I am a bachelor uncle. That, as a mere fact, might happen to anybody;
but I am a bachelor uncle by internal fitness. I am one essentially,
just as I am an individual of the Caucasian division of the human
race; and if, through untoward circumstances--which heaven forbid--I
should lose my present position, I shouldn't be surprised if you saw
me out in the _Herald_ under "Situations Wanted--Males." Thanks
to a marrying tendency in the rest of my family, I have now little
need to advertise, all the business being thrown into my way which a
single member of my profession can attend to.
I meander, like a desultory, placid river of an old bachelor as I am,
through the flowery mead of several nurseries, but I am detained
longest among the children of my sister Lu.
Lu married Mr. Lovegrove. He is a merchant, retired with a fortune
amassed by the old-fashioned, slow processes of trade, and regards
the mercantile life of the present day only as so much greed and
gambling Christianly baptized.... Lu is my favorite sister; Lovegrove
an unusually good article of brother-in-law; and I cannot say that
any of my nieces and nephews interest me more than their two
children, Daniel and Billy, who are more unlike than words can paint
them. They are far apart in point of years; Daniel is twenty-two,
Bill eleven. I was reminded of this fact the other day by Billy, as
he stood between my legs, scowling at his book of sums.
"'A boy has eighty-five turnips and gives his sister thirty'--pretty
present for a girl, isn't it?" said Billy, with an air of supreme
contempt, "Could _you_ stand such stuff--say?"
I put on my instructive face and answered:
"Well, my dear Billy, you know that arithmetic is necessary to you if
you mean to be an industrious man and succeed in business. Suppose
your parents were to lose all their property, what would become of
them without a little son who could make money and keep accounts?"
"Oh," said Billy, with surprise, "hasn't father got enough stamps to
see him through?"
"He has now, I hope; but people don't always keep them. Suppose they
should go by some accident, when your father was too old to make any
more stamps for himself?"
"You haven't thought of Brother Daniel--"
True; for nobody ever had in connection with the active employments
of life.
"No, Billy," I replied, "I forgot him; but then, you know, Daniel is
more of a student than a business man, and--"
"Oh, Uncle Teddy! you don't think I mean he'd support them? I meant
I'd have to take care of father and mother and him, too, when they'd
all got to be old people together. Just think! I'm eleven, and he's
twenty-two; so he is just twice as old as I am. How old are you?"
"Forty, Billy, last August."
"Well, you aren't so awful old, and when I get to be as old as you,
Daniel will be eighty. Seth Kendall's grandfather isn't more than
that, and he has to be fed with a spoon, and a nurse puts him to bed,
and wheels him round in a chair like a baby. That takes the stamps, I
bet! Well, I tell you how I'll keep my accounts: I'll have a stick
like Robinson Crusoe, and every time I make a toadskin I'll gouge a
piece out of one side of the stick, and every time I spend one I'll
gouge a piece out of the other."
"Spend a _what?_" said the gentle and astonished voice of my sister
Lu, who, unperceived, had slipped into the room.
"A toadskin, ma," replied Billy, shutting up Oolburn with a farewell
glance of contempt.
"Dear, dear! Where does the boy learn such horrid words?"
"Why, ma, don't you know what a toadskin is? Here's one," said Billy,
drawing a dingy five-cent stamp from his pocket. "And don't I wish I
had lots of 'em!"
"Oh!" sighed his mother, "to think I should have a child so addicted
to slang! How I wish he were like Daniel!"
"Well, mother," replied Billy, "if you wanted two boys just alike
you'd oughter had twins. There ain't any use of my trying to be like
Daniel now, when he's got eleven years the start. Whoop! There's a
dog fight; hear 'em! It's Joe Casey's dog--I know his bark!"
With these words my nephew snatched his Glengarry bonnet from the
table and bolted downstairs to see the fun.
"What will become of him?" said Lu hopelessly; "he has no taste for
anything but rough play; and then such language as he uses! Why
_isn't_ he like Daniel?" "I suppose because his maker never repeats
himself. Even twins often possess strongly marked individualities.
Don't you think it would be a good plan to learn Billy better before
you try to teach him? If you do, you'll make something as good of him
as Daniel; though it will be rather different from that model."
"Remember, Ned, that you never did like Daniel as well as you do
Billy. But we all know the proverb about old maid's daughters and old
bachelor's sons. I wish you had Billy for a month--then you'd see."
"I'm not sure that I'd do any better than you. I might err as much in
other directions. But I'd try to start right by acknowledging that he
was a new problem, not to be worked without finding out the value of
X in his particular instance. The formula which solves one boy will
no more solve the next one than the rule of three will solve a
question in calculus--or, to rise into your sphere, than the receipt
for one-two-three-fourcake will conduct you to a successful issue
through plum pudding."
I excel in metaphysical discussion, and was about giving further
elaboration to my favorite idea, when the door burst open. Master
Billy came tumbling in with a torn jacket, a bloody nose, the traces
of a few tears in his eyes, and the mangiest of cur dogs in his
hands.
"Oh my! my!! my!!!" exclaimed his mother.
