Virginius Dabney

“ Wherever else they may have been, they were not in the Argo. The Don and Mary were there; and in the then infancy of naval architecture row-boats were not built large enough to hold, comfortably, two pairs of lovers.
Mary was seated in the boat, he lounging around it; now leaning against the gunwale, now stalking idly to and fro in the shining sand, rejoicing in his youth. They talked of the passing sea-gulls, the twittering bluebirds, the rippling waves, the rosy clouds, the generous sunlight,—of everything, of nothing, it mattered not; for love hath power to transfigure the plainest things. ”

“ And dropping her eyes, and with an inimitable simper on her countenance, she made as though straightening, between thumb and forefinger, the hem of her handkerchief.
“Ah, you are the same dear old Alice still,” cried Lucy, leaning forward, and, with laughing lips, kissing her on the cheek. “And you fell in love with the graceful stranger?”
“Yes, indeed,—that is, as much as was becoming in a young woman of eighteen summers. By the way, Lucy, you too have reached that dignified age since I last saw you. Don’t you begin to feel ancient? I do. We shall soon be old maids.” ”

“ I need not look at the rosy sunset, or the smiling fields about me, to learn that there is a God. I have but to gaze into my own heart, and upon your image imprinted there. A fool might say that land and sea came by chance; but my Mary! Her arguments are not needed. She herself is all-sufficient proof, to me at least, that there exists, somewhere, a Divine Artificer. So don’t call names. It isn’t fair. Atheist, deist, infidel, old Nick,—what arrow can I send back in retort? Arrows I have,—a quiver full to bursting,—but all are labelled angel! ”

“ If a man could only do or say anything that no one else could do or say, or do it or say it better than any one else, he had a friend in Mr. Whacker. All forms of brightness and of humor—any kind of talent, or even oddity—could unlock that door, which swung so easily on its hinges. And not only men of gifts, but all who had a lively appreciation of gifts, were at liberty to make Elmington their headquarters; so that, as my memory goes back to those days, there rises before me a succession of the drollest mortals that were ever seen in one Virginia house. ”

“ Such is ever the ruin wrought by love, even in the mind of a philosopher.
“By the way,” said Alice, as she stood with her feet upon the gunwale of the Argo, ready to spring, “in the rather mixed metaphors of honest Sam, which of us was the fish and which the hook? ‘Porpoise,’” quoted she, laughing, “I trust I don’t remind you of one?”
Charley, who stood in the sand, held one of Alice’s hands in each of his with a degree of pressure entirely incommensurate with the necessities of equilibrium: “✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻” sang he, with a rapt and fatuous smile. ”

“ Mary here caught Alice’s eye, and could get no farther.
Alice rose slowly to her feet and said, gravely waving her closed fan as though it had been the wand of a showman, “This, ladies and gentlemen, is not a speech, but poetry and romance. I would simply observe that when a young woman begins by stating that she does not like a certain man, and ends by comparing his eyes to stars, the last state of that young woman shall be worse than the first. But I am somehow reminded of the Moonlight Sonata. Mr. Whacker, I beg you will conduct Miss Lucy to the piano.” ”

“ The artist nature is caprice itself,—changeful as an April sky; and the Don with sudden impulse released the neck of the violin, which sank back upon its luxurious cushion of blue satin. He would excuse himself,—he could not play. But the strings, vibrating beneath an accidental touch, gave forth a chord, and instantly reversed the current of his feelings. Yes, he would play; and taking up the instrument, he sauntered over, with as careless an air as he could command, to the window by which Mary stood, touching the strings lightly as he went, as though to see whether they were in tune. ”

“ Don,’ said I, beginning the skirmishing, ‘must have remarked the fact that girls will talk.’
“‘True, very true!’ And with dreamy, half-smiling, uplifted eyes, he thrust his cigar into the other corner of his mouth, as though by anticipation he rolled under his tongue some morsel of my nonsense. ‘Go on, laughter-compelling siren!’
“‘Again, you cannot fail to have observed that girls, being wound up to talk, by nature, must needs talk about one another or—the rest of mankind. As we are not philosophers, could it be otherwise?’
“‘Impossible!’ said he, rocking gently to and fro. ”

“ This we were expected to believe and did believe; and by what ingenuity we were to escape the dogma of eternal damnation I, for one, cannot see. But we made no effort to escape it, regarding it, to a man, as the mainstay of society and the sheet-anchor of all the virtues. A belief in hell was ranked among the necessaries of life.
“’Twas the merest luxury,” quoth Charley.
Now, what is the imagination but a kind of inner eye, revealing to us, often with fearful distinctness, that which may be, but is not. And imagination was, as we know, an overshadowing trait of Mary’s mind. ”

