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Yes, it was too much; five or six pages of Able-Analysis, showing just what these two young people felt, and why they felt it; and so, I passed a pen across the whole. It makes the chapter shorter; but even that has its possible advantages. The fact is, I am not quitesure that I know what they did think and feel; for was not the Don an Enigma? and was not Mary a woman?
After all, what is the use of all this microscopic anatomy in tracking the progress of heart-affairs? It seems to me that falling in love is as elementary a process as sitting down on an ice-pond. The rub ishow notto do it. If the novelists would but tell usthat! Fortunately for me, I am not called on to do this, as I am not a novelist, but a bushwhackerish philosopher instead. And then—have I defrauded you, fair reader?—this is not a love-story! When I sat down to write it, I resolved to exclude, most rigidly, from its pages, all allusion to the tender passion; but, somehow, though against my will, my personages could not be kept free from its toils. My error was in bringing them together to spend Christmas in a Virginia country-house. The thing cannot be remedied, now, without an entire change of plot; so I shall have to let it go as it is. But the reader must credit the whole of this Episode of Love, which has forced itself into a theme of a different nature, to Alice Carter. Without her assistance I could not have written one word of it. She and Charley, to be entirely honest, are the real authors of this book. They have furnished most of the facts; I am to pocket all the glory.
To show the part Alice has had in the matter, I will mention, by way of example, a conversation we had years after the occurrences herein described,—less, in fact, than eighteen months ago. We were talking of the good old times,—Consule Planco,—and happened to speak of this particular Christmas at Elmington, and especially of the week that preceded Christmas Eve.
“Did you know as early as that, that a love-affair was brewing between Mary and the Don?”
“Of course; at any rate, I feared it. You know how harum-scarum I was in those days?”
“I do,” I replied, “if harum-scarum means irresistible.”
“Youresisted me, at any rate; but, as I was going to remark, I had the regulation number of eyes aboutmy person, and couldn’t well help seeing what lay straight before me.”
“Isaw nothing!”
“Ah, but you are a man! and remember that there are none so blind as those who can’t see!”
“Then you think the affair was well under weigh before the end of the first week?”
“With the Don, yes; and Mary was far more interested than she would allow herself to believe.”
“Do you suppose that she was aware of the critical state of the Don’s affections?”
“Of course she was; don’t you know that a woman always perceives that a man is falling in love with her long before he finds it out himself?”
“Not to add,” I rejoined, “that she often perceives it when the man neverdoesfind it out himself. By the way, why do women always express surprise at a proposal, as I am told they invariably do?”
“Oh, that is to gain time; but rest assured, the surprise is about as real as that felt by a spider when a fly, after buzzing about her web for a time, and lightly grazing first one thread and then another, at last puts himself in a position where he may be made available.”
“Poor fly!”
Upon the authority, then, of Alice, who holds the position of Editor-in-chief of the Love-department of this work, I may assure the reader that by the time that one week had passed over the heads of our party at Elmington this was the state of things:
Mary was sure that the Don loved her, and believed that she was fancy-free. The Don was aware, no doubt, of the state of his own affections, and was, we will suppose,—for there is no way of knowing,—in perplexing doubt as to the condition of Mary’s. Alice knew more than either of them; while upon me, the teller of this tale, their various nods and becks and wreathéd smiles had been entirely lost.
I knew no more of what was going forward than Zip did of the amours of Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman.
Christmas Eve had come, and, as usual, the holidays had been officially ushered in by a noble fire of hickory logs. A deep mass of ruddy coals was glowing upon the vast hearth of the Hall. Upon these had been cast a hamper of chosen oysters. The guests (it was the way at Elmington) were expected to rake them out, every man for himself and sweetheart, which gave a delightful informality to the proceedings. As soon as the roasting was well under weigh, two enormous, ancestral bowls, one of eggnog, the other of apple-toddy, were brought in. Later, there was to be dancing. A dozen or so of our neighbors and friends were in the habit of dropping in on us, on these occasions, to help us make merry.
“And now, grandfather,” said I, “it is time to bring out the old Guarnerius.”
“The old what?” asked the Don, quickly.
“His old Guarnerius violin; Guarnerius was a celebrated maker of violins,” I explained.
What was the matter with Charley? Why did he purse up his mouth and give that inaudible whistle?
“Ah,—and Mr. Whacker has one of these old instruments?”
“Yes; and he is as tender with it as a mother with her first-born. He allows it to be brought out only during the Christmas holidays; though he used to let Monsieur Villemain play on it. The genuine ones are very rare and dear,” I added.
Another silent whe-e-ew from Charley.
“Oh, I should suppose so,” replied the Don.
“What did you say your Guarnerius cost you, grandfather?”
That was a question I asked every Christmas Eve, when the violin was brought out; and always with the same result.
“That,” replied the old gentleman, smiling and addressing the Don, “is a piece of information I have never given to my friends. You see, when I was a young man—”
We all knew what was coming,—the story that my grandfather always told to strangers when his Guarnerius was brought out for inspection. It was rather a long story,—how he took lessons from a very promising young artist, who took to gambling and drinking, and had, therefore, to sell his beloved violin to his pupil,—and how the young man grieved at giving it up, etc., etc., etc.
“So saying,” concluded Mr. Whacker, “he wrung my hand and hurried out of the room.”
“Ouch!” cried Charley, letting fall upon the hearth, at the same time, a large oyster and the knife with which he was opening it.
If there runs upon the people’s highway a hopelessly slow coach, it is your writer of English grammars. When will they deem this interjection respectable enough to introduce into their works? If never, how is the boy of the future to parse my works? Surely, it is worth any half-dozen of their genteel alases, or their erudite alackadays! Look at it! Ouch! How much body! What an expressive countenance! What character in its features! Hebrew verbs have genders; and don’t you see that ouch is masculine? What lady would use it? Nay, it is more than masculine,—it is manly!
