University of Virginia Library

24. CHAPTER XXIV.

“And so, Howard,” said Langdale, one day after
dinner, as he arose from the table, and taking a seat near
the window, extended his feet across another chair,
while with his finger he struck the ashes from his
segar, “and so you believe in love?”

Pinckney, who had almost entirely recovered from
the effects of his wound, and who had been out riding
before dinner, was reclining on a sofa in the recess by
the window, musingly, but with the complacency of
one who feels the vigour of returning strength in his
veins, was teaching his whiskers, which he had
neglected during his confinement, to assume their
wanted smoothness. He glanced, with a half-humourous
expression, at Langdale, and replied:

“Yes, I believe in love. You, I suppose, think with
the rhyme—

I believe in love, and, in spite of some transatlantic
experience, in women, also.”

“You do, hey?” replied Langdale. “They're jades
all, Howard—maybe you may know one exception,
but she is like the phœnix, companionless. Therefore
you observe this love has no `dizziness' for me.
Ha, ha! I delight in studying the sex. They're
thought riddles—I think not. Vanity is their ruling
passion, whether they play or pray—whether they

sinner it or saint it. Can an inferior woman bear the
pain of a superior, without a but, an if, or an and.
And did ever woman yet forgive a slight?”

“Ah, my dear sir,” said Pinckney, “it won't do;
among older men than I, you must seek for disciples.
Love, you know Rochester said, would cause the Deity
to be worshipped in a land of atheists.”

“Yes; and was there ever a more miserable devil,
and a greater satirist of women, than that very Rochester?”

“Then the greater the compliment, as coming from
their satirist.”

“Think of his life—he was incapable of sentiment;
he lived a life that will not bear repeating—all his
love was sensuality.”

“True; but, Langdale, you've a turn for teazing—
I understand you.”

“No, no; I have told you that matrimony might
make you a happier man, but then that you may be
happier I would have you entertain a just notion on the
subject. Your poets and imaginative men are scarcely
ever happy in marriage. Why? because they
have an exaggerated opinion of the excellencies of
women, which they never realize. Marriage disenchants
such a man; it is your plain, dull fellows who
endures matrimony with patience—'tis a chain at
best.”

“A gilded chain, then”—

“But not a golden one, Howard, and the gilding
soon wears off. However, there are exceptions, I admit.
Some years ago I was descending the Mississippi,
bound on business to New Orleans. We had a
host of passengers on board—as motley a set as
man ever yet met with—Gamblers, horse-jockeys,
preachers, lawyers, speculators, and doctors. Among
them I observed a tall, gentlemanly man, whose
health appeared delicate. We soon scraped an

acquaintance, and I discovered that he was a Colonel
B—, a Virginian gentleman, of an old family,
who was travelling for his health. He had a friend
with him from the same state. We three smoked
our segars together on the guards, and had a merry
and intellectual time of it. We talked of the high
names of Virginia, with whom the colonel was familiar;
and his anecdote and agreeable conversation,
with his state of health, interested me in him very
much. I more than once discovered him perusing
letters in a female hand, and I took him for a bachelor
who had caught the fever for matrimony, and of
course, as he had become a victim at rather a late
period, that he was far gone. Sunday came. Our
fellow travellers paid very little respect to the day.
Early in the morning some gentleman given to music
struck up his violin, while others seated themselves
at the card-table. These things have since, as I am
told, been reformed. The colonel walked the cabin
observing the players, and listening to the music,
when all at once a sudden thought seemed to seize
him, and he opened his trunk, took from it a book,
and taking a seat apart, he was soon lost in attentive
perusal of it. I observed on opening the book he read
several times an inscription on its title page before
he turned to its contents.

“Towards evening his companion came to me, and,
smiling, said:—`I have a good joke upon the colonel.'
`What's that?' I asked. `He replied, that
when the colonel left home, his wife, who was a pious
woman, had given him a Bible, and that he had promised
to read it every Sunday; but he did not know
it was Sunday, said he, until I chanced to make the
remark, when he stole away from me, and there he is,
you see, studying theology.'

“`What kind of a lady is his wife?' I asked. `The
finest woman I ever met with,' was the reply.

“I said nothing, but in walking up and down the
cabin, I at last chanced to catch the colonel's eye as
he raised it from the book, and advancing towards
him, I asked—

“`What book is that which interest you so deeply?'

