University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.
THE FATE OF A HERO.

Whether it was that Hazard was anxious to
conceal from the family his last night's frolic; or that
his thoughts were engrossed with the approaching
crisis in his affairs; or, perchance, that he was nervous
from overwatching during the two previous
nights, and unable to sleep, he rose early, and met
the family at their usual breakfast time. Neither
Harvey, Ralph, nor myself, suffered under the same
difficulties, and, therefore, it was fully ten o'clock
before we were seen in the parlour.

Ned's mien was truly sad. He had a haggard
look, a stagnated, morbid complexion, and blood-shot
eyes. His dress, which the day before had been
adjusted with such an unwonted precision, afforded
now an expressive testimony of the delinquent irregularity
of its wearer. Nothing more infallibly indicates
the long nocturnal revel than the disordered
plight of the dress the next morning: a certain rakish
air is sure to linger about its deepened folds, and betray
the departure from the sober usages of life.

Hazard's manners corresponded with this unhappy
exterior. A certain lassitude attended his movements,
and a pitiful dejection sat upon his visage. If
he had been master of his own actions, he would

never have risked the perilous fortunes of the day in
his present shattered condition; but a spell was upon
him, and it seemed as if fate had decreed him to
abide the chance. He was moody; and conversed
with the ladies with a bearing that implied an abstracted
mind and an alarmed conscience. Sometimes,
it is true, he raised his spirits to a forced gaiety,
but it was manifest, in spite of this, that he was disquieted,
pensive, and even melancholy. What added
to the singularity of these phenomena was, that
while Catharine and Bel were yet in the parlour, he
got up abruptly, and wandered out upon the lawn,
and then took a solitary ramble towards the river,
where he was observed, from the windows, walking
to and fro, absorbed in contemplation.

None of these symptoms of a perturbed imagination
escaped Bel. She was exceedingly puzzled, and
revolved in her mind all that had lately passed, to
ascertain the cause. At length,—as it usually happens
with women in such cases,—when she found
herself unable to penetrate the mystery, her heart
began to attune itself to pity. She grew to be quite
distressed. Harvey read the workings of her thoughts
in her face, and took an opportunity to draw her into
a private conference.

“My dear Bel, you see how it is,” said he, shaking
his head mournfully. “Poor fellow! I did'nt
expect to see it come to such an extremity as this.”

“In the name of wonder, cousin! I pray you, what
is it?” demanded Bel.—“You alarm me.”

“Ah!” returned Harvey, turning up his eyes, and
laying his hand upon his breast—“It cannot be concealed.

These are the very doleful doings of the little
Archer. The young gentleman is cruelly transfixed;—he
is spitted with the bolt, and is ready to be
geared to a smoke-jack, and turned round and round
before the fire that consumes him like a roasting
woodcock.”

“Let us have a truce to jesting,” said Bel.—“And
tell me, Harvey,—for indeed I cannot guess it,—
what ails Mr. Hazard?”

“You would never believe me,” replied Harvey,
“although I have told you a hundred times, that Ned
was a man of deep and secret emotions. Now, you
must perceive it;—for the fact is becoming too plain
to be mistaken. I consider it a misfortune for any
man who wishes to stand well with a woman, to
have been educated in habits of close intimacy with
her. She is certain, in that case, to be the last person
to do justice to his merits.”

“It would be vanity in me, cousin,” said Bel, “to
persuade myself that Edward Hazard was so much
interested in my regard as to grow ill on that account.
What have his merits to do with any supposed
attachment to me?”

“He desires to be thought a liege man to his lady,
Bel!” answered Harvey. “To tell you the truth,
Ned's as full of romance as you are; and I have
been looking to see some extravagance that would
defy all calculation: some freak that would not fail
to convince even you that the man was on the verge
of madness. And now, here it is! he has gone through
five degrees of love.”

“Five degrees! Pray, what are they?”

“The first is the mannerly degree: it is taken
at that interesting epoch when a man first begins
to discover that a lady has an air, a voice, and a
person more agreeable than others; he grows civil
upon this discovery; and if he has any wit in him it
is sure to appear. The next is the poetical degree;
it was in this stage that we surprised Ned upon the
bank of the river, when he was singing out your name
so musically, for the entertainment of Mark Littleton.
The third is the quixotic love, and carries a gentleman
in pursuit of stray hawks, and sets him to breaking
the heads of saucy bullies. The fourth is the
sentimental; when out comes all his learning, and
he fills his mistress's head with unimaginable conceits.
Then comes the horrible: you may know this,
Bel, by a yellow cheek, a wild eye, a long beard,
an unbrushed coat, and a most lamentable, woebegone,
lackadaisical style of conversation. This
sometimes turns into the furious; and then, I would
not answer for the consequences! It strikes me that
Ned looks a little savage this morning.”