See those two boys,—the one with a strong pin fixed in the toe of his shoe,—the other absorbed in his lesson, and sitting in an unguarded attitude. Up goes the foot!
“Ouch!”
The word is more than manly,—it is stoical. Stoical, did I say? ’Tis heroic!
For does not the lad say in that one breath, with Byron’s dying gladiator, that he consents to start, but conquers agony? He means, as clearly as though he had used the whole dictionary, “I am no girl. I didn’t scream. It didn’t hurt, neither. I just wantedto have you understand that I knew you were fooling with the seat of my trousers.”
All this those four letters mean; and yet this is their first appearance in any serious literary work!
To this masterly interjection did Mr. Charles Frobisher give vent; and he meant, of course, “I have cut my finger with this confounded knife, opening this confounded oyster; but don’t disturb yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, ’tis a small affair.” Accordingly he rose, left the room, and soon returned with his finger bandaged.
“Oh, I am so sorry!” said Alice.
“Badly cut?” inquired my grandfather.
“It is nothing,” said Charley.
“But how annoying,” added the old gentleman. “Your left hand, too! So that you will not be able to play for the dancers this evening.”
Charley looked at the bandaged finger with a thoughtful air, and shook his head.
Charley, with all his supposed aversion to the fair sex, was ready, at any time, to play all night to the dancing of a party of girls, and the young people were much chagrined at the accident to his finger. True, Herr Waldteufel had offered his services at the piano; but they wanted a fiddler on Christmas Eve; and the question was raised whether one could not be found among the negroes. But it turned out that a “revival” had recently swept over the county, and both my grandfather’s fiddlers had “got religion.” One of them had, in fact, already begun to preach; and, in his first sermon, had taken high conservative ground as to the future state of such as drew the bow and repented not. So, as the tyro to whom the new parson had sold his instrument was not yet up to the mark, it seemed certain that we would have to trip it to the less inspiring strains of the piano.
“I vill blay for de yoong beebles till daylight doaf abbear,” quoth the Herr, who was very near the mammoth bowl of apple-toddy.
But just as this thorough-going proposal fell from the Professor’s well-moistened lips, there was heard theclattering of hoofs on the frozen ground. There was a stir among the darkies, around and in the door-way, and on the steps of the Hall; for, as was the custom in the olden days, whenever there was any conviviality going forward in the “Great-House,” the negroes had crowded about all the doors and windows whence a glimpse of the festivities was to be had; for they knew very well there was “mo’ toddy in dat d’yar big bowl dan de white folks gwine ’stroy, let alone de eggnog.”
I hasten to remark that this mysterious cavalier, so darkly galloping through night and frost, was none other than Mr. William Jones,—Billy for short,—the young fellow of whom we have heard before, and who was, at this time, a student at the University. A dozen sable youngsters seized his reins, ambitious of the honor of riding his horse to the stable; and as he dismounted and approached the densely-packed steps, he was assailed by a chorus of joyous, friendly voices.
“Dat you, Marse Billy? Lord ’a’ mussy, how de chile done growed, to-be-sho! Jess like he pa, too!”
The light was streaming upon his cheery, manly face. “Why, how do you do, Aunt Polly?”
“I ’clare ’fo’ Gaud de chile know me, and in de dark, too!” And Aunt Polly doubled herself up and chuckled blissfully.
“Know you! why, it was only last October that I went off to the University!”
“Dat so, Marse Billy. How we old people does forgit, to-be-sho!”
I may remark, here, that before the late war it was very gratifying to a middle-aged negro to be thought old. There was on every farm a considerable proportion of the ladies and gentlemen of color who had voted themselves too old or too infirm to labor. Their diseases,—they were all diseased,—while masking their malignity behind such empirical euphemisms as rheumatiz or misery in de chist, baffled all diagnosis, and were invariably incurable; for who can minister to a mind diseased with that most obstinate of ailments, an aversion, to wit, to putting in movement the muscles of one’s own body? There was, so to speak, anHôpitaldes Invalideson every farm; and on my grandfather’s theemeritiandemeritæwere in strong force.
And truly it was a pleasant sight, provided you were not a political economist or a philanthropist, to walk among the cabins, on a bright autumn afternoon, and see the good souls sitting, sunning themselves, and hear the serene murmur of their prattle, broken, ever and anon, by some mellow burst of careless laughter.
It was tranquillity such as this, I fancy, that Homer must have observed in the old men of his day. Don’t you remember when there was a truce, and Priam was standing upon the battlements,—what book was it?—but no matter,—and he sent for Helen to come and point out to him the various Greek heroes who stood beneath the walls; and how she had to pass by a knot of ancient men, and how she amazed them by her beauty? The days of toil and sweat and wounds, for them, at least, were past; and they, too, had come to catch, from the turrets, a glimpse of wide-ruling Agamemnon and Ulysses of many wiles; of the brawn of Ajax; and of Diomede, equal to the immortal gods. And there they sat, hobnobbing and a-twittering—so the master says—low and sweet as so many cicadas—let us say katydids—from greenwood tree.
“No wonder,” they chirped, “the Greeks and Trojans” (theywere no longer either Greeks or Trojans,—they were aged men, merely) “have ceaselessly contended, for now nearly ten years, about her,—for she is divinely beautiful!”
I think it must have been my childhood’s experiences of plantation life that caused me to be so profoundly touched by this masterly passage; for hardly elsewhere, in this grimly struggling world of ours, could just such scenes have been witnessed. Just think of it, for a moment! Here, throughout Virginia, there were, in those days, on every farm, three or four, or a dozen, or a score of servants, who had rested from their labors at an age when one may say the struggle glows fiercest with the European races. A roof was over their heads, a bright fire crackled on their hearths. Their food, if plain, was abundant. Andthere was not a possibility that these things should ever fail them. No wonder they used to rival the ἄσβεστος γέλως that burst from the ever-serene gods, when lame Vulcan, with his ungainly hobble, went to and fro among them, officiously passing the nectar.
