University of Virginia Library

12. CHAPTER XII.

When Congress adjourned, Miss Carlton, in the
charge of a friend, left the capitol, for her native city,
while her father passed with Mr. Wortley, into the
interior of the state, where that gentleman lived
before he was appointed Secretary of the —.
These gentlemen were on an electioneering tour.
It was their intention, after travelling through the
state, to spend the remainder of the summer at
Oak Park, where Mr. Wortley was to be the guest
of Mr. Carlton. Mr. Carlton had set his heart, or
rather, his head, on making a match between his
daughter and Mr. Wortley; and that gentleman,
full of politics and the tender passion, was travelling
with his father-in-law, that was to be, as his sanguine
hopes flattered him, with the double purpose
of recruiting his good looks for the court of love,
and his party for the election day.

'Twas a beautiful spring afternoon, and the inmates
of the Purchase were partaking of its enjoyment.
Mr. Bradshaw, Mr. Chesterton, and Clinton,
were sitting before the door in conversation; and
within sight, straying through the orchard, were
Willoughby and Emily Bradshaw. Young Pete
had just passed the door, on his way to bring up
the cows, whistling as he went to the dog, that like

a well-fed animal of more pretensions, had been
napping away the hours after dinner. Jowler, at
Pete's call, started up, looked round, stretched his
legs fore and aft until his back formed a hollow,
gave himself a shake, looked after Pete for a moment,
and then turned his tail on him, and entered
his house, in a manner that said as plainly as any
dog's manner could say, “Pete, I can't go with
you, this evening.” Jowler had scarcely entered
his house, when he jumped out, barking quickly:—
at the same instant young Pete called out, “Oh,
Massa Clinton! there come Miss — Yes, it's she
looking out of the windy.”

“Miss who?” called out Clinton. “Is it Mary?—
Miss Carlton,”—and he sprang towards the gate.

“Yes, it's Miss Mary, by goley—”

“Peter—are you swearing?” asked Mr. Bradshaw,
sternly.

Pete slunk behind the carriage, which now drove
up; and Mary Carlton was greeted by her old
friends with a heart-felt welcome.

“O!” said she, throwing herself into Mrs. Bradshaw's
arms, “my more than mother—this, indeed,
seems like home to me.”

“Ugh! ugh!” coughed Mr. Chesterton—“as Jack
Dryden says:

Ugh! ugh!—why don't you introduce me to the
lady?”

“I ought to know you, Mr. Chesterton,” said
Mary, making a courtesy to him, and offering her
hand, with a laughing eye—for she knew him from

Emily's description. “I ought to know you, for I
have heard—”

“Of my character, hey? Who has been writing
my character to you?” asked he, darting a quick
glance around.

“Emily,” said Mary, laughing.

“Ugh! ugh!—then I know she gave me a good
character,” said he, with a pleased smile,—“didn't
she?”

“Why, I can't say exactly, good: she represents
you a gay Lothario—”

“Mary! Mary!” exclaimed Emily.

“As a gay Lothario,” continued Mary, without
heeding the interruption, “who had been making
many a wild foray against the hearts of the girls
in our neighbourhood. She tells me Mr. Willoughby
has learned to practise your winning ways exactly.”

“Ha! ha!—ugh!—I understand you: you're an
arch one. I shall like her, (said he, aside to Bradshaw.)
I understand you; and have you no intentions
at a foray yourself? You've been taking, by
force of—ugh! ugh!—arms, the hearts of the Solomons
of the nation, at Washington; and now you
have come here, as Burns says of one of his lasses,
`Like Alexander, to spread—ugh!—your conquests
farther'—hey?”

“I see that your sagacity,” said Mary, “penetrates
my intentions, at once—so, away with all
stratagem: therefore, I warn you, sir, to beware of
your heart. I'll take it if I can; and I'll wear it,
if I do, on my sleeve, or at my apron-string.”

“You will, hey? and you'll give me a fair chance
at yours?”

“Certainly. But, Mr. Chesterton, you must fight
fair; you have the advantage of me, as you are
such an old campaigner.”

“Ha! ha!—you've hit me—ugh!—old campaigner!
Yes, I'm in the hospital of the invalids:
I shall do battle no more.”

“I take you,” said Mary, archly: “that's your
art—you Kentuckians are used to bush-fighting;
you know how to play 'possum, Mr. Chesterton.”