“Cousin, that is all very well said,” interrupted
Bel. “But, I see none of your degrees in Edward
Hazard.”

“Why, he has not slept a wink for two nights
past,” said Harvey.

“And pray, what prevented him from sleeping?”

“Thinking of you, Bel! You have been buzzing
about in his brain, like a bee in his night-cap. And
it stands to reason! neither man nor beast can do
without sleep. If he were a rhinoceros he must eventually
sink under such privations. There he was,

the livelong night, stalking about like a spectre on
the banks of Acheron!”

“And you, Harvey,” added Bel, laughing, “were
one of the principal imps that stalked by his side.
You are not aware that I have been made acquainted
with your vagaries. I happen to know that you
were engaged in the refined and elegant amusement
of hunting an opossum all night, with a band of negroes.”

“Who was so indiscreet as to tell you that?” asked
Harvey. “I am sure the story has been marred
in the telling; and, therefore, I will relate to you the
plain truth. Ned was uneasy in mind, and could
not close his eyes; so, like the prince in the storybook,
he summoned his followers to attend him to the
chase, in the vain hope that he should find some relief
from the thoughts that rankled —”

“Irreclaimable cousin Harvey!”

“Fact, I assure you! Nothing takes off the load
from the mind like an opossum hunt.”

“And then, last night,” resumed Bel, “you were up
playing cards until daylight. That was to chase
away sorrow too, I suppose?”

“Ned could not sleep last night neither,” said
Harvey. “But Bel, don't say until daylight. We
broke up at a very reasonable hour.”

“I have heard all about it,” answered Bel.

“I admit,” returned Harvey, “that appearances
are a little against us: but, they are only appearances.
If you had seen how Ned played, you would
have been satisfied that the game had no charms for
him; for he sighed,—swore, and flung away his money

like a fool. I suppose he must have lost, at least,
a hundred dollars.”

“And with it, his good looks and peace of mind
besides,” added Bel. “Gaming, fighting and drinking!
Ah, me!”

“All for love, Bel! all for love! It is the most
transmographying passion!” exclaimed Harvey.
“Things the most opposite in nature come out of it.
Now, tell me honestly,—have you not seen a change
in Ned that surprises you?”

“Indeed I have,” answered Bel.

“What do you impute it to?”

“I am sure I do not know.”

“Then, to be done with this levity,” said Harvey,
“it is what I have said. Ned is awkward in his zeal
to serve you; but he is the truest of men. He gets
into all manner of difficulties on your account, and
suffers your displeasure like a martyr. He talks of
you, even in his sleep; and grows tiresome to his
friends with the eternal repetition of your praises. It
is a theme which, if you do not put an end to it, will
grow to be as hackneyed as a piece of stale politics.
If you could make it consistent, Bel, with your other
arrangements, I do really think it your duty to put the
youth out of misery: for, he never will be fit company
for any rational man until this infection is
cured.”

“You would not have me marry a man I do not
love,” said Bel, gravely.

“No, indeed, my dear Bel,” returned Harvey.
“But I have been all along supposing you did love
him.”

“You know my objections,” said Bel.

“I think they were all removed yesterday,” answered
Harvey.

“If they were, they have come back again today.”

“That shows,” said Harvey, “what a ticklish
thing is this love. May the saints shield me from all
such disasters as falling in love!”

“Your prayer has been granted before it was
asked,” returned Bel, smiling.

Here ensued a pause, during which the lady
stood for some moments wrapt in thought, with her
foot rapidly beating against the floor.

“I do not think,” she said at last, “at least, I am
not altogether certain, cousin, that I love him well
enough to”—

“Faith, Bel, I think you come pretty near to it,”
whispered Harvey; “the longer you ponder over
such a doubt, the clearer it will appear.—Drum it
out with your foot; that is the true device:—Love is
very much a matter of the nerves after all.”

“I will talk no more!” exclaimed Bel, with a
lively emotion.

With these words, she retreated into the drawing-room,
and sat down to the piano, where she played
and sung as if to drown her thoughts.

