H’m!” And he glanced around the room with a critical look. “We’ll ask Mr. Waldteufel next Friday. What on earth is that idiot giggling about?”
{Symphony of Life, Movement 2. The first page of the score of the second movement, Scherzo, of Beethoven}
SYMPHONY OF LIFE.MOVEMENT II.
It was just one week before Christmas,—that of 1860, the last Christmas of the olden time,—that Elmington—that Virginia—forever and forever—was to see—. But no matter; we did not know it then. The guests from Richmond were to arrive that evening. Everything was in readiness.
The hickory logs, which alone my grandfather—and his father before him, for that matter—would burn during the holidays,—lighting the first noble pile on Christmas Eve,—the hickory logs were banked up, high and dry, in the wood-house. The stall-fed ox nodded over his trough; the broad-backed Southdowns, clustered together in a corner of their shed, basked in the sun and awaited a return of appetite; a remnant of sturdy porkers, left over from the November killing, that blinked at you from out their warm beds, and grunted when requested to rise, suggested sausage; while over on Charley’s farm, and under Aunt Sucky’s able management, aldermanic turkeys, and sleek, plump pullets, and ducks, quacking low from very fatness, and geese that had ceased to wrangle,—all thought themselves, like man before Copernicus, the centre of the universe. Then, in the little creek, too, which ebbed and flowed hard by, there lay bushels and bushels of oysters freshly taken from The River in front. These, too, were ready; while, in the cellar, suspended from hooks, there dangled, thanks to the industry of Charleyand the Don, daily swelling bunches of partridges and rabbits, of woodcock and of wild fowl.
And can you not detect the odor of apples issuing even from that locked door? There are great piles of them stowed away there; and cider, I suspect, is not lacking. And above, the storeroom showed shelves weighed down, since the arrival of the last steamer, with such things as Elmington could not supply. Boxes and bags and bundles gave forth the mellow fragrance of raisins, the cheerful rattle of nuts, the pungent savor of spices,—the promise of all things dear to the heart of the Virginia housewife. On every whiff floated mince-pie,—mince-pie embryonic, uncompounded; with every sniff there rose, like an exhalation before the imagination, visions of Plum-Pudding—of the Plum-Pudding of Old England,—twin-sister of Roast Beef,—and, with Roast Beef, inseparable attendant and indispensable bulwark of Constitutional Liberty.
It was well.
Nor in stuffed larder alone were discernible the signs of the approaching festival. Christmas was in the very air. Old Dick’s mien grew hourly more imposing; his eye, beneath which now trembled no longer Zip alone, but Zip reinforced by double his own strength, hourly more severe. Aunt Phœbe, her head gorgeous in a new bandanna (a present from Mrs. Carter last Christmas, but which had lain folded in her “chist” for the past year),—Aunt Phœbe, chief of the female cohort, and champion pastry-cook of the county, waddled from room to room,—serene, kindly, and puffing,—voluminous with her two hundred pounds, inspecting the work of her subordinates, and giving a finishing touch here and there. Polly, the cook, and her scullion, alone of the household, had no leisure for putting on the Christmas look, busy as they were getting dinner for the coming guests; cooks being, in point of fact, among the few people, white or black, that ever did a full day’s work in Virginia in the olden time. But we have changed all that,—so let it pass.
“Dey comin’!” eagerly cried an urchin of color, who,with twenty companions of both sexes, had had for the past hour their eyes fixed on the lane-gate.
The gate was swinging on its hinges.
With one accord they all assumed the attitude of runners awaiting the signal to start. With feet planted firmly,—shall I say widely?—but no, they are men and brothers now,—with eyes bent upon the gate, but bodies leaning towards the house, they stood for a moment expectant.
The noses of a pair of horses appeared between the gate-posts.
“D’yar dey come! D’yar dey come!” they shouted in chorus; and, with quasi-plantigrade flap of simultaneous feet, they bounded to the rear.
As when Zeus, angry because of the forgotten hecatomb, sends forth, in black, jagged cloud, the glomerated hail, and lays low the labors of the oxen and the hopes of the husbandman.
Or, just as a herd of buffaloes, sniffing the band of Redmen from afar, scurry over the plain.
