CHAPTER XLVIII.
Time was pressing. In another week these long-continued and long-to-be-remembered Christmas festivities would come to an end. Yesterday, Alice had failed to extract any information from Charley. To-day, she would make another effort.
Opportunities were not lacking,—abundant opportunities. Somehow, everything had changed. Yesterday, wherever Alice was, there was a cluster of merry faces. To-day, her mere appearance upon the piazza seemed to dissipate the groups that chanced to be sitting there. One by one, on one pretext or another, the young people would steal away; and it was astounding how often Charley constituted the sole social residuum. Charley thought it famous luck; but Alice detected distinct traces of design in this sudden avoidance of her society. “They seem to be engaged,”—she knew that innocent phrase of Uncle Tom’s was passing from mouth to mouth, and it annoyed her; for, at the period in question, it was fashionable for our Virginia girls to be ashamed of being engaged; and so deep-rooted was this feeling, that whereas we are assured by Cornelius Nepos that Epaminondas was such a lover of truth that he would not lie even in jest—but enough of the virtuous Theban—
Alice, then, being superior neither to her sex nor to her age, as I am glad to say, was half vexed at being so constantly left alone with Charley,—yet half willing to be so vexed. There was an innuendo, it is true, in the very absence of her companions; but then the soft rubbish that Charley was pouring into her pink ear!
Of all passions, love is the most selfish; not excepting hunger and thirst. Yesterday, Alice had been eager to speak with Charley, alone, in the interests of her friend Mary. To-day she has already had three talks with him; and although he had given her nothing more to do than to listen to the conjugation of one little verb, she had not thought of Mary once. Left together for the fourth time, they were sitting on the piazza; and Charley, having already exhausted and re-exhausted the other tenses, was about to tackle the pluperfect,—that is to say, having persuaded himself that it was true, he was beginning to explain to Alice how it was that, before he had ever seen her, and merely from what he had heard of her, etc., etc., etc. [Fib! Alice F.] Just at this juncture, Mary brushed past them. Charley raising his eyes and seeing in Mary’s a casual, kindly smile, returned it with interest,—the happy dog! Alice raised hers, and seeing the casual, kindly smile,—and more,—looked grave.
“What is the matter?” asked Charley.
Compared with your infatuated lover, your hawk is the merest bat.
Alice rose. “I want to have a talk with you. Let us walk down to ‘the Fateful.’”
“The Fateful”—“Fateful Argo,” to give the name in full—had been christened by Billy. It was neither more nor less than a large and strongly-built row-boat, which had been hauled up on the shore; and being old and leaky, had been abandoned there. It had become imbedded in the sand, and being protected from the wind by a dense clump of low-growing bushes, was a very pleasant resting-place for the romantic, in sunny winter weather. It has been sung that Venus sprang from the waves. The truth of the legend I can neither deny nor affirm; but it is certain that their gentle splashing had a strange intoxication for many a couple that ventured to take their seats in this “Fateful Argo.”
Alice took her seat in the stern, and Charley (although there were several other seats in good repair) sat beside her.
I think it will be allowed me that no book was ever freer than this from satirical reflections upon women (or, in fact, freer from reflections of every sort upon any and all subjects); but I am constrained to observe, just here, that it seems to me that they have, at times, a rather inconsequential way of talking. That is, you cannot always tell, from what they have just said, what is coming next.
“I have asked you,” began Alice, “to come with me to this retired spot that I may have a talk with you. I have a favor to—Mr. Frobisher, you must be beside yourself! And the piazza full of people!” [Shades of Epaminondas! A. Frobisher.]
That’s what I complain of. When they begin a sentence, you never know how it is going to end.
“On the contrary,—thank heaven!—I am beside you.”
“But you won’t be beside me long, if you don’t behave yourself. Don’t,—oh, don’t! Are you crazy?”
“Perfectly,—and glad of it,” replied Charley, with brazen resignation.
“Well, then.” And with a supple grace disengaging herself from his proximity, so to speak, she whisked away to the seat in front.
That’s the reason I always did love women. Their memories are so short. No matter how angry they may be, if you will watch them while they are scolding you, you will see that they are forgiving you as fast as they can.