During all this while, the unconscious subject of
this colloquy was pursuing his secret meditations. It
is meet that I should tell my reader what was the
real cause of the cloud that sat upon his brow. In
truth, he was endeavouring to screw his courage up
to a deed of startling import. It was his fixed resolve,

when he crept to his bed at the dawn, to bring
matters, that very day, to some conclusion with his
mistress; and this fancy took such complete possession
of his faculties, that he found it vain to attempt
repose. His fortitude began to waver as the hour of
meeting Bel drew nigh, and every moment shook the
steadiness of his nerves. He cast a glance at the
reflection of his forlorn figure in the glass, and his
heart grew sick within him. As if ashamed of the
tremor that invaded his frame, he swore a round oath
to himself—that come what would, he would fulfil his
purpose. It was in this state of feeling that he appeared
at breakfast. Every instant the enterprise grew
more terrible to his imagination; until it was, at last,
arrayed before his thoughts as something awful. It
is a strange thing that so simple a matter should
work such effects; and stranger still, that, notwithstanding
the painful sensations it excites, there
should lurk at the bottom of the heart a certain remainder
of pleasant emotion, that is sufficient to
flavour the whole. Ned experienced this; and inwardly
fortified his resolution by frequent appeals to
his manhood. In such a state of suspense it was not
to be expected that he should be much at ease in
conversation. On the contrary, he spoke like a
frightened man, and accompanied almost every thing
he said with a muscular effort at deglutition, which
is one of the ordinary physical symptoms of fear.

His walk by the river side was designed to reassemble
his scattered forces; an undertaking that he
found impossible in the face of the enemy: They
were a set of militia-spirits that could not be brought

to rally on the field of battle. Having argued himself
into a braver temper, he returned from his wanderings
and stalked into the drawing-room, with an
ill-counterfeited composure. By a natural instinct,
he marched up behind Bel's chair, and for some moments
seemed to be absorbed with the music. After
a brief delay, during which the colour had flown
from his cheek, he crossed the room to the window,
and, with his hands in his pockets, gazed out upon
the landscape. Restless, uncertain and perplexed,
he returned again to the chair, and cast a suspicious
and rueful glance around him.

Harvey observing how matters stood, silently tripped
out of the room.

Bel executed a lively air, and concluded it with a
brisk pounding upon the keys; and then sprang up,
as if about to retreat.

“Play on,” said Ned, with a husky voice; “don't
think of stopping yet. I delight in these little melodies.
You cannot imagine, Bel, how music exhilarates
me.”

“I didn't know that you were in the room,” returned
Bel. “What shall I play for you?”

“You can hardly go amiss. Give me one of those
lively strains that make the heart dance,” said he,
with a dolorous accent. “But you have some exquisite
ballads too; and I think you throw so much
soul into them that they are irresistible. I will have
a ballad.”

Whilst he was wavering in his choice she struck
up a waltz. Ned, during this performance, sauntered
to the farther end of the drawing-room; and,

having planted himself opposite a picture that hung
against the wall, stood minutely surveying it, with
his lips, at the same time, gathered up to an inarticulate
and thoughtful whistle. The cessation of the
music recalled him to the piano with a start; and
he hastened to say to Bel,—that there was something
unspeakably pathetic in these simple and natural
expressions of sentiment; that it belonged to the
ballad to strike more directly upon the heart than
any other kind of song; and that, for his part, he never
listened to one of those expressive little compositions
without an emotion almost amounting to melancholy.

What is he talking about?—thought Bel. She
paused in profound astonishment: and then asked
him, if he knew what it was she had been playing?

“The tune is familiar to me,” stammered Ned.
“But, I have a wretched memory for names.”

“You have heard it a thousand times,” said she.
“It is the waltz in the Freyschutz.”

“Oh, true!” exclaimed Ned. “It is a pensive
thing; it has several touching turns in it. Most
waltzes have something of that in them. Don't
you think so?”

“Most waltzes,” replied Bel, laughing, “have a
great many turns in them: but, as to the pensiveness
of the music, I never observed that.”

“Indeed!” exclaimed Ned, confounded past all
hope of relief; “It depends very much upon the
frame of mind you are in. There are moods—and
they come on me sometimes like shadows—which
predispose the heart to extract plaintive thoughts

from the liveliest strains.—If there be one desponding
cord in the strings of the soul,—that one will begin
to vibrate—with a single sympathetic note—that
may be hurried across it in the rush of the gayest
melody.—I mean,—that there is something in all
music that arouses mournful emotions,—when the
mind is predisposed to—melancholy.”

