"And George W. and Henry B., what will they do for partners to-night? what will become of them?"
Alice put up her lip. "They will console themselves with Laura C. and those Kentucky girls from Louisville. For my part, I shall put on my walking-dress, and go over the river to spend the evening with Uncle John, and, what is more, I shall ask mamma to let me stay two or three days." And, suiting the action to the word, she began to dress hurriedly.
"You will surely never go without me, Alice?"
"You will never stay behind, if I do go, Kate," said she, looking back at me laughingly. "But make haste, I shall gain mamma over in five minutes; and we must be quick, if we are to reach Uncle John's before tea-time."
Uncle John,--even now that long years have passed, so long that it seems to me as if I had gone into another state of existence, as if I were not the same person as in those times,--even now the thought of him makes my heart beat quick and the blood thrill more rapidly through my veins. He was the delight of my childhood; far better, he was the comfort and support of my after years. Even as a child, I knew, knew by some intuitive perception, that Uncle John was not happy. How soon I learned that he was a disappointed man I cannot tell; but long before I grew up into womanhood I was conscious that he had made some mistake in life, that some cloud hung over him. I never asked, I never talked on the subject, even to Alice; there was always an understanding between us that we should be silent about that which each of us felt with all the certainty of knowledge.
But if Uncle John was unhappy himself, who was there that he did not make happy? No one who came near him,--from his nieces whom he petted and spoiled, down to the little negroes who rolled, unrebuked, over the grass before his window in summer, or woke him on a Christmas morning with their shrill "Christmas gift, Massa John!" Not that Uncle John was a busybody, troubling himself about many things, and seeking out occasions for obtruding his kindnesses. He lived so secluded a life in the old family-house on the outskirts of Newport, (we were a Kentucky family,) as to raise the gossiping curiosity of all new residents, and to call forth the explanatory remark from the old settlers, that the Delanos were all queer people, but John Delano was the queerest of them all.
So Uncle John spent his time between his library and his garden, while Old Aunt Molly took upon herself the cares of the household, and kept the pantry always in a condition to welcome the guests, to whom, with Kentucky hospitality, Uncle John's house was always open. Courteous he was as the finest gentleman of olden times, and sincerely glad to see his friends, but I have thought sometimes that he was equally glad to have them go away. While they were with him he gave them the truest welcome, leaving garden and books to devote himself to their entertainment; but I have detected a look of relief on his face as he shut the gate upon them and sought the shelter of his own little study, that sanctum which even we children were not allowed to enter except on special occasions, on a quiet winter evening, or, perhaps, on as quiet a summer morning.
Uncle John had not always lived in the old house. We knew, that, after Grandpapa's death, it had been shut up,--for my father's business engagements would not allow my mother to reside in it, and Uncle John had been for years among the Indians in the far Northwest. We had heard of him sometimes, but we had never seen him, we hardly realized that he was a living person, till one day he suddenly appeared among us, rough-looking and uncouth in his hunter's dress, with his heavy beard and his long hair, bringing with him his multifarious assortment, so charming to our eyes, of buffalo-robes and elk-horns, wolf-skins and Indian moccasins.
He staid with us that winter, and very merry and happy he seemed to us at first;--looking back upon it now, I should call it, not happiness, but excitement;--but as the winter passed on, even we children saw that all was not right with him. He gradually withdrew himself from the constant whirl of society in our house, and, by the spring, had settled himself in the old home at Newport, adding to his old furniture only his books, which he had been all winter collecting, and the primitive inconveniences of his own room, which his rough Western life had rendered indispensable to him. His study presented a singular mixture of civilization and barbarism, and its very peculiarities made it a delight to Alice and me. There were a few rare engravings on the walls, hung between enormous antlers which supported rough-looking rifles and uncouth hunting-shirts,--cases of elegantly bound and valuable books, half hidden by heavy buffalo-robes marked all over with strange-looking hieroglyphics which told the Indian coups,--study-chairs of the most elaborate manufacture, with levers and screws to incline them to any, the idlest, inclination, over the backs of which hung white wolf-skins, mounted, claws and all, with brilliant red cloth,--and in the corner, on the pretty Brussels carpet, the prettiest that mamma could find at Shellito's, lay the bag of Indian weed (Uncle John scorned tobacco) with which he filled his pipe every evening, and the moccasins which he always wore when at home.
In vain did Alice and I spend our eyesight in embroidering slippers for him; our Christmas gifts were received with a kiss or a stroke of the head, and then put into Aunt Molly's hands to be taken care of, while he still wore the rough moccasins, made far up among the Blackfoot Indians, which he laughingly declared were warmer, cooler, softer, and stronger than any slippers or boots that civilized shoemaker ever turned off his last.