"Don't you get scared, ma!" cried Billy, smiling a stern smile of
triumph; "I smashed the nose off him! He won't sass me again for
nothing _this_ while. Uncle Teddy, d'ye know it wasn't a dog
fight after all? There was that nasty, good-for-nothing Joe Casey, 'n
Patsy Grogan, and a lot of bad boys from Mackerelville; and they'd
caught this poor little ki-oodle and tied a tin pot to his tail, and
were trying to set Joe's dog on him, though he's ten times littler."
"You naughty, naughty boy! How did you suppose your mother'd feel to
see you playing with those ragamuffins?"
"Yes, I _played_ 'em! I polished 'em--that's the play I did! Says I,
'Put down that poor little pup; ain't you ashamed of yourself, Patsy
Grogan? 'I guess you don't know who I am,' says he. That's the way
they always say, Uncle Teddy, to make a fellow think they're some
awful great fighters. So says I again, 'Well, you put down that dog,
or I'll show you who I am'; and when he held on, I let him have it.
Then he dropped the pup, and as I stooped to pick it up he gave me one
on the bugle."
"_Bugle!_ Oh! Ooh! Ooh!"
"The rest pitched in to help him; but I grabbed the pup, and while I
was trying to give as good as I got--only a fellow can't do it well
with only one hand, Uncle Teddy--up came a policeman, and the whole
crowd ran away. So I got the dog safe, and here he is!"
With that Billy set down his "ki-oodle," bid farewell to every fear,
and wiped his bleeding nose. The unhappy beast slunk back between the
legs of his preserver and followed him out of the room, as Lu, with
an expression of maternal despair, bore him away for the correction
of his dilapidated raiment and depraved associations. I felt such
sincere pride in this young Mazzini of the dog nation that I was
vexed at Lu for bestowing on him reproof instead of congratulation;
but she was not the only conservative who fails to see a good cause
and a heroic heart under a bloody nose and torn jacket. I resolved
that if Billy was punished he should have his recompense before long
in an extra holiday at Barnum's or the Hippotheatron.
You already have some idea of my other nephew, if you have noticed
that none of us, not even that habitual disrespecter of dignities,
Billy, ever called him Dan. It would have seemed as incongruous as to
call Billy William. He was one of those youths who never gave their
parents a moment's uneasiness; who never had to have their wills
broken, and never forgot to put on their rubbers or take an umbrella.
In boyhood he was intended for a missionary. Had it been possible for
him to go to Greenland's icy mountains without catching cold, or
India's coral strand without getting bilious, his parents would have
carried out their pleasing dream of contributing him to the world's
evangelization. Lu and Mr. Lovegrove had no doubt that he would have
been greatly blessed if he could have stood it....
Both she and his father always encouraged old manners in him. I think
they took such pride in raising a peculiarly pale boy as a gardener
does in getting a nice blanch on his celery, and so long as he was
not absolutely sick, the graver he was the better. He was a sensitive
plant, a violet by a mossy stone, and all that sort of thing....
At the time I introduce Billy, both Lu and her husband were much
changed. They had gained a great deal in width of view and liberality
of judgment. They read Dickens and Thackeray with avidity; went now
and then to the opera; proposed to let Billy take a quarter at
Dodworth's; had statues in their parlor without any thought of shame
at their lack of petticoats, and did multitudes of things which, in
their early married life, they would have considered shocking. . . .
They would greatly have liked to see Daniel shine in society. Of his
erudition they were proud even to worship. The young man never had
any business, and his father never seemed to think of giving him any,
knowing, as Billy would say, that he had stamps enough to "see him
through." If Daniel liked, his father would have endowed a
professorship in some college and given him the chair; but that would
have taken him away from his own room and the family physician.
Daniel knew how much his parents wished him to make a figure in the
world, and only blamed himself for his failure, magnanimously
forgetting that they had crushed out the faculties which enable a man
to mint the small change of every-day society in the exclusive
cultivation of such as fit him for smelting its ponderous ingots.
With that merciful blindness which alone prevents all our lives from
becoming a horror of nerveless self-reproach, his parents were
equally unaware of their share in the harm done him when they
ascribed to a delicate organization the fact that, at an age when
love runs riot in all healthy blood, he could not see a Balmoral
without his cheeks rivaling the most vivid stripe in it. They
flattered themselves that he would outgrow his bashfulness; but
Daniel had no such hope, and frequently confided in me that he
thought he should never marry at all.
About two hours after Billy's disappearance under his mother's
convoy, the defender of the oppressed returned to my room bearing the
dog under his arm. His cheeks shone with washing like a pair of waxy
Spitzenbergs, and other indignities had been offered him to the
extent of the brush and comb. He also had a whole jacket on....
Billy and I also obtained permission to go out together and be gone
the entire afternoon. We put Crab on a comfortable bed of rags in an
old shoebox, and then strolled hand-in-hand across that most
delightful of New York breathing places--Stuyvesant Square.
"Uncle Teddy," exclaimed Billy with ardor, "I wish I could do
something to show you how much I think of you for being so good to
me. I don't know how. Would it make you happy if I was to learn a
hymn for you--a smashing big hymn--six verses, long metre, and no
grumbling?"
"No, Billy, you make me happy enough just by being a good boy."
"Oh, Uncle Teddy!" replied Billy decidedly. "I'm afraid I can't do
it. I've tried so often, and always make such a mess of it." ...