That sonorous mellowness of unalloyed laughter we shall never hear again. But never mind,—let it pass!
Yes, let it pass. There was music in that laughter, doubtless, but it cost us too dear. I think we Virginians[1]are agreed as to that,—more than agreed,—yet we cannot bring ourselves to look as others do, upon the state of things which rendered it possible. As one man, we rejoice that slavery is dead; but even the victors in the late struggle—the magnanimous among them, at least—will hardly find fault with us if we drop a sentimental tear, as it were, upon its tomb. A reasonable man is glad that an aching tooth is well out of his mouth; but to the autocratic dentist who should pull it out by force, his gratitude would not be boisterous; and then, after all, it leaves a void. But cheer up, brother Virginians, listen to your Bushwhackerish bard while he chaunts you a lay. He would have his say; but he will be good and kind. He would not willingly bore you; and hence, ever thoughtful and considerate, he serves up his rhetoric in a separate course. Skip this chapter, then, if you will. You will find the story continued in the next.
Yes, it is all true enough, I admit. It was but the other day, so to speak, that the first shipload of negroes was landed on the shores of a continent peopled by a race which, after all has been said, remain the most interesting of savages, and who, if not heroes, have easilybecome heroic under the magicians’ wands of Cooper and of Longfellow. That shipload and its successors have become millions; while the genius of a Barnum scarce suffices to bring together enough Redskins to make a Knickerbocker holiday. The descendant of the naked black, whose tribe, on the Gold Coast, still trembles before a Fetish, rustles, beneath fretted ceilings, in the robes of a bishop; while some chief of the kindred, perhaps, of Tecumseh, shivers on the wind-swept plains, under the fluttering rags of a contract blanket. His half-naked squaw hugs her pappoose to her bosom, and flees before the sabres of our cavalry; but her more deeply-tinted sister struts, beflounced, the spouse of a senator. In one word, the race which the Anglo-Saxons found on this continent remained free, and perished; the people they imported and enslaved, multiplied and flourished. I do not feel myself the Œdipus to solve this riddle of modern morals; but, with my people, I fail to see the consistency of Victor Hugo[2]for example, who could whine over the fate of John Brown,—hanged for an attempt to achieve the liberty of the negro through murder,—but who, when Captain Jack stood at the foot of the gallows, made no sign. Captain Jack, he too, through murder, sought to maintain his ancestral right to independence—nay, existence—and a few acres of wretched lava-beds. The distempered fancy of the first saw, as he gazed upon the corpses of the fellow-citizens of Washington, of Jefferson, and of Henry, countless dusky legions rushing to his rescue,—the clear eye of the other showed him forty millions pouring down upon his less than a hundred braves, to avenge the death of Canby; and yet he slew him. John Brown is a hero, his name is a legend, his tomb a shrine; but where are thy wretched bones slung away, poor Jack? Hadst thou been fair, and dwelt in Lacedæmon, in Xerxes’ days, the name of Leonidas shone not now in solitary glory adown the ages; wert thou living now, and of sable hue, thou mightest be sitting at the desk of Calhoun. Alas!alas! that thou shouldst have been of neutral shade; for how couldst thou be a man and a brother, being only copper-colored?
But leaving these knotty points of ethical casuistry to the philanthropists, I reiterate that I think that the picture I have drawn of certain aspects of slavery, as it existed in Virginia, reveals its fatal weakness. That weakness consisted in the fact that it realized the ideal set forth in Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables.” That eloquent work of the erratic French dreamer is one long and passionate protest against the sorrows and sufferings of the poor. In those sorrows and sufferings he finds the source of all the crimes that dishonor humanity. How, as things existed with us, poverty sufficiently grinding to produce crime was actually unknown; so that our little world was just the world that he sighs for.
Victor Hugo plumes himself, I believe, upon never having learned the gibberish that the English call their language. Therefore, as I do not design having this work translated into the various modern languages (why should I, forsooth, since by the time your day rolls round the aforesaid gibberish will be the only tongue spoken by mankind?) he will never have the pain of seeing himself ranked among the upholders of slavery. Whatever he might say, however, it is very clear that no state of things heretofore existing has so well fulfilled the conditions of his ideal of society. It is no fault of mine if his ideal be absurd.[3]
For I fear me much this is no ideal world we live in.
But ah, what a lotus-dream we were a-dreaming, when from out our blue sky the bolt of war fell upon us! We lived in a land in which no one was hungry, none naked, none a-cold; where no man begged, and no man was a criminal, no woman fell—from necessity; where no one asked for bread, and all, even the slaves, could give it; where Charity was unknown, and in her stead stood Hospitality, with open doors. What tidings we had, meanwhile, of the things of the outer world, made us cherish all the more fondly the quietude of our Sleepy Hollow. The nations, had they not filled the air for a century past with the murmur of their unrest? Revolutions, rebellions, barricades, bread-riots,—agrarianism, communism, the frowning hosts of capital and labor—the rumor of these grisly facts and grislier phantoms reached us, but from afar, and as an echo merely; and lulled, by our exemption from these ills, into a fatal security, we failed to perceive the breakers upon which we were slowly but surely drifting. The lee-shore upon which our ship was so somnolently rocking was nothing less than bankruptcy. Spendthrifts, we dreamed that our inheritance was too vast ever to be dissipated; nay, we fondly imagined that we were adding to our substance. Did not our statesmen, our Able Editors, unceasingly assure us that we were the richest people on the globe, and growing daily richer? And what had been that inheritance? A noble, virgin land, unsurpassed, all things considered, anywhere,—a land thatcost us nothing beyond the beads of Captain Smith and the bullets of his successors,—a land which no mortgages smothered, no tax-gatherer devoured. But smothered and devoured it was, and by our slaves.
