CHAPTER XXXIII.
No one had heard her approaching footsteps. The charming little actress stood there, her arms akimbo, her head tossed back, her eyes fixed upon the Don with the blackest look she could command. To the salutations of the company, to my grandfather’s request that she be seated, she deigned no reply; and suddenly whisking herself to the side of the table, she poured in upon the Don a still more deadly fusillade of fierce glances at short range; then, as the only unoccupied seat was next his, she advanced to take it, but in the twinkling of an eye her whole manner had changed, though why it changed I cannot explain, nor she any more than I, doubtless. I record facts, merely. As she went mincing around the table to reach her seat, she suddenly became converted into a prim and absurdly affected old maid. Her manner of shaking out her napkin would have been alone sufficient to convulse the company. In fact, for a time, all breakfasting, considered as a practical business, came to an end. The very streams of hot muffins, waffles, and buckwheat cakes stood still, in presence of this joyous spirit, as of old the river forgot to flow when Orpheus touched his lyre. I can see her now, it seems to me, nibbling at the merest crumb upon a prong of her fork, sipping her coffee with dainty affectation, ogling the gentlemen with inimitable drollery.
“Ah, Mr. Smith,” said she, suddenly turning to the Don and dropping the rôle she had assumed for one of the most artless simplicity,—“I am so delighted to hear that you are a musician. Do you know, I had an idea that you knew little of music, and cared less; so that—do you know?—we girls actually feared that our playing bored you? Indeed we did!” she added, with emphasis, and looking up into his face with an ingenuous smile. “Didn’t we, girls? But it is such a nice surprise to find you were only pretending to be an ignoramus. Why, it was only yesterday morning that I was explaining to you the difference between the major and the minor keys!—and you knew all the time!” And she gave a delicious, childish little laugh. “It is such a comfort to know that you have been appreciating our music all this time. Oh, Mr. Smith!” exclaimed she, infantile glee dancing in her hazel eyes, “I have one piece that I have never played for you. I’ll play it immediately after breakfast. It is called—let me see—” And with eyes upturned and fingers wandering up and down the table, she seemed to search for the title of the composition. “Oh!” cried she, gushingly, and throwing herself forward in front of the Don, and turning her head so as to pour her joyous smile straight into his eyes,—“oh, it is called the Jenny Lind Polka;” and she beamed upon our artist as though awaiting an answering thrill. “What! You never heard it? No?” (strumming on the table.) “Tump-ee! Jenny tump-ee! Lind polka? Tump-ee, tump-ee, tump-ee, teedle-ee—possible?” (with a look of intense surprise). “Tump-ee, teedle-ee, tump-ee, teedle-ee—No? W-h-y, g-i-r-l-s! Second part: Teedum, teedle-um, tee-dum, teedle-um—you don’t—teedum teedle-um—recognize it? Tee-dum, teedle-um tum, tum, tum—You are quite sure? Tump-ee, tump-ee—Quite? You shall have it immediately after breakfast—tump-ee, tump-ee.” And apparently unable to restrain her impatience, she recommenced the strain, and rattled it off with an ever-increasing brio, till, at last, as though transported with enthusiasm, she pushed back her chair and launched forth into a pas seul, tripping round the table, her dress spread out with thumb and forefinger of either hand, the graceful swaying of her lithe figure contrasting comically with the tin-pan tone she contrived to give her voice, and the ludicrous precision of her steps; but, changeful as the surface of a summer lake, she had hardly made the circuit of the table once, when she laid her dimpled cheek upon her rosy fingers, her rosy fingers interlaced upon the shoulder of an imaginary partner, and stilling her own voice, and as though drunk with the music of a mighty orchestra, she floated about the room, with closed eyes, in a kind of swoon.