We now got into a Broadway stage going down, and being unable, on
account of the noise, to converse further upon those spiritual
conflicts of Billy's which so much interested me, amused ourselves
with looking out until just as we reached the Astor House, when he
asked me where we were going.
"Where do you guess?" said I.
He cast a glance through the front window and his face became
irradiated. Oh, there's nothing like the simple, cheap luxury of
pleasing a child to create sunshine enough for the chasing away of
the blues of adult devils!
"We're going to Barnum's!" said Billy, involuntarily clapping his
hands.
So we were; and, much as stuck-up people pretend to look down on the
place, I frequently am. Not only so, but I always see that class
largely represented there when I do go. To be sure, they always make
believe that they only come to amuse the children, or because they've
country cousins visiting them, but never fail to refer to the vulgar
set one finds there, and the fact of the animals smelling like
anything but Jockey Club; yet I notice that after they've been in the
hall three minutes they're as much interested as any of the people
they come to pooh-pooh, and only put on the high-bred air when they
fancy some of their own class are looking at them. I boldly
acknowledge that I go because I like it. I am especially happy, to be
sure, if I have a child along to go into ecstasies, and give me a
chance, by asking questions, for the exhibition of that fund of
information which is said to be one of my chief charms in the social
circle, and on several occasions has led that portion of the public
immediately about the Happy Family into the erroneous impression that
I was Mr. Barnum glibly explaining his five hundred thousand
curiosities.
On the present occasion we found several visitors of the better class
in the room devoted to the aquarium. Among these was a young lady,
apparently about nineteen, in a tight-fitting basque of black velvet,
which showed her elegant figure to fine advantage, a skirt of garnet
silk, looped up over a pretty Balmoral, and the daintiest imaginable
pair of kid walking-boots. Her height was a trifle over the medium;
her eyes, a soft, expressive brown, shaded by masses of hair which
exactly matched their color, and, at that rat-and-miceless day, fell
in such graceful abandon as to show at once that nature was the only
maid who crimped their waves into them. Her complexion was rosy with
health and sympathetic enjoyment; her mouth was faultless, her nose
sensitive, her manners full of refinement, and her voice as musical
as a wood-robin's when she spoke to the little boy of six at her
side, to whom she was revealing the palace of the great show-king.
Billy and I were flattening our noses against the abode of the
balloon fish and determining whether he looked most like a horse-
chestnut burr or a ripe cucumber, when his eyes and my own
simultaneously fell on the child and lady. In a moment, to Billy the
balloon fish was as though he had not been.
"That's a pretty little boy," said I. And then I asked Billy one of
those senseless routine questions which must make children look at
us, regarding the scope of our intellects very much as we look at
Bushmen.
"How would you like to play with him?"
"Him!" replied Billy scornfully, "that's his first pair of boots; see
him pull up his little breeches to show the red tops to 'em! But,
crackey! isn't _she_ a smasher?"
After that we visited the wax figures and the sleepy snakes, the
learned seal, and the glass-blowers. Whenever we passed from one room
into another Billy could be caught looking anxiously to see if the
pretty girl and child were coming too.
Time fails me to describe how Billy was lost in astonishment at the
Lightning Calculator--wanted me to beg the secret of that prodigy for
him to do his sums by--finally thought he had discovered it, and
resolved to keep his arm whirling all the time he studied his
arithmetic lesson the next morning. Equally inadequate is it to
relate in full how he became so confused among the wax-works that he
pinched the solemnest showman's legs to see if he was real, and
perplexed the beautiful Circassian to the verge of idiocy by telling
her he had read in his geography all about the way they sold girls
like her.
We had reached the stairs to that subterranean chamber in which the
Behemoth of Holy Writ was wallowing about without a thought of the
dignity which one expects from a canonical character. Billy had
always languished upon his memories of this diverting beast, and I
stood ready to see him plunge headlong the moment that he read the
signboard at the head of the stairs. When he paused and hesitated
there, not seeming at all anxious to go down till he saw the pretty
girl and the child following after--a sudden intuition flashed across
me. Could it be possible that Billy was caught in that vortex which
whirled me down at ten years--a little boy's first love?
We were lingering about the elliptical basin, and catching occasional
glimpses between bubbles of a vivified hair trunk of monstrous
compass, whose knobby lid opened at one end and showed a red morocco
lining, when the pretty girl, in leaning over to point out the rising
monster, dropped into the water one of her little gloves, and the
swash made by the hippopotamus drifted it close under Billy's hand.
Either in play or as a mere coincidence the animal followed it. The
other children about the tank screamed and started back as he bumped
his nose against the side; but Billy manfully bent down and grabbed
the glove not an inch from one of his big tusks, then marched around
the tank and presented it to the lady with a chivalry of manner in
one of his years quite surprising.
"That's a real nice boy--you said so, didn't you, Lottie?--and I wish
he'd come and play with me," said the little fellow by the young
lady's side, as Billy turned away, gracefully thanked, to come back
to me with his cheeks roseate with blushes.
As he heard this Billy idled along the edge of the tank for a moment,
then faced about and said:
"P'raps I will some day. Where do you live?"