It is doubtful whether slavery was ever, at any stage of the world’s history, wise, from an economical point of view, though it was, of course, in one aspect, in the interest of humanity, when, at some prehistoric period, men began to enslave rather than butcher their prisoners of war. But it seems very clear, that if the conditions of any society were ever such that its greatest productive force could only be realized through the restraints and constraints of slavery, then that slavery must needs have been absolute and pitiless. No half-and-half system will suffice. Severe and continuous labor is endured by no man who can avoid it. But labor, continuous and severe, is the price paid by the great mass of mankind for the mere privilege of being counted in the census; so terrible is that struggle for existence, of the Darwinian dispensation, which, whether we be Darwinians or not, we must needs live under. This, in our dreamland, we quietly ignored. The political economists are all agreed that from the sharpest toil little more can be hoped for than the barest support of the toilers; and we were not ignorant of political economy. But is there not an exception to every rule? And were we not that exception? Inourfavored nook, at least, the cold dicta of science should not hold sway. And so our toilers did half work,—and got double rations. In one word, we spent more than we made. And although we could not be brought to see this, it became very plain when the war came and settled our accounts for us; for I venture to assert that in April, 1865, the State of Virginia was worth intrinsically less than when, in 1607, Captain John Smith and his young gentlemen landed at Jamestown. In other words, there had been going on for two hundred and fifty years a process the reverse of accumulation. For that length of time we had been living on our principal,—the native wealth of the soil. While, in other parts of the country, the struggle for existence had causedbarrenness to bloom, the very rocks to grow fat, in ours the struggle for ease had converted a garden into something very like a wilderness. The forests we found had fallen; the rich soil of many wide districts was washed into the sea, leaving nothing to represent them; and when the smoke of battle cleared away, we saw a naked land. It could not have been otherwise. Thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the nineteenth century, as well as the principles of the Jeffersonian Democracy, we were entangled in a system of things not compatible, profitably at least, with either. We could not forget that our slaves were human. There were ties that we felt in a hundred ways. We loved this old nurse. We humored that old butler. We indulged, here a real, there a sham invalid, until, in one word, the thing began to cost more than it came to, and it was time we shook off the incubus.
And there was a time when many Virginians, now living, began to see this; and had they been let alone, not many years would have passed before we should have freed ourselves from the weight that oppressed us. But in an evil hour there arose a handful of men with a mission,—a mission to keep other people’s consciences,—often—as certain national moral phenomena subsequently showed—to the neglect of that charity which begins at home. From that day all rational discussion of the question became impossible in Virginia; and a consummation for which many of the wisest heads were quietly laboring became odious even to hint at, under dictation from outsiders; and on the day when the first abolition society was formed, the fates registered a decree that slavery should go down; not in peace, but by war; not quietly and gradually extinguished, with the consent of all concerned, but with convulsive violence,—drowned in the blood of a million men, and the tears of more than a million women.
Well, they were only white men and women,—so let that pass, too.
[1]Obviously, as often elsewhere, Mr. Whacker here saysVirginians, instead ofSoutherners, to avoid all semblance of sectional feeling.
[1]
Obviously, as often elsewhere, Mr. Whacker here saysVirginians, instead ofSoutherners, to avoid all semblance of sectional feeling.
[2]Written, doubtless, before the death of “The Master.”—Ed.
[2]
Written, doubtless, before the death of “The Master.”—Ed.
[3]In my capacity of Bushwhacker, I make it a matter of business to laugh whenever I feel like it. I felt like it when, on reading the above, this parallelism occurred to me: the hero of the “Miserables”—Jean Valjean—is a thief. Now, holds our author, whenever a man is so unfortunate as to be a thief, no blame should be attached to him,—and he puts it about thus: “A thief is not a thief. Nor a crime. He is a product. A fact. A titanic fact. A thief is a man who hears the cry of a child. It is his child. It is a cry for bread. Society gives him a stone. Effacement of his rectitude. He appropriates society’s wallet. And serves society right; for ’tis society has made him a thief.”Leaving to some coming man the task and the credit of removing from society all stain, by discovering who or what made society a thief-maker, ’tis this that moved my Bushwhackerish soul to smile: this Jean Valjean, whom society is so wicked in producing, turns out to be a better man than any other man ever was, is, or shall be. So we, under our very sinful system, would seem to have prepared for the elective franchise a whole people lately buried in heathenism, without, as it were, half trying. Nor does this claim rest merely upon that braggartism so peculiarly Southern. The very best people on the other side—nay, the people who, by their own admission, embrace all the culture and virtue of the country—have been the first to give us this meed of praise,—yet it is notorious that very few white men are yet, with all their Bacons, and Sydneys, and Hampdens, and Jeffersons to enlighten them, qualified for that august function. Nay, even in France herself, though she is, as Victor Hugo says,—and he should know,—the mother and the father, and the uncle and the aunt, and the brother and the sister of civilization, I believe there are Frenchmen not yet fitted to wield the ballot,—among whom, I doubt not, some profane persons would make so bold as to class the illustrious rhapsodist himself.
[3]
In my capacity of Bushwhacker, I make it a matter of business to laugh whenever I feel like it. I felt like it when, on reading the above, this parallelism occurred to me: the hero of the “Miserables”—Jean Valjean—is a thief. Now, holds our author, whenever a man is so unfortunate as to be a thief, no blame should be attached to him,—and he puts it about thus: “A thief is not a thief. Nor a crime. He is a product. A fact. A titanic fact. A thief is a man who hears the cry of a child. It is his child. It is a cry for bread. Society gives him a stone. Effacement of his rectitude. He appropriates society’s wallet. And serves society right; for ’tis society has made him a thief.”
