University of Virginia Library

17. CHAPTER XVII.
Highfield enters on a voyage.

Juba was assisting his young master, or rather
delaying him, in packing up his things, for the old
man made a sad business of it; Lucia was in her
chamber, netting a purse as fast as her eyes would
let her; and Mr. Lee was in his library, writing
with all his might.

“Ah, Massa Highfield!” said Juba at length,
“what Miss Lucia say when you go away?”

“Miss Lucia say!” quoth the other, somewhat
surprised, “why nothing.”

“Ah, Massa Highfield! if you only know what I
know, icod! massa wouldn't stir a peg, I reckon.”

“What are you talking about, Juba, and what
are you doing? You've put my old boots up with
my clean cravats.”

“Ah, massa! I know what I say, but I don't
know what I do now, much; but if Massa Highfield
only know what I do—dat's all.”

“Well what do you know, Juba?” said Highfield,
hardly knowing what he was saying at the moment.

“I know Miss Lucia break her heart when you
gone.”

“Pooh! Miss Lucia don't care whether I go or
stay.”

“Ah, Massa Highfield! if you only see her set
by your bed-side when you light-headed, and cry
so, and say prayers, and wipe your forehead, and
kiss it”—

“What—what are you talking about, you old
fool?” cried Highfield, almost gasping for breath.
“If you say another word, I'll turn you out of the
room.”

“Ah, Juba always old fool—no young fools now--a-days;
all true dough, by jingo, I swear. I seed
her wid my own eyes—dat's all.” And he went on
with his packing slower than ever, while Highfield

sunk into a deep reverie, the subject of which the
reader must know little of his own heart if he requires
me to unfold.

The next morning was the last they were to spend
together, and the little party met at breakfast.
Lucia at first had determined to have a headach,
and stay in her room; but her conscious heart whispered
her this might excite a suspicion that she
could not bear the parting with her cousin. Accordingly
she summoned all the allies of woman to
her assistance. She called up maidenly pride, and
womanly deceit, and love's hypocrisy, to her aid, and
they obeyed the summons. She entered the breakfast
room with a pale face, but with a self-possession
which I have never since reflected upon without
wonder. Little was said and less eaten by the party.
A summons arrived for Highfield's baggage, and a
message for him to be on board in half an hour. Mr.
Lee rose, and taking from his pocket a paper, gave
it to Highfield with a request not to look at it till he
was outside the hook. Highfield suspected its purport,
and replied:

“Excuse me, dear uncle, this once;” and he
opened the paper, which was nothing less than the
deed of a fine estate Mr. Lee held in one of the
southern states.

“I cannot accept this, sir,” said the young man.
“I cannot consent to rob my cousin of what is hers
by nature and the laws.” And his voice became
choked with emotion.

“I insist,” said the old man; “it is all I can give
you now. Once I thought to give you all.”

“And I too,” said Lucia, but she could get no
farther.

“I declare, on my soul,” said Highfield, “I will
not, I cannot accept it, uncle. You at least know
my feelings and can comprehend my reasons, though
others may not. I had rather starve than rob my
cousin, and her—I have nothing to give either of
you in return.” He pulled out his watch; “I must
go now,” said he; and his voice sunk into nothing.
Lucia had been fumbling, with a trembling hand, in
her work-bag.

“My cousin is determined, I see,” said she, rallying
herself, “not to accept any favours from us;
but—but I hope he will not refuse this purse, empty
as it is. I have been a long while in keeping my
promise; but better late, they say, than never.”
And she burst into a torrent of uncontrollable emotion.
Highfield took it and put it in his bosom.

“And now, my dear uncle, farewell! may God
bless you.”

“Stop! one moment,” cried Mr. Lee earnestly,
and looking at Lucia, who was weeping in her
chair.

“Lucia,” said he solemnly, “my nephew loves
you, and is going from us that he may not see you
throw yourself away on a puppy with a heart as
hollow as his head.”

