University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.
ONE ACT OF A FARCE.

The next morning we fell into a consultation, or
rather resolved ourselves into a committee of the
whole, on the subject of Ned's affairs; and the result
of our deliberation was, that we should forthwith
proceed to the Brakes, and there renew our operations
as circumstances might favour.

Hazard, it will be remembered, had determined to
assume a more sapient bearing in his intercourse
with Bel, and to dazzle her with a display of learning
and sentiment. “I will come up, Mark,” said
he, “as near as possible to that model of precision
and grace, the ineffable Swansdown,—whom Bel
thinks one of the lights of the age.”

Ned, accordingly, withdrew to make his toilet;
and, in due time, reappeared, decked out in a new
suite of clothes, adjusted with a certain air of fashion
that he knew very well how to put on. His cravat,
especially, was worthy of observation, as it was composed
with that elaborate and ingenious skill which,
more than the regulation of any other part of the apparel,
denotes a familiarity with the usages of the
world of dandyism.

“I fancy this will do,” said he, eyeing his person,
and turning himself round so as to invite our inspection.

“I think I have seized upon that secret grace
that fascinates the imagination of female beholders.”

We agreed that nothing could be better.

“I flatter myself,” he continued, pleased with the
conceit, “that I shall amaze her to-day. But remember,
you are not to laugh, nor make any remarks
upon my conversion. I mean to conduct this thing
with a sort of every day ease.”

“You may trust us,” said Harvey, “if you are
careful not to overdo your own play. Don't be too
preposterous.”

Here ended all that is necessary to be told of the
preliminaries to our visit, and we now shift the scene
to the moment when our triumvirate arrived at the
Brakes, somewhere about eleven o'clock.

We found the ladies preparing to take a morning
ride. Their horses were at the door, and Ralph was
ready to escort them. Our coming was hailed with
pleasure; and we were immediately enlisted in their
service. I thought I could perceive some expression
of wonder in Bel's face when her eye fell upon
Hazard; and indeed his appearance could scarcely
escape remark from any one intimately acquainted
with him. His demeanor corresponded to
his dress. Instead of the light, careless, cavalier
manner in which he was wont to address the family
at the Brakes, there was an unsmiling sobriety in his
accost, and a rather awkward gravity. Bel imputed
this to the coldness she had shown at their former
interview; and, annoyed by the reflection that she
had unjustly dealt with him, she was now almost as
awkward as himself in framing her deportment in

such wise as might convey her regret for what had
passed, without absolutely expressing it in language.

This desire on her part favoured our design, and
we had therefore little difficulty, when we came to
mount our horses, to despatch Bel and Hazard in
the van of the party. I immediately took Catharine
under my convoy; and Harvey and Ralph brought
up the rear.

For the first fifteen minutes our conversation was
all common-place; and Ned frequently looked round
with a droll expression of faint-heartedness. We
had chosen a road that wound through the shade of
a thick wood, and our horses' feet fell silently upon
the sand. In a short time we arrived at a piece of
scenery of very peculiar features. It was an immense
forest of pine, of which the trees, towering to
the height of perhaps a hundred feet or more, grew
in thick array, shooting up their long and sturdy
trunks to nearly their full elevation without a
limb, resembling huge columns of a slaty hue, and
uniting their clustered tops in a thick and dark canopy.
No other vegetation diversified the view; even
the soil below exhibited the naked sand, or was
sparsely covered with a damp moss, which was seen
through the russet vail formed by the fallen and withered
foliage of the wood. This forest extended in
every direction as far as the eye could pierce its
depths,—an image of desolate sterility; and the deep
and quiet shade which hung over the landscape cast
upon it a melancholy obscurity. Where the road
penetrated this mass the trees had been cut away in
regular lines, so as to leave, on either side, a perpendicular

wall of mathematical precision, made up of
vast pillars that furnished a resemblance to a lengthened
aisle in some enormous cathedral.

When we entered into this pass, Bel, with her
hair-brained cavalier, was still in advance; and the
rest of us were riding immediately after them in
one platoon. Ned was evidently daunted, and by
no means played off the bold game he had threatened;
but an opportunity now arrived, and as if taking
courage from the occasion, he launched out in a
style that took us by surprise.

Bel had remarked to him the uncommon character
of the scene, and said that, from its novelty, it
had always been a favourite spot. “This place is
familiar to you,” she added.—

“I know each lane,” said he, quoting from Milton,
with an emphatic earnestness—

“And every bosky bourne,” said Harvey, from
the rear, drawling it out, like a school-boy reciting
verses.—

—“Hold your profane tongue, Harvey! It is not
fit for such as you to mar the thoughts of the divine
bard by uttering them with your jesting lips.”

Bel stared at Ned and then smiled.

“Riggs,” continued Hazard, “is the most inveterate
jester I ever knew. He spreads the contagion
into all societies. For my part, I think there

are scenes in nature, as there are passages in life,
which ought to repress merriment in the most
thoughtless minds; and this is one of them. Such
a spot as this kindles up a sort of absorbing, superstitious
emotion in me that makes me grave.”

“I observe that you are grave,” remarked Bel.

“Since I left college,” said Ned, “and particularly
since my last return to Swallow Barn, I have devoted
a great deal of my time to the study of those
sources of poetical thought and association which
lurk amongst the foundations of society.”—

“Hear that!” whispered Harvey to me.