Just at this juncture, there chanced to be standing near the outer dining-room door our friend Zip. Zip—but, as these were Christmas times, let us call him Moses—stood there, with hanging jaw, and rolling his rather popped eyes, first towards his chief, and then in the direction of the table, in manifest perplexity as to the disposition to be made of a plate of waffles he had just brought from the kitchen. Confused by the merriment, he failed to observe the fair Alice bearing down upon him. Away went the waffles over the floor. “That’s the way it goes!” said Alice to the Don, without even a glance at the waffles; “and you have never heard it before?” asked she, resuming her seat by his side. In fact, the most amusing feature of her entire performance was how utterly unconscious she seemed that any one heard or saw her save the new-found artist. Every word, every look, every gesture seemed designed solely for his edification. I shall not permit myself to describe the deportment of the company while Alice was on her high horse; for Lord Chesterfield has pronounced laughter, save in children, vulgar. And so, I shall declare breakfast over, and allow our merry friends to betake themselves whither fancy impels.
“What kind of a day is it?” inquires one; and the whole party soon find themselves scattered in groups on the southern veranda.
It was one of those enchantingly beautiful winter mornings, never witnessed, perhaps, out of America. The ground was frozen hard; while every tuft of dry grass, every twig in view, bedecked with hoar-frost, danced and flashed and sparkled beneath the dazzling yet hazy sunlight, with the mingled glow of opals and of diamonds. And what an atmosphere! Still, but not stagnant; for behold the dreamy undulations of that slender column of smoke, so peacefully rocking above yonder whitewashed cabin! Cold, not chill; descending into the lungs as a stimulating and refreshing bath; clear, but not colorless; tinted, rather,—nay, transfigured, with the translucent exhalations of nameless gems,—such was the air that floated over lawn and river on that bright Christmas morning.
It was a day too fine to be lost; and a vote being taken, it was decided that a walk should come first. And forth the joyous procession sallied, Alice and young Jones—kindred spirits—taking the lead. Let them go their way, rejoicing in their youth; and, while awaiting their return, I shall, with the consent of the contemporaneous reader, say a word or two about Virginia society, as it was, to that reader of the future for whose edification these slight sketches are drawn; to wit, my great-great-great-etc. grandson.
In my Alice, then, I have endeavored to place before you and future generations a type taken bodily from the joyous, careless life of ante-bellum days. Many of my contemporaries will recognize her and her merry-glancing hazel eyes. My friends—all Richmond, all Virginia, in fact—will know the original of the picture,—each one his own original. But the truth is, in painting the portrait of our jolly little Alice I have aimed at more than representing the features of a charming girl. I have striven to place before you a marked phase of Virginia society,—its freedom. It was this which gave it a charm all its own, and it would be interesting, did it not lead me too far from the path of my narrative, to point out the contrasts it affords to English society. Both eminently aristocratic, it is singular that the former should have been so unshackled, so unconventional, so free, while its prototype is, without doubt, the most uncomfortable, the most stifling tyranny that men and women—and men and women, too, of one of the grandest races of all time—ever voluntarily submitted to. And, strangely enough, Virginia is almost the only one of the United States where anything like a fair type of the mother society has survived. The English gentleman, like the Virginian, has his home in the country; but this is true, in this country it may almost be said, of Virginia gentlemen alone; if, at least, the terms be not understood in a sense too literally geographical. The Southern planter was wont to betake himself to New Orleans in winter, with half his cotton crop in his pocket, reserving the other half for Saratoga and the North when summer came. Charleston was the Mecca of the South Carolinian; while the wealthy citizen of New York, if he had his villa on the Hudson, retired to it rather to avoid than to seek society, or else, still unsated with the joys of city life (the detestation of your true John Bull), even when driven out of town by the dust of summer and the glare of wall and of pavement, he hastens to Newport, there to swelter through the dog-days in all the pomp of full dress and fashionable fooleries. Some stray lord has mentioned in his hearing—or some one who has seen a stray lord—that summer is the London season (none other being possible in that climate), and straight-way he trims his whiskers à la mutton-chop and buys a book of the peerage; nor suspects that the more closely you imitate an Englishman the less you resemble him,—one of the strongest characteristics of that great race being their disdainful refusal to imitate any other.