Part 4 (1/2)
”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 b.u.t.toning 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 doc.u.ment 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 fas.h.i.+onable 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 b.u.t.ton his jacket for him so that it showed his s.h.i.+rt-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 cla.s.s, 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 alb.u.m. 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-gla.s.s until that oracle should announce the auspicious moment for their setting forth.
Daniel was in conversation with a perfect G.o.dsend 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 wis.h.i.+ng it! It's just like the fairy books!” and, rus.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sumed entire guardians.h.i.+p 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 a.s.sented to by the lady that she should dance one lancers with him during the evening.