As though a pack of village curs have inaugurated a conflict, at dead of night, in peaceful, moonlit lane. The combat deepens and stayeth not. But the Summer Boarder, wild with the irony of advertisements, discharges in their midst the casual blunderbuss,—rusty, ineffectual. Instantly hushed is the voice of battle; but multitudinous is the rush of departing paws.
Not otherwise scampered over the Elmington lawn, with nimbly flapping feet, the children of the blameless Ethiopians, as Homer calls them.
The swiftest (for the race is not always to the slow) was first to reach the front steps.
“Dey comin’, Uncle Dick! D’yar dey is in de fur eend o’ de lane!” For that worthy, hearing their hurrying steps, had made his way to the porch, followed by Zip. Zip started back through the door on hearing the tidings.
“Whar you gwine, boy?”
Zip stood as though frozen.
“Ain’t you never gwine to learn no sense? Don’t you know I is de properest pusson to renounce de rerival o’ de company?”
Awed by this courtly phrase, no less than by the shining bald head and portly figure that stood before them, the black cohort slowly withdrew, and, straggling back, resumed their position at the lawn-gate to await the arrival of the carriages.
“I see Miss Fanny” (Mrs. Carter). “D’yar she sets, and Marse George” (Mr. C.), “and two more ladies.”
“Isee her,Isee Marse George,” chirped the sable chorus in deferential undertones.
“Sarvant, Miss Fanny!” spoke up one older and bolder than the rest. “Sarvant, Miss Fanny; sarvant, Marse George,” echoed the dusky maniple.
“How d’ye do, children, how d’ye do!” responded she, affably nodding to a familiar face here and there in the groups that lined the road on either side.
“Yonder Marse Jack!” shouted a little fellow, getting the start of the rest, who were grinning upon Mrs. Carter as though she were their guest. “Yonder Marse Jack a-drivin’ de hind carriage!”
Coming up between the rows, I nodded from side to side. The flash of ivories and of smiling eyes seemed to illumine the twilight. Perhaps the light was in my heart—it used to be so,—but letthatpass, too.
Greetings over, our party dispersed to dress for dinner. The new arrivals were seven or eight in number: Mr. and Mrs. Carter and their daughter Alice,—Alice with the merry-glancing hazel eyes; then Mary Rolfe, demure, reserved, full of subdued enthusiasm, the antithesis of Alice, but “adoring” her—girls will talk so—and adored by her in turn; then the teller of this tale, making five. In addition there were two or three young ladies,—all very charming,—but as they were not destined to play any marked part in our drama, why describe, or even name them?
Only two of our guests had ever before spent Christmas at Elmington,—Mr. and Mrs. Carter. Mrs. Carter was a kind of far-off Virginia cousin of ours, and it was an understood thing between her and my grandfather that she should come down to Elmington every Christmas and matronize his household; else, a houseful of girls, whom he exceedingly enjoyed having around him,would have been less attainable. And a merrier soul, and one who knew better how to make young people enjoy themselves, could hardly have been found. Mr. Carter, an excellent, silent, sober man of business, could rarely spend more than a week with us; but his jovial spouse never gave us less than a month of her charming chaperoning; and, on one occasion, I remember, the unceasing entreaties of the young people constrained her to prolong her visit and theirs, from week to week, till two full months had elapsed. The net result, direct and indirect, of that particular campaign was four marriages, if I recollect aright,—so that Elmington had an established reputation, among the girls, as a lucky place; of which my grandfather was not a little proud.
“Young ladies,” said he, walking up to Alice and Mary, and putting his arms around their waists, as they stood at a window, after dinner, admiring the moonbeams dancing on the waves,—“young ladies, do you know that Elmington is a very dangerous place?”
“How, dangerous?” asked Mary.
“Shipwrecks?” suggested Alice, nodding towards The River with a smile.
“Yes,” replied he, stooping down and kissing them both with impartial cordiality,—“shipwrecks of hearts.”
“I have lost mine already,” said Alice, laying her head on his shoulder and shutting her eyes, with a languishing smile on her upturned face.
“Little hypocrite!” said he, patting her cheek.
“Only a pat for such a speech?”
“Well, there! So, Alice, your grandmother consented to let us have you this Christmas? It was but right, now that you are grown. And then she lives in such an out-of-the-way neighborhood.”
“Yes, it was very kind in grandmamma to let me come here instead of spending my Christmas with her. She grows deafer every year, and I think—perhaps—I was going to make such a wicked speech!” And Alice dropped her eyes.
