No one had heard her approaching footsteps. The charming little actress
stood there, her arms akimbo, her head tossed back, her eyes fixed upon
the Don with the blackest look she could command. To the salutations of
the company, to my grandfather’s request that she be seated, she deigned
no reply; and suddenly whisking herself to the side of the table, she
poured in upon the Don a still more deadly fusillade of fierce glances
at short range; then, as the only unoccupied seat was next his, she
advanced to take it, but in the twinkling of an eye her whole manner had
changed, though _why_ it changed I cannot explain, nor she any more than
I, doubtless. I record facts, merely. As she went mincing around the
table to reach her seat, she suddenly became converted into a prim and
absurdly affected old maid. Her manner of shaking out her napkin would
have been alone sufficient to convulse the company. In fact, for a time,
all breakfasting, considered as a practical business, came to an end.
The very streams of hot muffins, waffles, and buckwheat cakes stood
still, in presence of this joyous spirit, as of old the river forgot to
flow when Orpheus touched his lyre. I can see her now, it seems to me,
nibbling at the merest crumb upon a prong of her fork, sipping her
coffee with dainty affectation, ogling the gentlemen with inimitable
drollery.
“Ah, Mr. Smith,” said she, suddenly turning to the Don and dropping the
rôle she had assumed for one of the most artless simplicity,—“I am _so_
delighted to hear that you are a musician. Do you know, I had an idea
that you knew little of music, and cared less; so that—do you know?—we
girls actually feared that our playing bored you? Indeed we did!” she
added, with emphasis, and looking up into his face with an ingenuous
smile. “Didn’t we, girls? But it is such a nice surprise to find you
were only pretending to be an ignoramus. Why, it was only yesterday
morning that I was explaining to you the difference between the major
and the minor keys!—and you knew all the time!” And she gave a
delicious, childish little laugh. “It is such a comfort to know that you
have been appreciating our music all this time. Oh, Mr. Smith!”
exclaimed she, infantile glee dancing in her hazel eyes, “I have one
piece that I have never played for you. I’ll play it immediately after
breakfast. It is called—let me see—” And with eyes upturned and
fingers wandering up and down the table, she seemed to search for the
title of the composition. “Oh!” cried she, gushingly, and throwing
herself forward in front of the Don, and turning her head so as to pour
her joyous smile straight into his eyes,—“oh, it is called the Jenny
Lind Polka;” and she beamed upon our artist as though awaiting an
answering thrill. “_What!_ You never heard it? _No?_” (strumming on the
table.) “Tump-ee! Jenny tump-ee! Lind polka? Tump-ee, tump-ee, tump-ee,
teedle-ee—possible?” (with a look of intense surprise). “Tump-ee,
teedle-ee, tump-ee, teedle-ee—No? W-h-y, g-i-r-l-s! Second part:
Teedum, teedle-um, tee-dum, teedle-um—you don’t—teedum
teedle-um—recognize it? Tee-dum, teedle-um tum, tum, tum—You are quite
sure? Tump-ee, tump-ee—Quite? You shall have it immediately after
breakfast—tump-ee, tump-ee.” And apparently unable to restrain her
impatience, she recommenced the strain, and rattled it off with an
ever-increasing brio, till, at last, as though transported with
enthusiasm, she pushed back her chair and launched forth into a _pas
seul_, tripping round the table, her dress spread out with thumb and
forefinger of either hand, the graceful swaying of her lithe figure
contrasting comically with the tin-pan tone she contrived to give her
voice, and the ludicrous precision of her steps; but, changeful as the
surface of a summer lake, she had hardly made the circuit of the table
once, when she laid her dimpled cheek upon her rosy fingers, her rosy
fingers interlaced upon the shoulder of an imaginary partner, and
stilling her own voice, and as though drunk with the music of a mighty
orchestra, she floated about the room, with closed eyes, in a kind of
swoon.
Just at this juncture, there chanced to be standing near the outer
dining-room door our friend Zip. Zip—but, as these were Christmas
times, let us call him Moses—stood there, with hanging jaw, and rolling
his rather popped eyes, first towards his chief, and then in the
direction of the table, in manifest perplexity as to the disposition to
be made of a plate of waffles he had just brought from the kitchen.