“Hit me again!” exclaimed Mr. Chesterton; and
then he observed, aside, to Bradshaw—“playing
'possum!—ugh!—do you understand?—alluding to
my will, my hoax, my poor devil business. I like
her, though—I like her. She'll keep life in me,
boy: she has the beauty of a Houri, and the wit
and grace of a Cleopatra. Why the—ugh! ugh!
—devil don't you—ugh!—court her?”

Beautifully the moon rose o'er the Purchase that
night. The tree tops were tipped with the mellow
light that lived along the landscape, glittering in
the ripples of the Branch, like the dimple in the
cheek of laughing childhood. The breath of the
early spring flower scented the air. It was a night
for the full flow of the affections, and, above all,
for love.

“Let us ramble,” exclaimed Bradshaw, to Mary
Carlton. She took his arm; and, followed by Willoughby
and Emily Bradshaw, they walked forth,
under the glorious moon-lit sky.

“Whither—ugh!—away, my fair foe?” asked
Mr. Chesterton, who was conversing at the door
with Mr. Bradshaw, “whither away?—have you
made Clinton a prisoner to your power?”

“No, sir, only an ally. You are too much for me
without assistance, so—”

“Ay, I understand it; you mean to take him into
copartnership, as a-sleep—”

Suspecting what was coming, Mary blushingly
hurried Clinton on, observing: “It's a beautiful
night.”

“Beautiful; shall we wander by the Branch,
Mary?”

“Yes, to the old sycamore; it seems an age since
I have seen it.”

Occupied with their own hearts, and with each
other, Willoughby and Emily followed them, though
at a considerable distance. As the pair of lovers
took the winding path through the orchard, and
then along the Branch to the old sycamore, they
seemed, indeed, the proper living beings of such a
scene. Leaning on Willoughby's arm, Emily looked
up into his face with an absorbed and full affection;
while he, clasped her hand, that trembled
like a prisoned bird, and gazed upon her like a star
upon the wave that reflects deep within its depths
the living light—and thus they walked in silence.
The very happiest hour of love is such a silent
one. Mary Carlton leaned on Bradshaw's arm;
and, as she stepped along, would, for a moment,
bow her head, flower like, and watch, apparently,
her little fairy feet, or turn to her companion, as if
she sought a repetition of what he said; yet she
heard him distinctly—or she would turn her head
away and smile archly, or look up at the full-orbed
moon, or on the landscape—and, thus walking, they
discoursed.

“Were you anxious to return, Mary?” asked
Bradshaw.

“Indeed I was, Clinton: what is more wearysome
than your fashionable society, where you feel
little or no interest in any one; and they feel not
the least in you. If there is any thing worse than
your mere fashion, it is the mixed set of place-men-patriots,
(I'm qualified to use such words, I've heard
nothing else,) office-hunters and holders, and the
varieties of north, south, east, and west, that you
meet in Washington; I”—

“I see,” interrupted Bradshaw, “that the letter
writers have been trying to do justice to your
merits, as a belle, Mary; and that Mr. Wortley
has acknowledged your power, which, according
to the letter writer aforesaid, you mean to exercise
in mercy.”

“What letter writer?—What did he say?”

“You did not see it, then;” and Bradshaw repeated
the extract we have given.

“Who could have written that?” asked Mary,
in a mortified and angry tone.

“I hope, Mary, there was no ground for it.”

“Ground for it!—Clinton! Clinton! I thought
you knew me better.”

“And so I do, Mary; but it provoked me to
see your name coupled with any one's in that
way. Tell me, was Talbot very attentive to you
at Washington?”

Mary spoke not.

“Will you not give me your confidence?”

“Yes, I will. But,” asked she, laughing,—

“when did your authority commence, Mr. Clinton
Bradshaw?”

“When, dearest Mary, may it commence?”

“That depends upon your conduct, sir. But,
why do you ask me such a question of Mr. Talbot?”

“I have a particular reason?”

“Am I not to have your confidence, too?”

“I suspect Talbot wrote the letter.”