"I live on East Seventeenth Street with papa--and Lottie stays there,
too, now--she's my cousin. Where d'you live?"
"Oh! I live close by--right on that big green square, where I guess
the nurse takes you once in awhile," said Billy patronizingly. Then,
looking up pluckily at the young lady, he added, "I never saw you out
there."
"No; Jimmy's papa has only been in his new house a little while, and
I've just come to visit him."
"Say, will you come and play with me some time?" chimed in the
inextinguishable Jimmy. "I've got a cooking-stove--for real fire--and
blocks, and a ball with a string."
Billy, who belonged to a club for the practise of the great American
game, and was what A. Ward would call the most superior battist among
the I. G. B. B. 0., or "Infant Giants," smiled from an altitude upon
Jimmy, but promised to go and play with him the next Saturday
afternoon.
Late that evening, after we had got home and dined, as I sat in my
room over "Pickwick" with a sedative cigar, a gentle knock at the
door told of Daniel. I called "Come in!" and, entering with a slow,
dejected air, he sat down by my fire. For ten minutes he remained
silent, though occasionally looking up as if about to speak, then
dropping his head again, to ponder on the coals. Finally I laid down
Dickens and spoke myself:
"You don't seem well to-night, Daniel?"
"I don't feel very well, uncle."
"What's the matter, my boy?"
"Oh-ah, I don't know. That is, I wish I knew how to tell you."
I studied him for a few minutes with kindly curiosity, then answered:
"Perhaps I can save you the trouble by cross-examining it out of you.
Let's try the method of elimination. I know that you're not harassed
by any economical considerations, for you've all the money you want;
and I know that ambition doesn't trouble you, for your tastes are
scholarly. This narrows down the investigation of your symptoms--
listlessness, general dejection, and all--to three causes--dyspepsia,
religious conflicts, love. Now, is your digestion awry?"
"No, sir; good as usual. I'm not melancholy on religion, and--"
"You don't tell me you're in love?"
"Well,--yes--I suppose that's about it, Uncle Teddy."
I took a long breath to recover from my astonishment at this
unimaginable revelation, then said: "Is your feeling returned?"
"I really don't know, uncle; I don't believe it is. I don't see how
it can be. I never did anything to make her love me. What is there in
me to love? I've borne nothing for her--that is, nothing that could
do her any good--though I've endured on her account, I may say,
anguish. So, look at it any way you please, I neither am, do nor
suffer anything that can get a woman's love."
"Oh, you man of learning! Even in love you tote your grammar along
with you, and arrange a divine passion under the active, passive and
neuter!"
Daniel smiled faintly.
"You've no idea, Uncle Teddy, that you are twitting on facts; but you
hit the truth there; indeed, you do. If she were a Greek or Latin
woman I could talk Anacreon or Horace to her. If women only
understood the philosophy of the flowers as well as they do the
poetry--"
"Thank God they don't, Daniel!" sighed I devoutly.
"Never mind--in that case I could entrance her for hours, talking
about the grounds of differences between Linnaeus and Jussieu. Women
like the star business, they say--and I could tell her where all the
constellations are; but sure as I tried to get off any sentiment
about them, I'd break down and make myself ridiculous. But what
earthly chance would the greatest philosopher that ever lived have
with the woman he loved if he depended for her favor on his ability
to analyze her bouquet or tell her when she might look out for the
next occultation of Orion? I can't talk bread-and-butter talk. I
can't do anything that makes a man even tolerable to a woman!"
"I hope you don't mean that nothing but bread-and-butter talk is
tolerable to a woman!"
"No; but it's necessary to some extent--at any rate, the ability is--
in order to succeed in society; and it's in society men first meet
and strike women. And, oh, Uncle Teddy! I'm such a fish out of water
in society!--such a dreadful floundering fish! When I see her dancing
gracefully as a swan swims, and feel that fellows like little Jack
Mankyn, who 'don't know twelve times,' can dance to her perfect
admiration; when I see that she likes ease of manners--and all sorts
of men without an idea in their heads have that--while I turn all
colors when I speak to her, and am clumsy, and abrupt, and
abstracted, and bad at repartee--Uncle Teddy! sometimes (though it
seems so ungrateful to father and mother, who have spent such pains
for me)--sometimes, do you know, it seems to me as if I'd exchange
all I've ever learned for the power to make a good appearance before
her!"
"Daniel, my boy, it's too much a matter of reflection with you! A
woman is not to be taken by laying plans. If you love the lady (whose
name I don't ask you, because I know you'll tell me as soon as you
think best), you must seek her companionship until you're well enough
acquainted with her to have her regard you as something different
from the men whom she meets merely in society, and judge your
qualities by another standard than that she applies to them. If she's
a sensible girl (and God forbid you should marry her otherwise), she
knows that people can't always be dancing, or holding fans, or
running after orange-ice. If she's a girl capable of appreciating
your best points (and woe to you if you marry a girl who can't!),
she'll find them out upon closer intimacy, and, once found, they'll a
hundred times outweigh all brilliant advantages kept in the show-case
of fellows who have nothing on the shelves. When this comes about,
you will pop the question unconsciously, and, to adapt Milton, she'll
drop into your lap, 'gathered--not harshly plucked.'"