“You are perfectly outrageous!” said Alice; at the same time readjusting her collar,—and with both hands,—just to show how dreadfully provoked she was.
“Outrageous? Presently you will be calling me Argo-naughty,” said Charley. [This is too bad! I never made one in my life. Chs. F.]
Alice had purposed looking indignant for two or three consecutive seconds, but surprised by this totally unexpected sally, she burst out laughing. She had opened her batteries on the enemy, but, by ceasing to fire, she had revealed the exhaustion of her ammunition; and he, so far from being stampeded, showed symptoms of an advance. As a prudent captain, all that was left her was to retire. She took the seat next the prow. The enemy seized the vacated position.
“That seat is very rickety.”
“So I perceive,” remarked the enemy, rising and advancing.
“Oh, but there is not room on this for two. Go back to the stern.” And she threw out skirmishers.
The now exultant foe grasped one of the skirmishers in both his: “You will forgive me?”
“Oh, I suppose so, if you will go back to your seat, and behave yourself. Let go my hand.”
“You have promised it to me.”
“Yes, but indeed, Mr. Frobisher, the girls on the piazza—”
“The piazza is nearly a hundred yards away, bless its heart!”
“Indeed, indeed—there now!” she suddenly added, with a stamp of her foot, “I told you so!”
When? When did she tell him so? That’s another reason I could never make a woman out.
It was then that Charley heard the sound of heavy footsteps crunching through the sand, and, turning his head, saw through the twilight an approaching figure almost at his elbow.
Alice, like most, though not all of her sex, was, as I have mentioned before, a woman. Raising her placid face and serene eyes, she pointed out to her companion, with the tip of her parasol, a gull that hurried above them in zigzag, onward flight. “Yes,” continued she,—or seemed to continue,—“she seems to be belated. I wonder where she will roost to-night? On some distant island, I suppose.”
“Sam, is that you? Sam is one of my men,—one of the best on my farm. Sam, this is Miss Alice—Miss Alice Carter.”
“Sarvant, mistiss,” said Samuel, hastily removing his hat and bowing, not without a certain rugged grace; while at the same time, by a backward obeisance of his vast foot, he sent rolling riverward a peck of shining sand.
“Well, Sam, any news from the farm?”
“Lor’, mahrster, d’yar never is no news over d’yar! I most inginerally comes over to Elminton when a-sarchin’ for de news.”
“And you want to make me believe that you walk over here every night for the news, do you? Sam is courting one of Uncle Tom’s women,” added Charley, addressing Alice. “I am in daily expectation of having him ask my consent to his nuptials.”
Sam threw back his head and gave one of those serene, melodious laughs (as though a French horn chuckled), the like of which, as I have said before, will probably never again be heard on this earth. “Lor’ bless me, young mistiss, what’s gone and put dat notion ’bout my courtin’ in Marse Charley head? I always tells ’em as how a nigger k’yahnt do no better’n walk in de steps o’ de mahrster, and Marse Charley and me is nigh onto one age; and Marse Charley ain’t married, leastwise not yet.”
“You mean to say,” said Alice, “that when Mr. Frobisher marries it will be time enough for you to think of taking a wife?”
“Adzackly, young mistiss, adzackly, dat’s it. But Lor’ me, I dunno, neither. I ain’t so sartin ’bout dat. Sam don’t want to be hurried up. He want to take he time a-choosin’. A man got to watch hisself dese times. D’yar ain’t no sich gals as d’yar used to be. De fact is, ole Fidjinny has been picked over pretty close, and Sam ain’t after de rubbage dat de others done leff.”
“I am afraid you are rather hard to please, Sam?”
“Yes, mistiss, Sam is hard to please.” [Three weeks from this date Sam led to the altar a widow with one eye and eleven children,—making an even dozen,—who was lame of the left leg, black as the ace of spades, and old enough to be his mother.] “I won’t ’spute dat. Ain’t I patternin’ after Marse Charley? Slow and sho’ is de game Marse Charley play, and Sam’s a-treadin’ in he tracks. Lor’, mistiss, you wouldn’t believe how many beautiful young ladies has been a-fishin’ for him; but pshaw! dey mought as well ’a’ tried to land a porpoise wid a pin-hook!”