“It was base in him if he did!” exclaimed
Mary. “For, at Washington, he renewed a suit
which he made some time ago. Heaven knows,
I never gave him any encouragement; and, that
he might no more importune me, I—I told him
the state of my feelings. He affected surprise,
and said, that he thought Mr. Wortley was his
favoured rival. I, with indignation, taxed him
home at once, and asked him if he had ever seen
any thing in my manners to Mr. Wortley to justify
such an opinion. After hemming and hawing,
he confessed he had not; but, he said, it was
evident what my father's wishes were with regard
to Mr. Wortley. The new light that burst
in upon me, when he spoke of my father, set me
to thinking of Mr. Wortley's intentions, and of
father's; and, with a provoked sense of the ridiculous—more
than half mad with myself, and yet
I did not know why I should be—I sat down and
wrote that long rigmarole to Emily. My father
spoke to me afterwards; said I treated Mr. Wortley
coolly, and that he had invited him to spend
the summer at the Park. I had made up my
mind to speak plainly to him, and was on the eve

of doing so, when, at the moment, some one
called. This was just before I left Washington.
My father never spoke to me on the subject
again, and I had no opportunity of speaking to
him; and, somehow or other—never having been
much with him, and when I am, conversing little
with him, even on common-place matters, never
having given him my confidence, for he never
sought it—I shrank from making an opportunity.
I wish, indeed, now, that I had. But,” assuming
a livelier tone, she said—“there, Mr. Inquisitor-General
Bradshaw, you have had my whole history.—Do
you wish to cross-question?”

Bradshaw caught her hand to press it to his
lips—she snatched it away, and said—

“You're a pretty fellow, Mr. Clinton Bradshaw,
to pretend to such deep interest in your
humble servant. You hold this interest in most
of the sex, don't you? That gay, young, rich
widow, Mrs. Douglas who knew you at the legislature,
and afterwards visited Washington,
made you quite the theme of her conversation.
She more than once insinuated, in public, and
would inform any one, in private, plainly, that
the speaker of the eloquent canal speech, made
more eloquent speeches even than that, and when,
too, he had the inspiration of one listener, only;
but, she would add, with a blush, and a smile, and
a sigh, his eloquence does not always prevail.”

“Ah! you became acquainted with the fair widow,
did you? She attended the debates regularly,
and has a claim, I believe, to the attentions
of every young member, particularly on his first

it open, and tumbled into the room. Within ten
feet of him, near the tar barrel, stood old Scratch,
with the light in his hand. Bradshaw rushed past
him, and descended the steps, into the grocery.
There were several persons around the stove, who
evidently had been startled by the report of the
pistol. Bradshaw looked round to see if there was
any back way, through which he could pass out;
for he reflected, without his false whiskers and hat,
he might be known to some of them, as the one
who had hurt Adams. He saw no way of passing
out, but by the front door. As he rapidly advanced
to do so, the fellow who had been conversing at the
stove with Kentuck, asked—“Where's the other
fellow? Who fired the pistol? Where's your
whiskers and hat, my lark?”

“Keep dark,” said Bradshaw; “I left them up
stairs. There's watchmen hid away, about here,
I believe.”

“The devil! What will Adams do? Don't you
smell something burning?”

At this moment, old Scratch called out from
above—“Knock him down—kill him! He's a spy.”

The fellows immediately placed themselves in a
threatening attitude: one brandished a formidable
club, and others drew their knives. They stood
directly between Bradshaw and the door, calling
out—

“Traitor, spy—we know you. Say your prayers!”

“Make way, my brave boys,” said Bradshaw,
nothing intimidated, drawing and cocking a pistol,

as he spoke. “Make a clear passage. Put up
your knives and clubs. The first man who attempts
to use one, I'll shoot dead.”

“Don't fear him,” exclaimed the fellow who
had previously spoken: “his pistol's not loaded.
Didn't you hear it go off, up stairs?”

“Why don't old Scratch come down,” said another
fellow, intimidated by Bradshaw's manner,
“and help us, if he wants him caught?”

“See, boys!” said Bradshaw, producing another
pistol, and holding one in each hand,—“two pistols
have not been fired: one must be loaded. Your
blood be upon your own head! The first one that
attempts to stop me is a gone case.”

So speaking, he passed deliberately by them,
while old Scratch came running down stairs, crying
out, “Stop him!” They followed, but at a respectful
distance, after Bradshaw, determined to
dog him. He crossed over to the old building in
which were the watch. He thought it best not to
call them, as the fellows might then scamper off;
and he wished them to be taken. They followed
after him, giving, at intervals, a low whistle, which
was answered from the upper part of the lane,
where footsteps were heard advancing. All at
once, the cry of “Fire! Fire!!” from a hundred
tongues, burst forth in that fearful tone, that tells
it is near: at the same moment, a blaze of light revealed,
to Bradshaw, the forms and faces of the
watchmen, among whom he stood.

“We've found him,” said Bradshaw. “He's at
old Scratch's.”