Confused by the merriment, he failed to observe the fair Alice bearing
down upon him. Away went the waffles over the floor. “That’s the way it
goes!” said Alice to the Don, without even a glance at the waffles; “and
you have never heard it before?” asked she, resuming her seat by his
side. In fact, the most amusing feature of her entire performance was
how utterly unconscious she seemed that any one heard or saw her save
the new-found artist. Every word, every look, every gesture seemed
designed solely for his edification. I shall not permit myself to
describe the deportment of the company while Alice was on her high
horse; for Lord Chesterfield has pronounced laughter, save in children,
vulgar. And so, I shall declare breakfast over, and allow our merry
friends to betake themselves whither fancy impels.
“What kind of a day is it?” inquires one; and the whole party soon find
themselves scattered in groups on the southern veranda.
It was one of those enchantingly beautiful winter mornings, never
witnessed, perhaps, out of America. The ground was frozen hard; while
every tuft of dry grass, every twig in view, bedecked with hoar-frost,
danced and flashed and sparkled beneath the dazzling yet hazy sunlight,
with the mingled glow of opals and of diamonds. And what an atmosphere!
Still, but not stagnant; for behold the dreamy undulations of that
slender column of smoke, so peacefully rocking above yonder whitewashed
cabin! Cold, not chill; descending into the lungs as a stimulating and
refreshing bath; clear, but not colorless; tinted, rather,—nay,
transfigured, with the translucent exhalations of nameless gems,—such
was the air that floated over lawn and river on that bright Christmas
morning.
It was a day too fine to be lost; and a vote being taken, it was decided
that a walk should come first. And forth the joyous procession sallied,
Alice and young Jones—kindred spirits—taking the lead. Let them go
their way, rejoicing in their youth; and, while awaiting their return, I
shall, with the consent of the contemporaneous reader, say a word or two
about Virginia society, as it was, to that reader of the future for
whose edification these slight sketches are drawn; to wit, my
great-great-great-etc. grandson.
In my Alice, then, I have endeavored to place before you and future
generations a type taken bodily from the joyous, careless life of
ante-bellum days. Many of my contemporaries will recognize her and her
merry-glancing hazel eyes. My friends—all Richmond, all Virginia, in
fact—will know the original of the picture,—each one his own original.
But the truth is, in painting the portrait of our jolly little Alice I
have aimed at more than representing the features of a charming girl. I
have striven to place before you a marked phase of Virginia
society,—its freedom. It was this which gave it a charm all its own,
and it would be interesting, did it not lead me too far from the path of
my narrative, to point out the contrasts it affords to English society.
Both eminently aristocratic, it is singular that the former should have
been so unshackled, so unconventional, so free, while its prototype is,
without doubt, the most uncomfortable, the most stifling tyranny that
men and women—and men and women, too, of one of the grandest races of
all time—ever voluntarily submitted to. And, strangely enough, Virginia
is almost the only one of the United States where anything like a fair
type of the mother society has survived. The English gentleman, like the
Virginian, has his home in the country; but this is true, in this
country it may almost be said, of Virginia gentlemen alone; if, at
least, the terms be not understood in a sense too literally
geographical. The Southern planter was wont to betake himself to New
Orleans in winter, with half his cotton crop in his pocket, reserving
the other half for Saratoga and the North when summer came. Charleston
was the Mecca of the South Carolinian; while the wealthy citizen of New
York, if he had his villa on the Hudson, retired to it rather to avoid
than to seek society, or else, still unsated with the joys of city life
(the detestation of your true John Bull), even when driven out of town
by the dust of summer and the glare of wall and of pavement, he hastens
to Newport, there to swelter through the dog-days in all the pomp of
full dress and fashionable fooleries. Some stray lord has mentioned in
his hearing—or some one who has seen a stray lord—that summer is the
London season (none other being possible in that climate), and
straight-way he trims his whiskers _à la_ mutton-chop and buys a book of
the peerage; nor suspects that the more closely you imitate an
Englishman the less you resemble him,—one of the strongest
characteristics of that great race being their disdainful refusal to
imitate any other.