Encouraged by the smiles evoked by this bold comparison, Sam bloomed into metaphor:
“But he was not to be cotched, not he! Leastwise not by dem baits. ‘Never mind, Marse Charley,’ says I to myself, ‘never you mind. You g’long! Jess g’long a-splashin’ and a-cavortin’ and a-sniffin’!’ ’Fore Gaud dem’s my very words, ‘but d’yar’s a hook somewhar as will bring you to sho’ yet,’ says I; ‘and dat hook is baited wid de loveliest little minner,’—umgh-u-m-g-h! Heish! Don’t talk!”
Charley could scarcely suppress his delight. “And how soon,” said he, carelessly dropping his hand into his pocket,—“how soon am I to be landed?”
“How soon?” repeated Sam, leaning upon his heavy staff and reflecting with a diplomatic air. “How soon? Lor, mahrster, what for you ax a nigger dat question? How is a nigger to know? But I do believe,” said he, turning his back upon the river, and at the same time landing his metaphor, “dat you have done jumped over into de clover-field already, and you ain’t gwine to jump back no mo’.” (Here Charley withdrew his hand from his pocket and threw his arm casually behind him, across the gunwale of the Argo.) “Leastwise,” he added with a perceptible-imperceptible glance at Alice,—“leastwise I don’t see how you could have de heart to do it.”
Here Charley gave a slight movement of his wrist, invisible to Alice; and Sam, with a few sidelong, careless steps, placed himself behind his master. He stooped and rose again, and Alice saw in his hand three or four oyster shells. These he dropped from time to time, pouring forth, meanwhile, a wealth of tropes and figures drawn from both land and sea; but the last shell seemed to fall into his pocket.
An Anglo-Saxon, if he have a well-born father, a careful mother, and half a dozen anxious maiden aunts, you shall sometimes see hammered into the similitude of a gentleman; but in your old Virginia negro good-breeding would seem to have been innate.
“Some says dat d’yar is as good fish in de sea as ever was cotched out of it; but I tells ’em, when you done pulled in one to suit you, you better row for de sho’ less a squall come and upsot de boat. Well, good-evenin’, Miss Alice, and good-evenin’, Marse Charley!” And with polite left foot and courteous right the black ploughman sent rolling the shining sand.
“There, now,” said Alice, “you see! What did I tell you?”
“Oh,” replied Charley, “Sam will keep dark!”
Yes, those were his very words! And Alice acknowledges that he made the one recorded above (though I see he has denied it). Such is ever the ruin wrought by love, even in the mind of a philosopher.
“By the way,” said Alice, as she stood with her feet upon the gunwale of the Argo, ready to spring, “in the rather mixed metaphors of honest Sam, which of us was the fish and which the hook? ‘Porpoise,’” quoted she, laughing, “I trust I don’t remind you of one?”
Charley, who stood in the sand, held one of Alice’s hands in each of his with a degree of pressure entirely incommensurate with the necessities of equilibrium: “✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻” sang he, with a rapt and fatuous smile. “✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ Absence of wings ✻ ✻ ✻ vision ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ eyes beheld.” For, upon my word, the reader must not expect me to transcribe more than a word, here and there, of such jargon.
Yet, though my tongue be harsh, I do not in my heart blame Charley; for Alice, at all times a pretty girl, was, just at this moment, as she stood above him with the dark sky for a background, radiantly beautiful in his eyes. And more,—
She looked beautiful on purpose.
I repeat it,—she did it on purpose.
And here, though it is abhorrent to all my art-instincts to break the current of my story with anything like a thought, original or selected,—though I have promised the reader to place before him a succession of pictures merely, without even adding, This is Daniel, and, These are the Lions!—I feel that I have used an expression requiring an explanation. That explanation I cannot give save through the medium of what—disguise it how I will—wears the semblance of a thought.
Buckle, in his “History of Civilization in England,” lays it down that no man can write history without a knowledge of the physical sciences. Now it is equally true that no one can discuss human nature scientifically without an acquaintance with zoology. It is Darwin and the naturalists who have opened up this new field of inquiry; and Comparative Zoological Nature has now become as needful a study to the playwright and novelist as Comparative Anatomy is to the physiologist. For my own part, whenever I would know whether a certain proposition be true of man, I first inquire if it holds good as to the lower animals,—to speak as a man; and in the course of my desultory investigations on this line I have stumbled upon sundry valuable truths.
