The return of our Jason and Medea from the Argo was very different from
their departure for that fateful craft, if their going had been
operatic, their coming was elegiac. A salvo of salutations was preparing
as they approached, and the Gallery watched the couple as they drew
near, momentarily expecting some outburst of jollity on their part; but
expectancy slowly faded as their nearer and nearer approach brought into
ever clearer view the faces of the Argonaut and the Enchantress.
I have called the Don a man of surprises. What had he been saying to
Alice? thought every one as she tripped up the piazza steps with an
effort to appear jaunty and careless; but her cheeks showed splotches of
burning red, while his features were pale and set. What had happened?
I cannot say what others thought, but I happen to have learned since
what flashed across Mary’s mind. The Don had proposed to Alice and Alice
had rejected him, had declined his _first_ proposal merely, for of
course she could not have meant to reject him for good and all. What
passed her comprehension was how Alice had had the hardihood to propose
a walk which she must have known was to have that result. She was amazed
to think how blind she had been all along. How could she have failed to
remark what was patent to all, that the Don hung upon every word that
fell from Alice’s lips?
I happen to know, too, what Charley thought: “_She_ tackled him! What a
girl! what a girl! Bless her little heart!”
“Well, Alice,” said my grandfather, “you know the rule.” Alice looked
up. “Whenever any of my girls have had a trip on the Argo—”
“Oh,” said Alice, “we kiss you on our return.” And she suited action to
word.
“I accept the amendment, but that is not what I meant. Give an account
of yourself. What luck?”
Alice’s face grew serene under the old-time courtesy of my grandfather’s
manner, and she was herself again.
“You will have to excuse me, Uncle Tom. A girl who has been properly
brought up cannot fail to feel that there _are_ occasions when her
mother is her only proper confidant.”
Even the Don laughed at this, and the hard lines passed out of his face.
He looked at Alice with an expression of admiring amusement, seeing how
easily she had laughed away the awkward pause that their return had
caused.
When Mary, poor tempest-tossed soul, saw that admiring glance, she
stamped her foot, though inaudibly,—stamped it with vexation, and
inwardly begged Alice’s pardon; for it was not the glance of a lover,
rejected or other.
“There they come down the lawn,” suddenly cried my grandfather.
“Charley, where is the glass? Thank you. They are getting into the
boat,—Mrs. Poythress is in,—now for Lucy,—she is in,—and now Mr. P.
there! The first flash of the oars! They are off! Charley,” added he,
handing the glass to Mrs. Carter, “did you think to send word to the
Herr to come, as the Poythresses were to spend the day with us? Ah, I
remember, he could not come. Well, Lucy and Mr. Smith will have to
entertain us to-day.”
“Ah,” sighed Mary, “in that boat sits my real rival. How could I have
thought such a thing of dear Alice?”
When the boat neared the shore, the gentlemen (there were only three at
Elmington at this time,—my grandfather, Charley, and the Don) went to
meet the guests. Mrs. Carter went also, to greet Mrs. Poythress; and
Alice, too; saying, when she saw her mother leaning on Mr. Whacker’s
arm, that she thought it prudent to look after her father’s interests,
when her mother was carrying on so in his absence. I am afraid, however,
that she did not keep a very strict watch on her mother; for she and
Charley were soon considerably in the rear of the rest, and engaged, as
was obvious to Mary (who remained on the piazza), in a very earnest
conversation, the subject of which it hardly needed a woman’s instinct
to divine. She felt sure that her friend was describing to Charley her
interview with the Don; and as Alice grew more and more earnest in her
manner and vehement in her gestures, her curiosity rose at last into a
sickening intensity, for a voice whispered in her ear that she, somehow,
was deeply concerned in what those two were saying. She forgot where she
was, forgot the girls seated near her, saw only Charley and Alice; and
leaning farther and farther forward, as they receded, strove to drink in
with her soulful eyes the words that her ears could not hear.
“Gracious, Mary, what is the matter?”