"I know that's sensible, Uncle Teddy, and I'll try. Let me tell you
the sacredest of secrets--regularly every day of my life I send her a
little poem fastened round the prettiest bouquet I can get at
Hanft's."
"Does she know who sends them?"
"She can't have any idea. The German boy that takes them knows not a
word of English except her name and address. You'll forgive me,
uncle, for not mentioning her name yet? You see, she may despise or
hate me some day when she knows who it is that has paid her these
attentions; and then I'd like to be able to feel that at least I've
never hurt her by any absurd connection with myself."
"Forgive you? Nonsense! The feeling does your heart infinite credit,
though a little counsel with your head will show you that your only
absurdity is self-depreciation."
Daniel bid me good-night. As I put out my cigar and went to bed my
mind reverted to the dauntless little Hotspur who had spent the
afternoon with me and reversed his mother's wish, thinking:
"Oh, if Daniel were more like Billy!"
It was always Billy's habit to come and sit with me while I smoked my
after-breakfast cigar, but the next morning did not see him enter my
room until St. George's hands pointed to a quarter of nine.
"Well, Billy Boy Blue, come blow your horn; what haystack have you
been under till this time of day? We shan't have a minute to look
over our spelling together, and I know a boy who's going in for
promotion next week. Have you had your breakfast and taken care of
Orab?"
"Yes, sir; but I didn't feel like getting up this morning."
"Are you sick?"
"No-o-o--it isn't that; but you'll laugh at me if I tell you."
"Indeed I won't, Billy!"
"Well"--his voice dropped to a whisper, and he stole close to my
side--"I had such a nice dream about _her_ just the last thing
before the bell rang; and when I woke up I felt so queer--so kinder
good and kinder bad--and I wanted to see her so much that, if I
hadn't been a big boy, I believe I should have blubbered. I tried
ever so much to go to sleep and see her again; but the more I tried
the more I couldn't. After all, I had to get up without it, though I
didn't want any breakfast, and only ate two buckwheat cakes, when I
always eat six, you know, Uncle Teddy. Can you keep a secret?"
"Yes, dear, so you couldn't get it out of me if you were to shake me
upside-down like a savings bank."
"Oh, ain't you mean! That was when I was small I did that. I'll tell
you the secret, though--that girl and I are going to get married. I
mean to ask her the first chance I get. Oh, isn't she a smasher!"
"My dear Billy, won't you wait a little while to see if you always
like her as well as you do now? Then, too, you'll be older."
"I'm old enough, Uncle Teddy, and I love her dearly! I'm as old as
the kings of France used to be when they got married--I read it in
Abbott's histories. But there's the clock striking nine! I must run
or I shall get a tardy mark, and, perhaps, she'll want to see my
certificate sometimes."
So saying, he kissed me on the cheek and set off for school as fast
as his legs could carry him. Oh, Love, omnivorous Love, that sparest
neither the dotard leaning on his staff nor the boy with pantaloons
buttoning on his jacket--omnipotent Love, that, after parents and
teachers have failed, in one instant can make Billy try to become a
good boy!
With both of my nephews hopelessly enamored and myself the confidant
of both, I had my hands full. Daniel was generally dejected and
distrustful; Billy buoyant and jolly. Daniel found it impossible to
overcome his bashfulness; was spontaneous only in sonnets, brilliant
only in bouquets. Billy was always coming to me with pleasant news,
told in his slangy New York boy vernacular. One day he would exclaim:
"Oh, I'm getting on prime! I got such a smile off her this morning as
I went by the window!" Another day he wanted counsel how to get a
valentine to her--because it was too big to shove in a lamp-post, and
she might catch him if he left it on the steps, rang the bell and ran
away. Daniel wrote his own valentine; but, despite its originality,
that document gave him no such comfort as Billy got from his twenty-
five cents' worth of embossed paper, pink cupids and doggerel.
Finally Billy announced to me that he had been to play with Jimmy and
got introduced to his girl.
Shortly after this Lu gave what they call "a little company"--not a
party, but a reunion of forty or fifty people with whom the family
were well acquainted, several of them living in our immediate
neighborhood. There was a goodly proportion of young folk, and there
was to be dancing; but the music was limited to a single piano played
by the German exile usual on such occasions, and the refreshments did
not rise to the splendor of a costly supper. This kind of compromise
with fashionable gaiety was wisely deemed by Lu the best method of
introducing Daniel to the _beau monde_--a push given the timid
eaglet by the maternal bird, with a soft tree-top between him and the
vast expanse of society. How simple was the entertainment may be
inferred from the fact that Lu felt somewhat discomposed when she got
a note from one of her guests asking leave to bring along her niece,
who was making her a few weeks' visit. As a matter of course,
however, she returned answer to bring the young lady, and welcome.
Daniel's dressing-room having been given up to the gentlemen, I
invited him to make his toilet in mine, and, indeed, wanting him to
create a favorable impression, became his valet _pro tem_, tying
his cravat and teasing the divinity student look out of his side
hair. My little dandy Billy came in for another share of attention,
and when I managed to button his jacket for him so that it showed his
shirt-studs "like a man's," Count d'Orsey could not have felt a more
pleasing sense of his sufficiency for all the demands of the gay
world.
