It is the surgeon-in-chief, who happens to give our particular Christmas dinner,--I mean the one that interests you and me. Huldah and the other ladies had accepted his invitation. Horace Bartlett and his staff, and some of the other officers, were guests; and the doctor had given his own permit that Major Barthow might walk up to his quarters with the ladies. Huldah and he were in advance, he leaning, with many apologies, on her arm. Dr. Sprigg and Anna Thwart were far behind. The two married ladies, as needing no escort, were in the middle. Major Barthow enjoyed the emancipation, was delighted with his companion, could not say enough to make her praise the glimpses of Virginia, even if it were West Virginia.
"What a party it is, to be sure!" said he. "The doctor might call on us for our stories, as one of Dickens's chiefs would do at a Christmas feast. Let's see, we should have
THE SURGEON'S TALE; THE GENERAL'S TALE;
for we may at least make believe that Hod's stars have come from Washington. Then we must call in that one-eyed servant of his; and we will have
THE ORDERLY'S TALE.
Your handsome friend from Wisconsin shall tell
THE GERMAN'S TALE.
I shall be encouraged to tell
THE PRISONER'S TALE.
And you"--
"And I?" said Huldah laughing, because he paused.
"You shall tell
THE SAINT'S TALE."
Barthow spoke with real feeling, which he did not care to disguise. But Huldah was not there for sentiment; and without quivering in the least, nor making other acknowledgment, she laughed as she knew she ought to do, and said, "Oh, no! that is quite too grand, the story must end with
THE SUPERINTENDENT OF SPECIAL RELIEF'S TALE.
It is a little unromantic to the sound; but that's what it is."
"I don't see," persisted the major, "if Superintendent of Special Relief means Saint in Latin, why we should not say so."
"Because we are not talking Latin," said Huldah. "Listen to me; and, before we come to dinner, I will tell you a story pretty enough for Dickens, or any of them; and it is a story not fifteen minutes old.
"Have you noticed that black-whiskered fellow, under the gallery, by the north window?--Yes, the same. He is French, enlisted, I think, in New London. I came to him just now, managed to say _etrennes_ and _Noel_ to him, and a few other French words, and asked if there were nothing we could do to make him more at home. Oh, no! there was nothing; madame was too good, and everybody was too good, and so on. But I persisted. I wished I knew more about Christmas in France; and I staid by. 'No, madame, nothing; there is nothing. But, since you say it,--if there were two drops of red wine,--_du vin de mon pays, madame_; but you could not here in Virginia.' Could not I? A superintendent of special relief has long arms. There was a box of claret, which was the first thing I saw in the store-room the day I took my keys. The doctor was only too glad the man had thought of it; and you should have seen the pleasure that red glass, as full as I could pile it, gave him. The tears were running down his cheeks. Anna, there, had another Frenchman; and she sent some to him: and my man is now humming a little song about the _vin rouge_ of Bourgogne. Would not Mr. Dickens make a pretty story of that for you,--'THE FRENCHMAN'S STORY'?"
Barthow longed to say that the great novelist would not make so pretty a story as she did. But this time he did not dare.
You are not going to hear the eight stories. Mr. Dickens was not there; nor, indeed, was I. But a jolly Christmas dinner they had; though they had not those eight stories. Quiet they were, and very, very happy. It was a strange thing,--if one could have analyzed it,--that they should have felt so much at home, and so much at ease with each other, in that queer Virginian kitchen, where the doctor and his friends of his mess had arranged the feast. It was a happy thing, that the recollections of so many other Christmas homes should come in, not sadly, but pleasantly, and should cheer, rather than shade the evening. They felt off soundings, all of them. There was, for the time, no responsibility. The strain was gone. The gentlemen were glad to be dining with ladies, I believe: the ladies, unconsciously, were probably glad to be dining with gentlemen. The officers were glad they were not on duty; and the prisoner, if glad of nothing else, was glad he was not in bed. But he was glad for many things beside. You see it was but a little post. They were far away; and they took things with the ease of a detached command.
"Shall we have any toasts?" said the doctor, when his nuts and raisins and apples at last appeared.
"Oh, no! no toasts,--nothing so stiff as that."
"Oh, yes! oh, yes!" said Grace. "I should like to know what it is to drink a toast. Something I have heard of all my life, and never saw."