She had seen Alice stop and turn towards Charley and gaze at him with an
almost tragic earnestness. Then, suddenly springing towards him and
seizing his wrist, she had given him a pull that shook his equilibrium.
With nerves unstrung by the harassing doubts of the last few weeks, and
wrought up to the highest pitch of painful curiosity as to the subject
matter of the singular interview between Alice and the Don in the Argo
that morning,—seeing Alice detailing that interview to Charley,—when
she witnessed Alice’s violent illustration of what must have occurred
between her and the Don, Mary had leaped, with a cry, from her seat.
“Gracious, Mary, what is the matter?”
At these words of her neighbor Mary sank back in her chair with a vivid
blush and a confused smile, and was silent.
“You frightened me so! I thought some one had fallen out of the boat,
perhaps. What was the matter?”
“I am sure I can’t tell; I suppose I must have been dreaming.”
The neighbor cast her eyes towards the boat, and seeing among the
approaching guests Lucy leaning on the Don’s arm, thought her own
thoughts.
The day was an unusually warm one for February, and, a vote being taken,
it was decided not to enter the house; and our friends soon grouped
themselves to their liking on the sunny piazza; the elders at one end,
in the middle the young people, except Charley and Alice, who sat by
themselves at the other end of the porch.
These twain often found themselves isolated now. Wherever they chose
their seats every one seemed to think they needed room, and moved
off,—treatment that Charley bore like the philosopher that he was. The
fact is that, from being a man who seemed to have nothing to say, he
became, about this time, one who could not find time to say all that he
had on his mind. At this period of his life he used to lie awake in bed,
for hours and hours, as he has since confessed to me [And to me. _A._]
[Wh-e-e-e-w! _C. F._], running over in his mind the things that he had
omitted to say to Alice the evening before, and resolving to say them
all immediately after breakfast next morning. On this occasion a
mountain torrent of words had risen in his soul during the hour’s
absence of his charmer in the Argo. But he was not uttering them. Nor
did it matter in the least, as they would have been as like thousands of
others that he had been whispering and whispering into her rosy ear, as
one drop of water of the supposed torrent was like another. The twain
were rather silent, in fact. They were quietly watching the Don and
Lucy.
One other pair of eyes took in every movement of the Don, another pair
of ears lost never a word nor an inflection of his voice. (Mary was, it
is true, engaged in an animated discussion with Mr. Poythress on the
subject of Byron,—he denouncing the man, while she lauded the
poet,—but then she was a woman.) “How changed he is!” sighed she. “A
moment ago, pale as ashes; how bright and cheerful now! And Lucy! I
think I should try not to look _quite_ so happy, if I were you! Why not
announce your engagement in words, as you are doing every moment by your
manner?”
Alice, on the contrary, to Charley: “How well he is acting his part! He
knows we are looking at him, and see the easy air of an old friend that
he has assumed towards Lucy! Not assumed, either, for his bearing
towards her has always been just that.”
“So I have always thought,” said Charley.
“Certainly; only that manner is rather more pronounced than usual. The
merest glance would convince any one that he was no lover of Lucy’s.”
“‘He that hath bent him o’er the dead,
Ere the first day of death is fled,—
The first dark day,’” etc., etc.,
quoted Mary.
No voice that I have ever heard quite equalled Mary’s in sweetness, even
in familiar talk. Soft and tender, it was yet singularly clear, though
marked by a certain patrician absence of that exaggerated articulation
so characteristic of other communities, where not the _norma loquendi_
of gentle ancestors is the touchstone of speech, but the printed word,
and the spelling-book, and the unlovely precision of the free school.
But now that she was uttering a wail over her own crushed heart, and, in
unison therewith, Byron’s passionate lament over the dead glories of the
Greece of Thermopylæ and of Marathon, the tremulous fervor of her
vibrating tones was touching beyond description. Two or three fair heads
had clustered near hers to catch her low-breathed words; and when,
turning to Mr. Poythress with a certain triumphant enthusiasm in her
soulful eyes, she, with a slight but impassioned gesture, ended with the
words, “’Tis Greece, but living Greece no more,” there was a sense of
choking in more than one snowy throat.