“ All is fair in love and war; and in both the best-laid schemes are undone by a surprise. The enemy had found the citadel unguarded and rushed in.
“Will you allow me?” said he.
She made no reply beyond a faint smile, and he took his seat beside her.
“You spoke of music just now. Lucy has a charming touch; but I know a voice that is, to me at least, richer than all the harmonies of a symphony, softer than an Æolian harp, gentler than the cooing of a dove.”
She made a brave effort to look unconscious. “Oh, how beautiful it must be! How I should like to hear such a voice!” ”

“ Charley smiled. “How fearfully and wonderfully is woman made! You first ask me for information which I do not possess, but which it appears you do, then answer your own question; then when I am about to say something, you tell me what I am about to say; and then—with a little shriek—discover the mare’s nest I am about to reveal! No, I was not going to say ‘neither Lucy nor Mary,’ nor yet that the Don was married. I was about to make a proposition to you. Are you really very anxious to have it decided whether it is Mary or Lucy?” ”

“ When the audience within heard the knob rattle, the excitement was intense. It was dissipated, in an instant, by the sight of Charley bearing the child.
In this wide world there lives not a woman who can look upon a bearded man, with his first infant in his arms, without smiling.
The admiring ohs and ahs made the young mother’s heart beat high with joy. And who shall call her weak, because she forgot that they are to be heard at every christening? In the name of pity, let us sip whatever illusive nectar chance flowers along our stony path may afford! ”

“ Every family must have a head; and Mr. Poythress was the head of his. Few women could have stood up long against his firm will and his clear-cut, vigorous convictions. At any rate, acquiescence in whatever he thought and did had become a second nature with his gentle wife; who had come to look upon him as a model of wisdom, virtue, and piety. She had even reached the point, by degrees, of heartily accepting his various isms; and though she sometimes winced under the austere puritanism that marked the restrictions he imposed upon their boy, she never doubted that it was all for the best. ”

“ His visits began when I was ever so little; and as for mother, she loves Mr. Frobisher as dearly as though he were her own son. But you know,” said she, turning to me with a grave look, and speaking in undertones, “there are peculiar reasons for that.”
“Yes,” said I, “I have heard.”
Lucy sighed and was silent.
“But, Mr. Whacker,” began Alice, “why is he so silent? You can see he is very intelligent. His smile is singularly subtle, and what little he does say is always admirably well said. ‘A bird that can sing and won’t,’ you know.” ”

“ I give you my word, I nearly exploded when I caught sight of the Don. There he sat, with an oyster on the end of his fork poised midway between his plate and his mouth, with his eyes riveted on you. Put this down in your book, Mary,—this,—as a maxim on love: ‘Whenever a man forgets the way to his mouth his heart’s in danger.’”
“I will,” said Mary, shaking with laughter.
“Yes,” continued Alice, standing before the glass and taking down her hair, “you have a streak of genius, that’s the truth; but it is not the whole truth.” ”

“ Alice, then, being superior neither to her sex nor to her age, as I am glad to say, was half vexed at being so constantly left alone with Charley,—yet half willing to be so vexed. There was an innuendo, it is true, in the very absence of her companions; but then the soft rubbish that Charley was pouring into her pink ear!
Of all passions, love is the most selfish; not excepting hunger and thirst. Yesterday, Alice had been eager to speak with Charley, alone, in the interests of her friend Mary. ”

“ What a surprise when the poet draws the curtain, and there flashes upon our astonished eyes the inexorable, flinty-hearted captain of the Myrmidons seated with his friend Patroklus, peacefully singing to his lyre the illustrious deeds of heroes! What a master-stroke!” cried he, with flashing eyes. “It is like the sudden bursting upon the view of a green valley in the midst of barren rocks. And you don’t like Homer?”
“Oh, that is beautiful, really beautiful!” she hastened to say, abashed at the sentiment she had just uttered. “One often fails to see beauties till they are pointed out. ”

“ The mirage vanished,—for a mere tone may outline a whole system of theology. That cry, as he gave it, was one of bitter human anguish. In her lover’s eyes ’twas not a God that died, but a man,—godlike, but a man.
“With that cry” (he added) , “the bitterest that ever broke from mortal lips—”
She heard but heeded not; she knew more than enough already.
“With that cry there burst the grandest heart that ever beat for mankind. Who can wonder that sixty generations of men have worshipped him as a God!”
Mary rose, and, descending from the Argo, took his arm. She needed its support. ”

“ Perhaps some anger had been mingled with the softer feeling at first; but Alice had put a new face upon the matter; and she was hurrying home to say to her daughter that she for one (and her father for another) looked upon the alleged scepticism of young men as the most harmless of eccentricities; and her face wore a determined smile. She did not intend to commit herself. It would be time enough to express her views (that is to say, Mr. Rolfe’s) when this Enigma had given an account of himself. ”