"One toast, at least, then," said the doctor. "Colonel Bartlett, will you name the toast?"
"Only one toast?" said Horace; "that is a hard selection: we must vote on that."
"No, no!" said a dozen voices; and a dozen laughing assistants at the feast offered their advice.
"I might give 'The Country;' I might give 'The Cause;' I might give 'The President:' and everybody would drink," said Horace. "I might give 'Absent friends,' or 'Home, sweet home;' but then we should cry."
"Why do you not give 'The trepanned people'?" said Worster, laughing, "or 'The silver-headed gentlemen'?"
"Why don't you give 'The Staff and the Line'?" "Why don't you give 'Here's Hoping'?" "Give 'Next Christmas.'" "Give 'The Medical Department; and may they often ask us to dine!'"
"Give 'Saints and Sinners,'" said Major Barthow, after the first outcry was hushed.
"I shall give no such thing," said Horace. "We have had a lovely dinner; and we know we have; and the host, who is a good fellow, knows the first thanks are not to him. Those of us who ever had our heads knocked open, like the Major and me, do know. Fill your glasses, gentlemen; I give you 'the Special Diet Kitchen.'"
He took them all by surprise. There was a general shout; and the ladies all rose, and dropped mock courtesies.
"By Jove!" said Barthow to the Colonel, afterwards, "It was the best toast I ever drank in my life. Anyway, that little woman has saved my life. Do you say she did the same to you?"
III.
CHRISTMAS AGAIN.
So you think that when the war was over Major Barthow, then Major-General, remembered Huldah all the same, and came on and persuaded her to marry him, and that she is now sitting in her veranda, looking down on the Pamunkey River. You think that, do not you?
Well! you were never so mistaken in your life. If you want that story, you can go and buy yourself a dime novel. I would buy "The Rescued Rebel;" or, "The Noble Nurse," if I were you.
After the war was over, Huldah did make Colonel Barthow and his wife a visit once, at their plantation in Pocataligo County; but I was not there, and know nothing about it.
Here is a Christmas of hers, about which she wrote a letter; and, as it happens, it was a letter to Mrs. Barthow.
HULDAH ROOT TO AGNES BARTHOW.
VILLERS-BOCAGE, Dec. 27, 1868.
... Here I was, then, after this series of hopeless blunders, sole alone at the _gare_ [French for station] of this little out-of-the-way town. My dear, there was never an American here since Christopher Columbus slept here when he was a boy. And here, you see, I was like to remain; for there was no possibility of the others getting back to me till to-morrow, and no good in my trying to overtake them. All I could do was just to bear it, and live on, and live through from Thursday to Monday; and, really, what was worst of all was that Friday was Christmas day.
Well, I found a funny little carriage, with a funny old man who did not understand my _patois_ any better than I did his; but he understood a franc-piece. I had my guide-book, and I said _auberge_; and we came to the oddest, most outlandish, and old-fashioned establishment that ever escaped from one of Julia Nathalie woman's novels. And here I am.
And the reason, my dear Mrs. Barthow, that I take to-day to write to you, you and the Colonel will now understand. You see it was only ten o'clock when I got here; then I went to walk, many _enfans terribles_ following respectfully; then I came home, and ate the funny refection; then I got a nap; then I went to walk again, and made a little sketch in the churchyard: and this time, one of the children brought up her mother, a funny Norman woman, in a delicious costume,--I have a sketch of another just like her,--and she dropped a courtesy, and in a very mild _patois_ said she hoped the children did not trouble madame. And I said, "Oh, no!" and found a sugar-plum for the child and showed my sketch to the woman; and she said she supposed madame was _Anglaise_.
I said I was not _Anglaise_,--and here the story begins; for I said I was _Americaine_. And, do you know, her face lighted up as if I had said I was St. Gulda, or St. Hilda, or any of their Northmen Saints.
"Americaine! est-il possible? Jeannette, Gertrude, faites vos reverences. Madame est Americaine."
And, sure enough, they all dropped preternatural courtesies. And then the most eager enthusiasm; how fond they all were of _les Americaines_, but how no _Americaines_ had ever come before! And was madame at the Three Cygnets? And might she and her son and her husband call to see madame at the Three Cygnets? And might she bring a little _etrenne_ to madame? And I know not what beside.