“I venerate,” proceeded Ned, “old usages; popular
errors have a charm for my imagination, and I
do not like to see them rubbed out. `The superstitious,
idleheaded eld,' as the poet calls it, has a volume
of delightful lore that I study with rapture. And although,
I dare say, you have never observed my
secret devotion to such pursuits.—”

“No indeed! I never suspected you of it,” interrupted
Bel.

—“I have taken great pains to preserve the race of
sprites and witches from the ruin that threatens them.
The poetry of this local mythology, Bel, is always
rich, and renders the people who possess it not only
more picturesque, but more national, and, in many
respects, more moral.”

“I am delighted to hear you say so,” said Bel,
innocently, “for I have precisely the same opinion.”

“Indeed!” exclaimed Ned. “I did not know there
was another human being in Virginia that would
venture to acknowledge this.”

“Nor I neither,” whispered Harvey again; “we
shall hear more anon.”

“This belief,” continued Ned, “is, to the ignorant,
a tangible religion which takes hold of the vulgar
imagination with a salutary terror; while to cultivated
minds it furnishes treasures of classical beauty.
The ancients”—

“Heaven preserve us!” said Harvey, still in a low
voice; “now for something in the style of parson
Chub.”

Ned turned round and smiled. “The ancients,
Bel—I see Harvey does not believe me—but the ancients
stocked such a place as this with tutelar deities:
they had their nymphs of the wood and grove,
of the plain, of the hill, the valley, the fountain, the
river, and the ocean. I think they numbered as many
as three thousand. I can hardly tell you their
different denominations; but there were Oreads and
Dryads and Hamadryads, Napeæ, Nereids, Naiads,
and—the devil knows what all!”

“That was a slip,” said Harvey, aside; “one
more and he is a lost man.”

Bel opened her eyes with amazement at this volley
of learning, as if utterly at a loss to understand
its meaning.

“Our English ancestors,” proceeded Ned, “in
the most palmy age of their poetry, had their goblin
and elf and ouphe, `swart fairy of the mine,' `blue
meagre hag,' and `stubborn unlaid ghost,'—to say
nothing of witch and devil. Our times, more philosophic,
have sadly dispeopled these pleasure-grounds
of romance.”

“Indeed have they!” cried Bel, who was listening
in wondering attention.

“You see it every where,” added Ned; “they are
gradually driving away even the few harmless wanderers
that, for a century past, inhabited such spots
as this; and in a short time we shall not have the
groundwork for a single story worth reading.”

“Ned calls that sentiment,” said Harvey. “It
looks amazingly like a schoolmaster's lecture.”

This remark, although intended only for us in the
rear, was overheard by both Ned and Bel; upon
which Ned reined up his horse, so as to face us,
and burst out a-laughing.

“I'll thank you, Harvey Riggs,” said he, “when
I am engaged in a confidential discourse, to keep
your proper distance: I do not choose to have such
an impenetrable, hardened outlaw to all the fascinations
of romance and poetry, within hearing.”

“Indeed, upon my word, cousin Harvey!” said
Bel, “Mr. Hazard has been contributing very much
to my edification.”

We had now passed the confines of the pine forest,
and were following a road that led by a circuit
round to the Brakes, so as to approach the house
from the quarter opposite to that by which we had
left it. By this track it was not long before we concluded
our ride and found ourselves assembled in
the parlour.

“How did I acquit myself?” inquired Ned of
Harvey and myself, when we were left alone.

“You have utterly astounded us both,” replied
Harvey; “and, what is better, Bel is quite enchanted.

Where, in the name of balderdash! did you
get all that nonsense?”

“Gad, I once wrote an essay on popular superstitions!”
answered Ned, “and had it all at my
finger-ends. So, I thought I would take the chance
of the pine forest to give it to Bel.”

“It had a very prosy air,” said Harvey. “However,
you are on the right track.”

During the day Ned made a great many efforts
at sentiment, but they generally ended either in unmeaning
words or dull discourses, which came from
him with a gravity and an earnestness that attracted
universal remark; and by nightfall, it was admitted
by the ladies, that Hazard had a good deal of information
on topics to which he was hitherto deemed a
total stranger, but that he had certainly lost some of
his vivacity. Catharine said, “she was sure something
unpleasant had occurred to him: his manners
were strange;—she should not be surprised if he had
some affair of honour on hand,—for, he evidently
talked like a man who wanted to conceal his emotions.
It was just the way with gentlemen who
were going to fight a duel.”

Bel was also perplexed. She could not account
for it, except by supposing that he was more deeply
wounded by her conduct than he chose to confess.
It made her unhappy. In short, Ned's substitution
of a new character began already to make him dull,
and to disturb the rest of the company.

When we announced our intention to return to
Swallow Barn after tea, old Mr. Tracy interposed
to prevent it. He said he had set his heart upon a

hand at whist, and that we must remain for his gratification.
Our return was accordingly postponed;
and when, at ten o'clock, the old gentleman retired
to rest, we were challenged by Harvey to a game
at brag. The consequence was, that, all unconscious
of the flight of the hours, we were found in
our seats when the servants came in the morning
and threw open the shutters, letting in the daylight
upon a group of sallow, bilious and night-worn faces,
that were discovered brooding over a disorderly table,
in the light of two candles that were flaring in
their sockets and expending their substance, in overflowing
currents, upon the board.

Alarmed by this disclosure, we broke up the sitting,
and were shown by Ralph to our unseasonable
beds.