“What dreadful thing were you going to say?”
“I was thinking that, perhaps, bawling into one’sgrandmother’s ear was not so pleasant a pastime, to a girl, as having—just for a change you know—a young fellow whispering in hers.”
“Charley,” asked Mr. Whacker, suddenly, that night, as we sat before the library fire, after the newly-arrived guests had retired, “do you know, I can’t understand why, in speaking of the ladies you met in Richmond, you never so much as mentioned the name of Alice Carter?”
I tried to catch Charley’s eye, but he durst not look me in the face. Seated as I was, therefore, rather behind my innocent relative, I clapped my hand upon my mouth, doubled myself up in my chair, and went through the most violent, though silent contortions of pantomimic laughter. Charley held his eye firmly fixed on my grandfather’s face, and affected, though with reddening face, not to observe my by-play.
“D-D-D-Didn’t I?”
Any kind of mental perturbation always brought on an attack of stammering with Charley.
“Why, no; and yet I have never seen a more charming girl. She is positively fascinating. Don’t you admit it, you cold-hearted young wretch?”
Here, a broad smile from the Don encouraging me to further exertions, my chair tilted, and I recovered myself with a bang.
“What is the matter with you?” asked my grandfather, suddenly turning.
Charley gave me a quick, imploring glance, and I had pity on him. “Give it to him, grandfather; he deserves it, every word,—the woman-hater!”
“To be sure he does. Why, were I at his time of life—hey, Mr. Smith?”
That night, after we had gone to bed, I was just dozing off into dreamland. Charley gave me a sudden dig in the ribs.
“Wasn’t I good?” said I, drowsily. But the old boy, turning his back upon me and settling his head upon his pillow, took in a long breath of air; and, breathing it out with a kind of snort, was silent.
“How well the Parson is looking, Mary,” said Alice, as she stood before the glass that night, unpinning her collar.
Mary, tired and sleepy as she was, dropped into a chair and shook with half-unwilling laughter.
“What is the Little Thing laughing at?”
“Alice, you are the hardest case I ever knew. Why do you persist in turning the man into ridicule?”
“Who, the Pass’n?” for thus she pronounced the word,—and her merry eyes twinkled.
I doubt whether the reader can guess who the “Pass’n” is. I must explain, therefore, that when I mentioned to the girls, in Richmond, that I had found the Don reading the New Testament, Alice had immediately cried out that now she had it. “He is a Methodist parson in disguise.” And upon this theme she had ever since been playing inimitably grotesque variations. Coming down on the boat, notably, she had surpassed herself; and I hear our party disgraced themselves by their hilarity. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she had cried out, when first we had come in view of Elmington,—“ladies and gentlemen,” said she, leaning out of the carriage window, and declaiming solemnly to the passengers in the rear vehicle, “in yonder mansion sits meditating, at this moment, Pass’n Smith, the disguised Methodist divine. He is the Whitefield of our day. For generations, no exhorter of such power—especially with sentimental young girls and lonesome widows— Will some one be so good as to administer restoratives to the Fat Lady? She seems on the verge of— Where was I?” And so she went on, her young heart ceaselessly bubbling over with freshness and high spirits.
“Ridicule the Pass’n!” said Alice, dropping into her friend’s lap. “Far from me the profane idea.” And she smoothed back from Mary’s brow her loosened hair.
“In the first place, Alice, it is perfectly absurd for you to say he is a parson; and even if he were,” she continued, after a sharp struggle with her rising laughter.—“even if he were studying with a view to the ministry, I don’t see that he should be made fun of on that account. To my mind,—and you ought to think so too, Alice,—to my mind there is no nobler spectacle than that of a young man deliberately turning his back upon all the allurements that lead astray so many of his comrades, and devoting himself, in the very vigor of his manhood and in all the glory of his youthful strength, to the service of his God. But as for the Don,—Mr. Smith I mean,—I think he is about as far from being a parson as he well could be. Don’t you remember how, when I first met him, I said I was afraid of him? Well, that feeling grows on me. He may have his passions well under control, but, you may depend upon it, they would be terrible if ever they got the mastery over him. Did you ever notice his teeth, how strong and even they are, and as white as ivory? but do you know that, at times, when he smiles in that peculiar way of his, they seem to me to glitter through his moustache like—like—”
“Is the Little Thing afraid the Pass’n will bite her? ’Twould be a wicked shepherd to bite a little lamb. And if he ever does such a thing,” she continued, “you go straight and tell your mamma.” And she dropped her head on Alice’s shoulder and stuck out her mouth like a three-year-old child.