He turned and beheld the old villain's house on

“Yes, Miss Mary, I know that; but young Mr.
Bradshaw come here to-day; I told him all was
out; but he come in, thew right open the windy,
and lay right down on the sofa there, and kept
looking at your picture, (there was a picture of
Mary opposite the sofa, by Jarvis,) and I forgot to
shut it after he went away!”

“What did he say, Sue?”

“Nothing, miss, only he asked when you'd come
home—if missus had a letter from you when—”

“Where did he go?”

“He rid away on horseback.”

“Did he—did—he—say any thing about me,
Sue?”

“No, Miss; he just lay down on the sofa, looked
at the picture, and asked me for a glass of water.
I brung it—and then he forgot that I told him that
missus had no letter from you—for he asked again
—and then he went away. He gave me a half a
dollar, and told me, when you come, I must come
my own self round to his office and tell him.—Why
were you going, Miss Mary?”

“You say aunt won't be in—if Clin—I'm going
out to old Mr. Bradshaw's farm, Sue; to the Purchase.”

When a man truly loves, no matter how cold
or worldly, or ambitious his nature, he is often betrayed
by his passion into a boyish confession of her
power in his every tone and look, which, though he
knows well of, and tries to control, he cannot; which
gives his manner a kind of silent shyness. Bradshaw
was as unsusceptible of this sensation we
speak of as any other man, but as Mary Carlton

stood before him, so graceful, so beautiful, so accomplished,—having
caught from the world all the
adornment and elegance it could bestow, without
altering, in the least, the naturalness of her character,
or the gentleness and goodness of her heart,
realizing all in her that his heart had panted for,
in its young dream of love,—he felt, in the still
moonlight, in this scene of his boyhood, with her
by his side, a woman, who had roamed by his side
a girl, and whom he had loved then, as now, from
whom he had been longer parted than he ever had
been before—he felt
an overpowering sense of her loveliness and of his
love.

“My beautiful, my own Mary!” he exclaimed;
“I knew not how much I loved you, till you were
away.—Raphael's canvass never gave back more
truly a lovely form than did my heart yours:—it
lived, breathed, burned there. Ambition, worldliness,
the strife of the thick crowd forsake me, in
your presence, to-night. I feel now how Mark
Antony lost the world for love—and yet he should
not have lost it—she should have been to him, in
the stormy strife for empire, a light to guide, a star
of blessed destiny. When I feel the stir of ambition
most, I feel strongest the necessity of your love.
Where can man learn such holy, such disinterested
counsel as from the lips of her who has linked her
destiny with his? In a free country like ours,
where popularity is every thing, where can he find
one who will so much advance him, as one with your

powers to please? Call this not selfishness; I say
it because in every scene of life my spirit is wrapped
up in thine.—Mine is not the holiday love that, like
the bird, must seek the grove to tell its tale—that
only lives where flowers bloom and fountains sparkle.
No, Mary, no! if I obtain power in this great
land, and men's applause, and influence, by your
gentle aid must I win and use them. And, if I fail,
as thousands have, stranded by an adverse tide, or
without power—having miscalculated my strength
—to `ride the waves of glory'—when, all baffled,
I am driven back to the obscurity whence I
emerged, to the Pilgrim's Purchase—will you not
make the pilgrimage with me? Shall I not pillow
upon a heart whose every throb will still be
mine? Your voice will have no reproach for me;
its every tone will be a lullaby of rest.—Yes, I
would leave the strife of the world, as my pilgrim
fathers left their father-land, and find in thee, my
own Mary, a world of love beyond it all.”

Bradshaw, as he spoke, held a not unwilling
hand, and pressed a lip that chid not.

“I know: every body says you can be what you
please, Clinton. You do not know how many things
the great men in Washington said of you—how
many questions they asked of your character—if
you were ambitious—what side you took in politics.”

“Did they?” said Bradshaw, while a proud
smile broke over his countenance, and his eye became
lustrous as the bright evening-star to which
he elevated his brow, and on which, in abstraction,
for a moment, he fixed his gaze.

“Yes, Clinton, but shall I indeed be to you all
you have said? Am I indeed so necessary to your
happiness?”

“My Mary, the praise which you have uttered
from any other lips could not move me. Then you
are unchanged, and you did think of me in the gay
world!—bless you!”

Beneath the aged sycamore the lovers plighted
anew their faith, the moon had been shining on
them much longer than they imagined, ere they
arose to return to the house. Just as they entered
the little gate to the palings that surrounded the
dwelling, they overtook Willoughby and Emily,
who, like themselves, were just returning: at this
moment, the cheerful voice of our early acquaintance,
Miss Penelope Perry, now Mrs. Selman, greeted
them.

