Marriage à la mode | Page 7

a little discourse on the house and its history, as they stood on the
veranda; and private conversation was no longer possible.
CHAPTER II
A sudden hush had fallen upon Mount Vernon. From the river below
came the distant sounds of the steamer, which, with its crowds safe on
board, was now putting off for Washington. But the lawns and paths of
the house, and the formal garden behind it, and all its simple rooms
upstairs and down, were now given back to the spring and silence, save
for this last party of sightseers. The curator, after his preliminary
lecture on the veranda, took them within; the railings across the doors
were removed; they wandered in and out as they pleased.
Perhaps, however, there were only two persons among the six now
following the curator to whom the famous place meant anything more
than a means of idling away a warm afternoon. General Hobson carried
his white head proudly through it, saying little or nothing. It was the
house of a man who had wrenched half a continent from Great Britain;
the English Tory had no intention whatever of bowing the knee. On the
other hand, it was the house of a soldier and a gentleman, representing
old English traditions, tastes, and manners. No modern blatancy, no
Yankee smartness anywhere. Simplicity and moderate wealth,
combined with culture--witness the books of the library--with
land-owning, a family coach, and church on Sundays: these things the
Englishman understood. Only the slaves, in the picture of Mount
Vernon's past, were strange to him.
They stood at length in the death-chamber, with its low white bed, and
its balcony overlooking the river.
"This, ladies, is the room in which General Washington died," said the
curator, patiently repeating the familiar sentence. "It is, of course, on
that account sacred to every true American."
He bowed his head instinctively as he spoke. The General looked round
him in silence. His eye was caught by the old hearth, and by the iron

plate at the back of it, bearing the letters G. W. and some scroll work.
There flashed into his mind a vision of the December evening on which
Washington passed away, the flames flickering in the chimney, the
winds breathing round the house and over the snow-bound landscape
outside, the dying man in that white bed, and around him, hovering
invisibly, the generations of the future.
"He was a traitor to his king and country!" he repeated to himself,
firmly. Then as his patriotic mind was not disturbed by a sense of
humour, he added the simple reflection--"But it is, of course, natural
that Americans should consider him a great man."
The French window beside the bed was thrown open, and these
privileged guests were invited to step on to the balcony. Daphne Floyd
was handed out by young Barnes. They hung over the white balustrade
together. An evening light was on the noble breadth of river; its surface
of blue and gold gleamed through the boughs of the trees which girdled
the house; blossoms of wild cherry, of dogwood, and magnolia
sparkled amid the coverts of young green.
Roger Barnes remarked, with sincerity, as he looked about him, that it
was a very pretty place, and he was glad he had not missed it. Miss
Floyd made an absent reply, being in fact occupied in studying the
speaker. It was, so to speak, the first time she had really observed him;
and, as they paused on the balcony together, she was suddenly
possessed by the same impression as that which had mollified the
General's scolding on board the steamer. He was indeed handsome, the
young Englishman!--a magnificent figure of a man, in height and
breadth and general proportions; and in addition, as it seemed to her,
possessed of an absurd and superfluous beauty of feature. What does a
man want with such good looks? This was perhaps the girl's first
instinctive feeling. She was, indeed, a little dazzled by her new
companion, now that she began to realize him. As compared with the
average man in Washington or New York, here was an exception--an
Apollo!--for she too thought of the Sun-god. Miss Floyd could not
remember that she had ever had to do with an Apollo before; young
Barnes, therefore, was so far an event, a sensation. In the opera-house

she had been vaguely struck by a handsome face. But here, in the
freedom of outdoor dress and movement, he seemed to her a physical
king of men; and, at the same time, his easy manner--which, however,
was neither conceited nor ill-bred--showed him conscious of his
advantages.
As they chatted on the balcony she put him through his paces a little.
He had been, it seemed, at Eton and Oxford; and she supposed that he
belonged to