When we reached the parlor we found Pa and and Ma Lovegrove already
receiving. About a score of guests had arrived. Most of them were old
married couples, which, after paying their _devoirs_, fell in
two like unriveted scissors--the gentlemen finding a new pivot in pa
and the ladies in ma, where they mildly opened and shut upon such
questions as severally concerned them, such as "the way gold closed"
and "how the children were."
Besides the old married people, there were several old young men of
distinctly hopeless and unmarried aspect who, having nothing in
common with the other class, nor sufficient energy of character to
band themselves for mutual protection, hovered dejectedly about the
arch pillars or appeared to be considering whether, on the whole, it
would not be feasible and best to sit down on the center table. These
subsisted upon such crumbs of comfort as Lu could get an occasional
chance to throw them by rapid sorties of conversation--became
galvanically active the moment they were punched up and fell flat the
moment the punching was remitted. I did all I could for them, but,
having Daniel in tow, dared not sail too near the edge of the
Doldrums, lest he should drop into sympathetic stagnation and be
taken preternaturally bashful, with his sails all aback, just as I
wanted to carry him gallantly into action with some clipper-built
cruiser of a nice young lady. Finally, Lu bethought herself of that
last plank of drowning conversationalists, the photograph album. All
the dejected young men made for it at once, some reaching it just as
they were about to sink for the last time, but all getting a grip on
it somehow, and staying there in company with other people's babies
whom they didn't know, and celebrities whom they knew to death,
until, one by one, they either stranded upon a motherly dowager by
the Fireplace Shoals, or were rescued from the Soda Reef by some
gallant wrecker of a strong-minded young lady, with a view to taking
salvage out of them in the German.
Besides these were already arrived a dozen nice little boys and
girls, who had been invited to make it pleasant for Billy. I had to
remind him of the fact that they were his guests, for, in comparison
with the queen of his affections, they were in danger of being
despised by him as small fry.
The younger ladies and gentlemen--those who had fascinations to
disport or were in the habit of disporting what they considered such,
were probably still at home consulting the looking-glass until that
oracle should announce the auspicious moment for their setting forth.
Daniel was in conversation with a perfect godsend of a girl, who
understood Latin and had begun Greek. Billy was taking a moment's
vacation from his boys and girls, busy with "Old Maid" in the
extension room, and whispering with his hand in mine, "Oh, don't I
wish _she_ were here!" when a fresh invoice of ladies, just unpacked
from the dressing-room in all the airy elegance of evening costume,
floated through the door. I heard Lu say:
"Ah, Mrs. Rumbullion! Happy to see your niece, too. How d'ye do, Miss
Pilgrim?"
At this last word Billy jumped as if he had been shot, and the bevy
of ladies opening about sister Lu disclosed the charming face and
figure of the pretty girl we had met at Barnum's.
Billy's countenance rapidly changed from astonishment to joy.
"Isn't that splendid, Uncle Teddy? Just as I was wishing it! It's
just like the fairy books!" and, rushing up to the party of
newcomers, "My dear Lottie!" cried he, "if I'd only known you were
coming I'd have gone after you!"
As he caught her by the hand I was pleased to see her soft eyes
brighten with gratification at his enthusiasm, but my sister Lu
looked on naturally with astonishment in every feature.
"Why, Billy!" said she, "you ought not to call a strange young lady
'_Lottie!_' Miss Pilgrim, you must excuse my wild boy."
"And you must excuse my mother, Lottie," said Billy, affectionately
patting Miss Pilgrim's rose kid, "for calling you a strange young
lady. You are not strange at all--you're just as nice a girl as there
is."
"There are no excuses necessary," said Miss Pilgrim, with a
bewitching little laugh. "Billy and I know each other intimately
well, Mrs. Lovegrove; and I confess that when I heard the lady aunt
had been invited to visit was his mother, I felt all the more willing
to infringe etiquette this evening by coming where I had no previous
introduction."
"Don't you care!" said Billy encouragingly--"I'll introduce you to
every one of our family; I know 'em, if you don't."
At this moment I came up as Billy's reinforcement, and fearing lest
in his enthusiasm he might forget the canon of society which
introduces a gentleman to a lady, not the lady to him, I ventured to
suggest it delicately by saying:
"Billy, will you grant me the favor of a presentation to Miss
Pilgrim?"
"In a minute, Uncle Teddy," answered Billy, considerably lowering his
voice. "The older people first;" and after this reproof I was left to
wait in the cold until he had gone through the ceremony of
introducing to the young lady his father and his mother.
Billy, who had now assumed entire guardianship of Miss Pilgrim, with
an air of great dignity intrusted her to my care and left us
promenading while he went in search of Daniel. I myself looked in
vain for that youth, whom I had not seen since the entrance of the
last comers. Miss Pilgrim and I found a congenial common ground in
Billy, whom she spoke of as one of the most delightfully original
boys she had ever met--in fact, altogether the most fascinating young
gentleman she had seen in New York society. You may be sure it wasn't
Billy's left ear which burned when I made my responses.