“Incorrigible scamp!” cried Mary, between laughter-kisses that, like bubbles, exploded as they touched those pouting lips. “But, Alice, will you never be serious?”
“Serious?” replied Alice, rising. “I was never more serious in my life. It wouldn’t be right.”
“What wouldn’t be right?”
“For you to let the Pass’n bite you, without telling your mother,—and with those glittering teeth too! Think of it! Glittering teeth and starry eyes! Imagine! Most improper, upon my word!”—and she gave a toss of her shapely little head. “Mary,” said Alice,dropping again, suddenly, into her laughing friend’s lap,—“Mary, look me in the eyes!”
From her fine honest face, as well as from her voice,—both changeful as the dolphin’s hues,—had vanished in an instant all trace of raillery. Mary looked up with a smile half serious, half inquiring.
“Well?”
“Straight in the eyes!” repeated Alice, lifting her friend’s chin on the tip of her forefinger.
“I am looking.”
“Mary,” began Alice, leaning forward, and with that same forefinger daintily depressing the tip of Mary’s nose, “are—you—quite—sure—that—you—are—not—”
“Not what?”
“Falling in love with Mr. Smith?”
“Alice, what can have put that idea into your head?”
“That sounds more like a question than an answer to a question. Look me in the eyes and say no,—if you can.”
“Well,no, then!”
“No flutteringhere, when he approaches? no quick breathing when he speaks to you? no pit-a-pat?”
“No pit-a-pat,—noanything! Will that do?”
“Well, I suppose it will have to do,—at least for the present.”
“How ‘for the present’?”
“Never mind,” said Alice, rising; “and now for another question. Is the Don, so far as you can see, falling in love withyou?”
“Withme?” cried Mary, with genuine surprise. “What, pray, will you ask next? Whether, for example, I do not perceive that Mr. Frobisher is enamoured of me? No, you will not askthat.Dear Charles,—well, he is a nice fellow, I must admit,—and would let you do all the talking.” And she gave Alice a squeeze, as girls will do, when talking sweethearts among themselves.
“Mr. Frobisher! Why are you continually harping on him? He has never said a dozen words to me. But mark my words, that Enigma is interested in you. Heshowed it to-day at dinner. You know, my dear, when the humor strikes you, you talk beautifully—”
“I don’t compare with you, Alice.”
“Never mind about me. This meeting has not been called with a view to organizing a Mutual-Admiration Society.Youare the subject of this little pow-wow. Now, to-day, at dinner—well, I don’t like to sit here and flatter you to your face, but I saw very plainly that the Reverend Mr.—I beg your pardon, the Don, was enraptured with your unconscious eloquence.”
“Eloquence, Alice?” And Mary flushed with ill-concealed delight.
“Yes, Little Dumpling, eloquence.”
“Really?”
“That’s the charm of the thing, goosey; your words flow from you so easily, that you are unconscious how lovely your language often is. Then, of course, as none of us know the sound of our own voices, you are hardly aware how low and musical your voice is.”
“Alice,” said Mary, gravely, “you are making fun of me. You have never said anything like this to me before. It is not kind,—it really isn’t!” And her lips quivered.
“You little goose! Not to know me any better than that! Well, to-day you became so much interested in some subject you were discussing with Mr. John Whacker that you did not observe, for some time, that every one at the table was listening to you; and then, when you discovered that you ‘had the floor,’ you blushed furiously and stopped talking.”
“Yes, I remember; it made me feel so foolish!”
“Well, you know, my love, I am very proud of you; and so I was looking around to see what others thought of you. I give you my word, I nearly exploded when I caught sight of the Don. There he sat, with an oyster on the end of his fork poised midway between his plate and his mouth, with his eyes riveted on you. Put this down in your book, Mary,—this,—as a maxim on love: ‘Whenever a man forgets the way to his mouth his heart’s in danger.’”
“I will,” said Mary, shaking with laughter.
“Yes,” continued Alice, standing before the glass and taking down her hair, “you have a streak of genius, that’s the truth; but it is not the whole truth.”
