CHAPTER XVIII.
“Why, what’s all this, Uncle Dick?” exclaimed Charley, as that venerable servitor entered, with hospitably beaming countenance, bearing a tray. “Roast oysters! why, this cold turkey was enough for a prince.” And he brushed from his yellow moustache the foam of a glass of Bass’s ale.
The old man, complimented by Charley’s surprise, placed the smoking oysters upon the table with a bow of the old school.
“Why, they are beauties! Ah, I am glad you will join me, Uncle Tom! I never saw finer.”
“Dey is fine, Marse Charley, dat’s a fac’. Polly she save ’em for you special. You know, young mahster” (another bow), “de old-time people used to say you must speed de partin’ guest.”
“That’s true. By the way, Uncle Dick, what do you say to a little something to warm up your old bones?”
“Since you mention it, Marse Charley, I believe de frost has tetched ’em a little.”
“Well, get that bottle out of the sideboard,—you know where it is.”
“Know whar ’tis? I wish I had as many dollars as I know whar dat bottle sets!”
“Or would you prefer ale?”
“Thank you, young mahster; whiskey good enough for Dick.”
“There, ’tisn’t more than half full; take it out and give Polly her share.”
“Sarvant, mahster!”
“Take some sugar?”
“Much obleeged, young mahster; seems like ’most everything spiles whiskey. Somehownutther nothin’ don’t gee with sperrits ’cep’n ’tis mo’ sperrits.”
“But Aunt Polly might like sugar with hers.”
“Dat’s a fac’, Marse Charley, dat’s a fac’; but Lor’ me, women don’t know; but den again dey tell me it’s a wise man as knows his own father, so d’yar ’tis.”
“Well, Uncle Dick, I can make out without you now, so good-night; and present my compliments to Aunt Polly, and you and she drink my health.”
“We will pint’ly, Marse Charles, we will pint’ly.” And even after the old man had closed the door, you might have heard muttered fragments of his amiable intentions, as he trudged back to the kitchen.
“Well,” began my grandfather, rising from the table to fill his pipe, “you made a long stay of it in Richmond. How did you leave the young man?”
“Ah, he is nearly well again,” said Charley, deftly removing a side-bone from the fowl before him. “By Jove, I did not know how hungry I was. That early dinner on the boat seems to me now like a far-away dream of a thing that never was. I wonder whether this turkey really is the best that old Sucky ever raised? How good that tobacco smells!”
Charley was happy. The bright fire and good cheer, after his long, cold, and tiresome ride, the intense consciousness of being at home once more, but, above all, the look of beaming satisfaction on the face of the venerable but still vigorous old man, who sat smiling upon him and enjoying his appetite and high spirits, filled him with ineffable content.
“Let me settle with this august bird, Uncle Tom, and then I shall be ready to talk to you about Mr. Smith,—Don Miff, as the girls call him.”
“Don Miff?—what girls?”
“The—ah, we gave him that nickname. I’ll explain when I get even with this noble fowl and light my pipe.”
“Did you,” asked my grandfather, advancing cautiously as a skirmisher, “meet any nice people in Richmond?”
“Oh, yes, very nice people up there,—too many of them; made me talk myself nearly to death,—but very nice people, of course, very. Look at that chap,” added he, holding up on the end of his fork a huge oyster.
“You spoke of girls,—did you meet any?” And a pang of jealousy shot through the old man’s heart, as he recalled Dick’s aphorism on the universal liability of young folks to a certain weakness.
“Oh, lots!—I’ll have to cut this fellow in two, I believe.”
“Who were they?” asked the old man, trying to smile.
“Who? the girls?”
“Yes; you did not mention any in your letters.”
“Of course not. When did you ever know me to write about girls? As I said, I met lots of them at the various houses at which I visited. It seems to me that there are girls everywhere.”
“Thank God for it, too.”
“Well,—yes,—as it were; but you can’t expect a fellow to remember all their names. Oh, there was Lucy Poythress, of course.”
