University of Virginia Library

24. CHAPTER XXIV.
HOW THE SEIGNEUR MORT-REYNARD PREACHED AND PRACTISED.

That merry fox-hunter and incorrigible bachelor, Mr. Jack
Hamilton, or as Captain Waters called him, Seigneur Mort-Reynard,
was holding a confidential conversation with Miss
Alethea in the library—when we say confidential, we mean
personal—inasmuch, as the colloquy in question busied itself
with the moral delinquencies of the identical seigneur, and
especially referred to his reynard-hunting propensities.

When Mr. Effingham entered, he found that his friend
was engaged in that forlorn and desperate undertaking—
arguing with one of the opposite sex. Mr. Jack Hamilton
was accustomed to plume himself upon his knowledge of the
female character; to mention with pride and satisfaction the
fact that he had always seen through them, as he expressed
it, and been enabled by his splendid sagacity to detect and
escape their wiles; in a word, he would often inform his
Nimrod associates over their claret, after a jovial hunt, that
he knew women perfectly, and that he was so old a fox that
the swiftest of them could not run him down. And yet,
with all this boasted knowledge of the sex, with all this profound
insight into their peculiarities of organization, the unfortunate
man was absolutely arguing a proposition with a
lady. The poor fellow had really not learned the first and

most commonplace rules of the science which he boasted.
And how he did boast when he got Tom Lane, and Charley
Cotes, and the rest, snugly seated at a jovial supper at the
Trap!

“My dear fellow,” this keen student of (female) human
nature would say, with one arm resting on the table, the
right hand holding to his lips a glass of claret, “you are not
as old as I am, and will not take my advice, and leave the
girls alone. Avoid them, sir!—this world would get on
gloriously were it not for these women—with their sighings,
and oglings, and flirting fans, and rustling flounces. All the
trouble in the universe—more or less—is caused by them,
and many a tall fellow—in the Shakespearian sense, I was
reading him yesterday; a good writer!—many a fine fellow,
brave, and holding up his head, has bit the dust before
'em!

“Just look! Here is a jolly companion, ready to run a
fox to the death, to hunt deer on the coldest night that ever
a fryingpan shone in, what I call a boy of metal, ready for
fun, and joyous as the day! ready to clash glasses, to laugh
at matrimony, to break through every thing which bothers
him, and as brave as Julius Cæsar. Well, sir—the bottle
stays with you!—just look now how the thing works! He goes
to some ball or other, makes the acquaintance of a pair of
blue eyes, lips to match—to say nothing of the rest. He
looks—the infatuated fellow will not cut and run as a brave
man may, when he knows the enemy can beat him easily—
he dances with her—goes bowing and ambling, and mincing
his steps and smiling through a minuet or a quadrille: he
squeezes her hand—the poor, infatuated boy! Never squeeze
a woman's hand, sir! by Jove, it is too ridiculous. Well,
the unhappy victim of the eyes, does this more and more:
he returns her ogles, he thinks her courtesies, as she holds
out her silken skirt, the very sublimity of grace, by George!
he feels a something creeping over him, that makes him feel
like a thousand pins were sticking in him, and as if the black
rascals, who are scraping away on their fiddles, are playing
rainbow music, on moonlight violins, with bows made of
flowers, by Jove! The reel finishes him, sir!—he dances it
with her—her face flushes up, her eyes sparkle, her satins
rustle, she shoots him down, by Jove! with her eyes, and

takes his heart, which he is holding in his hand, and puts it
in her pocket—if ladies have pockets, which I doubt.

“Now, mark me, sir—not bad claret, this!—from that
minute, he is gone! He leaves hunting—he passes over to
the other side, when he meets us jolly fellows on the road;
he frowns when we refuse to acknowledge that all the sense,
all the virtue, all the brilliancy of the world, is found in
women; and let any one dare to assert that his particular
paragon is not the pearl of all—the top froth—the moonlight
and flowers—the head and front of all. Try it! a cock-sparrow
is nothing to him. He whips out his hanger, by
Jove! his eyes blaze up, he makes a pass at you, and runs
you through the gizzard, causing a large and affectionate
circle to mourn your loss.

“All this, sir, is caused by women—from their passion
for matrimony. Men, sir, are to them, what the fox is to
us—they take pleasure in running them down and slaughtering
them. No, I am wrong—they are not so easy as that:
they are like cats, sir, when a mouse falls into their clutches.
They tie the infatuated poor fellow to their apron-string—
they watch, and smile, and simper, and die away: but try
to escape, sir, under the impression that the enemy is lulled
to sleep. By Jove! sir, the claw comes out from the velvet
paw, and you are gone! You are married, sir!—you are
led like a sheep to the slaughter, and you may bleat as much
as you choose, by George! You are thenceforth a married
man, and your bachelor joys are all gone. Try a fox hunt
if you dare—madam will make you rue it: speak to your
bachelor friends—she'll scratch you, sir. From that moment
you are a joyless, married man, and your whole life is to be
spent in working like a drudge for a set of little dirty-faced
darlings, who make you get up fifty times in the night,
and won't let you read your newspaper for crawling over
you.

“That's it, sir: you are an unfortunate married man.
You dare not ask your friends to dinner, or if you feel that
it is a shame not to, you say in a mild and sheepish voice,
`Really, now, my dear Tom (or Jack, as the case may be), I
am delighted to see you; your face reminds me of old times
(poor fellow, so it does!) come and—I hope you can make
it convenient—you are sure you have no engagement—I

should be happy—Do you know—my—wife?' And, by
George! sir, he hangs his head, and looks like he had been
caught stealing a sheep; for he knows that madam will sit
up like a lump of ice, and make personal observations unpleasantly
alluding to his past life with us jolly fellows, and
when she has him, sir, alone, will make the watches of the
night miserable with a lecture behind the curtains, in which
she will prove, to his own, and her own, satisfaction, that he
is falling back into his old abominable courses, when he
used to commit the deadly sin of sitting up a-nights, and
rattling the dice, and eating suppers, and chasing reynard
with us jolly boys, by George! He knows she'll lay it all
out to him, with that eloquence which she possesses in such
a high degree; and no wonder that the poor fellow blushes,
and hesitates, and hems! when he ventures to suggest that his
old friends should visit him—the reprobates, as madam calls
them. I, for one, would not go and dine with him—I should
shake my head, and go on my way, in pity, not anger,
and I would empty six bottles, and run down fifty foxes to
get his face out of my mind. Yes, sir, that is the short and
the long of it—your fate will be to find yourself henpecked!
Avoid them in time, by Jove! never put yourself in their
power, or you are gone—you are, indeed! Never laugh and
talk with them—never visit them — above all, sir, never
argue with them, for you are sure to get the worst of it. Lay
this down as a general rule, that a woman will always have
the last word; and, secondly, that no woman ever yet understood
how a demonstration followed a fixed set of premises;—
logic is not their weakness, sir, they don't understand it;
but what they do understand, is jumping to their own conclusions,
and sticking to 'em like grim death. One of their
conclusions is, that all men of right ought to be caught, if
eligible. Now, sir, you needn't resist—they will convince
you: the only way is to do as I do—never go near them,
and cultivate a bachelor life.”

And after these diabolical sentiments, Mr. Jack Hamilton
would empty his claret, pour out a second glass, and
begin singing, “Oh, a jolly life for me-e-e! A jolly life
for me!”

Let us return from this digression to the Hall, which we
have left, to listen to Mr. Hamilton's advice given to his

bachelor friends at the Trap. But it is not our intention to
report the words uttered by Mr. Hamilton and Miss Alethea.
It is enough to say that the Seigneur Mort-Reynard
proved his own philosophy to be perfectly correct, and was
quietly unhorsed by Miss Alethea in every charge—that
lady managing the weapons with her habitual air of prim
and stately grace.

“Ah, here's Champ coming to the rescue!” cried the
delighted seigneur. “I am in a bad way here, friend Effingham.
Miss Alethea has been proving satisfactorily that
I am a most hardened sinner.”

Miss Alethea smiled, with a wintry look, but said nothing.

“I am glad to see you, Jack,” replied Mr. Effingham,
suppressing by an effort the painful emotion caused by the
sight of his rival; “how did I miss seeing you when you
rode up?”

“Oh, I slipped through the lane by the stable; I wanted
to get the nearest road to Riverhead.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Effingham, coldly; but immediately
suppressing this exhibition of feeling, he added, calmly,
“present my best respects to the family.”

“Including Clare?” said Mr. Hamilton, easily.

“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Effingham, austerely: and he picked
up a book to conceal his emotion. Then conscious that this
tone was a great injustice to his friend, he said, “I am
rather unwell to-day—I hope you are as hearty as ever,
Hamilton.”

“I?” said the Seigneur Mort-Reynard, laughing; “why
I never felt better in my life. We had a glorious—”

Suddenly the seigneur paused: he saw the eye of Miss
Alethea fixed on him, and suppressed the remainder of his
sentence with a sheepish look.

“I am going over to carry Miss Clare these gloves,” he
added. “She commissioned me to procure them in town
for her.”

“You know the size of her hand, then?” asked Mr.
Effingham, not to have his painful silence observed.

“Her hand? I think so! The sweetest little hand.
She laid it in my own buckskin one, and by Jove!—a thousand
pardons, Miss Alethea!—and I measured it by laying

my fore and middle fingers upon it. They were just the
width of her hand, and her thumb was the size of my little
finger.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Effingham.

“Yes, indeed! Now if the ladies only wore some species
of covering on the lips!”

Mr. Hamilton paused with a laugh.

“On the lips, sir?” asked Miss Alethea, who was not
quick at a jest.

“And I measured with my own, as I measured the
hand!” said the seigneur, laughing.

Miss Alethea drew herself up: Mr. Effingham's face
flushed. His friend did not perceive it, apparently, and
went on.

“I really think I am becoming a lady's man,” he said.
“Here I am running about buying gloves, and flirting fans,
and making myself useful in a variety of ways. I really
should not be surprised if I ended by attaching myself to
some fair lady for life!”

“A good resolution,” said Mr. Effingham, looking away.
“As for myself, I am growing more and more careless in
these matters.”

“That reminds me, Champ,” said Miss Alethea, “that
we are all invited to Mr. Lee's to-morrow.”

“I shall not go.”

“Why?”

Mr. Effingham looked at his sister, but suppressed his
irritated feeling.

“I am not very well,” he added, “please say as much.”

“Now, Champ,” said Mr. Hamilton, “permit me to observe
that you do wrong in neglecting the ladies over there.
They are really charming—and though I confess what I
probably should conceal, that for certain reasons I am not
an unbiassed judge between Miss Henrietta and Miss Clare,
yet I assure you I think the former a most beautiful and
lovely girl.”

This speech was so plain that Mr. Effingham felt a pang
shoot through his breast: he said nothing.

“They were talking about your neighborly behavior,”
continued his friend, coolly, “and Clare—Miss Clare, I
mean—said that you had scarcely been near them since your

return from Europe. That is not friendly, and they think
you are driven away by that Don Moustachio, Captain Waters,
whom you do not like!”

We regret to say that this was a fib: the fox-hunter had
no reason to suppose that the Riverhead family had any
such thoughts.

Mr. Effingham replied:

“I do not dislike Captain Waters—we are good friends.”

“Why then stay away?”

Mr. Effingham replied by the same look which had
greeted a similar question from Miss Alethea. And the
same suppression of his irritability ensued.

“I stay away because I visit nowhere,” he said.

“Ah, you fear the bright eyes of Henrietta!” said Mr.
Hamilton.

This quiet assumption that Clare could not be the source
of fear from her peculiar relations towards himself—Mr.
Hamilton—produced a painful effect upon Mr. Effingham.
He began to feel some rising indignation, too, at these banterings
from a man who had asked him with a twinkle in
his eye, in a former interview, “if he had seen Clare?”—
upon his return, the reader will remember. Therefore to
Mr. Hamilton's bantering charge, that he feared Henrietta's
eyes, he replied, coldly:

“I think you might have added Miss Clare Lee to the
number of those I do not visit at Riverhead, from a sentiment
of fear.”

“Clare?” said Mr. Hamilton, with some surprise, “but,
my dear fellow! she is wholly out of the question.”

“How, sir?”

“Hum!” said Mr. Hamilton, looking mysterious, “perhaps
I am not at liberty to speak: there are certain things
which should not be alluded to, I believe.”

Mr. Effingham turned his head aside, and his breast
heaved:—his cheek grew paler. Then he conquered this
emotion, so painful and trying: and turning to his friend,
said, as he offered his hand:

“You are right, Hamilton, I will go to-morrow!”

And his head sank. Ten minutes afterwards the Seigneur
Mort-Reynard rose and departed.