“Jack,” said Charley that night at my rooms, “have you any message for
the old gentleman? I am off for home to-morrow.”
“Indeed! Why this sudden resolution?”
“Too many people in Richmond for me.”
“It seems to me that you like some of them a good deal. Isn’t she
bright?”
“P-p-p-pass me the tobacco.” He filled his pipe very deliberately and
walked across the room. “Where do you keep your matches? Ah, here they
are. Who,” added he, striking one—“puff—do you—puff, puff—think
so—puff, puff, puff—bright? Confound the thing!—puff—puff—it has
gone out!” And he struck another. Lighting his pipe, and throwing
himself upon a lounge, he looked the picture of content.
“Say, old boy,” said I, “own up. Those hazel eyes—”
“Do you know, Jack-Whack” (whenever he called me that he was in the best
possible humor), “that you are making a howling ass of yourself?” And he
shot a pillar of smoke straight towards the ceiling, following its
eddying curves with contemplative eyes.
“‘Howling ass’ is a mixed metaphor.”
“Yes, but an unmixed truth, my boy. Did it ever occur to you, Jack,”
said he, removing the Powhatan pipe, with its reed-root stem, from his
lips, “that cigars are essentially vulgar? You never thought of it? But
they are. So are dress-coats. You have only to put them into marble to
see it. Look at the statue of Henry Clay in the Square. Was ever
anything so absurd! Posterity will inevitably regard Henry as an ass.”
“Of the howling variety?”
“Of course. Now, just picture to yourself Phidias’ Jove with a cigar
stuck into his mouth.”
Charley shot upwards a circling wreath of smoke, watched it till it
dissipated itself, and then turned his head, with a little jerk, towards
me: “H’m? How would the Olympian Zeus look with a Parian Partaga between
his ambrosial lips?”
“I have seen lips that—”
“Howling and so forth.” And he turned over on his back and commenced
pulling away at his pipe.
“I think she likes you.”
Charley pursed up his mouth, and, taking aim, with one eye, at a spot on
the ceiling, projected at it a fine-spun thread of smoke. I detected a
tremor in his extended lips.
“I may say I know she likes you.”
With an explosive chuckle the pucker instantly dissolved. I had taken
him at a disadvantage. His features snapped back into position as
suddenly as those of a rubber mask.
“I was thinking,” said he, “how great a solace and bulwark a pipe would
have been to Socrates, during his interviews with Xantippe,—and it made
me smile.”
“Yes,” said I, carelessly.
“_Yes!_” said he, rising up on his elbow,—“what do you mean by ‘yes’?”
“I merely meant to agree with you, that a pipe would have been a great
solace and bulwark to Socrates during his interviews with Xantippe.”
He fell back on the lounge. “Let’s go to bed,” said he.
“Good!” said I; and I began to remove my coat. “So the Don is to leave
the Carters to-morrow and go to his own quarters.”
“Yes,” said he, rising from the lounge. “I like that chap.”
That was a great deal for Charley to say. It was the very first
expression of his sentiments towards the Don.
“I am glad you do,” said I; “I thought you did.”
“Yes, he is a man. Do you know what I am going to do? I shall invite him
to Elmington. Uncle Tom will like him. He says he is fond of hunting,
and this is just the time for that; and he will be strong enough soon.
Suppose we go up to-morrow, before I leave town, and invite him jointly.
You will be down for the Christmas holidays, you know. By the way, I
hope he will accept?”
“I am quite sure of it. He has betrayed an unaccountable interest in
Leicester County on every occasion that I have alluded to it,
notwithstanding an obvious effort to appear indifferent. He has a way of
throwing out innocent, careless little questions about the county and
the people that has puzzled me not a little. Who the deuse _is_ he?”
“Roll into that bed! it is too late for conundrums. Here goes for the
light!” And he blew it out.
“Jack!” said he, about half an hour afterwards; “Jack, are you asleep?”
“H’m?”
“Are you asleep?”
“H’m? H’m? Confound it, _yes_!”
“No, you’re not!”
“Well, I _was_!” And I groaned.
“Jack, I suppose Uncle Tom will have his usual Christmas party of girls
and young men at Elmington this Christmas?”
“S’pose so, umgh!”
“I say—”
“Don’t! Don’t! Those are my ribs! Good Lord, man! you don’t know how
sleepy I am. What on earth are you talking about?”
“Do you know what girls Uncle Tom is going to have to spend Christmas
with us this winter?”
“And you woke me up to ask me such a question as that? Thunder! And you
see him to-morrow evening, too! Oh, I understand,” said I, being at last
fully awake, and I burst out laughing. “You want me to say something
about Alice with the merry-glancing hazel eyes.”
“About whom? Alice? That’s absurd,—perfectly absurd! Why, she thinks me
an idiot because I don’t jabber like one of you lawyers. All women do.
Unless you gabble, gabble, gabble, you are a fool. They are all alike. A
woman is always a woman; a man may be a philosopher.”
“My dear boy, your anxieties are misplaced.”
“Who spoke of anxieties?”
“Don’t you—a philosopher—know that talkative girls prefer taciturn
men? I am perfectly certain that Alice thinks your silence
admirable,—dotes on it, in fact.”
“Jack-Whack,” said Charley, rising up in bed and—rare sight—though I
felt rather than saw or heard it—shaking with laughter, “you are the
most immeasurable, the most unspeakable, the most—”
Down came a pillow on my head. Down it came again and again as I
attempted to rise. We grappled, and for a few minutes no two school-boys
could have had a more boisterous romp.
“Now just look at this bed,” said Charley, out of breath; “see what you
have done!” And he fell back exhausted, as well with the struggle as
from his unwonted laughter. “We have not had such a tussle since I used
to tease you as a boy. Whew! Let’s go to sleep now.”
“She’s a bewitching creature.”
“Idiot!” said Charley, turning his back to me with a laugh, and settling
himself for the night.
“Poor fellow! Well, he got me to pronounce her name, at any rate, by his
manœuvring.”
“Do you know this is rather coolish? Where on earth are the blankets?
Find one, won’t you? and throw it over me.”
“Here they are, on the floor! There! Sleep well, poor boy!
‘Oh don’t you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?
Sweet Alice with h-a-i-r so brown.’”
“You rhyme with the sinners who came to scoff, but remained to pray. You
seem to yourself to sing, but appear to me to b-b-b-bray.”
“Good! There is life in the old boy yet!”