As for Mrs. Carter,—sympathetic soul,—I am told that there were
actually tears in her eyes.
“Upon my word,” began Mr. Poythress, ready to yield.
Perhaps Mary heard what he said as he re-defined his position; but his
words can be of no interest to the reader.
“See,” mused she, “what an easy air he has assumed towards Lucy! And
Lucy! how matter-of-fact! Any one could see at half a glance that they
were acknowledged lovers. See with what an air of content he looks about
him! There, he is exchanging glances with Alice; and she understands
him, of course. She is telling Mr. Frobisher that they are engaged. Ah,
he glanced at me, then, and so furtively! No wonder he averts his eyes
when they meet mine! Yet even yesterday I thought I saw in his
look—well, well; _that_ is all over.”
Alice, on the contrary: “See, he can’t keep his eyes off her! He is just
dying to say something to her; and it will be to the point. Ah, Uncle
Tom has put himself just between us.” And she leaned forward so as to
put Charley almost behind her back, but went on talking, all the same,
in a low voice: “How could those girls have thought that he was in love
with Lucy or Lucy in love with him!”
“Horrible!” ejaculated Charley, in a voice that startled Alice. She
turned and looked at him. Had she turned more quickly, she might have
caught a different expression on his face. As it was, he was gazing out
upon the River with a stony calm upon his features.
“What did you say?” asked she, beginning to doubt her ears.
“‘Horrible?’”
“Who? I?” And the gray eyes met the hazel without blinking.
“Did you not say that the idea of the Don and Lucy being lovers was
horrible?”
“Very likely. Of late I have been capable of saying anything.”
“What did you mean?”
“If I said it,—which I don’t admit; and if I meant anything,—which,
likely enough, I did not—”
“‘Horrible’ is so unlike you.”
“Now you flatter me.”
“Tell me, goose.”
“You say that the Don loves Mary. Then wouldn’t it be sad if Lucy loved
him? And you tell me that Mary loves the Don. Now wouldn’t it be too bad
if the Don loved Lucy? Ought not true love to run smooth if it can?”
Alice fixed her eyes upon Charley’s, and scanned his features long and
intently. There was nothing to be seen there save a smile that was
almost infantile in its sweetness and simplicity. “Do you think I am
handsome?” asked he, languidly. “They tell me I am good.”
“Do you know, Mr. Frobisher, I sometimes think you know more about the—
There she goes, and he after her!”
“Mr. Poythress,” Mary had said, laughing, “my defence of Byron has made
my throat dry.”
“Nor did it lack much of making our eyes moist,” replied he, with a
courtly inclination of his patrician head.
“Let me get you a glass of water,” interrupted the Don, moving towards
the door.
“Ah, thank you, never mind.” And rising hastily, she made for the door
with a precipitancy that vexed Alice; for she saw in it a pointed
indication of unwillingness on Mary’s part to accept even this little
service at the hands of the Don. She moved so rapidly that she had
passed in at the door before the Don could reach it; but he, whether or
not he interpreted her motives as Alice did, followed her within the
house. Instantly the cloud that had passed over Alice’s face was gone,
and a sudden smile shone forth. She sprang to her feet. “Why do we tarry
here all the day? It is moved and seconded that we adjourn to the Hall.
Fall in, company! Attention! Shoulder—I mean seize arms!” And skipping
away from Charley, she laid hands upon Mr. Poythress (“You take Mrs.
Poythress,” she had whispered to Charley; “that will make them all
come”), and away they marched down the steps and across the lawn,
towards the Hall, Alice leading with her rataplan, rataplan, and
enacting a sort of combination of captain, drum-major, and vivandière.
Nothing so much delighted our slaves, in those days, as any jollity on
the part of their masters. Happy and careless themselves, when they saw
their betters unbend they realized more clearly, perhaps, that they were
men and brothers.