As a man who takes his seat in a surgeon-dentist's
chair, to have his teeth filed, having made up
his mind to endure the operation, bears the first application
of the tool with composure, but, feeling a
sense of uneasiness creeping upon him with every
new passage of the file across the bone, is hurried
on rapidly to higher degrees of pain, with every succeeding
jar; until, at last, it seems to him as if his
powers of sufferance could be wound up to no higher
pitch, and he, therefore, meditates an abrupt leap
from the hands of the operator,—so did Ned find himself,
as he plunged successively from one stage to
the other of the above-recited, exquisite piece of nonsense.

When he had finished, his face (to use the phrase
of a novel writer) `was bathed in blushes;' and Bel
had turned her chair half round, so as to enable her
to catch the expression of his countenance; for, she
began to feel some misgiving as to the soundness of
his intellect.

Of all the ordinary vexations of life it is certainly
the most distressing, for a man of sense to catch himself
unseasonably talking like a fool, upon any momentous
occasion wherein he should especially desire
to raise an opinion of his wisdom; such as in

the case of a member of congress making his first
speech, or of an old lawyer before a strange tribunal,
or, worse than all, of a trembling lover before a super-fastidious
mistress. The big drops of perspiration
gathered on Ned's brow: he felt like a thief taken in
the mainour: he was caught in the degree of back
berinde and bloody hand, known to the Saxon Forest
laws, with his folly on his back. He could have
jumped out of the window; but, as it was, he only
ordered a servant to bring him a glass of water, and
coughed with a short dry cough, and swallowed the
cool element at a draught.

As motion conduces to restore the equilibrium of
the nerves, Ned now paced up and down the apartment,
with stately and measured strides.

“Courage!” said he, mentally. “I'll not be
frightened!” So, he made another convulsive motion
of the œsophagus,—such as I have seen a mischievous,
truant boy make, when on his trial before the
pedagogue—and marched up directly behind Bel.

All this time she sat silent; and taking the infection
of fear from her lover, began to cower like a terrified
partridge.

“Miss Tracy,” said Ned, after a long pause, with
a feeble, tremulous utterance, accompanied by a
heavy suspiration.

“Sir—”

“Miss Tracy,”—here Ned put his hands upon
the back of Bel's chair, and leaned a little over her;
—“You,—you—play very well,—would you favour
me with another song,—if you please?”

“I havn't sung a song for you,” replied Bel.

“Then, you can do it, if you would try.”

“No. It would be impossible. I am out of
voice.”

“So am I,” returned Ned, with comic perturbation.
“It is strange that we should both have lost
our voices at the very time when we wanted them
most.”

“I am sure I don't see,” said Bel, blushing, “any
thing extraordinary in my not being able to sing.”

“Well,—I think it very extraordinary,” said Ned,
with a dry laugh and an affected, janty air, as he
took a turn into the middle of the room,—“that the
fountains of speech should be sealed up, when I had
something of the greatest importance in the world to
communicate to you.”

“What is that?” inquired Bel.

“That I am the most particularly wretched and
miserable coxcomb in the whole State of Virginia,”
said he, rising into a more courageous tone.

“Your speech serves to little purpose,” muttered
Bel, “if it be to utter nothing better than that.”

“I am a boy,—a drivelling fool,” continued Ned,
very little like a man who had lost his power of articulation—“I
am vexed with myself, and do not deserve
to be permitted to approach you.”

Bel was covered with confusion; and an awkward
silence now intervened, during which she employed
herself in turning over the leaves of a music-book.

“Do you relent, Bel?” said Ned, in a soft and beseeching
accent. “Have you thought better of the
proposition I made you a year ago? Do you think
you could overcome your scruples?”

Bel, somewhat startled by these tender tones, withdrew
her eyes from the music-book, and slowly turned
her head round to the direction of the voice. There,
to her utter amazement, was her preposterous lover
on one knee, gazing pitifully in her face.

It is necessary that I should stop at this interesting
moment, to explain this singular phenomenon; for,
doubtless, my reader concludes Ned to be the veriest
mountebank of a lover that ever tampered with the
beautiful passion.