Among the convictions which I have reached in this way is the one which led me to say just now that our pretty little Alice, perched upon the gunwale of the Argo, bethought her of making poor Charley crazy with love, by simply looking very, very beautiful; and did so look accordingly, then and there. Of the mere fact there can be no doubt, since I have Charley’s word for that. [Fact. C. F.] [Goose! A. F.] [Who? J. B. W.] But a scientific explanation of the phenomenon can be given only by a student of Comparative Zoological Nature.
The way in which I hit upon the truth in question was as follows. A vexatious incident in my own private history had occurred just at the time when I had set myself the task of weaving this Monograph, and I was ruefully ruminating upon woman and her ways, and bringing up in my mind, and contrasting with her (in my Comparative Zoological fashion) all manner of birds and fishes and what not, when all of a sudden there popped into my head eels, and how marvellously slippery they were.
But, thought I, if you can but get your finger and thumb into their gills, you’ve got ’em; and if eels—
But straightway I lost heart; for I remembered, from my Darwin, that of gills—or branchiæ, as he will persist in calling them—no traces have for ages been discovered in the genus homo,—at least in the adult stage. Far from it; for the Egyptian mummies, even in their day, for example, got on perfectly without them.
The case was hopeless, therefore; but still I went on ruminating about women and eels and eels and women, in the most aimless and unprofitable fashion, till, wandering off from the eel of commerce and the pie, I chanced to think of the electric variety of that fish. Here faint streaks of dawn began to make themselves felt; and so, making a rapid excursion through the animal kingdom, and recalling the numberless appliances for offence, defence, and attraction to be observed therein, I returned flushed with victory. I had made a discovery. It is this. Just as the eel in question (the Gymnotus electricus) has a reservoir of electricity, to be used when needed, so woman, I find, carries about her person more or less bottled beauty, which she has the singular power of raying forth at will.
More or less; in too many cases, less; but evolution, through selection, may ultimately mend that.
How, or by what mechanism they contrive to do this, is more than I can tell. We know, it is true, that the Anolis principalis (the so-called chameleon of the Gulf States) can change at will from dingy brown to a lovely pea-green, by reversing certain minute scales along its back; but to jump from this fact to the conclusion that the woman you saw at breakfast old and yellow, but youthful and rosy at the ball, indued all this glory by simply reversing her scales, is, in the present state of our knowledge, premature. Besides, we have just seen that the gills of the prehistoric sister have long since disappeared; so that the woman of the period may, upon investigation, turn out not to have any scales, minute or other, to reverse; so unsafe are analogies in matters of science.
But the fact remains (no other hypothesis covering all the observed phenomena) that women carry about their persons bottled beauty.
As to the thing itself, female beauty, I do not pretend to know any more about it than other people. That it is in its nature a poison has been notorious for thousands of years, attacking the male brain with incredible virulence. This pathological condition of that organ has been spoken of for ages as Love, as everybody knows. But what everybody does not know, is that woman possesses the power of concentrating this toxic exhalation upon a doomed male,—dazzling him with what I may provisionally term beauty’s bull’s-eye lamp. Love is not blind. Just the reverse. The lovelorn see what is invisible to others, that is all; the focussed rays of the most magical of all magic lanterns.
Before I made this discovery, I was continually wondering how most of the women I knew had managed to get married; but it is a great comfort to me now to know that they are all beautiful (in the eyes of their husbands).
Setting in motion, then, this subtle mechanism, which all women possess (though in some it don’t seem to work), Alice showered down upon Charley, from hazel eyes and sunny hair, from well-turned throat and dimpled hand, from undulating virgin form and momentary ankle-flash,—showered down upon him as she stood there graceful as a gazelle ready to spring, a sparkling wealth of youth and beauty.
No matter what Charley said.
“I am glad you think so,” said she, fluttering down from her perch.
The shining sand was deep; and that’s the reason they walked so slowly; and that’s the reason Alice clung so closely to his arm; and that’s the reason Charley thought he was walking on rosy morning clouds.