“Uncle!” said Highfield.

“Nay, sir, I will speak; the truth shall out,
though I travel barefoot to Rome for absolution.
Yes, daughter, my nephew loves you, and with my
entire and perfect approbation. And now, madam,
I am going to ask you some questions, which I trust
at this parting hour you will answer, not as a foolish,
frivolous girl who thinks it proper to play the hypocrite
with her father, but as a reasonable woman
and an obedient child. Will you promise? The
happiness of more than one depends on your reply.”

Lucia uncovered her face, and, having mastered
her emotions, firmly replied,

“I will, father.”

“Have you given your affections to Mr. Goshawk?”

“I have not, sir.”

“Do you mean to bestow them on him?”

“Never, sir.”

“Are your affections engaged elsewhere?”

Lucia answered not; she could not speak for her
life.

“Yes, yes, I see how it is,” said Mr. Lee; “you
are deceiving your father again. You have given
away you heart to some whiskered puppy you
waltzed with at a fancy ball, who can write a string
of disjointed nonsense about nothing in jingling
rhyme, or criticise a book according to the latest
Edinburgh or Quarterly; and yet—look at me,
Lucia, and answer me too—did you not while your
cousin was delirious visit his bed-side?”

“I did, sir.”

“And weep and wring your hands; and watch
his slumbers; and minister to his comforts; and
did I not once when I came into the room suddenly,
detect you hovering over him and kissing his forehead?
Answer me, as you hope for mine and Heaven's
forgiveness for playing the hypocrite at the price
of others health and hopes; is it not so?”

“It is, sir,” said the daughter faintly; and sinking
back on her chair she again covered her face
with her hands.

“What am I to understand from all that I saw?”

“For Heaven's sake sir; for my sake; for the
sake of your daughter, stop—” cried Highfield,
whose feelings on this occasion we will not attempt
to describe.

“Silence!” cried the old man; “too much has
been risked, too much is at stake, and too much may
be sacrificed by stopping short at this moment.
Answer me, daughter of my soul,” added he kindly
yet solemnly.

“You are to understand, sir, from all this, that—
that, though I would not shut my heart to—to gratitude,
I was too proud to force it on one who did not
value it when himself. He could not insult me with
indifference when unconscious of my presence.

“Oh Lucia, how unjust you have been to me!
You knew not my feelings, when I seemed most indifferent.”

“There were two of us in the like error,” replied
she, with a heavy sigh.

“The pride of conscious dependence,” said Highfield.

“The pride of woman,” said Lucia.

“I loved you from the moment I felt the first impulses
of manhood. Oh Lucia, my dear cousin,
daughter of my benefactor, companion of my childhood,
will you, can you fulfil his wishes and my
hopes without forfeiting your own happiness? Do
you not despise my poverty and presumption? Do
you not hate me for being a party, at least in appearance,
in thus severely probing your feelings? Ah!
had I known of your kindness and attentions when
I was not myself, I should not when myself have forgot
the deep heart piercing obligation; I should
have been grateful—” Mr. Lee could not bear the
word—

“Grateful, pooh, nonsense—The lady is grateful
for past favours; and the gentleman is grateful
for past sympathy. Look ye, most grateful lady,
and most grateful gentleman, I have not quite so
many years to live and make a fool of myself as you
have, perhaps; now, Lucia, will you take your old
father's word when he tells you solemnly that Charles
has loved you ever since he came from college?”—

“Long before, sir!” cried Highfield, warmly.

“Hold your tongue, sir, if you please—Lucia, answer
for yourself.”

“I will believe any thing my father says, even
were it ten times more improbable,” replied she, with
one of her long absent smiles.

“And how think you he ought to be rewarded?”

“My gratitude will”—

“Now Lucia you are at your old tricks again; I
tell you I wont hear a word about that infernal gratitude.”

“What shall I say, sir?”