It is common to all men, and, indeed, to all animals,
when sore perplexed with difficulties, to resort
for protection to the strongest instincts nature has
given them. Now, Ned's predominating instinct
was to retreat behind a jest, whenever he found that
circumstances galled him. For some moments past
he had been brightening up, so that he had almost
got into a laugh,—not at all dreaming that such a state
of feeling would be unpropitious to his suit; and when
he arrived at the identical point of his wooing above
described, he was sadly at a loss to know what step
to take next. His instinct came to his aid, and produced
the comic result I have recorded. It seemed
to strike him with that deep sense of the ridiculous,
that is apt to take possession of a man who seriously
makes love; and the incorrigible wight, therefore,
reckless of consequences, dropped upon his knee,—
one-tenth part in jest, and nine-tenths in earnest. It
was well nigh blowing him sky high!

“Is this another prank, Mr. Hazard?” said Bel.—
“Am I to be for ever tortured with your untimely
mirth? How,—how can you sport with my feelings

in this way!” Here she burst into tears; and, putting
her hand across her eyes, the drops were seen
trickling through her fingers.

Ned suddenly turned as pale as ashes. “By all that
is honest in man!” he exclaimed,—and then ran on
with a list of lover-like abjurations, vowing and protesting,
in the most passionate terms,—according to
the vulgar phrase, “by all that was black and blue,”
—that he was devoted to his mistress, body and soul.
Never did there rush from an opened flood-gate a
more impetuous torrent than now flowed from his
heart through the channel of his lips. He was hyperbolically
oratorical; and told her, amongst other
things, that she “was the bright luminary that gilded
his happiest dreams.”

“I have not deserved this from you,” said Bel,
whose emotions were too violent to permit her to
hear one word of this vehement declaration. “At
such a moment as this, you might have spared me an
unnecessary and cruel jest.”

She arose from her seat and was about to retire;
but Ned, springing upon his feet at the same time,
took her by the hand and detained her in the room.

“For heaven's sake, Bel!” he ejaculated, “what
have I done? Why do you speak of a jest? Never
in my life have my feelings been uttered with
more painful earnestness!”

“I cannot answer you now,” returned Bel, in a
tone of affliction; “leave me to myself.”

“Isabel Tracy!” said Ned, dropping her hand, as
he assumed a firm and calm voice, “you discard
me now for ever. You fling me back upon the world

the most wretched scapegrace that ever hid himself
in its crowds.”

“I neither promise nor reject,” said Bel, beginning
to tremble at Ned's almost frenzied earnestness. “If
I have mistaken your temper or your purpose, you
have yourself to blame. It is not easy to overcome
the impressions which a long intercourse has left upon
my mind. You have seemed to me, heretofore, indifferent
to the desire to please: You have taught
me to think lightly of myself, by the little value you
appeared to place upon my regard: You have jested
when you should have been serious, and have
been neglectful when I had a right to expect attention:
You have offended my prejudices on those
points that I have been accustomed to consider indispensable
to the man I should love: You will not
wonder, therefore, that I should misconceive your
conduct. I must have a better knowledge of you,
and of my own feelings, before I can commit myself
by a promise. Pray, permit me to retire.”

This was uttered with a sedate and womanly
composure that forbade a reply, and Bel left the
room.

Hazard was thrown, by this scene, into a new
train of sensations. For the first time in his life, he
was brought to comprehend the exact relation he held
to his mistress.—He had no further purpose in remaining
at the Brakes; and he and I, accordingly,
very soon afterwards set out for Swallow Barn.

We discussed fully the events of the morning as
we rode along; and, upon the whole, we considered
this important love-affair to have passed through its

crisis, and to rest upon auspicious grounds. This
conclusion arose upon Ned's mind in a thousand
shapes:

—“I have got a mountain off my shoulders,” said he;
“I am unpacked; and feel like a man who has safely
led a forlorn hope.—I would fight fifty Waterloos,
rather than go through such a thing again! Egad! I
can sing and laugh once more. Bel's a woman of
fine sense, Littleton: She is not to be trifled with.
Faith, I stand pretty fairly with her, too! It is certainly
no refusal: `Faint heart never won fair lady.'
A lover to thrive must come up boldly to the charge.
—But, after all, I was considerably fluttered,—not to
say most unspeakably alarmed.”

These, and many more such fragments of a boasting,
doubtful and self-gratulating spirit, burst from him
in succession; and were, now and then, accompanied
with lively gesticulations on horseback, which
if a stranger could have seen, they would have persuaded
him that the performer was either an unhappy
mortal on his way to a madhouse, or a happy lover
on the way from his mistress.