In five minutes he reappeared to announce, in a tone of
disappointment, that he could find Daniel nowhere. He could see a
light through his keyhole, but the door was locked, and he could get
no admittance. Just then Lu came up to present a certain--no, an
uncertain--young man of the fleet stranded on parlor furniture
earlier in the evening. To Lu's great astonishment Miss Pilgrim asked
Billy's permission to leave. It was granted with all the courtesy of
a _preux chevalier_, on the condition readily assented to by the
lady that she should dance one lancers with him during the evening.
"Dear me!" exclaimed Lu, after Billy had gone back like a superior
being to assist at the childish amusement of his contemporaries,
"would anybody ever suppose that was our Billy?"
"I should, my dear sister," said I, with proud satisfaction; "but you
remember I always was just to Billy."
Left free, I went myself to hunt up Daniel, I found his door locked
and a light shining through the keyhole, as Billy had stated. I made
no attempt to enter by knocking, but, going to my room and opening
the window next his, leaned out as far as I could, shoved up his sash
with my cane, and pushed aside his curtain. Such an unusual method of
communication could not fail to bring him to the window with a rush.
When he saw me he trembled like a guilty thing, his countenance fell,
and, no longer able to feign absence, he unlocked his door and let me
enter by the normal mode.
"Why, Daniel Lovegrove, my nephew, what does this mean? Are you
sick?" "Uncle Edward, I am not sick--and this means that I am a fool.
Even a little boy like Billy puts me to shame. I feel humbled to the
very dust. I wish I'd been a missionary and got massacred by savages.
Oh, that I'd been permitted to wear damp stockings in childhood, or
that my mother hadn't carried me through the measles! If it weren't
wrong to take my life into my own hands, I'd open that window, and--
and--sit in a draft this very evening! Oh, yes! I'm just that bitter!
Oh, oh, oh!"
And he paced the floor with strides of frenzy.
"Well, my dear fellow, let's look at the matter calmly a minute. What
brought on this sudden attack? You seemed doing well enough the first
ten minutes after we came down. I was only out of your sight long
enough to speak to the Rumbullion party, who had just come in, and
when I turned around you were gone. Now you are in this fearful
condition. What is there in the Rumbullions to start you off on such
a bender of bashfulness as this which I here behold?"
"Rumbullion indeed!" said Daniel. "A hundred Rumbullions could not
make me feel as I do. But _she_ can shake me into a whirlwind with her
little finger; and _she_ came with the Rumbullions!"
"What! D'you--Miss Pilgrim?"
"Miss Pilgrim!"
I labored with Daniel for ten minutes, using every encouragement and
argument I could think of, and finally threatened him that I would
bring up the whole Rumbullion party, Miss Pilgrim included, telling
them that he had invited them to look at his conchological cabinet,
unless he instantly shook the ice out of his manner and accompanied
me downstairs. The dreadful menace had the desired effect. He knew
that I would not scruple to fulfil it; and at the same time that it
made him surrender, it also provoked him with me to a degree which
gave his eyes and cheeks as fine a glow as I could have wished for
the purpose of a favorable impression. The stimulus of wrath was good
for him, and there was little tremor in his knees when he descended
the stairs. Well-a-day! So Daniel and Billy were rivals!
The latter gentleman met us at the foot of the staircase.
"Oh, there you are, Daniel!" he said cheerily. "I was just going to
look after you and Uncle Teddy. We've wanted you for the dances.
We've had the lancers twice, and three round dances; and I danced the
second lancers with Lottie. Now we're going to play some games--to
amuse the children, you know," he added loftily, with the adult
gesture of pointing his thumb over his shoulder at the extension
room. "Lottie's going to play, too; so will you and Daniel, won't
you, uncle? Oh, here comes Lottie now! This is my brother, Miss
Pilgrim--let me introduce him to you. I'm sure you'll like him.
There's nothing he don't know."
Miss Pilgrim had just come to the newel-post of the staircase and,
when she looked into Daniel's face, blushed like the red, red rose,
losing her self-possession perceptibly more than Daniel.
The courage of weak warriors and timid gallants mounts as the
opposite party's falls, and Daniel made out to say in a firm tone
that it was long since he had enjoyed the pleasure of meeting Miss
Pilgrim.
"Not since Mrs. Cramcroud's last sociable, I think," replied Miss
Pilgrim, her cheeks and eyes still playing the telltale.
"Oho! so you don't want any introduction!" exclaimed Master Billy. "I
didn't know you knew each other, Lottie?"
"I have met Mr. Lovegrove in society. Shall we go and join the
plays?"
"To be sure we shall!" cried Billy. "You needn't mind--all the grown
people are going, too."
On entering the parlor we found it as he had said. The guests being
almost all well acquainted with each other, at the solicitation of
jolly little Miss Bloomingal, sister Lu had consented to make a
pleasant Christmas kind of time of it, in which everybody was
permitted to be young again and romp with the rompiest. We played
blindman's buff till we were tired of that--Daniel, to Lu's delight,
coming out splendidly as blindman, and evincing such "cheek" in the
style he hunted down and caught the ladies as satisfied me that
nothing but his eyesight stood in the way of his making an audacious
figure in the world. Then a pretty little girl, Tilly Turtelle, who
seemed quite a premature flirt, proposed "doorkeeper"--a suggestion
accepted with great _eclat_ by all the children, several grown
people assenting.