“He blushed slightly as he put it into my hand—
strange that he should blush, hey? and said, `Read
what's on the blank leaf.' I turned to it and read
the following simple line:

You may think it odd, but from that moment I felt the
deepest interest in the colonel. We became quite intimate,
and when we parted he made me promise that
if ever I went to Richmond, where he lived, I
would call on him, and we exchanged hands. Last
year in going to the Springs I went to Richmond, and
doubtful if the colonel was living from the state of his
health when we parted, and anxious to renew our acquaintance
if he was, I made inquiry for him, and
found that he was in town with restored health. I
sent my card, and he instantly called, and with true
Virginian hospitality, insisted that I should make his
house my home while I staid. I could not resist. I
found his lady a most fascinating and lovely woman.
Pious, without a touch of fanaticism; cheerful, without
the least frivolity; intelligent, without the least
taint of blue—a pattern of all that becomes a woman.
I understand, indeed, from his own lips, that she had
reclaimed him from a most dissipated life; and his
neighbours told me that the change for the better
which she had wrought in him was radical and almost
miraculous. I have not for my own mother more respect
than I have for that fair Virginian. I really
felt a respect approaching awe in her presence—the
only woman who ever touched me with a shadow of
such a feeling. On leaving them, I could not but tell
her that she was more than a Roman matron—she
was a Christian one. The fact is, Pinckney, I cannot
bear irreligious women: a sense of religion is to
them a sheet-anchor amidst the allurements and vices
of society—without it they are adrift, and are often
taken as a waif.”

“I agree with you,” replied Pinckney, musing.
“How beautifully the poet has spoken of women:

“Ha, ha! treacherous kiss,” repeated Langdale,
“do you ever court the muse, Pinckney?”

“I have courted them as I suppose every young
man has, but I've a poor knack at rhyme.”

“I was given that way when I was at your age.
Some lines that I wrote to a fair lady once, in the
Tom Moorish style, upon `blushing' and `kissing,'
involved me in a duel that nearly cost me my
life.”

“Where are the lines? how was it?”

“Some years since I met a fair lady at the Springs,
who was a beauty, a coquette, and all that kind of
thing; and once, in a moon-lit ramble, I desecrated her
virgin lip—heaven save the mark! she taxed me with
being impudent—and asked me if I ever blushed. In
reply, I wrote the verses I speak of. Well, we parted,
with nothing between us, as I believed, but the harmless
kiss, and I thought no more of her. Some two
months afterwards I received a tender epistle from

the lady, who lived some three hundred miles off,
couched in the kindest terms, and intimating very
plainly that she considered herself engaged to me!
Well, having no idea of being `blest upon compulsion,'
as Tom Moore says, I replied in as gallant a
strain as I possibly could under the circumstances,
stating that I had no idea that there was such happiness
in store for me, and that if ever the consummation
of my bliss occurred, it must be in leap year.”

Pinckney laughed heartily. “And what then?” he
asked:

“With the return of post came her brother, post haste,
with a friend. The friend waited on me; and, presenting
the fatal lines, inquired if I was not the author
of them; and if I had not addressed them to the
lady.

“I confessed that I had addressed the lines to the
lady, but I protested that I had not addressed her in
any other way.

“He assured me it was no jesting matter, and forthwith
handed me a challenge; at the same time remarking
that he should be happy to accommodate
the matter. I expressed my great willingness to have
it accommodated, and asked him in what way it should
be done. He replied it would give him great pleasure
to act as my groomsman. I told him I was obliged
to him for such a friendly offer upon so short an
acquaintance, but that I had no idea of matrimony.
He then peremptorily said there was no backing out;
that I must fight. I tried to ridicule him out of the
affair. He took it in high dudgeon, and said I would
certainly be posted. I prepared pistols and coffee
for two, and we accordingly met on the ground. I
remonstrated; but the lady's brother and the gentleman
who wished to be my groomsman insisted upon
the duello. I stood two shots from the furious brother,
firing each time myself in the air. His second shot

struck my watch, and, as Judge Parson's said, `time
kept me from eternity.' He insisted upon another fire,
and my patience became a martyr for my life and
died a violent death. I grew angry, and determined
not to waste my saltpetre like the fragrance of Gray's
flower on the desert air. I used to be a capital shot,
and on the third fire I maimed my brother-in-law
that would be, in his right arm, and so the affair
ended. The sacred nine were frightened by the report
of our pistols, and have never visited me since.

“The lines,” said Pinckney, “the lines.”

“Here they are,” replied Longdale, advancing to
the book-case, and taking them from a private drawer.
“Here they are, in the identical condition in which
I gave them, and in which they were returned to
me.”

Pinckney opened the gilt-edged note which Longdale
handed him, and read as follows:

“Ha, ha!” laughed Pinckney, “the lady must have
thought that there are as many kinds of declarations as
there are puffs, according to Sheridan's critic. As
this could not have been the declaration direct, it
must have been considered the declaration preliminary.”

“No, it was considered the declaration direct.
The lady's susceptibilities were quick, almost as quick
as her's whose hand a gentleman, when assisting her
into a carriage, chanced to press with the harmless
intention of preventing her from slipping. `O! la,
sir,' said she “if you come to that, you must ask Pa.”

“What became of the lady?” inquired Pinckney.

“My volunteer groomsman, no doubt, knew that
there was good reasons why she ought to be married,
and as he could not get me to take her, he made me
happy by proxy, and took her himself; there was a
take-in somewhere, you may depend upon it.”