“Oh!” cried Alice,—and Charley’s face was corrugated with sudden care: had some envious shell dared bruise her alabaster toe?
“Did you hurt your foot, — — —est?”
“Oh, no; I just remembered that I had forgotten the very thing that I came to the Argo to talk over with you.”
“What was that?”
Alice looked perplexed.
“Tell me, — —ing; what is it?”
“I don’t know where to begin.”
“At the b-b-b-beginning, of course.”
“With some people I should; but do you know that you are a very queer creature?”
“Your fault; I was just like other people till I met you,—a little cracked ever since.”
“Oh, I like you that way.” And she gave his arm a little involuntary squeeze. [Nothing of the kind. Al.]
“How am I queer, then?”
“Well, you never tell people anything.”
“I have told you a good many things within the last day or two.”
“Only one thing, but that a good many times. But I am not a bit tired of hearing it.”
Here Charley gave her hand a voluntary little squeeze against his heart. [Inadequate statement of an actual occurrence. C. F.]
“The fact is, I want to ask you a question, and am actually afraid you won’t answer it. There, I knew you would not! A cloud passed over your face at the very word question. You are so strange about some things!”
“Let’s hear the question; what is it about?”
“About the Don. There! Why, you are positively frowning!”
“Frowning!”
“Yes; your face hardened as soon as I uttered the word Don.”
“The Don! What am I supposed to know about him? Have not you known him as long as I, and longer?”
“Oh, I am not going to ask you who he is, or anything of that kind. I presume he alone knows that.” (Charley’s face grew serene.) “It is something entirely different. Is the Don—I know you will think it idle curiosity, but, indeed, indeed, it is not—is the Don—in love?”
“Is the Don in love?” cried Charley, with a sudden peal of laughter. “Is the Don in love? And that is the weighty question that you have made such a pother about! Is the Don in love!”
“That sounds more like my question than an answer to it.”
“Now, seriously, my —ous —ing, you did not expect me to answer such a question as that?”
“No, I didn’t!” (A little snappishly.) “Any other man—under the circumstances—”
“Yes, I believe I am very different from other men, and it is well; for if every man were of my way of thinking, every girl in the world, save one, would be deserted; and soon there would be but one man left on earth,—such a Kilkenny fight would rage around that one girl!”
“I knew you would not answer my question.” (Not snappishly.)
“How am I to know anything about it?”
“You and he are inseparable—”
“And hence he has made a confidant of me, and I am to betray him? No, he has never alluded to any such matter. Upon my word, I know nothing whatever upon the subject.”
“Indeed? You are a droll couple, to be sure,” and she looked up, admiringly, at one-half of the couple, “talking together for hours, and never telling one another anything! Well, then, I shall answer the question myself: The Don is in love: there!”
“What extraordinary creatures women are, to be sure! You ask a question, are vexed at getting no answer, and then answer it yourself! The Don is in love, then; but with whom?”
“That I don’t know; I only suspect. Oh, yes, I more than suspect; in fact, I know, but some of the girls don’t agree with me, and I want to know which side you are on.”
“On yours, of course—”
“No joking; I am in earnest. The question between us girls is this: it is plain to us all that he is in love—”
“Then, why on earth—”
“Don’t you know that when you wish to find out about one thing the best way is to ask about another?”
“That aphorism, I must confess, is entirely new to me.”
“Well, it is a household word with women. Of course he is in love; we—all of us girls, I mean—know that. But with whom? That is the question which divides us.”
“And you wish to put that conundrum to me? Indeed, I know nothing about it.”
“Nor suspect?”
Charley hesitated.
“Honor bright? Oh, don’t be so hateful!”
Charley smiled; Alice saw he was weakening.
“Oh, do tell me, which of the two?”
“Which of the two?” repeated Charley, looking puzzled. “Surely, you cannot be in earnest; for of all the men I know, Dory—the D-D-D-Don” [What, Charley, stammering on a mere lingu palatal!] “is the least likely to have two loves.”
“Dody, Dody! Why do you call him Dody?”
“I called him the Don,” said Charley, doggedly.
“And Dody, too! Why Dody? What a droll nickname!” And she laughed.
“You are mistaken; I did not call him Dody.”
“You didn’t?”