“Lord ’a’ mussy!” cried Aunt Polly at the kitchen door, letting fall a
dish-cloth.
“What dat, gal?” carelessly asked Uncle Dick, who sat breakfasting in
his usual stately and leisurely fashion. Aunt Polly made no reply, being
seized with a sudden paroxysm which caused her to collapse into half her
normal stature. Straightening herself out again, and wiping her eyes
with her apron, “Oh, Lord, _how_ long!” she ejaculated, giving the
door-sill two simultaneous flaps with slippers that were a world too
wide. “What’s a-comin’ next? dat’s all I wants to know.” And she began
to rock to and fro. Seeing her for the second time telescope into a
three-foot cook:
“What de matter wid de gal?” said Uncle Dick, rising with dignity, and
wiping his rather unctuous lips.
“’Fore Gaud,” cried his spouse, “I do b’lieve dat chile gwine to make
everybody at Elmin’ton crazy befo’ she done. Mussiful heaven, jess look
at ole mahrster, and he a-steppin’ high as a colt, and Miss Alice
a-struttin’ jess like she had on a ridgimental unicorn, and a-backin’
and a-linin’ of ’em up wid her parasol! Forrard, march! Jess lissen at
her sojer talk, and ain’t she a pretty little critter? No wonder Marse
Charley ravin’ ’stracted ’bout her. Lor’, Dick, let de boy look!”
Zip, by a dextrous ducking of his head, had just evaded the sweeping
palm of his chief. “What is dese young niggers a-comin’ to?” exclaimed
this virtuous personage. “Boy, don’t you see dem flies.” And he pointed
to the table he had just left. “And you a-gapin’ at de white folks,
’stid o’ mindin’ your business!”
One of the perquisites of Zip’s position as junior butler was waving a
feather brush over the bald head of his senior when he sat at meat. Dick
had elected him to this office on the plea of fotchin’ of him up in the
way he should go; and, being a strict disciplinarian, had resented his
abandoning the post of duty without orders.
Zip made a perfunctory dash, with his brush, at the flies,—whom, by the
way, he somewhat resembled in disposition; for as you shall not ruffle
the temper, or even hurt the feelings of one of these, during your
afternoon nap, by a slap, be it ever so violent and contumelious, if it
but miss him; so Zip-Moses accounted all blows that failed to reach that
anvil-shaped head of his not as insults and injuries, but clear gain
rather. Zip, therefore, was not long in finding his way back, on tiptoe,
to where he could get a glimpse of what was going forward on the lawn;
even as that reckless insect blanches not as he tickles the somnolent
nose of a blacksmith; for hath he not his weather eye upon the doughty
fist of his foe?
“Left face!” cried Alice; “forward, file right, march!” And her company
went tumbling with bursts of laughter up the steps and into the Hall.
Lucy took her seat at the piano.
“Why, where is the Don?” asked my grandfather, looking round.
“Lucy has a new solo for us,” said Alice,—“perhaps,—” added she,
conscience-stricken.
“Oho!” cried Mr. Whacker, settling himself.
“What new solo?” asked Lucy.
“That—what do you call it?” replied Alice, rather vaguely.
“The Sonata I have been learning?”
“Oh, yes; that’s what we want.”
Lucy struck the opening chords and began.
Charley leaned carelessly forward and whispered in Alice’s ear,—
“_This_ is a solo; _that_?” And he nodded slightly in the direction of
the house.
“A duet. What did you think of my manœuvre?”
“Immense!”
NOTICE TO THE PUBLIC.
BEING AN INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTER LI.
How and by how many cooks this broth has been brewed, our patrons have
already been duly informed. Up to this point the firm, as a firm, has
been responsible for everything that has been written; for though our
Mr. Whacker, having the pen of a ready writer, has had the task of
arranging our wares in show-cases, our silent partners have furnished
the bulk of said wares. And we desire to say to the public that our
joint labors have been, thus far, carried forward most joyously, and
with perfect harmony.