“Say what your heart prompts, and do what
never mortal woman did before—speak the truth,
even though it make your old father happy.”

“Lucia,” said Charles.

“Daughter,” said Mr. Lee.

“Charles,” said Lucia, and gave him her hand—
“You shall know my feelings when it will be my
duty to disguise nothing from you.”

Highfield lost his passage; the ship sailed without
him, taking with her all his wardrobe.

Goshawk called that morning as early as fashionable
hours would permit, to take the first opportunity
of enforcing his attractions on Lucia, in Highfield's
absence.

“She no see any body,” said Juba.

Mr. Goshawk said he had particular business.
Juba demurred—

“She busy wid young Massa Highfield.”

“What, is not Mr. Highfield gone?”

“No sir, he going another voyage soon.”

“Not gone! why what prevented him?”

Juba grinned mortally—“Miss Lucia prevent
him. Icod, Massa Goosehawk bill out of joint, I
reckon,” quoth Ebony, half aside.

Goshawk soon got to the bottom of the matter;
which he forthwith communicated to the azure coterie
at Miss Appleby's, each of whom made a famous
speech on the occasion, and voted Lucia a Goth.

“To fall in love with a man of no genius!” cried
Miss Overend.

“Who can't write a line of poetry!” cried Miss
Appleby.

“Who hates argument!” cried the great Puddigham.

“Who places actions before words!” cried Paddleford.

“Who never made a set speech in his life!” cried
Prosser.

“Who hates passion—”

“Despises criticism—”

“And never reads a review—” cried they all together.

Every member of the azure tribe, to whom Goshawk's
despairing passion had been long known,
took it for granted, that having so excellent an apology,
he would now certainly die of despair, or suddenly
make away with himself, after writing his own
elegy. He did neither; but he became if possible
ten times more miserable than ever. He railed at
this world, and the things of this world; he tied a
black riband round his neck, drank gin and water,

and ate fish every day. One day he talked of joining
the Greeks, and the next the Cherokees; sometimes
he sighed away his very soul in wishes for
speedy annihilation, and then he sighed away
his soul again, in pining for the delights of Italy,
lamenting that he was not rich enough to go thither,
occupy a palace and hire a nobleman's wife to come
and be his housekeeper, like my Lord Byron. Man
delighted not him, or woman either; he sucked
melancholy as the bee sucks honey out of every
flower; the sunshine saddened, the clouds made him
melancholy, and the light of the moon threw him into
paroxysms of despair. Finally he announced
his determination to retire from this busy, noisy, heartless,
naughty, good for nothing world, and spend the
remainder of a life of disappointment and misery, in
the great mammoth cave in Kentucky. But what was
very remarkable, and shows the strange inconsistencies
of genius, there was no public place, no party,
no exhibition of any kind, at which this unhappy
gentleman did not make his appearance, notwithstanding
his contempt of the world, and its empty
pleasures.

In process of time, there was a great dispersion
from the tower of Babel at Miss Appleby's. That
azure and sublime lady, descended at last, as she
said, “to link her fate, chain down her destiny, and
trammel her genius, with an honest grocer from
Coenties slip, who, not being able to speak English
himself, had a great veneration for high and lofty declamation.

Miss Overend got tired of the executive
Greek committee, and paired off with a little broker,
who had got rich by speculating in the bills of broken
banks, and drank champaigne instead of small
beer at dinner. Paddleford married an heiress from
somewhere near the Five Points; and the great
Puddingham became a member of the city corporation,
where he served on divers important committees,
drew up divers laws, that puzzled wiser men
than himself to expound, and became a sore persecutor
of mad dogs, and wallowing swine, insomuch
that if a dog in his sober senses, or a swine of ordinary
discretion, saw him coming afar off, he would
incontinently flee away like unto the wind. He became
moreover, a great philanthropist, and it was
observed that he never, in the capacity of assistant
justice at the quarter sessions, pronounced sentence
on an offender, without first making him a low bow,
and begging his pardon for the liberty he was about
to take.