“No; but my tongue,” said Charley, coloring, “is like a mustang,—buck-jumps occasionally, and unseats its rider—her rider.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon!” said Alice, with tender earnestness, and gave his arm—this time consciously—an affectionate, apologetic squeeze. [I don’t deny it! Al Frob.]
“So the Don is not only a lover, but a double-barrelled one?”
“No, we don’t think that,” said Alice, laughing; “but there is a dispute among us which of two birds he wishes to bring down.”
“Which of two birds? Really, you puzzle me,” said Charley, reflecting. “I could guess the name of one, perhaps; but the other—I am completely at sea.” And he looked up in inquiry.
“Is it possible! How blind, blind, blind you men are! And yet they tell me that nothing ever escapes your lynx eyes! Why, Lucy and Mary, of course.”
“Lucy and Mary!” cried Charley, and, throwing back his head, he exploded with a shout of single-barrelled amazement.
“Wit and humor!” “Repeat, repeat, Alice!” cried voices from the piazza.
The strollers looked up in surprise at finding themselves so near the porch, while the occupants of this favorite lounging-place were in no less wonder at hearing Frobisher giving forth so unusual a sound. Alice swept the faces of her friends with a bright smile of greeting, but there was a certain preoccupation in her look. Charley’s laugh had startled her. “Unconscious wit, then;” and turning, she looked up into her companion’s face with a puzzled air.
It would seem that that sudden and unusual draft upon Charley’s cachinnatory apparatus had exhausted that mechanism, for he was not even smiling now, but in what is called a brown study. He slowly turned on his heel as though to return to the Argo, or, rather, as if he had no intentions of any kind, his movements being directed by what Dr. Carpenter calls unconscious cerebration. Alice, holding her companion’s arm, turned upon him as a pivot (though with conscious cerebration, for she could almost feel upon the back of her head the smiles raying forth from the porch).
“Mary and Lucy, did you say?” inquired he, turning quickly upon her as though it had suddenly flashed upon him that he had not, perhaps, heard aright.
“Yes, Mr. Frobisher. What on earth is the matter?”
“What’s the matter? Why, nothing, of course. You simply amused me, that is all.” And smiling stiffly, he threw up his head with a sort of shake and made as though he would join the party on the porch.
This time Alice did not rotate on the pivot, but, standing firm, became the centre of revolution herself, and brought Charley to a “front face” again, by a sturdy pull upon his arm, and began to move slowly forward, as though to return to the Argo. “What is it?” asked she, looking up into his face with eager interest. “Do tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“Why you act so strangely? Which of the two, then?”
These words threw Charley into his brown study again. Looking far away, with drawn lids, he was silent for some time. “Alice,” said he, turning slowly and looking into her eyes, “I am going to surprise you.”
“Neither Mary nor Lucy, you are going to say!” And her snowy bosom beat with thick-thronging breaths. “O-o-oh, I know,” cried she, with a look of pain. “He is married already!”
Yet why with a look of pain? Ought she not rather on her friend’s account to have rejoiced? But here was a hero evaporated; and in this humdrum treadmill of our life there is so little of romance! And do we not all of us, men and children alike, strain our eyes against the darkened sky, regretful that the flashing but all too evanescent meteor has passed away into the abyss of night?
Charley smiled. “How fearfully and wonderfully is woman made! You first ask me for information which I do not possess, but which it appears you do, then answer your own question; then when I am about to say something, you tell me what I am about to say; and then—with a little shriek—discover the mare’s nest I am about to reveal! No, I was not going to say ‘neither Lucy nor Mary,’ nor yet that the Don was married. I was about to make a proposition to you. Are you really very anxious to have it decided whether it is Mary or Lucy?”
“Very.”
“Then I know but one way: ask the Don himself.”
“The idea!” cried Alice, with a cheery laugh. “What!” added she, looking up into his face with great surprise, “surely you are not in earnest!”
“I am.”
“Mr. Frobisher!”
“I am. I said I was going to surprise you.”
Alice wheeled in front of him, and they stood looking into each other’s eyes. “Upon—my—word,” said she, slowly, “I believe you really mean it!”
“I do.”
“Mr. Frobisher! Then, if it be so important to you to know, why don’t you ask him yourself?”
