“I saw it. Neville’s face turned red when he kissed Angela on the cheek and Neville is not given to blushing. However, I am by no means certain that Angela will stand by him. She is like most of our Southern women—a creature outwardly all impulse, inwardly of the most fixed and determined character. It is a chance whether love or patriotism will win the day.”
“Yes, it depends upon whether she falls in love with Neville or not. Come, the fire is out, let us go. It is already Christmas day.”
CHAPTER III
THE POINT OF HONOR
WHILE it was yet dark on Christmas morning, the silvery notes of a bugle, like the horns of elfland, floated out upon the wintry fields, the black flowing river, and lost itself in the echoing woods and far-off uplands. It was the signal for the awakening of life upon the estate. The bugle was played by Hector from his bachelor quarters over the carriage house. Hector scorned matrimony and, like Benedick, thought he should not live until he were married. It was Hector’s duty by this call to rouse the sleeping black people—a duty which he cheerfully and punctually performed and then went back to his own bed to snooze comfortably until he felt like getting up to perform his sole, regular duty in life—the shaving of Colonel Tremaine.
On Christmas morning, however, all were awake before the sounding of the bugle call; candles and fires were lighted in the old house and crowds of negro children with shining eyes and gleaming teeth came trooping in the early dawn toward the old mansion. Shouts of laughter resounded, the older negroes appearing and joining in the merry hubbub and laughing excitement. Santa Claus for them was in the hall of Harrowby, where were piled up gifts for everyone on the estate. Each negro child was given a coarse woolen stocking filled to the top with sweets, and in each stocking was a switch which was understood as an admonishment to good behavior. The dogs about the place waked; long, lean, red deerhounds and short-legged beagles, all yelping and barking in unison. Within the house, as each servant entered the sleeping rooms to make the fires, the occupant was greeted with “Chris’mus gif’,” “Chris’mus gif’,” the theory being that the first who claimed a Christmas gift should get it. There was no more sleeping in the house after daylight. By seven o’clock all were up and dressed and the hall doors were opened for the negroes to come in and get their Christmas gifts. These were distributed by Angela and Archie, the children of the house.
It was a happy, noisy, primitive occasion and had about it the true Christmas spirit, the making of a holiday for each dependent. After the younger negroes had departed, half a dozen old negro men, the veterans of the place, long since retired from work, remained to have a glass of apple toddy with Colonel Tremaine. The great family punch bowl was filled with this concoction of apple brandy, sugar, and roasted apples. And Colonel Tremaine, filling the glass of each of the old men, wished him health and long life, to which each responded with the politeness characteristic of his race, “Sarvint, suh, the same to you, suh, an’ ole Missis an’ young Marse an’ de little Missis.” Hector departed from this form as not being elegant enough for a person who had been to Richmond, Baltimore, had seen a panorama of the city of New York, and who had accompanied his master during the Mexican War, and always answered as follows: “Colonel Tremaine’s felicitations. I beg, suh, you will accept, suh, the assurances of my distinguished consideration,” a phrase which he had mastered with great effort and which invariably revealed how much liquor Hector had imbibed. He was able to say it without hesitation at taking his first swig of apple toddy in the morning, but was likely to become a little mixed in his phrasing as the day wore on.
Breakfast was late, and as there was to be a large dinner at five o’clock, the fashionable hour of the day, and a dance in the evening, there was much to be done by the house servants. But the negroes, like all their race, reckoned it a holiday when they were preparing for a festival. As the case was under the old régime, the burden of preparation fell upon Mrs. Tremaine and Angela. Colonel Tremaine, his three sons, and Lyddon went for a long ride in the morning for the express purpose of being out of the way while the making ready for the dinner and the dance created turmoil in the house. Mrs. Tremaine, with a masterly hand and with Angela to assist her, carried through the infinite details of the work of preparation for a hundred persons, where everything had to be done with only the forces and implements of one household. Hector, as usual, in his determination to save Tasso and Jim Henry from the danger of strong drink, had consumed the remainder of the apple toddy himself and, in consequence, soon took no note of time or anything else, mislaid his keys, misplaced everything he touched, and, although barely able to keep his feet, harangued eloquently upon the sin of drunkenness. Mrs. Tremaine had struggled with this complication for thirty-five years and encountered it as usual with patience and authority. In spite of Hector everything was in readiness by four o’clock, for, as the guests came from considerable distances, they were liable to arrive half an hour before the time or half an hour afterward.
At four o’clock Angela, dressed for the festivity, took the last look in her mirror with the happy satisfaction of a nineteen-year-old girl. She wore a gown of pale blue of trailing length; wide sleeves with frills of filmy lace fell back from her slender arms. Her gown was cut away squarely back and front like one she had seen in an old print of a Romney portrait. Her delicate throat and neck were thin but exquisitely white. She had longed for a headdress of lace and flowers, such as Mrs. Tremaine wore, but that had been forbidden as being too old, and she had only been permitted to twine a long strand of gold beads in and out among the masses of her chestnut hair. She passed out of her room and as she reached the top of the staircase the hall door opened and Neville entered in his riding dress. He walked slowly toward the staircase, keeping his eyes fixed upon Angela as she came down the stairs. She was smiling and blushing with the self-consciousness of first youth and fixed her laughing eyes on Neville as the nearest masculine object in view from whom to exact tribute. The tribute, however, was readily paid and in a coin upon which Angela had not counted. As they met upon the broad landing of the stairs there was a look in Neville’s eyes which Angela had never seen there before; love had taken the place of kindness, Neville did what he had never done before in his life to her—took her little hand in his and raised it to his lips. Like all women, she recognized the master passion at the first glance and under all disguises. Neville in an instant of time had changed from the indulgent elder brother, the friend, the grown-up companion of her childhood, and had become her lover, a being to be reckoned with and different in many ways. The feeling was not one of rapture to Angela any more than an electric shock is rapture.
“How pretty you are, Angela!” said Neville, still holding her hand. Angela, with a scarlet face, tried to hark back to their old relations.
“It is the first time you ever called me pretty in my life,” she said. “I remember how furious I was once a long time ago when I heard you telling Aunt Sophia that you didn’t believe I should ever have any good looks, I was so—skinny.”