“Give me the rest of it.”
Alice, instead of replying, made a face at herself in the glass; then, folding her arms across her bosom and swaying from side to side two or three times, sailed off in a waltz around the room.
“The trouble with you, my dear, is simply this,”—and she stood before her friend with arms akimbo,—“you are devoid of common sense.” And off she capered again, this time in the rhythm of the polka. “Oh, I’m so happy!” cried she, clasping her hands and rolling up her eyes.
“Because I have no common sense?”
“Because I have so much! I’ve lots!Oceans!” And she spread out her arms. Catching sight of her own waving arms in the mirror, she, like the kaleidoscope, changed in an instant. Standing on her left foot, she described, with the extended toe of her right, an elaborate semicircle, and ended with a profound courtesy, her young face corrugated, meanwhile, with that professional grin of the equestrienne, which, among the horsical, passes for a smile. Turning then to Mary, she repeated the movement. “Behold,” cried she, drawing herself up to her full height,—“behold the Empress of the Arena! The Champion Bare-back Rider of the World!”
“I don’t know so much about the champion part of it, but of the bare back there can be little doubt.”
“Well said, Little Dumpling! I must admit that my costume is rather meagre.”
“Alice, you ought to be able to explain it if anybody can,—how do people come to be ‘privileged characters,’ as they are called? You do whatever you please, and cut all sorts of crazy antics, and no one ever thinks you foolish, or even undignified; and then, you say whatever you think, yet no one can get angry with you. You tell me, to my face, that I am destitute of common sense—”
“Totally, that’s a fact.”
“And yet I am not the least bit vexed?”
“The simplest thing imaginable. Listen, and I will explain. As to the crazy antics, as you are pleased to term my joyous, lamb-like friskings, of course you cannot expect me to have the face to stand up here and say that they do not offend, because of the bewitching, inborn grace which characterizes my every movement?”
“Naturally.”
“Of course. And you will naturally pardon my not alluding to what I can’t help.”
“Poor thing!”
“Of course. I was born so; and that’s the end of that. Now, as to your not being hurt by my telling you that plain truth about yourself—”
“My destitution as regards—”
“Common sense—yes,—I think you yourself must understand it.”
“Because you told me, first, that I had a streak of genius,—flatterer?”
“Precisely; I credit you with bullion, and you are not worried that I should deny you the small change of every-day life. You see I am as deep as Machiavelli,—in other words, as full of common sense as an egg is of meat. Lucy will not be home,” said she, abruptly veering off from the line of their talk, as she seated herself on the edge of the bed, “till the middle of January.”
“No; I am so sorry. What made you think of her?”
“Because I wish she were here right now.”
“Why, pray?”
“Because, from what I saw in Richmond, the Don might devote himself to her instead of you.”
“Thank you for wishing to rob me of an admirer, as you pretend to deem him!”
“No, I am glad she is not here. She is so pure and earnest, so single-minded and devoted, that I should tremble to see her exposed to such a danger.”
“And I am so—”
“You are what you are, my dear, and I would not have you other. But there is but one Lucy in theworld. You know it and I know it, and neither of us would think of comparing ourselves with her.”
“Yes, Lucy is a real madonna.”
“And, somehow, I am not,—you may speak for yourself. Yes, I am glad she is not here. I’ll tell you, Mary: I wish he would fall in love with me,—I’ve got so much hard sense that I should never think of reciprocating. However,” added she, resting her head in her hand, while her elbow and fair, plump arm sank in the pillow, “I am not so sure. I, too, am human. Perhaps it would be too much for me. He is tall,” she continued, looking dreamily into space,—“he is distinguished-looking!—so brave!—so mysterious!—perhaps I haven’t as much sense as I thought,”—and she seemed to nod,—“and his teeth are so like stars! and his rows of eyes are so even and white! glitter so!—Am I asleep? Mary, my love,” cried she, bouncing off the bed, “are you going to talk all night? Talk on,—but I’ll tell you what I am going to do. I shall straightway put on my little N. G.,—the toggery, to wit, of repose; and then I shall fall on my little knees and say my little prayers; which done, I shall curl up my little self in my little bed, and know no more till the rising-bell. One word with you, however. Mary, do you know what all I have been saying to you means?”
“I don’t know what any of it means,—not one word; nor do you, I should imagine.”