“Oh, you romantic creatures!—here have I been
these two hours, like Miss Patience on the monument,
cold in the cold moonlight, waiting to see
you; and you have been wandering, like a Jack-o'-lantern,
down by the Branch. Only see what
all this love ends in!—the person puffing that cigar,
and sitting opposite to me, not beside me, is Mr.
Henry Selman, who once”—

“Penelope, my dear,” said Selman, in a low
half-provoked, half coaxing tone, “don't, now,
trifle so.”

“Who once,” continued his lady, laughing, but
without heeding the interruption, “gave unto your
humble servant, ladies, a devotion which would
shame the chivalry of your knights—and now behold
him smoking the filthy weed in spite of my

remonstrances against the pollution of his breath.
I wish we two were twain again just for one
moment.”

“Yes, indeed, if you were Penelope,” interrupted
Mary Carlton, “you would have that cigar
extinguished quicker even than was Sir Walter
Raleigh's when his servant, who had never seen
him smoke, thought he was a case of self-combustion,
and threw a pail of water on him. I've learnt
a lesson.”

“Is it possible, Mrs. Selman,” asked Bradshaw,
“that my friend Hal has obtained such authority
as to pronounce `no pipe, no Parr.”'

“Oh yes, indeed!” exclaimed Mrs. Selman; “it
would seem so. I happened to read an article in
some book or other, this very afternoon, while I
was waiting for my lord and master to bring me
out. It told an anecdote of Dr. Parr and a lady.
The lady refused to let the Dr. smoke in her best
room, on account of her curtains, as well as of
herself—he remonstrated, but she was peremptory.
He called her the best tobacco stopper in England.
One of two things appears,—either that I have
none of the powers of command of the lady, or Mr.
Selman has none of the qualities of Dr. Parr.”

“My dear,” exclaimed Selman, “you know very
well I told you I wouldn't smoke if you had any
objection.”

“There, now, Mr. Selman, why did you not tell
that before, sir;—I only wished our friends to see
that I had not lost all my authority—I”—

“Ah, my dear!” exclaimed Selman, in haste to
be delivered of a pun—“now I smoke you.”

“Clinton, my boy,” said Mr. Chesterton, who
had been in the house, reading, but who, on hearing
the voices had come to the door,” ugh—Dryden
has a fable versified from old Chaucer to the
point, pat—ugh—It kept me, my boy, from matrimony.
A lusty—ugh—knight, it says, did a very
naughty—ugh—thing in king Arthur's time, for
which he was sentenced to death—ugh. At the
queen's intercession, he was saved, provided he
could find out `what women most—ugh—desire.'
What a d—l of a trouble he had to find out—any
body who sees the sex now a days—ugh—could tell
him. At last an old hag told him—ugh—but the
condition!—she told him true, nevertheless—ugh.
Repeat the lines if you know them, I can't for
coughing.”

“If Selman has no objection,” said Bradshaw,
laughing—“and if I remember them. Ah! you
know the hag tells him, and he tells the queen—
I had more than one proof of them to-night.

“Ugh—ugh—a fact—a very truth—ugh—I believe
it kept me from matrimony. It seems you don't
mind being governed, though, you democratic dog,
you—”

“The only sovereign we democrats democrats, is
the lady of our choice. And you remember, Mr.
Chesterton, the hag's condition was that the knight
should grant whatever boon she should desire; and
when his life was saved, she claimed his hand. She
turned out to be a beautiful woman—and, Selman,
will you excuse me? knowing your former fondness
for a quotation, I have fallen into a trick of it,

I've no doubt you will verify it, Selman,” continued
Bradshaw, bowing to Mrs. Selman.

“I'm in a fair way to verify the sovereignty quotation,”
said Selman.

“Ugh—ugh—you'll all verify that, young gentlemen,
I can tell you.”

“It appears you will not be so controlled, Mr.
Chesterton!” exclaimed Mary Carlton, laughing.

“Not, unless you conquer, fair queen—I shall
—ugh—hold out to the last. I shall resist your
apron-strings until you have me bound fast with
them, as a slave resists the chains of servitude.”

“Oh, you barbarian! And when I've conquered,
and I drag you forth, like a captive Goth, amidst
the splendours of Rome, you will pout in barbaric
dignity, I suppose.”