Poor Mr. Goshawk, being thus as it were left
alone howling in the wilderness of the city, continued
to nourish his despair at all public places. He was
a constant attendant at the Italian opera, where he
kept himself awake by nodding and bobbing his admiration;
beating time with his chin upon his little
ivory headed switch, and now and then crying
“Bravo” to the Signorina. Every body said what
an enthusiast was Mr. Goshawk, and what a soul he
had for music, until one night he mistook Yankee

Doodle for “Di Tanti,” which ruined his reputation
for ever as a connoiseur. By slow, imperceptible,
yet inevitable degrees, he at length sunk to his
proper level; for the most stupid at last will become
tired of affectation, and the most ignorant detect
their kindred ignorance. His loud pompous nothings;
his affected contempt of the world and distaste
for life; his disjointed, silly, and unpurposed
poetical effusions; and his mysterious sorrows, all
combined, failed in the end to sustain his claim to
genius. The admiration of his associates dwindled
into indifference, and even the young ladies tittered
at his approach. He tried the pretender's last stake—
the society of strangers. He went to the Springs,
where it was his good fortune to encounter the rich
and sentimental widow of a rich lumber merchant,
from the neighbourhood of the great Dismal Swamp.
She was simplicity itself; she adored poetry, idolized
genius, and the routine of her reading had
prepared her to mistake, high sounding words for
lofty ideas, and namby-pamby twaddle for genuine
feeling. Goshawk thundered away at the innocent
widow, and finally soon melted her heart, by declaiming
about the worthlessness of this world, and
the heartlessness of mankind. The poor lady came
to think it the greatest condescension possible, for
him to select her from this mighty mass of worthlessness.
Finally, he declared his enthusiastic love.

“La! Mr. Goshawk,” said the widow, “I

thought you despised the world, and the people in
it.”

“Divine widow,” cried the poet, “you belong to
another world, and a higher order of beings.”

Goshawk is now the happy husband of the widow,
and lords it over a wide tract of the great Dismal.
He orders his gentleman of colour to cut down pine
trees like Cicero declaiming against Verres; reads
Lord Byron under the shade of a bark hut; and
makes poetry extempore riding to church over a log
causeway in a one horse wagon with wooden springs.
The widow has already discovered that her husband
is no witch, for nothing makes people more clear
sighted than marriage; and the man of genius has
found out that his lady has a will of her own.

Our heroine remains the happy, rational, lovely
wife of Highfield, and talks just like other well-bred
sensible people. She prefers Milton to Byron,
and the Vicar of Wakefield to an entire new Waverly.
She admires her husband, though he can't
write poetry; and is a sincere convert to the opinion,
that high moral principles, gentlemanly manners,
amiable dispositions, a well constituted intellect, and
the talents to be useful in society, are a thousand
times more important ingredients in the character of
a husband, than affected sensibility, or the capacity
to disguise empty nothings in pompous words, and
jingling rhymes.

My worthy friend Mr. Lightfoot Lee is so happy,
that he begins seriously to doubt whether the world

is really going forwards or backwards. There is
reason to apprehend that he and Mr. Fairweather
will soon agree on this great question, and then there
will certainly be an end to their long friendship.

“Ah massa,” said King Juba one day to Mr. Lee,
who was apt to boast of his excellent management
in bringing about this happy state of things—“Ah
massa, icod, if I no tell massa Highfield about dem
dare visit to he bedside, when he light headed, he
no marry Miss Lucia arter all.”

“Pooh, you old blockhead, don't you know marriages
are made in heaven?”

“May be so, massa, but old nigger hab something
to do wid um for all dat—guy!”

“Get away you stupid old ninny!”

“Massa wouldn't dare call me ninny, if I was a
white man,” quoth Juba, as he strutted away with
the air of a descendent of a hundred ebony kings.