"Fifty-four!" There seemed to be a chorus of that compound word coming from the group of ladies; and even Judge Owen, who had been so solemnly assured that his intended son-in-law was more than twenty years younger, could not avoid joining in the astonished exclamation: "Fifty-four!"
But the climax had not yet been reached. There had long been a suspicion which almost amounted to a certainty, in the mind of Frank Wallace, with reference to one point of the gallant Colonel's personal adornment; and he was now quite enough carried away by the reckless mischief of his nature, to determine that that suspicion should be verified or disproved.
"Fifty-four?" echoed the scapegrace. "Impossible! No Commissioner will believe any such story! Look at your hair—not a thread of gray in it! Bah!" and before the Colonel could make any effectual attempt to prevent the movement, the Captain had allowed his cane to fall to the floor and made a sudden and determined grab at the head-covering of the man of exempt years. Any effectual attempt to prevent the movement, it has been said: he did make an attempt to prevent it, however, as with a newly-awakened consciousness of danger. The only result of this sudden throwing out of his hands and scrambling with them, was that they came in sudden and violent contact with the head-covering and facial adornments of the pseudo-Captain, and that before any one else in the room could become fully aware of what had happened, the green patch, the green spectacles and gray wig which had metamorphosed the young man were all cleared away, and the curly head and bright face of Frank Wallace, printer and mischief-maker, stood fully revealed.
But it must be recorded that at that moment no one saw him. All eyes were turned in another direction, and yet one not very far removed. The sudden and vigorous jerk of the young man, which had been so determinedly guarded against, had yet produced its effect. In his hand he held a dark mass of hair, at the moment that his own pushed-off incumbrances tumbled to the floor; and a state of affairs was revealed on the cranium of the Colonel, for which not more than one of the company, or possibly two, could have been in the least degree prepared. What Virginia would have been, if cleared of all its woods and swamps and made into fair fighting-ground, and what Virginia is, with all its woods and swamps, while the Union soldiers fight over it at so terrible a disadvantage—may fitly present the contrast between Colonel John Boadley Bancker's head as it was and as it had been supposed. Not a spear of hair on it, from forehead to spine, so far as the eye could see by gas-light; and the head one of those fearful botches of nature when not over-well instructed in her work,—with the forehead retreating like the roof of a house, and the skull coming to a dull point at the top, like the end of a gigantic cucumber, and glossy and yellow like that cucumber ripening for seed! The total baldness of the head was bad enough, under the circumstances (especially for thirty-two!) but the shape of that head!—oh father of that man, what right had you to visit your own sins upon a succeeding generation in such a manner?
The reception of this revelation was as varied, at first, as the characters of those who received it. Frank Wallace was so astounded at the extraordinary success of his manœuvre, and at the same time at his own detection, that he dropped crutch and cane, allowed his sham wounded leg to straighten, and stood holding the wig in his hand as if he had no power to lay it down. Mrs. Owen screamed, that seeming to be the duty of hospitality when such a breach of good manners had been committed in her parlor. Josephine Harris paled, flushed, and finally fell back into a chair in such convulsions of laughter that she cried like a child. Emily Owen tried to look grave, but looked at Joe and soon followed her lead. Aunt Martha happened to have her handkerchief in her hand, and stuffed it into her mouth so tightly that she came near suffocating. Judge Owen still stood in the doorway, his face judicially severe and portentous, as if he felt that some awful desecration had been committed, for which the full severity of the criminal law could scarcely be an adequate punishment.
Not an instant, however, before the two young girls found recruits for their "forward movement." Aunt Martha's handkerchief flew from her mouth, and she laughed from cap to slipper. Mrs. Owen, thus deserted by her reserve, caught the infection and laughed still louder than Aunt Martha. Frank Wallace directly came in with a baritone which chimed well with the soprano of the young girls and the contralto of the middle-aged ladies. And Judge Owen, at last, having satisfied his judicial dignity by keeping his gravity longer than any one else, rung in with a gruff heavy bass that might have been contracted for in the damp vault of his own court-room.
There are said to be some occasions in which the highest order of eloquence is shown in total silence, and others in which the most indomitable bravery is shown by immediately running away. Certainly this was an opportunity for the display of the latter quality. Just when the laugh had fairly burst, Colonel John Boadley Bancker clapped his hand to his head, satisfied himself that the catastrophe had really occurred, then made a grab at the wig and caught it out of the hands of his tormentor, took three steps out of the room to the hat-rack in the hall, and a few more out into the bright moonlight. Napoleon had left Waterloo!
CHAPTER XXX.
The Last Tit-bits of the Banquet—Subsequent Events in the Histories of Different Characters—A Cavalry Charge at Antietam—And the End.