“Yes, I knew she was in Richmond.”
“And then—and then there was a schoolmate of hers,—Miss Mary Rolfe. You know her father, Mr. James Rolfe. Brilliant girl, they say,—talks beautifully—very accomplished, you know, and all that sort of thing.”
“Yes, I have heard she is a really charming girl. What do you say to our having her as one of our Christmas party?” The old man removed his pipe from his mouth. “What do you say, Charley?” And he glanced at the young man’s face with a look that was too eager to be shrewd.
“A capital idea!” exclaimed Charley, spearing another oyster with emphasis.
The old man drew vigorously on his pipe several times, and finding it had gone out, rose for a lighter. “You think,” said he, puffing between his words as he relit his pipe, contemplatively watching the tongue of flame darting down into the bowl, “that we should have her of the party?”
“Most assuredly. She is a fine girl,—you would like her. In fact, we must have her here if possible.”
“Yes,” said the old man, “yes.” And he gazed at the bright coals. He felt that he had not landed his trout. “So you didn’t lose your heart?”
“My heart? Who, I?” And Charley gave a loud laugh.
“The very idea amuses you?”
“I should think so! I suppose you suspect that old Cousin Sally’s niece—or Cousin Sally’s old niece—whichever you please—captivated me?”
“No, I was not thinking of Sarah Ann. In fact, I didn’t know that any one had captivated you—till you mentioned it.”
“Well, upon my word, I have finished the last of these oysters,—and there is not so much turkey as there was.”
“Well, now we will have an old-time whiff together; and now begin your story. However, before you do, can you think of any other girl who would be an acquisition for Christmas?”
“Who? Bless me, Uncle Tom, what could have put such a notion into your head? Oh, I’ll tell you,—leave it all to Jack-Whack; he’s the ladies’ man of the family, you know.”
“Very well; and now fill your pipe and tell me all those strange things about that strange Mr. Smith, that you promised me in your letters.”
Charley told the story, with one omission. He failed to allude to his having invited the Don to visit Elmington. Omissions to state all manner of things that ordinary mortals would make haste to mention was one of Charley’s idiosyncrasies,—so that I suspect that his silence on this point was premeditated. Another was, as I have already hinted, an aversion to expressing an opinion of any one, good or bad. But Mr. Whacker felt instinctively that Charley had conceived a genuine liking for this mysterious stranger. A tone here, a look there, told the tale. Charley’s likings, being rare, were exceedingly strong. Moreover, they were never, I may say, misplaced, and my grandfather knew this. So, when Charley had finished his narrative, “You have,” said he, “interested me deeply. Who can he be? But be he who he may, he is obviously no common man.”
Charley puffed away slowly at his pipe.
“He is a remarkable man,” continued my grandfather, warming up.
“He has points about him,” said Charley, driven to say something.
“Yes, and characteristic points, highly characteristic points,” said the old gentleman, with a sort of defiant emphasis.
“He has, beyond question.”
“Charley,” began Mr. Whacker, rising and taking a lighter,—for he had suffered his pipe to go out,—“don’t you think”—and he lit the taper—“what do you say,” he continued, in a hesitating manner, which he tried to cover up under pretence of strict attention to the feat of adjusting the blaze to the tobacco,—“how would it do to invite him here,—just for a week or so, you know?”
It is, I dare say, a mere whim on my part, but I must now beg the contemporary reader to obliterate himself for a few pages.
I must tell you, my descendant-to-the-tenth-power—no, you will be that much of a grandson,—my descendant-to-the-twelfth-power, therefore—I must tell you, as a matter of family history, why your ascendant-to-the-fourteenth-power hesitated.
Our common ancestor was a Virginian,—which means, you will doubtless know, that he was hospitable. Again, he was a Virginian of Leicester County,—and that is as much as to say, as I trust a dim tradition, at least, shall have informed you, that he was a Virginian of Virginians. But, lastly and chiefly, he was Mr. Thomas Whacker of Elmington. What that amounts to you can learn from me alone.
