It must, in former days, before we Christianized them (at any rate, if
we didn’t do that, quite, we did what we could; we cut their throats for
their heathenism and lands),—it must have been a comfort to an old
Indian brave (before the Pale Faces had taught him what was meant by
peace on earth) when his stalwart son, heir to his prowess, returned to
the parental wigwam and cast into his veteran lap his first string of
scalps. And so, in our day (for conditions change, not man), the
youthful sparkle comes back to a mother’s eye, and nascent wrinkles on
her fading cheek become twinkling dimples again, when her blooming
daughter returns, flushed with victory, from her first campaign. How did
you leave your uncle and your aunt? And I hope all the children are
well? And so you have had a good time? _Glorious!_ Well, you must be
tired; you need not go up-stairs; come into my room and take off your
things.
But she has not had time to unbutton her left glove before her mother
wants to know all about the scalps: how many and whose.
And here there makes its appearance a seeming difference between our
young campaigner and the brave I have mentioned. He, as he dances around
the campfire, waving in one hand the sinister trophies of his victory,
and brandishing his tomahawk in the other, proclaims, not without
ingenuous yells, what a singularly Big Injun he conceives himself to be.
She, returning from the war-path, has nothing to show; denies everything
(as she laughingly unties her bonnet-strings), even to her mother. To
the next-door neighbor, who runs in to hear, denies; but smiles
mysteriously. Idle tales. Nonsense. Not a word of truth in it. Pooh! He
was making love to another girl. But in the end, young man, your scalp
is nailed above the door of that young woman’s chamber, where all may
see,—nailed up with laughing protests and mysterious smiles.
Which is as it should be. There are ways and ways of blowing one’s
little trumpet—or of getting it blown. Conditions change, not man. The
vanity of Ajax was not greater than that of a nineteenth century hero.
Where, pray, was the son of Telemon to find a bottle of champagne to
crack with a war-correspondent?
Alice and Mary managed things economically. Each was the
war-correspondent of the other. In their letters to Richmond, during
these notable holidays, Mary recounted the victories of the enchantress,
while Alice numbered the slain of Mary and her soulful eyes. For be it
understood, fair reader, that while as a monographist I have indicated
one scalp, merely, apiece, in reality a pile of corses lay in front of
each of these lovely archers. They were Big Injuns, both. But this by
the way.
“Which one of them all did you like best?” asked Mrs. Rolfe.
“All!” laughed Mary, letting down her hair as she dropped upon a lounge.
“How many were there, pray?”
“Alice wrote me that—”
“Oh, she’s been telling tales, has she? And you believed all she wrote?”
✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻
✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻
✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻
“Oh, yes, I knew his father, when I was a girl, and I don’t wonder at
the son’s being stupid, as you say. He could talk of nothing but horses,
I remember. By the way, speaking of horses, what has become of that poor
Mr. Smith who was so badly hurt last October?”
“He is still at Elmington, I believe; that is—yes, of course he is
there. I mean we left him there.”
“You _believe_!” laughed Mrs. Rolfe. “Upon my word,” added she, “that is
a summary way of disposing of a young man. He must be a nonentity
indeed. I often wondered that you never mentioned him in your letters.
Alice, on the contrary, could write of no one else. It was the Don did
this and the Don said that.”
“Her beloved Charley and Mr. Smith are close friends.”
“Oh, I see; but I don’t understand how it was that Alice seemed to take
such a lively interest in ‘the Don,’ as she calls him, while you can
scarcely remember that he is still at Elmington. She never wrote a
letter without singing his praises.”
“As I said just now, ‘the Don’ has the good taste to admire Mr.
Frobisher.”
“Ah, that accounts for Alice’s liking ‘the Don.’ Am I to suppose”
(something in Mary’s manner made her mother feel sure that she was on
the right track)—“am I to suppose, then, that you are interested in
some one whom the Don has _not_ the good taste to admire?”
“You are a marvellous guesser, to be sure,” cried Mary, with a bright
laugh, and springing from the lounge and into her mother’s lap.
“Ah, I have hit the nail on the head, have I?” asked Mrs. Rolfe, with a
pleased look of conscious sagacity.
“What a subtle brain is here!” continued Mary, smoothing back the white
hairs from her mother’s forehead, and gazing tenderly into her loving
eyes.
“And so you have been hiding something from your poor old mother? But
you are going to tell her now, aren’t you?” added she, coaxingly. “Who
is this person in whom you are interested?”
“Mary Rolfe!”
“Yourself? Ah, I see. Mr. Smith does not like you, and therefore you do
not fancy Mr. Smith. Am I right?”
“Not entirely.”
“Oho! Then he is another of those upon whom you have found it impossible
to smile. Well, I cannot blame him, poor fellow.” And she kissed her
daughter’s forehead. “The idea of your having never—but why did Alice
never allude to this affair? She gave me an account of all the others.”
“I can’t say,” replied Mary, leaving her mother’s lap for the lounge.
“So you did not fancy him. Of course not, of course not. He is a
handsome fellow,—very; but really, I cannot see how he could have had
the hardihood to make love to you while maintaining his incognito, as
Alice writes that he still does.”
“Hardihood in making love is just what some girls would like.”
“Of course,—_some_ girls; but not a girl brought up as you have been.
Did he make no apology? Yes? Well, that was to his honor. He is a
gentleman, there can be no doubt about that. And you?”
Mary was lying at full length upon the lounge. “I forgave him,” said
she, averting her face.
“Ah, we can’t help that, my daughter. A woman would not be a woman
unless”—and reminiscent lights and shadows flitted across her
face—“unless she kept a soft place in her heart for every man who ever
loved her. But forgiveness and love are different parts of speech.”
No answer.
“To pardon, I say, and to love, are different things,” repeated she; and
her heart began to throb, she hardly knew why.
“Sometimes,” said Mary, covering her face with her hands.