Leaving to some coming man the task and the credit of removing from society all stain, by discovering who or what made society a thief-maker, ’tis this that moved my Bushwhackerish soul to smile: this Jean Valjean, whom society is so wicked in producing, turns out to be a better man than any other man ever was, is, or shall be. So we, under our very sinful system, would seem to have prepared for the elective franchise a whole people lately buried in heathenism, without, as it were, half trying. Nor does this claim rest merely upon that braggartism so peculiarly Southern. The very best people on the other side—nay, the people who, by their own admission, embrace all the culture and virtue of the country—have been the first to give us this meed of praise,—yet it is notorious that very few white men are yet, with all their Bacons, and Sydneys, and Hampdens, and Jeffersons to enlighten them, qualified for that august function. Nay, even in France herself, though she is, as Victor Hugo says,—and he should know,—the mother and the father, and the uncle and the aunt, and the brother and the sister of civilization, I believe there are Frenchmen not yet fitted to wield the ballot,—among whom, I doubt not, some profane persons would make so bold as to class the illustrious rhapsodist himself.
“Git out o’ de way, you niggers! Aint y’ all got no manners? Git out o’ Marse Billy way! I declar’ fo’ Gaud niggers ain’t got no manners dese days. Tain’t like it used to be. Y’ all gittin’ wuss and wuss.”
So saying, Aunt Polly made an unceremonious opening among the eager heads of the youngsters that were thrust into the door-way; and Billy pressed laughing through the throng, nodding here and there as he passed. His arrival was hailed with beaming smiles by the ladies, and an almost uproarious welcome by the gentlemen. The Don had already opened his heart to him before he had gotten within introducing distance, charmed by his frank and manly bearing, his hearty manner with the gentlemen, his gentle deference to each lady in turn. So Billy’s sunny face, his cordial rushing hither and thither to greet his friends, his cheery laugh as he exchanged a bright word here and there,—a laugh that revealed a set of powerful and large, though well-shaped teeth,—all this had lighted up the thoughtful face of the Don with a sympathetic glow,—a glow that vanished when, on their being introduced, Billy’s fist closed upon his hand.
Mr. Billy was always a great favorite with me. Indeed, I like to think of him as a kind of ideal young Virginian of those days,—so true, and frank, and cordial, and unpretending. But there is one thing—I have mentioned it above—that, as a historian, I am bound to confess: Billy was addicted to playing on the fiddle.
“So, young ladies,” said my grandfather (for whose annual tunes no one, somehow, had thought of calling), “you will have a fiddle to dance by, after all.” A remark that elicited a joyous clapping of hands; and there was a general stir for partners.
“Dares any man to speak to me of fiddling,” said Billy, “before I have punished a few dozen of these bivalves?”
“That’s right, Billy! Dick, some oysters for Mr. Jones! They were never better than this season!”
Billy passed into the next room, where Dick and his spouse began to serve him with hospitable zeal.
“How was she, Marse Billy?”
Billy had just disposed of a monster that Dick had opened for him, and was looking thoughtful.
“Uncle Dick, it almost makes me cry to think how much better that oyster was than any we can get at the University; indeed it does.”
Dick chuckled with delight. “I believe you, Marse Billy; dey tells me dere ain’t no better oysters in all Fidginny dan de Leicester oyster.”
Four or five students, who, like Billy, had run down home for the holidays, had collected round the doorway leading into the library, and with them several girls who were listening in a half-suppressed titter to Billy’s solemn waggery. Lifting a huge “bivalve” on the prongs of his fork, he contemplatively surveyed it.
“You are right, Uncle Dick; Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these!”
“Jess so! What I tell you, Polly?” said Dick, straightening himself and holding an unopened oyster in one hand and his knife in the other. “Didn’t I say the Nuniversity was de most high-larnt school in de Nunited States?”
Polly, being Mrs. Dick, had too great an admiration for that worthy’s wisdom to do anything but simper assent.
“Jess so,”—and he held his eye upon her till he felt sure that she had abandoned all thought of protesting against his dictum,—“eben so. You right, Marse Billy; Solomon nor no other man never raised ’em like one o’ dese. Ain’t you takin’ nothin’ to-night, Marse William? Dey tells me toddy help a oyster powerful.”
“Uncle Dick,” exclaimed Billy, with admiring surprise, “how do you manage always to know exactly what a fellow wants?”
“Marse William,”—and Dick drew himself up to his full height,—“I ain’t been ’sociatin’ wid de quality all dese years for nothin’.”
The dancing being over at a reasonable hour,—Billy and the Herr furnishing the music,—the ladies retired to their rooms in the “Great-House,” leaving the gentlemen to their toddy and cigars; and a jovial crew they became. Billy and the Herr bore a large part in the entertainment of the company,—the former executing reel and jig and jig and reel in dashing style,—the latter improvising accompaniments,—his head thrown back, a cigar-stump between his teeth, and contemplating, through his moist spectacles, with a serene Teutonic merriment, the capers of the revellers, one or another of whom could not, from time to time, resist the fascination of the rhythm, but would spring to his feet and execute something in the nature of a Highland fling or a double-shuffle, to the great delight of the others, and of none more than my glorious old grandfather. It is needless to remark that at each one of these Terpsichorean exhibitions there was a suppressed roar of chuckles to be heard issuing from the sable throng that crowded the door-ways, and that there might have been seen as many rows of ivories as there were heads massed together there.
“It is refreshing, Mr. Whacker,” observed the Don, whose reserve was unmistakably thawing under the apple-toddy, “to see a man of your age sympathizing so heartily with us youngsters in our enjoyments.”
