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 Charley and 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.”
“_I_ see her, _I_ see 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 let _that_ pass, 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’s grandmother’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.