Our common ancestor was, then, the soul of hospitality,—hospitality in a certain sense boundless, though it was strictly limited and exclusive in a certain direction. No dull man or woman was welcome at Elmington. But his nets seemed to bring in all the queer fish that floated about Virginia. I suppose there must have been something inborn in him that made odd people attractive to him, and him to them, but I have no doubt that this trait of his was in part due to the kind of Bohemian life he led in Europe for several years, when he was a young man, mingling, on familiar terms, with musicians, actors, painters, and all manner of shiftless geniuses,—so that the average humdrum citizen possessed little interest for him. If a man could only do or say anything that no one else could do or say, or do it or say it better than any one else, he had a friend in Mr. Whacker. All forms of brightness and of humor—any kind of talent, or even oddity—could unlock that door, which swung so easily on its hinges. And not only men of gifts, but all who had a lively appreciation of gifts, were at liberty to make Elmington their headquarters; so that, as my memory goes back to those days, there rises before me a succession of the drollest mortals that were ever seen in one Virginia house. Now, I need hardly remind you that company of this character has its objections. Men such as I have rapidly outlined are not always very eligible visitors at a country house. It happens, not unfrequently, that a man who is very entertaining to-day is a bore to-morrow,—the day after, a nuisance; so that our grandfather, who was the most unsuspicious of mortals, and who always took men for what they seemed to be on a first interview, was frequently most egregiously taken in, and was often at his wit’s end as to how to get rid of some treasure he had picked up. In fact, Charley used to dread the old gentleman’s return from the springs in autumn, or the cities in winter; for he was quite sure to have invited to Elmington some of the people whom he had met there; and they often proved not very profitable acquaintances. In fine, wherever he went, he rarely failed to gather more or less gems of purest ray serene, many of which turned out, under Charley’s more scrutinizing eyes, very ordinary pebbles indeed.
Unqualified, however, what I have written would give a very erroneous idea of the people our grandfather used to gather around his hospitable board; for I must say that after all deductions have been made, he managed, certainly, to get beneath his vine and fig-tree more really clever and interesting people than I have ever seen in any one house elsewhere. And then, too, as there were no ladies at Elmington, I don’t know that his mistakes mattered much. Still, they were sufficiently numerous; and he had begun to lose, not indeed his faith in men, so much as in his own ability to read them. And just in proportion as waned his confidence in his own judgment in such matters, he placed an ever-heightening estimate upon Charley’s; so that, in the end, he was always rather nervous upon the arrival of any of his new-found geniuses, till his taciturn friend had indicated, in some way, that he thought them unexceptionable.
Now, Charley had seen Mr. Smith; our grandfather not. Here was a chance. He would throw the responsibility upon Charley. In this particular case he was especially glad to do so, for there was undoubtedly an air of mystery surrounding Mr. Smith, and mystery cannot but arouse suspicion.
Our grandfather continued: “H’m? What do you say? For a week or so?”
There was positively something timid in the way he glanced at Charley out of the corners of his eyes. And now you may dimly discern what was most probably Charley’s motive for refraining from alluding to his having himself invited the Don to Elmington. In a spirit of affectionate malice he had deliberately entrapped his old friend into making the proposition. So I must believe, at least.
“By all means,” replied Charley, with a cordiality that surprised Mr. Whacker.
“What! Do you say so?” cried our grandfather, rubbing his hands delightedly; and taking out his keys, he began to unlock his desk. “How should the letter be addressed?” continued he, turning and looking at Charley. His face reddened a little as he detected an imperfectly suppressed smile in Charley’s eyes. He was somewhat afraid of that smile.
“What are you grinning at?”
“I grinning?”
“Yes, you! Didn’t you say we should invite him?”
“Certainly.”
“Then what’s the matter?”
“It’s past eleven,” said Charley, glancing at the clock.
“Is it possible!”
“And then the mail doesn’t leave till day after to-morrow.”
“Oh!” ejaculated our impulsive ancestor, “I had not thought of that!”