“Yes,” remarked the old gentleman, lolling comfortably back in his chair; “but I am not so sure that I have left all the fun to the youngsters;” and he nodded towards his empty glass; “but I believe I enjoy the capers of the boys more than the toddy.”
“Go it, Billy!” cried a student, as that artist dashed into a jig with a zeal heightened by the enthusiasm of the now slightly boozy Herr.
“Bravo!” cried Mr. Whacker; “you will have to look to your laurels, Charley.”
“Oh, I resign!” said Charley, examining the rag on his finger.
“By the way, Charley, you have not yet shown Mr. Smith the old Guarnerius. Do you take any interest in such things?”
“I have a great curiosity to see it.”
“I am afraid it will not show off to advantage. I have forgotten to have it mounted with strings this Christmas. Do you know that a violin gets hoarse, as it were, from lying idle?”
“I have heard something of the kind.”
“I should have had it strung several days ago.”
“I put strings on it day before yesterday,” said Charley.
“Indeed!” said my grandfather; “but you were always thoughtful. Let us have it, Charley.”
Charley’s return with the violin made a stir among the company. Billy stopped his fiddling and came up, followed by all present, to see opened the case that contained the wonderful instrument, which was a sort of lion among the fiddlers of the county. My grandfather unlocked the case with a certain nervous eagerness, raised the lid almost reverently, and removing the padded silken covering which protected it, “Now just look at that,” said the old gentleman, his eye kindling.
I have often seen ladies take their female friends to the side of a cradle, and softly turning down the coverlet, look up, as much as to say, “Did you ever see anything half so beautiful?” And I must do the female friends the justice to add that they always signified that they never had; and I have often seen the subject of such unstinted praise, when brought before males, pronounced a pretty enough baby, but a baby seemingly in no wise different from all the babies that are, have been, or shall be; and on such occasions I can recall, methinks, some maiden aunt, for example, who has ended by getting worried at the persistent inability of some obstinate young fellow to see certain points of superiority about mouth, eyes, or nose, which to her were very clear. And so it was on this occasion, as on many previous ones, with my grandfather. He was always amazed, when he showed his violin, at the polite coldness of the praise that it received.
“Look at thosef-holes,” said he, taking the violin out of its case; “look at those clean-cut corners!” And everybody craned his neck and tried to see the clean-cutcorners. “What a contour!” exclaimed the enthusiastic old gentleman, holding the instrument off at arm’s length and gazing rapturously upon it. There was a murmur of adhesion, as the French say.
“Splendid!” ejaculated Billy, feeling that something was due from him as the fiddler of the evening; thereby drawing the gleaming eyes of Mr. Whacker full upon him. “Splendid!” repeated he, in a somewhat lower tone, and looking steadfastly at the violin; for he could not look the old gentleman in the face,—knowing—the honest scamp—that he was a fraud, and saw nothing wonderful in the instrument.
“Why, hand me that old gourd you have been playing on,” said Mr. Whacker; and he snatched the fiddle from Billy’s hand. “Look at those two scrolls, for example,” said the old gentleman, bumping them together within three inches of Billy’s nose.
Billy took the two necks in his hands, screwed up his face, and tried his best to look knowing; but his broad, genial countenance could not bear the tension long; and a sudden flash of humor from his kindly eyes set the company in a roar, in which my grandfather could not help joining.
“Well, well,” said he, “I suppose I ought not to expect you to be a connoisseur in violins. Would you like to examine it?” said Mr. Whacker, thinking he detected a look of interest on the part of the Don,—and he handed him the instrument.
The Unknown took it in an awkward and confused sort of way. My grandfather looked chopfallen. “I thought that possibly you might have seen Cremonas in Europe,” observed the old man timidly.
The Don bowed,—whether in assent or dissent was not clear; nor was it any clearer, as he gently rocked it to and fro, examining thef-holes and other points of what is known as the belly of the instrument, whether he was moved by curiosity or by courtesy. A motion of his wrist brought the back of the instrument in view. “By Jove!” vehemently exclaimed the stranger, as a flood of golden light flashed into his eyes from the unapproachable varnish; but he colored and looked confusedwhen he saw that his warmth had drawn the eyes of all upon himself. Even Charley ceased examining the bandage on his finger and quietly scrutinized the Don out of the corners of his eyes.
But you should have seen your ancestor and mine, my dear boy. He rose from his seat without saying a single word. There was an expression of defiance in his fine brown eyes, not unmingled with solemnity. He held out his upturned hands as though he were going to begin a speech, I was going to say,—but it was not that. His look and attitude were those of an advocate who has just brought a poser to bear on opposing counsel. And such my grandfather felt was his case. “For years,” his looks seemed to say, “I have been chaffed about my Guarnerius by you bumpkins, and now here comes a man who puts you all down by one word.” He looked from face to face to see if any of the company had anything to say to the contrary. At last his eve met Billy’s. That young gentleman, willing to retrieve his disastrous defeat in the matter of scrolls and contours andf-holes, again came to the front.
“Doesn’t it shine!” remarked that unfortunate youth, approvingly.
“Shine!” shouted my grandfather, indignantly,—“shine!” repeated he with rising voice, and rapping the back of the violin with his knuckles,—“do you call that shiny?” said he, with another rap, and holding the instrument in front of Billy. “Why, a tin pan shines,—a well-fed negro boy’s face shines,—and you saythatshines,” he added, with an argumentative rap. “Is that the way you are taught to discriminate in the use of words at the University?” And the old gentleman smiled, mollified by Billy’s evident confusion and the shouts of laughter that greeted his discomfiture.
“Why, Uncle Tom, if that violin doesn’t shine, what does it do?”
“Why, it—well—I should say—ahem!—in fact, it—I—”
“What would you call it, Uncle Tom?” urged Billy, rallying bravely from his rout, and trying to assume a wicked smile.
