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; and then 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 see
how 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?”
[Illustration: SYMPHONY OF LIFE. MOVEMENT II.
_Scherzo._ L. van Beethoven, _“Eroica” Symphony_.
{The first page of the score of the second movement of Beethoven's
Eroica Symphony is shown.}]
SYMPHONY OF LIFE.
MOVEMENT II.