CHAPTER XXII.
So, after all, my grandfather lost his opportunity of explaining to the Don how he came to build the Hall. No doubt he will do so as soon as the latter returns from his walk. But there are reasons why I prefer to give my own account of the matter. The truth is, I believe my narration will be more exactly in accordance with the facts of the case than Mr. Whacker’s would be. For, my grandfather (though as truthful as ever man was) having, like the rest of us, a great deal of human nature in him, did not always see very clearly what his own motives were; and, had he been asked why he had constructed this rather superfluous building, would have given an answer at variance with what Charley’s or mine would have been. Now, had either of us been questioned, confidentially, and apart from our friend, we would have unhesitatingly affirmed that he had built the Hall as a home for his quartet; but had he, perchance, overheard us, he would have denied this, and not without heat. And this is easily explicable.
On the whole subject of music—music, whether quartet or solo, vocal or instrumental—Mr. Whacker had grown sore, and as nearly irritable as his strong nature admitted of. His neighbors had worried him. They—and who shall wonder at it?—had naturally been filled with amazement—and, what is harder to bear—amusement—when their old friend had suddenly, at his time of life, burst out, as the homely phrase runs, in a fresh place,—and of this he could not but be aware; so that in the end he grew so sensitive under their jokes that he altogether gave over inviting even his nearest neighbors to be present at the Elmington musical performances. “Well, I hear your grandfather has got a new Dutchman,”—that was the way one old gentleman used to speak of the arrival at Elmington of each successive find of Waldteufel’s in Baltimore; and then his sides would shake. Naturally enough, my grandfather grew more and more reticent, under the circumstances, as to his musical doings and projects.
Now, the Elmington mansion was, originally, like most of the residences of the Virginia gentry, a rather plain and ill-planned structure. I dare say it had never occurred to the ancestral Whacker who contrived it that any one of its rooms would ever be acoustically tested by a string quartet. At any rate, my grandfather found his parlor, with its thick carpet and heavy furniture, very unsatisfactory as a concert-room, and resolved to build a better. True, he himself never uttered a word to this effect. Like a skilful strategist, he kept his front and flanks well covered as he advanced upon his objective-point. He began his forward movement with some skill.
The Virginians of that day, as is well known, with a hospitality that defied all arithmetic, used to stow away in their houses more people in proportion to the number of the rooms than was at all justifiable,—and a marvellous good time they all had too,—the necessity for extra ventilation being met by the happy provision of nature, that no true Virginian ever shuts a door.
I am far from claiming, my dear boy, that these ancestors of yours were entitled to any credit for their hospitality. For, even in our day of Mere Progress, we have ascertained that this is but a semibarbarous virtue, while, in your day of Perfected Sweetness and Light, it will be classed, doubtless, among the entirely savage vices. I am writing neither eulogium nor apology. I draw pictures merely. You and your day must draw the moral.
Well, Field-Marshal Whacker began operations by throwing out the suggestion, every now and then, that the Library would be more comfortable to the young men who were sometimes crowded into it, on gala occasions (what a time they used to have!), if the bookcases and the great table were removed. But where to put them? He had often been puzzling his head of late, he would say, trying to contrive some addition to the house, but it was so built that he did not very well see how it could be added to. After much beating about the bush, from time to time, at last the proposition for a separate building came. Charley, very naturally, could not see the necessity for this, considering we were but three; but, finding the old gentleman’s heart set on the project, he ceased to raise objections.
“It would be such a comfortable little nook to retire to.”
“Retire from whom, Uncle Tom?”
“Often, you know, our friends bring their children.”
“Very true.”
“It would be a good place to read or write in, when the house was full.”
“Exactly.”
“Certainly. And then, sometimes, when a lot of you young fellows got together, and wanted to have a ‘high old time,’ you could go out there, and I could go to bed and let you have it out. Don’t you see?”
“Capital.”
So it was settled.
“But, Charley, would not a single room, stuck out all alone in the yard, have rather a queer look?”
“Rather queer, I should say.”
“While we are about it, why not put two rooms under one roof?”
“Of course.”
