CHAPTER XXVI.
Next morning, as the two girls were tripping downstairs, Mary said to herself, “Now I shall observe the Don narrowly, and see whether there is anything in what Alice says. Perhaps there may be some little foundation for her opinion.” Entering the breakfast-room in this frame of mind, it is not to be wondered at that, as she saluted one after another of the company, her eyes suddenly gave forth kindlier beams as they met those of the Don. Very likely the Don did not make any such comparison. He may not have remarked that the smile she gave him was sweeter or sweetest; but he felt that it was sweet.
There were only two vacant seats at the table when the two girls entered. One, at my grandfather’s right, he had expressly reserved for Alice, who had entirely captivated him the evening before by her sparkling gayety. The other was next the Don’s, and this Mary took. That sweet smile merited response of some sort, and his attentions to his fair neighbor were assiduous and delicate. He was always courteous, but, certainly, rather constrained; now, his manner seemed to her singularly gentle. What was thawing him out? Perhaps—well, at any rate—
“Thank you,” cooed she, in that soft, high-bred tongue of Richmond,—“thank you,”—in requital for hot waffle, weaving wreathed smile, entangler of the hearts of men. Could he, the friendless one and solitary, could he be unmoved? And so, smile answered smile, and interest brought interest, making it compound; and every school-boy knows how fast that counts up.
✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻
Yes, it was too much; five or six pages of Able-Analysis, showing just what these two young people felt, and why they felt it; and so, I passed a pen across the whole. It makes the chapter shorter; but even that has its possible advantages. The fact is, I am not quite sure that I know what they did think and feel; for was not the Don an Enigma? and was not Mary a woman?
After all, what is the use of all this microscopic anatomy in tracking the progress of heart-affairs? It seems to me that falling in love is as elementary a process as sitting down on an ice-pond. The rub is how not to do it. If the novelists would but tell us that! Fortunately for me, I am not called on to do this, as I am not a novelist, but a bushwhackerish philosopher instead. And then—have I defrauded you, fair reader?—this is not a love-story! When I sat down to write it, I resolved to exclude, most rigidly, from its pages, all allusion to the tender passion; but, somehow, though against my will, my personages could not be kept free from its toils. My error was in bringing them together to spend Christmas in a Virginia country-house. The thing cannot be remedied, now, without an entire change of plot; so I shall have to let it go as it is. But the reader must credit the whole of this Episode of Love, which has forced itself into a theme of a different nature, to Alice Carter. Without her assistance I could not have written one word of it. She and Charley, to be entirely honest, are the real authors of this book. They have furnished most of the facts; I am to pocket all the glory.
To show the part Alice has had in the matter, I will mention, by way of example, a conversation we had years after the occurrences herein described,—less, in fact, than eighteen months ago. We were talking of the good old times,—Consule Planco,—and happened to speak of this particular Christmas at Elmington, and especially of the week that preceded Christmas Eve.
“Did you know as early as that, that a love-affair was brewing between Mary and the Don?”
“Of course; at any rate, I feared it. You know how harum-scarum I was in those days?”