“It is of no earthly importance to me to know; it is of importance to—to—to—him to be asked?”
“You awful sphinx! You will kill me with curiosity! But why not ask him yourself? Why put it on me?”
“Because,” said Charley, smiling,—“simply because it is your question; you want the answer to the riddle, not I!”
“That’s just the way with you men,” said Alice, smiling; “you affect to be lofty beings, superior to the foible, curiosity. And so you would make a cat’s paw of me?”
“Well, yes; for it is you who want the chestnuts.”
“And my fingers, therefore, are to be burnt; for this same Mr. Don is an awful somebody to approach.”
“To others, perhaps, but not to you; nor to me, either, perhaps; but the chestnuts are for you. Besides, as Dido said to her sister Anna, you know the approaches of the man and the happy moment. How often have I seen every one quaking with awe when you are attacking him with your saucy drolleries, and how charmed he always is, and how he laughs!”
“And poor dear mamma,” said Alice, with a tender smile, “how she shakes and weeps and weeps and shakes! Do you know, Mr. Frobisher, though I say it ‘as shouldn’t,’ I am not, by half, so giddy and brainless as I seem? Do you know why I cut up so many didoes? (By the way, I wonder whether that rather colloquial phrase has any reference to Æneas’s girl?) But it is the truth, that half the time that I am cutting my nonsensical capers, it is just to make mamma laugh. Ah, Mr. Frobisher, you have hardly known what a mother can be, and you will have to love mine! You won’t be able to help it.” And the cutter of capers and of didoes passed her hand across her eyes. “Look,” said she after a pause, “there she sits now, and beside the Don, too. Don’t she look serene? See how she is smiling at me over the banister!” And throwing herself into an attitude, she blew kiss after kiss to Her Serenity, in rapid succession, from alternate hands. “There! she is off. As her eyes are shut tight, she will not be able to see me for half a minute, and I will take the opportunity of telling you, for your comfort, that she does not think there is a man living half good enough for me. How do you feel?”
“I feel that she is right.”
“And I feel that she is twice wrong. First, because she does not know me, and secondly, because she does not know—somebody!” And skipping up the steps, she ran to her mother and bounced into her lap: “Are you glad to see me? Did you think I was never coming back?”
“A bad penny is sure—”
“Who’s a bad penny?” And taking the plump cheeks between her palms, she squeezed the serene features into all manner of grotesque and rapidly-changing shapes. “Who’s a bad penny? Isn’t she a beauty?” said she, twisting the now unresisting head so as to give the Don a full view of the streaming eyes and ludicrously projecting lips. “Behold those æsthetic lines! Ladies and gentlemen,” said she, turning, with a quick movement, her mother’s face in the opposite direction, “I call your attention to the Cupid’s bow so plainly discernible in the curves of that upper lip. Can you wonder that papa is a slave? By the way,” continued she in the same breath, and taking no heed of the general hilarity that she had aroused,—“by the way, Mr. Don, are you glad to see me?” But without waiting for him to find words to reply, a quizzical look came into her face as she observed that with the beat of her mother’s laughter her own person was gently bobbing up and down, as though she rode a pacing horse: “Snow-bird on de ash-bank, snow-bird on de ash-bank, snow-bird on de ash-bank,” she began, in a sort of Runic rhythm, or shall we say in jig measure? “snow-bird on de ash-bank;” and from her curving wrists, drawn close together in front of her bosom, her limp hands swung and tossed, keeping time, jingling like muffled bells. The pacing horse now broke into a canter, and the canter became a gallop: “Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross, ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross! This steed is about to run away; discretion is the better part.” And springing from her mother’s lap, she stood before the Don.
“Have you prepared your answer yet? Are you glad to see me once more?”
The Don put his hand upon his heart. Alice extended hers. The Don took it.
“You have not answered my question.”
“Words cannot ex—”
“Words? Who is talking about words?” And she extended her hand again. “Press that lily fair,—just one little squeeze. She—the rotund smiler—won’t be able to see for half a minute yet. Quick! She is wiping her eyes! Ah! ah! ah! Really and truly? Enough! Desist! We are observed!”
“She is the girl to tackle him!” thought Charley, wiping his eyes.