“Then listen! All that I have said and done and danced to-night means this, and this only. The Pass’n is going to fall in love with you. That’s the Pass’n’s affair, and shows his good taste. Now, who on earth is the Pass’n? Do you see? Well, don’t you go and fall in love with him, now mind!don’t,—that’s a good, wise girl. Good-night!”
I will not suppose that any of my readers are superficial persons; and only superficial persons need be told that Alice Carter was a young woman of unusually strong judgment and sound sense. And, further: all persons like her are similarly characterized. Doubtless, a sense of humor is not necessary to the chemist or the naturalist or the mathematician,—to one pursuing a special branch of knowledge; but in that science of sciences, the knowledge of men and things, no eminence is possible without it. ’Tis the blind who fall into pits; and the man who cannot see the absurd in others can in nowise himself escape being ridiculous. I know of but one bird with long ears; and he looks exceeding wise; but let him but venture forth from the twilight of his hiding-place into the full glare of day, and the first school-boy that passes whistling by, shall knock him on the head. And so, among men, the most solemn owl is ever the most solemn ass.
Yes, our little Alice of the merry-glancing hazel eyes was a wise virgin and of exceeding tact; but when she warned her friend against falling in love with the Don, she blundered,—blundered most grieviously when she planted in Mary’s mind the idea that he was not indifferent to her. She loved Mary dearly, with a love securely based on similarity of principles and dissimilarity of temperament, and cemented by the closest association from their very infancy. She admired her, too,—admired her gifts, the unusual range of her womanly culture, her enthusiasm for all that was high and noble, the glowing beauty of her language when she discoursed of anything that kindled her blood. At such times she would sit gazing upon Mary’s face, illumined as it was with a beautiful enthusiasm, and feel that she herself was almost despicable. Yet a reaction always came. Mary was not what is called practical. Her head was among the stars, as it were, whileher feet were stumbling along the earth; and Alice revenged herself upon her goddess, for her enforced worship, by playing upon her foibles and blunders with an incessant spray of delicate and sparkling raillery. Even the school-girl love-affairs that they had had when about twelve or thirteen years of age had been characteristic of the two friends. Mary’s youth rejoiced in the aristocratic name of Arthur, while Alice’s lad was known as plain Harry. Arthur was curly-haired and pale of face, and generally had, as he sauntered to school, some novel or other concealed about his person. Harry was a brisk, bullet-headed chap, champion knucks’ player of the school; while, at mumble-peg, his stubby, upturned nose allowed him to rise superior even to defeat.
“I can’t see, Alice, how you can fancy a boy with a pug nose,” said Mary, one day.
“Harry’s nose turns up, that’s true; butso did he, yesterday, and with his umbrella, which kept you and me dry, while he ran home in the rain. Somebody else was afraid of getting hiscurlswet. I’ll tell you what it is, Mary,Ilike a boy that carries my books for me and gives me peaches and French candy and oranges and things; butyouwant one with a novelly name and a ‘chiselled nose,’ as you call it,—aprettyboy, in fact.” All which Mary denied With some heat, and they had a tiff and “didn’t speak” for five long and weary minutes. Alice phrased the same idea differently some years later. “Mary, I’ll tell you the difference between you and myself. Your idea of a husband is a man whomyoucan adore; mine must adoreme.”
Alice blundered,—blundered through over-zeal for her friend’s welfare. She knew Mary’s nature in its every recess; she erred through not knowing human nature as well. She was only eighteen; hence her knowledge of mankind was special rather than general. She knew the exaltation of Mary’s imagination, and felt the danger of her fervid fancy’s laying hold of such a man as the Don, and converting him into a demi-god by the alchemy of her fresh, girlish heart. But generalization is not a trait of the feminine mind. Whenwe hear that some one admires us, we—all of us—instinctively give that person credit for good taste and discernment,—that, she of the hazel eyes overlooked. Now, good taste and discernment are admirable traits; how, then, other things being favorable, can we help admiring our admirers?
“Good-night!” answered Mary; and the two fair heads lay side by side, deep-sunk in vast, beruffled pillows. Alice, fatigued by the day’s journey, fell asleep almost immediately. Her companion, though her eyes were closed, lay thinking. Ah, little Alice, you have sadly blundered! Mary is thinking of what you have said to her—ransacking her brain for confirmation of your suggestion. “Yes, I did remark his looking at me several times at dinner; but what of that? People can look at other people without being in love with them. And—yes, I did think his eyes wore a very intense look; but then they always glow like coals. How beautiful they are!” [Oh, Alice! Alice!!] “terribly beautiful! Oh, if he but hated you!” And she shivered.