Save only in one particular.
Our female associate has been grumbling, from the very first, at the
treatment that Love has received at the hands of our Mr. Whacker. She
has again and again protested against what she calls the mocking touches
of his pencil, when he would portray that passion which is so tender,
and yet hath power to move the world. He, on his side, has defended his
handiwork, if not with success, at least with a certain manly vigor,
having observed more than once that he could not for the life of him get
it into his head how it could be High Art to make your heroes say in a
book what a Christian would be hanged before he would say, or be
overheard saying, at least, in real life; adding, with a tartness born
of his wrangles at the Bar, that it passed his comprehension why authors
should be at the pains of causing imaginary beings to make fools of
themselves, when nature had served so many real ones that turn. In
reply, our Alice said that, if that were so, they were but holding the
mirror up to nature; a retort that seemed to dispose of our legal
brother; and so our Alice was encouraged to go on and add (using the
bluntness of a friend) that all this talk about love-making being an
exhibition of an aggravated type of idiocy was, to use the mildest name,
the merest affectation, and could have originated only in the brain of a
sore-headed old bachelor, who is forever talking of marrying, but who
has not the vaguest conception of what love really means. Our Charley,
meanwhile, would only smoke and chuckle and chuckle and smoke, when we
asked for his vote to end our controversy; and as his smoke-wreaths were
perfectly symmetrical, inclining neither this way nor that, and as he
chuckled on both sides of him, neither of us belligerents had the least
pretext for claiming the victory. Yet, in the end, it was he who closed
our debate.
“Jack-Whack,” said he (ever judicious), “turn about is fair play.
Suppose we let Alice write this fifty-first chapter. Let it be hers
entirely, and let her acknowledge it as such, while you may disown it.”
To this we are all agreed. In testimony whereof we have hereunto, etc.,
etc., etc.
Charles Frobisher. [Seal.]
Alice Ditto. [Seal.]
John Bouche Whacker. [Seal.✻]
[✻_Porpoise. Ha! ha! ha!_]
When Charley came out with his Compromise Resolutions, Alice was at
first much taken aback, turning red and white by turns; nor do I believe
she would ever have consented, had I not permitted myself to smile a
rather triumphant smile of defiance. It was then that, nettled by this,
she brought down her plump little fist upon the table and cried, “_I’ll
do it._”
“Brava!” cried Charley, patting her on the back.
“And you, sir!” said she, turning upon him. “I don’t believe _you_ think
I can do it.”
“I believe you capable of anything.”
“Well, I will show you. Decamp forthwith, both of you!”
Charley and I decamped accordingly, and betook ourselves to a very
pleasant beer-garden (for this colloquy chanced to be held in Richmond),
where we spent a couple of hours. On our return we found Alice sitting
with dishevelled hair and looking very disconsolate.
“Where is chapter fifty-one?”
Alice pointed rather snappishly to the waste-basket, in which lay
several sheets of paper, torn into shreds.
“Ah!” said I, “let us put the pieces together, Charley, and see how she
got on.” And Charley and I made for the basket. The result was a battle
royal, at the end of which the shreds had become bits of the size of
postage-stamps, mingled with which, all over the room, lay the ruins of
the basket.
“You give it up, then?”
“Not for a moment,” replied she, panting.
A week passed before Alice summoned us to hear her chapter read. Not
with a view to criticism, however; for it was agreed that neither
Charley nor I should utter one word, either of praise or censure.
Whatever she produced was to be printed just as she wrote it; and here
it is, word for word, just as it came from her pen.
And if any reader, during its perusal, shall come to doubt whether it
be, in truth, her production; if he shall fail to discover one solitary
trait of our merry-sparkling, laugh-compelling enchantress, it will be
but another proof that what people are has nothing to do with what they
write. If, for example, the reader shall find this work dull—but
enough.
Moving nearer the lamp, Alice read with a resolute spirit but faltering
voice as follows: