Fleetwood, or, The stain of birth a novel of American life |
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 | CHAPTER II. Fleetwood, or, The stain of birth |  |
2. CHAPTER II.
In beauty, that with such an artful touch
Ye lift her curls and float about her robes?
Milman.
Seventeen years after the tragical event, which
we have narrated, two young men, equipped for
a shooting excursion, were sauntering along one of
the most beautiful portions of that shore, which
forms the Connecticut side of Long Island Sound.
They carried fowling-pieces, and were apparently
in pursuit of that delicate little bird, the snipe,
which frequents the salt water sands. But either
the game was scarce, or the sportsmen were indisposed
to make very vigilant exertions to find it.
handful of the smooth flat stones, which lay in
ridges along the beach, send them skipping over
the smooth surface of the Sound; or they would
stand and watch the progress of some distant
steam-boat, as with a black streamer of smoke
issuing from her funnel-pipe, she ploughed the tranquil
waters.
At length the wanderers reached a ledge of
rocks, which seemed to offer so tempting a resting-place,
that they sat down, and called to their dogs
to crouch at their feet, as if disdaining to seek a
farther acquaintance with the sky birds, who had
thus far baffled all their murderous skill.
“Isn't this a bore, Fleetwood?” asked the larger
of the two companions, whose full face and figure
seemed to indicate a predominance of the sensual
over the intellectual faculties. “Isn't this a bore,
Fleetwood? I can't imagine how you can tarry in
this stupid place except upon compulsion. If you
were dependent as I am upon a rich, capricious old
aunt for your expectations of future affluence, and
if, as one of the conditions of being her heir, you
were obliged to do penance a month or two every
summer in her stupid little cottage on Blackberry
Hill,—why, there would be some excuse for you.
But here you are,—just twenty-one, and a free
man—with five thousand a year under your control,
and liberty to cut in upon the principal, if you
choose—with no one to say, do this, or do that,
come here, or go there—and no one even to bother
you with advice, unless it is old Snugby your former
guardian. By Jove! I wish I were in your
situation.”
“In my situation, Glenham!” replied the younger
man, while a melancholy smile passed over his
countenance. “Without mother, father, sister,
brother! In my situation!”
“Ahem! I should not consider it such a mighty
misfortune to be so deprived,” returned Glenham, displacing
his shirt-collar, that his fingers might coquet
with a pair of incipient whiskers. “To be perfectly
independent—above the reach of rebuke and
interference—master of one's actions and of a handsome
fortune—Jove! What ingratitude not to be
happy!”
“Did I say I was not happy?”
“You seemed to regard your lot, as in no manner
preferable to mine.”
“True! You have parents, who are fondly
attached to you; sisters, beautiful and affectionate
—a brother, who has just entered upon an honorable
professional career, and to whom you can look
for guidance and encouragement. But I—I am literally
the last of my race. I know not one human
being, who is bound to me by the ties of consanguinity.”
“Happy man!” ejaculated Glenham. “As for
me, I have a whole regiment of country cousins,
whom I would like to exchange with you for your
pointer, Veto.”
“Indeed, Glenham, it is no light thing to be so
alone in the world. Had I only a sister! Heavens!
How I would love her—how I would cherish—
worship her—a sister!”
“Nonsense! With your face, figure and fortune,
you can find sisters enough in the world—ay, more
than sisters. But how happens it, my dear Fleetwood,
that you are so unencumbered? Is it possible
that there isn't even one of that delightful and
numerous class of individuals, known as poor relations,
who claims alliance with you—some great
grandfather's second cousin's nephew's needy
niece, for instance?”
“Not one! Not one!”
“Indeed! If it is not intrusive, I would like to
so delightfully isolated.”
“My story is soon told, and yet it is not wholly
devoid of romance. My grandfather having taken
the king's side during the war of our revolution,
was, as soon as our independence was established,
stripped of an estate large enough to be cut up
into half a dozen townships. Too much attached
to the country, however, to quit it altogether, he
removed to the West with his family. While sailing
down the Ohio in a flat-bottomed boat, his party
was attacked by Indians, and all but my father,
who was then a boy, were massacred. This explains
the reason of my having no relatives on the
paternal side.”
“But how happens it, that you were equally
fortunate on your mother's side?”
“My mother,” (and here Fleetwood's lips quivered
slightly as he spoke) “was the only daughter
of a French gentleman of high rank, who, with his
wife and their maternal relations were murdered at
Lyons by Collot D'Herbois, in 1793. Coralie, (such
was my mother's name,) was saved by her nurse,
who afterwaads escaped with her to New Orleans,
where on the death of her protector, the little girl
was adopted by a company of charitable nuns, by
whom she was admirably educated. They were
unable to persuade her, however, to join the ascetic
sisterhood. She had not reached her seventeenth
year when my father saw her—an elopement and
marriage were the consequence—and of that union
I am the unworthy issue.”
“Quite a little romance! If I mistake not, you
lost both your parents by shipwreck?”
“Alas, yes! We were bound to Charleston to
pass the Spring in a milder climate. We were
wrecked in the Palmetto, off Hatteras. After the
first shock, I knew nothing until I found myself on
chafing my temples. On learning that both my
parents were lost, I became delirious and continued
so for several days. It is now six years since that
disaster, and I have tutored myself to speak of it
with calmness.”
“Adventures seem to run in the family.”
“I could tell you much more to prove it. But I
will finish my story now that I have got so far, although
the catastrophe is already told. My father,
Frederick Fleetwood, whose name, but not whose
virtues, I inherit, accumulated his large property
by fortunate speculations in cotton just after
the cessation of the last war. He then came
north, and recovered the most eligible fragment
of his ancestral estate on the Hudson,
building the house which you have seen. He was
a man of a nice sense of honor, generous, high-spirited,
and full of all noble impulses. Both he and
my mother attached a little too much importance,
I think, to the circumstance of gentle blood. Both
could trace back their lineage to some of the most
illustrious personages of England and France;
and both would often make me promise to keep
pure and uncontaminated by unworthy alliances
the noble stock from which I sprang. Their wishes
I shall ever regard as sacred, not because I care
for `the blood of all the Howards,' but because the
recollection of those parental injunctions will ever
be stronger in my heart than the throes of passion.”
“Thank you for your story,” said Glenham.
“But see! What a shot is there — by the water's
edge! Here goes for one more chance! Bang!”
Fleetwood did not look to see the result of his
companion's aim; for before the smoke of the explosion
had cleared away, a slight feminine scream
arrested his attention. He turned and saw a
young female on the brow of a small sandy acclivity,
darted to her relief, and caught her in his arms,
while her horse in his fright was twisting round
like water as it leaves a tunnel. Breathless and
faint with alarm the lady suffered Fleetwood to
support her for nearly a minute, during which he
surveyed her face with undisguised admiration.
A little black velvet cap had fallen from her head,
giving the gazer an opportunity to examine with
all an artist's enthusiasm its matchless proportions
—the sweep of that low but intellectually developed
forehead—the light chesnut hair, that parted from
the centre, undulated to the temples and broke into
closely clinging curls—the chiselled loveliness of
the features—the regular and immaculate teeth,
which the delicate upper lip, lifted so as to form
Cupid's bow, fully revealed—and the long eyelashes
that curtained the depressed, dark blue balls.
“Who can she be?” muttered Fleetwood. “She
is strangely beautiful! And what a figure!”
Glenham now approached, after having satisfied
himself that he had committed no havoc by his last
shot among the birds. “By Jove!” he exclaimed,
as he drew near, “there is Fleetwood, once more
in luck; with his arms about the waist of a pretty
woman! How the deuce happens it, that such adventures
never occur to me? I see it all. The
horse took fright at the discharge of my gun—the
lady fell—and Fleetwood was just in time to catch
her ere she touched the ground. Confound the
fellow! How he studies her face! How he manages
to let the wind blow her curls against his
cheek! And now he puts his hand upon her heart
to see if it beats! And now he places his lips near
her own to see if she breathes! And now he looks
at her like a mother on a new-born child. I do
believe the fellow is half in love already. And
Ahem! Ahem there!”
“What, Glenham, is that you?” exclaimed Fleetwood,
arrested by his companion's satirical cough,
in the act of warming the lady's lily-like cheek
with a kiss. “Mount the horse instantly, Glenham,
and ride for assistance to the nearest house.
Do not delay. The life of a fellow-being may depend
upon your speed.”
“In what part of my eye do you see anything
green?” retorted Glenham, using a school-boy's colloquial
vulgarism. “I will hold the lady, and you
shall ride the horse. Come! now prove the sincerity
of your concern.”
“I will prove that by remaining where I am,”
replied Fleetwood, who recoiled from entrusting
his precious burthen to his companion's care.
“But look—she revives—her breast heaves.”
The lady attempted to lift her hand twice, but it
fell to her side. Then she raised it suddenly to her
forehead, pressed it for an instant to her eyes, dropped
it, and starting from Fleetwood's support, looked
inquiringly about her.
“Your horse is close by—he was frightened by
the firing of a gun—wheeled, and would have
thrown you—but you have escaped uninjured,” said
Fleetwood rapidly, and in his tenderest and most
respectful tones.
“I remember—and I am indebted to you, sir—
am I not?—that my head was not dashed against
some of these rocks?”
“I wish I could say, lady, that I believed your
life was in danger, for the thought of having saved
it would have been to me a life-long joy—but the
danger, I am bound to say, was slight. Your horse
was spinning about in this little heap of sand, and,
had you fallen, you would have found a soft resting-place.”
“Nonsense, Fleetwood,” muttered his companion
in a side-whisper, “I would have protested that
her brains were on the point of being dashed out,
when, at the imminent peril of my neck, I rushed
to her relief. I see you don't know how to win a
woman.”
At this moment an equestrian party of five, consisting
of three young ladies, a female of a certain
age, and a black servant with a gilt band about his
hat, made their appearance, having been concealed
hitherto by the ridge of the sand bank.
“As I live, here is Miss Adelaide Winfield parleying
with two young men!” exclaimed the female
of a certain age, who, I may as well tell the reader
now, as hereafter, was Miss Holyoke, the keeper of
a boarding-school for “the finishing of young ladies”
in the little village of Soundside, where the
scene now lingers.
“And pray, Miss Winfield, may I ask the meaning
of all this?” interrogated Miss Holyoke, reining
in her horse, and casting a very acidulated glance
upon the young sportsmen.
Glenham started forward, and, making a respectful
obeisance, said: “Pardon me, Miss Holyoke;
if blame rests upon any one it is upon me.
The discharge of my gun frightened the lady's horse,
and she would have been inevitably killed upon the
spot, if my friend here, Mr. Fleetwood—allow me
to introduce him, my dear Miss Holyoke; Mr.
Fleetwood, of Fleetwood, New York—as I was
saying, the young lady would have been dashed
into splinters if my friend here had not, at the risk
of his own life, seized her horse by the head, and
caught her as she was about being hurled against
that rock, which you see there, with the skeleton by
its side.”
Glenham's style of beauty was not displeasing to
Miss Holyoke; and his address was calculated to
approaching Adelaide, inquired if she had received
any harm from the accident. Her apprehensions
were speedily quieted. Beyond a momentary agitation
the young and fair equestrian had experienced
no bad effects.
“Mount your horse, then, Miss Adelaide, and
let us proceed homeward,” said the chaperon of the
party.
“Allow me the honor of assisting you,” said
Fleetwood, who, in silent admiration, had for some
moments been contemplating Adelaide.
“Clinton, you will save Mr. Fleetwood the
trouble,” said Miss Holyoke waving her hand imperatively,
and addressing the black attendant, who
was on his feet holding the recently terrified horse.
Clinton obeyed, and placing his ebony hand for
a stepping-stone, lifted the young lady lightly and
dexterously into the saddle.
“May we have the honor to call and inquire
into the lady's health and your own?” asked Glenham,
with his most persuasive smile.
“The young ladies of the Holyoke Seminary receive
no male visitors farther removed than first
cousins,” said the instructress.
Awful Miss Holyoke! At that moment Fleetwood
would have given more for a passport to
your good graces than for the freedom of all the
courts of Europe.
Seeing her fair troop all ready for a start, Miss
Holyoke called Clinton to her side, placed a hand
upon his shoulder, and mounted into her saddle.
“Forward now, young ladies!” she exclaimed.
Adelaide cast one parting look full of gratitude upon
Fleetwood ere she drew the green veil over her
features, made a slight and gracious inclination of
the head, then touching her horse's mane lightly
with her riding-whip, followed the cortege, less
“Confound the old prude!” exclaimed Glenham,
before the instructress had well got out of hearing.
“If she cannot be circumvented, however, I am no
judge of woman. What are you gazing at, Fleetwood?
You cannot see them, for they're out of
sight, as Lord Burleigh would say. Is little Velvet
Cap riding away with your tongue as well as your
heart? Speak, man! Confess! Or, if you can't
speak, give us a shake of your head.”
“Who can she be?” ejaculated Fleetwood in a
half reverie. “They called her Adelaide—Adelaide
who?”
Fleetwood did not attempt to shoot any more
that day. He found a suddenly awakened sympathy
in his breast for wounded birds.
| CHAPTER II. Fleetwood, or, The stain of birth | |