To Billy--quite as much on account of his shining prominence in the
executive faculties as of his character as host--was committed the
duty of counting out the first person to be sent into the hall. There
were so many of us that "Aina maina mona mike" would not go quite
round; but, with that promptness of expedient which belongs to
genius, Billy instantly added on, "Intery-mintery-cutery-corn," and
the last word of the cabalistic formula fell upon me--Edward Balbus.
I disappeared into the entry amidst peals of happy laughter from both
old and young, calling, when the door opened again to ask me whom I
wanted, for the pretty lisping flirt who had proposed the game. After
giving me a coquettish little chirrup of a kiss and telling me my
beard scratched, she bade me on my return, send out to her "Mithter
Billy Lovegrove." I obeyed her; my youngest nephew retired; and after
a couple of seconds, during which Tilly undoubtedly got what she
proposed the game for, Billy being a great favorite with the little
girls, she came back, pouting and blushing, to announce that he
wanted Miss Pilgrim. That young lady showed no mock-modesty, but
arose at once and laughingly went out to her youthful admirer, who,
as I afterward learned, embraced her ardently and told her he loved
her better than any girl in the world. As he turned to go back she
told him that he might send to her one of her juvenile cousins,
Reginald Rumbullion. Now, whether because on this youthful
Rumbullion's account Billy had suffered the pangs of that most
terrible passion, jealousy, or from his natural enjoyment of playing
practical jokes destructive of all dignity in his elders, Billy
marched into the room, and, having shut the door behind him,
paralyzed the crowded parlor by an announcement that Mr. Daniel
Lovegrove was wanted.
I was standing at his side and could feel him tremble--see him turn
pale.
"Dear me!" he whispered in a choking voice, "can she mean me?"
"Of course she does," said I. "Who else? Do you hesitate? Surely you
can't refuse such an invitation from a lady?"
"No, I suppose not," said he mechanically. And amidst much laughter
from the disinterested while the faces of Mrs. Rumbullion and his
mother were spectacles of crimson astonishment, he made his exit from
the room. Never in my life did I so much long for that instrument
described by Mr. Samuel Weller--a pair of patent double-million-
magnifying microscopes of hextry power, to see through a deal door.
Instead of this, I had to learn what happened only by report.
Lottie Pilgrim was standing under the hall burners with her elbow on
the newel-post, looking more vividly charming than he had ever seen
her before at Mrs. Cramcroud's sociable or elsewhere. When startled
by the apparition of Mr. Daniel Lovegrove instead of the little Rum-
bullion whom she was expecting, she had no time to exclaim or hide
her mounting color, none at all to explain to her own mind the
mistake that had occurred, before his arm was clasped around her
waist, and his lips so closely pressed to hers, that through her soft
thick hair she could feel the throbbing of his temples. As for
Daniel, he seemed in a walking dream, from which he waked to see Miss
Pilgrim looking into his eyes with utter though not incensed
stupefaction--to stammer:
"Forgive me! Do forgive me! I thought you were in earnest."
"So I was," she said tremulously, as soon as she could catch her
voice, "in sending for my cousin Reginald."
"Oh, dear, what shall I do! Believe me, I was told you wanted me. Let
me go and explain it to mother--she'll tell the rest. I couldn't do
it--I'd die of mortification. Oh, that wretched boy Billy!"
On the principle already mentioned, his agitation reassured her.
"Don't try to explain it now--it may get Billy a scolding. Are there
any but intimate family friends here this evening?"
"No--I believe--no--I'm sure," replied Daniel, collecting his
faculties.
"Then I don't mind what they think. Perhaps they'll suppose we've
known each other long; but we'll arrange it by-and-by. They'll think
the more of it the longer we stay out here--hear them laugh! I must
run back now. I'll send you somebody."
A round of juvenile applause greeted her as she hurried into the
parlor, and a number of grown people smiled quite musically. Her
quick woman wit showed her how to retaliate and divide the
embarrassment of the occasion. As she passed me she said in an
undersone:
"Answer quick! Who's that fat lady on the sofa, that laughs so loud?"
"Mrs. Cromwell Crags," said I as quietly.
Miss Pilgrim made a satirically low courtsey and spoke in a modest
but distinct voice:
"I really must be excused for asking. I'm a stranger, you know; but
is there such a lady here as Mrs. Craggs--Mrs. _Cromwell_ Craggs? For
if so, the present doorkeeper would like to see Mrs. Cromwell Craggs."
Then came the turn of the fat lady to be laughed at; but out she had
to go and get kissed like the rest of us.
Before the close of the evening Billy was made as jealous as his
parents and I was surprised to see Daniel in close conversation with
Miss Pilgrim among the geraniums and fuchsias of the conservatory. "A
regular flirtation!" said Billy somewhat indignantly. The conclusion
they arrived at was, that after all no great harm had been done, and
that the dear little fellow ought not to be peached on for his fun.
If I had known at the time how easily they forgave him, I should have
suspected that the offense Billy had led Daniel into committing was
not unlikely to be repeated on the offender's own account; but so
much as I could see showed me that the ice was broken.
--From "Little Brother, and Other Genre Pictures."
_________
-THE END-
Fitzhugh Ludlow's short story: Selections from a Brace of Boys
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