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Updated: June 18, 2025
That afternoon Fanchon Bareaud told Tom how beautiful her betrothed had been to her; he had brought her a great bouquet of violets and lilies-of-the-valley, and had taken her to the cemetery to place them on the grave of her baby brother, whose birthday it was.
Always cheerfully "full of company," as they said, it was the sort of house where a carpet-dance could be arranged in half an hour; a house with a sideboard like the widow's cruse; the young men always found more. Mrs. Bareaud, a Southerner, loving to persuade the visitor that her home was his, not hers, lived only for her art, which was that of the table.
If the signal had been for a church-meeting they might have understood. Mr. Gray's conduct was surprising two other people at about the same time: Tom Vanrevel and Fanchon Bareaud; the former by his sudden devotion to the law; the latter by her sudden devotion to herself. In a breath, he became almost a domestic character.
As the old gentleman finished, and before the toast was drunk, Fanchon Bareaud, kissing her hand to Betty, took up the song again; and they all joined in, lifting their glasses to the blushing and happy girl clinging to her father's arm: "Thou wouldst still be adored as this moment thou art, Let thy loveliness fade as it will; And around the dear ruin, each wish of my heart, Would entwine itself verdantly still."
He went out a great deal, though no visitors came to the house; for it was known that Mr. Carewe desired to present his daughter to no one until he presented her to all. Fanchon Bareaud, indeed, made one hurried and embarrassed call, evading Miss Betty's reference to the chevalier of the kitten with a dexterity too nimble to be thought unintentional.
Presently, the romp, Virginia Bareaud, making her appearance on the arm of General Trumble, Mrs. Tanberry led them all in a hearty game of Blind-man's Buff, followed by as hearty a dancing of Dan Tucker. After that, a quadrille being proposed, Mrs. Tanberry suggested that Jefferson should run home and bring Fanchon for the fourth lady.
"He has come," said Tappingham, pleased to find the pair the only occupants of the place. "He saw Madrillon, and there's a session to-night." "Praise the Lord!" exclaimed the stout General, rising to his feet. "I'll see old Chenoweth at once. My fingers have the itch." "And mine, too," said Bareaud. "I'd begun to think we'd never have a go with him again." "You must see that Crailey comes.
Most of the vagabonds can sing and play a bit, and so can Crailey, particularly when he's had a few bowls of punch; but when Tom Vanrevel touches the guitar and lifts up his voice to sing, there isn't an angel in heaven that wouldn't quit the place and come to hear him! Crailey wrote those words to Virginia Bareaud. But you must keep him away, Princess."
One was the absence of Miss Fanchon Bareaud, one the donors; another, that of Corporal Gray; a third was the excessive modesty of Major Vanrevel, although present at the time, refused to receive the ladies' sumptuous offering and insisted that Captain Marsh was the proper person to do the honors, to which the latter reluctantly, though gracefully consented.
Instantaneously, several gentlemen, who had hastily acquitted themselves of various obligations in order to seek her, sprang forward with eager greetings, so that when the stricken Tom, dazed and confounded by his evil luck, followed her at about five paces, he found himself confronted by an impenetrable abbatis formed by the spiked tails of the coats of General Trumble, Madrillon, Tappingham Marsh, Cummings and Jefferson Bareaud.
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