Lying, as she was, locked in Alice’s arms, the nervous, rippling movement of her body slightly disturbed the latter’s slumbers; but she merely drew a long breath and exhaled it again with force,—taking a fresh hold, as it were, on sleep.
“Pshaw! it’s all nonsense! Alice forgets what we all agreed to in Richmond. Lucy Poythress was obviously his favorite. Of course she was. Everybody remarked it. I never saw anything like the suddenness of the fancy he took for her. Well, Lucy will reach the neighborhood in a few weeks, and then we shall see. I wonder—no, I cannot think that of him. ‘Out of sight, out of mind,’—no, that’s impossible; whatever he may be, he is not fickle. Let me think. I do recall that he seemed to bow a shade lower to me than to the others when we left the parlor; but what of that? Bows must differ like everything else; one must be lower than the rest. And he is so strong, I suppose he hardly knew that he almost hurt my hand.” “Stuff!” cried she aloud, with emphasis; whirling out of Alice’s arms and changing her position.
Many men, in many lands, Poor Thing, have tried that method of changing the current of their thoughts, and have failed. The chronometer goes ticking on, lay it how you will; and so the human heart; but that, alas, unlike the tireless watch, throbs fiercest when ’tis broken.
Alice gave the half-conscious moan of disturbed sleep; and Mary resumed her meditations, going, again and again, over the same ground. At last youth and fatigue asserted their claims, and she fell asleep and slept for hours; then suddenly sprang up with a sharp cry.
“What’s the matter?” asked Alice, in terror.
“Oh, I had such a fearful dream!”
“You did?” said Alice, dropping back upon her pillow. “You frightened me so-o-o.” And she was asleep again.
Mary had dreamt that she was walking alone on a road through a dark forest, when suddenly she heard, behind her, the clatter of a horse’s hoofs. Looking around in terror, she beheld a Knight in full armor, with visor down, mounted on a powerful black charger, and riding furiously. The Knight seemed to be making full at her, and she stood transfixed with fright, and rooted to the ground. As he came up to her, he did not slacken his speed, but bending to the right, and encircling her waist with his mighty arm, lifted her from the ground, and, without an effort, placed her before him on the charger’s neck. On, on, they rushed for miles and miles; but the horseman spake never a word, nor, for very terror, could she utter a cry. At last they emerged into a bright, moonlit plain, and there, standing before them, was the figure of a young girl. She turned her head at the sound of the charger’s hoofs, and the moon, shining full on her face, revealed the features of Lucy. “Aha! it is she!” cried the Knight, breaking silence for the first time. ’Twas the voice of the Don! And tossing his trembling captive disdainfully to the ground, he stooped once more, and, seizing Lucy, sped on as before. Oh, Alice! Alice!! Alice!!!
Next morning, as the two girls were tripping downstairs, Mary said to herself, “Now I shall observe the Don narrowly, and see whether there is anything in what Alice says. Perhaps there may be some little foundation for her opinion.” Entering the breakfast-room in this frame of mind, it is not to be wondered at that, as she saluted one after another of the company, her eyes suddenly gave forth kindlier beams as they met those of the Don. Very likely the Don did not make any such comparison. He may not have remarked that the smile she gave him was sweeter or sweetest; but he felt that it was sweet.
There were only two vacant seats at the table when the two girls entered. One, at my grandfather’s right, he had expressly reserved for Alice, who had entirely captivated him the evening before by her sparkling gayety. The other was next the Don’s, and this Mary took. That sweet smile merited response of some sort, and his attentions to his fair neighbor were assiduous and delicate. He was always courteous, but, certainly, rather constrained; now, his manner seemed to her singularly gentle. What was thawing him out? Perhaps—well, at any rate—
“Thank you,” cooed she, in that soft, high-bred tongue of Richmond,—“thank you,”—in requital for hot waffle, weaving wreathed smile, entangler of the hearts of men. Could he, the friendless one and solitary, could he be unmoved? And so, smile answered smile, and interest brought interest, making it compound; and every school-boy knows how fast that counts up.