“What would I call it? I would call it—well—the violin—confound it! I should hold my tongue rather than say that violin was shiny.” And the old gentleman turned upon his heel and stalked across the room; but Billy was not the man to relinquish his advantage.
“How, Uncle Tom, that is not fair,” said he, following up his adversary, and holding on to the lappel of his coat in an affectionately teasing manner. “Give usyourword.”
“Shiny! shiny!” spluttered the old gentleman with testy scorn.
“Ah, but that won’t do. Let the company have your word, Uncle Tom.” And the young rogue tipped a wink to a knot of students. “The violin is—?”
“Effulgent!” shouted his adversary, wheeling upon him and bringing down the violin, held in both hands, with a swoop.
I shall take the liberty here of assuming that my readers are, as I was myself, till Charley enlightened me, ignorant of the fact that the varnish of the violins of the old masters is considered a great point. Collectors go into raptures over the peculiar lustre of their old instruments, which, they say, is the despair of modern makers. I have myself seen, or at least handled, but one of them,—my grandfather’s old Guarnerius,—and that, certainly, was singularly beautiful in this respect.
“Effulgent!” cried he, his noble brown eyes dilated, his head tossed back and swaying from side to side,—tapping gently, with the finger-nails of his right hand, the back of the violin, upon which the light of a neighboring lamp danced and flamed. The students indicated to Billy, in their hearty fashion, that he had got what he wanted, and Mr. Whacker, spurred on by their approval, rose to the height of his great argument.
“Just look at that,” said he, turning with enthusiasm to one of the students,—“just look at that,” he repeated, flashing the golden light into the eyes of another; “why, it almost seems to me that we have here the very rays that, a century ago, this maple wood absorbed in its pores from the sun of Italy.”
How much more my grandfather was going to sayI know not; for he was interrupted by a storm of applause from his young auditors.
“I say, boys, that’s a regular old-fashioned ‘curl,’” whispered one of them.
“Uncle Tom,” said Billy, removing the bow from the case, “doesthiseffulge any?”
“But, Mr. Whacker,” observed a fat and jolly middle-aged gentleman, “it strikes me that the important thing about a fiddle is its tone, not its varnish. Now, do you really think your Cremona superior to a twenty-dollar fiddle in tone? Honestly now, is there any difference worth mentioning?”
“Any difference? Heavens above! Why, listen!” And the old gentleman drew the bow slowly over double strings, till the air of the room seemed to palpitate with the rich harmony. “Did you ever hear anything like that?” exclaimed he, with flushing face; and he drew the bow again and again. There were exclamations of admiration—real or affected—all around the room.
The Don alone was silent.
I remember looking towards him with a natural curiosity to see what he—the only stranger present—appeared to think of the instrument; but he gave no sign,—none, at least, that I could interpret. He was gazing fixedly at my grandfather with a sort of rapt look,—his head bowed, his lips firmly compressed, but twitching a little. His eyes had a certain glitter about them, strongly contrasting with their usual expression of unobtrusive endurance. I looked towards Charley, but his eyes did not meet mine; for he had turned his chair away from the fire, and was scrutinizing the stranger’s face with a quiet but searching look.
“It is a little hoarse from long disuse,” said Mr. Whacker, drawing the bow slowly as before.
“Give us a tune, Uncle Tom?”
“Yes, yes!” joined in a chorus. “Give us a tune!”
“Pshaw!” said the old gentleman, “it would be a profanation to play a ‘tune’ on this instrument.”
“There is where I don’t agree with you, Mr. Whacker,” put in the fat and jolly middle-aged gentleman.“The last time I was in Richmond I went to hear Ole Bull; and such stuff as he played I wish never to hear again,—nothing but running up and down the strings, with de’il a bit of tune that I could see.”
“That’s precisely my opinion,” said another. “Confound their science, say I.”
“Why, yes,” continued the jolly fat middle-aged gentleman, encouraged. “The fact is, it spoils a fiddler to teach him his notes. Music should come from the heart. Why, I don’t wish to flatter our friend Billy here, but, so far as I am concerned, I would rather hear him than all the Ole Bulls and Paganinis that ever drew a bow.”
“Rather hear Billy? I should think so! Why, any left-handed negro fiddler can beat those scientific fellows all hollow.”
My grandfather, during the passage at arms that ensued upon the expression of these sentiments, grew rather warm, and at last appealed to the Don. He, as though loath to criticise the performance of our friend Billy, spoke guardedly. “I should think,” said he, “that music would be like anything else,—those who devoted most time to it would be most proficient.”
“Of gourse!” broke in the Herr, who had not allowed the discussion to draw him very far from the bowl of toddy. “Now, joost look at unser frient Pilly. Dot yung mon has a real dalent for de feedle,—but vot he blay? Noding als reels unt cheeks unt zuch dinks. Joost sent dot yung mon one time nach Europen, unt by a goot master. Donnerwetter, I show you somedink! Tausendteufels!” added he, draining his glass, “vot for a feedler dot yung Pilly make!”
I may remark that just in proportion as the Herr mollified his water did he dilute his English. Just in proportion as he approached the bottom of a punch-bowl did the language of Shakespeare and Milton become to him an obscure idiom.
“Won’t you try its tone?” said Mr. Whacker, offering the violin and bow to the Don.
“Oh,” replied he, deprecatingly.
“It’s of no consequence that you can’t play,” insisted the old gentleman. “Just try the tone. Here, this way,” added he, putting the violin under the Don’s chin.
It may seem strange that I, a bachelor, should be so fond of illustrating my scenes by means of babies; but as the whole frame-work and cast of this story compels me to marry at some future day, I may be allowed to say that the Don held the violin just as I have seen young fellows hold an infant that had been thrust into their arms by some mischievous young girl. Afraid to refuse to take it lest the mother be hurt, they are in momentary terror lest it fall.