“Don’t you think so? Then we’ll do it. Two rooms,—let me see.” And the wily old captain seemed to reflect. “As the rooms would be of only one story, the pitch should be high,—better artistic effect, you know.”
“Undoubtedly,” acquiesced Charley. And the crafty engineer meditated as to how to run his next and last parallel.
“But what kind of a room shall the second be? The first will be our Library, and, in case of a pinch, an extra guest-chamber, of course. But what are we to do with the second room? There’s the rub.”
“That’s a fact,” granted Charley between puffs; and the twain were silent for a little while.
“By Jove, I have it!” exclaimed my grandfather, slapping his thigh.
Charley looked up.
“We’ll make a ball-room of it.”
“A ball-room! Good Lord, Uncle Tom!” cried Charley, surprised, for a moment, out of his habitual calm.
“Why not?” asked Mr. Whacker, appealing with his eyes from Charley to me, and from me to Charley. “Why not a ball-room? Remember how many young people we frequently have here, especially Christmas time,—and you know they always dance.”
“I had forgotten that.”
“As it is, they must dance on a carpet, or else it must be taken up, and that is a great bother; whereas, with a nicely waxed floor! And then,” added my grandfather, casually,—running over the words as if of minor importance (’twas a regular masked battery),—“and then the fiddles would sound so much better in such a room.”
“Oho!” cried Charley.
“What?” quickly put in Mr. Whacker, slightly coloring.
“The boys and girls would enjoy it,” replied Charley, demurely.
“Enjoy it? I should think so!” exclaimed Mr. Whacker, relieved to feel that he had not uncovered his artillery.
And so my grandfather set about gathering suitable lumber for his “Library,” as he called it; but it was nearly two years before the structure was complete; so many trees did he find unsuitable, after they were felled, and so carefully did he season the planks, before they were deemed worthy of forming part of this sacred edifice. Nor, during all this time, did Mr. Whacker ever once allude to the “Ball-Room” as likely to prove a suitable place for his quartet performances. At last, in the month of November, 1858, just two years before the arrival of the Don at Elmington, the “Library” was finished, and we three were walking over the glittering waxed floor of Mr. Whacker’s so-called Ball-Room, admiring its proportions and the exquisite perfection of its joinery.
“Well, boys, we’ll christen her at Christmas. We’ll have one of the liveliest dancing-parties ever seen in the county. Suppose, Jack, you go over to the house and bring us a fiddle, and we shall see how she sounds.”
I brought the fiddle.
“Now, Charley, toss us off a reel.”
Charley dashed into a dancing tune, and played a few bars.
“Magnificent!” exclaimed Mr. Whacker, flushing with intense delight. “Did you ever hear such resonance!”
“Magnificent!” we echoed; and Charley resumed his playing.
“Do you know?” began he, pausing and raising his head from the fiddle,—but on he dashed again. “Do you know, Uncle Tom?” he resumed, biting his under-lip, as he gave a slight twist to a peg,—“Do you know, it occurs to me that this room—” the scamp winked at me with his off eye. “Listen!” And, placing the violin under his chin, he began to play a movement out of one of Mozart’s quartets. “How does that sound?” he asked, looking up into my grandfather’s face with an expression of innocence utterly brazen.
This simple question, and the simplicity with which it was put, covered our unsuspecting ancestor with confusion, though he himself could hardly have told why. Before he could recover himself sufficiently to reply, Charley went on,—
“Do you know, Uncle Tom, that it occurs to me that this room is the very place for our quartets? How strange that it should never have occurred to us before!” And turning to me, he bended upon me that stare of serene stolidity under which he was wont to mask his intense sense of the humorous. I had no such power of looking solemn and burying a smile deep down in my heart, as the pious Æneas used to do his grief, while he was fooling Sidonian Dido, poor thing; and so, as Charley and I had had many a quiet joke over my grandfather’s transparent secret, I burst out laughing.
“Why, don’t you agree with me?” demanded Charley with austere composure. “What do you think, Uncle Tom?”
“Our quartets? Well, now that you suggest it—H’m!” And he glanced around the room with a critical look. “We’ll ask Mr. Waldteufel next Friday. What on earth is that idiot giggling about?”