“ Alice, fatigued by the day’s journey, fell asleep almost immediately. Her companion, though her eyes were closed, lay thinking. Ah, little Alice, you have sadly blundered! Mary is thinking of what you have said to her—ransacking her brain for confirmation of your suggestion. “Yes, I did remark his looking at me several times at dinner; but what of that? People can look at other people without being in love with them. And—yes, I did think his eyes wore a very intense look; but then they always glow like coals. How beautiful they are!” [Oh, Alice! Alice!!] ”

“ Setting in motion, then, this subtle mechanism, which all women possess (though in some it don’t seem to work) , Alice showered down upon Charley, from hazel eyes and sunny hair, from well-turned throat and dimpled hand, from undulating virgin form and momentary ankle-flash,—showered down upon him as she stood there graceful as a gazelle ready to spring, a sparkling wealth of youth and beauty. ”

“ Had she been a good sensible girl, with no nonsense about her, it might have been supposed that she would have been curious to know whether he were rich. Then, being but just turned of eighteen, who could have blamed her if she had wondered whether he were of a jealous temper, and likely to put an end to her dancing with other men? Again; many women have a pardonable ambition to shine in the eyes of their friends; and was he, if rich, generous as well? And was she likely to dazzle Alice with her diamonds, perhaps, or beam upon Lucy from a handsome equipage? ”

“ Don, are you glad to see me?” But without waiting for him to find words to reply, a quizzical look came into her face as she observed that with the beat of her mother’s laughter her own person was gently bobbing up and down, as though she rode a pacing horse: “Snow-bird on de ash-bank, snow-bird on de ash-bank, snow-bird on de ash-bank,” she began, in a sort of Runic rhythm, or shall we say in jig measure? “snow-bird on de ash-bank;” and from her curving wrists, drawn close together in front of her bosom, her limp hands swung and tossed, keeping time, jingling like muffled bells. ”

“ At last, Mary, drying her eyes, arose, tottering, from her seat.
“And so I have come in vain! Once before I humbled myself in the dust before you—and you spurned me—”
The captain shook his head wearily.
“Yes, spurned me, and in the presence of others; so that even that poor dying man found it in his heart to pity me. And you, too, are dying, yet have not the mercy of a stranger and an enemy. You bade me read Homer, and taught me to admire Achilles, yet even his flinty heart was melted by the tears of Priam.” ”

“ No hope! There, the bell rang! A soft tap on her door; not Alice’s merry rub-a-dub. A young slave and sister announced the cousin. Mary sprang to her feet: “I won’t see him,” she almost screamed; “tell him that!” cried she, advancing upon her late pupil in Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” with looks so fierce and gestures so vehement as to drive her back in alarm upon the door which she had just entered with a smile.
“Yes, ma’am, yes, ma’am,” stammered the Pilgrim, fumbling over the door-knob in her confused effort to escape. ”

“ She knew the exaltation of Mary’s imagination, and felt the danger of her fervid fancy’s laying hold of such a man as the Don, and converting him into a demi-god by the alchemy of her fresh, girlish heart. But generalization is not a trait of the feminine mind. When we hear that some one admires us, we—all of us—instinctively give that person credit for good taste and discernment,—that, she of the hazel eyes overlooked. ”

“ With us, as well, laughter became frivolity, and dancing blasphemous. There are rifts in the fog now, and here and there the sun is bursting through; but at the period of our story the shadow was unbroken. There was laughter, it is true. Do not the condemned often make merry in their cells? and young people will dance,—just as lambs frisk, even upon a bed of mint—heedless,—for ’tis their nature to. ”

“ There was a murmur of adhesion, as the French say.
“Splendid!” ejaculated Billy, feeling that something was due from him as the fiddler of the evening; thereby drawing the gleaming eyes of Mr. Whacker full upon him. “Splendid!” repeated he, in a somewhat lower tone, and looking steadfastly at the violin; for he could not look the old gentleman in the face,—knowing—the honest scamp—that he was a fraud, and saw nothing wonderful in the instrument.
“Why, hand me that old gourd you have been playing on,” said Mr. Whacker; and he snatched the fiddle from Billy’s hand. ”

“ During these two months Mary has been in a perpetual ferment. She has read all the books of evidential polemics that she could lay her hands on, and her mind has become a very magazine of crushing syllogisms. She has been pouring these out with all that eloquence that love is so sure to lend a woman’s pen. Day by day she has become more thoroughly convinced of the impregnability of her position (just as lawyers’ convictions bloom ever stronger under the irrigation of repeated fees,—retainer, reminder, refresher, convincer) . ”