Alice shivered. Charley lifted his hand. I ceased reading.
SYMPHONY OF LIFE.
MOVEMENT III.
CHAPTER LVIII.
It must, in former days, before we Christianized them (at any rate, if we didn’t do that, quite, we did what we could; we cut their throats for their heathenism and lands),—it must have been a comfort to an old Indian brave (before the Pale Faces had taught him what was meant by peace on earth) when his stalwart son, heir to his prowess, returned to the parental wigwam and cast into his veteran lap his first string of scalps. And so, in our day (for conditions change, not man), the youthful sparkle comes back to a mother’s eye, and nascent wrinkles on her fading cheek become twinkling dimples again, when her blooming daughter returns, flushed with victory, from her first campaign. How did you leave your uncle and your aunt? And I hope all the children are well? And so you have had a good time? Glorious! Well, you must be tired; you need not go up-stairs; come into my room and take off your things.
But she has not had time to unbutton her left glove before her mother wants to know all about the scalps: how many and whose.
And here there makes its appearance a seeming difference between our young campaigner and the brave I have mentioned. He, as he dances around the campfire, waving in one hand the sinister trophies of his victory, and brandishing his tomahawk in the other, proclaims, not without ingenuous yells, what a singularly Big Injun he conceives himself to be. She, returning from the war-path, has nothing to show; denies everything (as she laughingly unties her bonnet-strings), even to her mother. To the next-door neighbor, who runs in to hear, denies; but smiles mysteriously. Idle tales. Nonsense. Not a word of truth in it. Pooh! He was making love to another girl. But in the end, young man, your scalp is nailed above the door of that young woman’s chamber, where all may see,—nailed up with laughing protests and mysterious smiles.
Which is as it should be. There are ways and ways of blowing one’s little trumpet—or of getting it blown. Conditions change, not man. The vanity of Ajax was not greater than that of a nineteenth century hero. Where, pray, was the son of Telemon to find a bottle of champagne to crack with a war-correspondent?
Alice and Mary managed things economically. Each was the war-correspondent of the other. In their letters to Richmond, during these notable holidays, Mary recounted the victories of the enchantress, while Alice numbered the slain of Mary and her soulful eyes. For be it understood, fair reader, that while as a monographist I have indicated one scalp, merely, apiece, in reality a pile of corses lay in front of each of these lovely archers. They were Big Injuns, both. But this by the way.
“Which one of them all did you like best?” asked Mrs. Rolfe.