“There! So!” exclaimed the old gentleman, adjusting the instrument.
While every one else smiled at the scene, Charley was, strangely enough, almost convulsed with a noiseless chuckle that brought the tears into his eyes.
“The old boy feels his toddy,” thought I.
The Don began to scrape dismally.
“Ah, don’t hold the bow so much in the middle!—So!—That’s better!—Now pull away! Keep the bow straight!—There, that’s right! So!—”
Charley rocked in his seat.
“Now, up! Down! Up! Down! Up! Very good! Down! Up! Bow straight!—”
Charley leaped from his chair and held his sides. Well, even Cato occasionally moistened his clay.
“So! Better still! Excellent! Upon my word, you are an apt scholar!”
Charley dropped into his seat, threw back his head, and shut his eyes.
The Don paused, smiling.
“What a tone!” exclaimed my grandfather. “Oh!” cried he with intense earnestness, “if—if I could but hear, once again, an artist play upon that violin!”
The smile passed from the Unknown’s face. A strange look came into his eyes, as though his thoughts were far away. His chin relaxed its hold upon the violin and pressed upon his breast. His right arm slowly descended till the tip of the bow almost touchedthe floor; and there he stood, his eyes fixed upon the ground. A stillness overspread the company. No one moved a muscle save Charley. He, with an odd smile in his eyes, softly drew from his pocket a small pen-knife and held it in his left hand, with the nail of his right thumb in the notch of the blade.
Slowly, and as if unconsciously to himself, the Don’s right arm began to move. The violin rose, somehow, till it found its way under his chin.
Charley opened his knife.
There were signs in the Unknown’s countenance of a sharp but momentary struggle, when his right arm suddenly sprang from its pendent position, and the wrist, arched like the neck of an Arab courser, stood, for a second, poised above the bridge.
Charley passed the blade of his knife through the threads that bound the bandage about his finger, and the linen rag fell to the floor; and he rose and folded his arms across his breast.
The bow descended upon the G string. The stranger gave one of those quick up-strokes with the lowest inch of the horse-hair, followed by a down-stroke of the whole length of the bow.
The note sounded was the lower A, produced, if I may be allowed to enrich my style with a borrowed erudition, by stopping the G string with the first finger. Whimsical as the idea may seem to a musician, I have always considered this the noblest tone within the register of the violin; and such an A I had never before heard. I have already mentioned the extraordinary acoustical properties of this room, the very air of which seemed to palpitate, the very walls to tremble beneath the powerful vibrations. The deep, long-drawn tone ceased, and again the wrist stood for a moment arched above the bridge. A breathless stillness reignedthroughout the room, while the Don stood there, with pale face, his dark eyes “in a fine frenzy rolling,”—stood there, one might say, in a trance, forgetful of his audience, forgetful of self, unconscious of all else save the violin clasped between chin and breast. Down came the fingers of the left hand; with them the bow descended, this time upon all four strings; and four notes leaped forth, crisp, clear, and sparkling, brilliant as shooting-stars! Then chord after chord; and, in mad succession, arpeggios, staccatos, pizzicatos, chromatic scales, octaves, fierce, dizzy leaps from nut to bridge, cries of joy, mutterings of rage, moans of despair, all were there,—a very pandemonium of sound!
It was not a composition,—hardly an improvisation, even; for neither was key sustained nor time observed. It resembled, more than anything else I can compare it to, the mad carolling of a mocking-bird as he flaps and sails from the topmost branch of a young tulip poplar to another hard by, pouring forth in scornful profusion his exhaustless and unapproachable tide of song, little recking what comes first and what next,—whether the clear whistle of the partridge, the shrill piping of the woodpecker, or the gentle plaint of the turtle-dove.
And the mad dancing of the bow went on, amid a silence that was absolute. But it was a silence like that of a keg of gunpowder, where a spark suffices to release the imprisoned forces.
The spark came in the shape of an interjection from the deep chest of Uncle Dick.
But how am I to represent that interjection to posterity?
There came a pause.
“Umgh-u-m-g-h!” grunted our venerable butler. And straightway there ensued a scene which—
But future ages must first be told precisely what Uncle Dick said; for, as all Virginians, at least, know, when you limit yourself to reporting of a man that he said umgh-umgh, you have given a meagre and inadequate, certainly an ambiguous, interpretation of his sentiments.
Not to go into any refinements, it suffices to say that besides a score of other umgh-umghs of radically distinct significance, there are umgh-umghs which mean yes, and umgh-umghs which mean no. For example, “Dearest, do you love me?” Now the umgh-umgh that may be supposed in this case is a kind of flexible, india-rubber yes, ranging all the way from “Perhaps” to “Oh, most dearly!” (but Charley says that it is umgh-humgh, not umgh-umgh, that means yes;) now follow up your question with a demonstration as though you would test matters,—umgh-umgh!What anois there! “Are you crazy? Right out here in the summer-house! with people strolling all around, and the vines so thin that—”
Now, Uncle Dick’s umgh-umgh was not at all an umgh-umgh affirmative, still less an umgh-umgh negative. ’Twas rather an umgh-umgh eulogistic, as though he said, Words are inadequate to express my feelings. Now, a less painstaking author than myself would say no more just here; aware that every Virginian, at least, knows what is meant by the umgh-umgh eulogistic; but the contemporary reader must pardon me for reminding him that this book has not been written entirely, or even mainly, for him, but rather for generations yet unborn,—notably the generations of the Whackers. I esteem it, therefore, singularly fortunate that my friend Charley happens to have made an exhaustive study of this same umgh-umgh language, and especially so that he has been at the pains of elucidating his subject by means of a musical notation. Know, then, oh,propinqui longinqui!—oh,manus innumerabiles Whackerorum!—that the exact sound uttered by that unapproachable Automedon was: