University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.

“Bless me!” exclaimed I, as I awoke, “it is
broad daylight! I should have been two miles on
the road.”

“Why so? Did he rain get at you in bed?”

“Oh, no!”

“Then you are better where you are. Do you
not hear the rain?”

“I do, indeed. I had not observed it, for it does
not sound like rain. It falls like a heavy soft mass,
as if it would crush the roof.”

“Shall I come in?” said my entertainer, still
speaking from the outside of the curtain.

“Certainly; but what is the hour?”

“Nine.”

“Nine! I hope you have not waited breakfast
for me.”

“No danger of that. It is not so easy to have
an early breakfast in such weather, when the fire
is half out of doors, and everything else wholly
so. Breakfast has not waited for you, but we
have waited for breakfast. But it is now near at
hand, and will be ready by the time you are.”

I was not long at my toilet, and issuing from my
pen in company with my friend, was conducted
across the passage into the opposite stall of this
curious establishment.

“We are all out of doors here,” said he; “but
there are three degrees of comparison in this as in
most things else. This is the positive, the passage
the comparative, and there” (pointing out into the
column of rain) “is the superlative. In such
weather as this the intus penetralia is exposed
enough; so I must make you free of my lady's
chamber.”

Accordingly in my lady's chamber stood the
breakfast table, loaded with good things, and furnished
in a style in most amusing contrast with the
mansion. The table itself was of rich mahogany;
the bedstead handsomely carved, and room had
been found for a neat bureau. The equipage of
the table was in good taste; and, in short, as
many comforts were there as could be brought together
without rendering the tout ensemble uncomfortable
in so narrow a space. Mine host, too, this
morning, was dressed like a gentleman, and his

wife was “point device in her accoutrements,” and
every inch a lady of the highest finish.

“Put that other doghole in some sort of order,”
said the master to one of the maids, “and set an
iron pot of burning charcoal in there. You don't
see” (turning to me) “that there is one under the
table, but you will not be sorry to feel it. It is not
easy to be too warm in this raw weather, and
there is no great danger of being stifled by the vapour
in this palace of the elements.”

We now sat down to breakfast with recovered
appetites, but not so keen as to deny Mr. Balcombe
the use of his tongue.

“As soon as you told me your name,” said he,
“I knew that you must belong to a family of that
name on York River. I was half tempted to ask
to what branch of it, and would do so now, but the
question is superfluous. By daylight I see that
you are a son of Mr. Napier of Craiganet.

“You happen to be right,” said I; “but strangely
enough, for I am utterly unlike my father.”

“So I should suppose; but I never saw him.”

“For Heaven's sake, then, how do you come at
my filiation?”

“Very easily. You are very like your mother's
family, and none of your name but your father
married into that family.”

“You are strangely familiar with such things;
but you are wrong. My father's brother married
my mother's sister.”

“But she died, leaving an only daughter.”

“That is true. Did you know that family?”

“No. But there is nothing strange in my
knowledge. I am myself of one of your oldes
families, and could trace a relationship to you in
more ways than one.”

“You must have a curious fancy for genealogies.
For my part, I only care to know that I am
my father's son.”

“Then you do yourself great wrong. Were
you a Plantagenet, men would hardly blame you
for claiming descent from the Conqueror, though
traced through the treacherous John and his imbecile
son, or any others whose crimes tarnish the
glories of that illustrious line. Is it not a higher
honour to be sprung from a race of men without
fear and without reproach—the ancient cavaliers
of Virginia? Men in whom the spirit of freedom
was so blended with loyalty as to render them
alike incapable of servility and selfishness; and
who, when their sovereign tore himself from his
place in their hearts, transferred their allegiance
to their country, and again poured out their blood
like water, and scattered their wealth like chaff.
Had they fostered this and transmitted it to you,
you would have been careful to make out your
claim to the inheritance. Are you not degenerate,
if you do not prize, even yet more highly, the
name, for the honour of which they gave so freely
that which was, in their estimation, comparatively
but as `the small dust of the balance?' You
wrong yourself. You do not deem lightly of this

inheritance; nor would you, for all the broad lands
of which you and your fathers have been defrauded,
change your name for the once honourable, but
now dishonoured name of Montague.”

I started at this name, for it touched a chord
that vibrated to my very heart, and laying down
my knife and fork stared in amazement on the
face of this strange being, who seemed to know
all that I knew of myself and my affairs, and might
by possibility know much more that I was anxious
to discover.

He appeared not to heed me, but paused, with
compressed lips and an abstracted but flashing eye,
which told that memory and fancy were both hard
at work.

“Tell me,” said he, “do you know nothing of
the history of a gentleman whose body, after
death, was seized by his creditors, during the latter
part of the revolutionary war, for debts contracted
to feed, and clothe, and pay troops in the
service of his country, and which had already
swallowed up his princely estate? The same
who, with his own hands, pointed the first gun at
his own house, which the soldiers had been careful
not to injure, although occupied by the enemy?
You have heard of him.”

“He was my kinsman.”

“Then you do trace yourself beyond your
father, as well you may. My dear sir, do not disparage
yourself by adopting the cant of a political
fanaticism, that, with a false zeal for liberty, denies

those honours which, in a free government, being
open to all, give liberty its greatest value in the
eyes of honourable men. It is not for you to give
into the humours of those who swell and rage at
the word `gentleman,' as if here, as in England, it
was one of the designations of an order in the
state. What does it mean with us, but a man who
scorns what is base, and detests what is brutal,
and whose manners, either by nature or by training,
conform to those sentiments? From this
aristocracy, as they are pleased to call it, none
are shut out but by their own fault. And hence
they rage against it, for their exclusion is a sentence
of condemnation which conscience ratifies.
'Twas but the other day that a good old man, who
lives just west of me, was told, `that if I should
come to live here, the sun would not shine on him
till twelve o'clock.' Truly, my mansion casts a
mighty shadow! But I could forgive the fellow
this malignity for the sake of his originality of
thought. What hinders the author of such a conception
from a place among those he envies?
What but the baseness which prompted him to
poison another's mind against one who had done
him no wrong? Yet they come to me for favours
—they come to me for advice, and try to engender
hatred of me in their own hearts. And why?
Am I rich? No. Do I vaunt my lineage? They
do not know whether I am the son of a king or
a cobbler. Am I ostentatious? I think with all
my Sunday clothes on, my dress should excite no
man's envy. What you took me for yesterday,
you know best; certainly not for an aristocrat.
What to think of my establishment, you yourself
don't know. But no matter; it keeps us dry, and,
for my own part, I am not sure that I am not as
well off at this moment as in a palace. So let us
eat our venison, and comfort ourselves with the
thought that, fall as we may, the ground will catch
us, and is not quite so hard as it seems to be. We
are of the race of Antæus. We have been lifted
in air, and fell from dizziness; but the touch of
another earth restores us.”

I was not sorry for this turn in a speech, under
some parts of which I felt a little restiff. But I
was fairly talked down. I felt the force, if not the
truth, of what I had just heard; and, though I was
not prepared to assent to it, was well pleased that
I was not called on to refute it. There was something
in the hardiness of thought and freedom of
speech of my new acquaintance quite bewildering.
The rapidity with which he hurried my mind along
look away my breath. I found, too, that I was
beginning to stand in awe of a perspicacity, which
read my thoughts at a glance, and a quickness,
which made it impossible to anticipate what sort
of ideas anything I might say would call forth. I
was amused, but felt something of the same sort of
uneasiness which I once saw manifested by a tame
rackoon when forced into a game of romps by a
tame otter. In short, I had never seen a man, the
breath of whose mouth held me so much in check,

as this anomalous stranger. But he had opened a
peephole for my curiosity, and I indulged it.

“You have, indeed,” said I, “strangely contrived
to secure your present comfort under unpromising
circumstances. My own part in the matter leaves
me no room to regret anything I have left behind
me, at least on this side of the Mississippi. As to
yours, I presume your being here, under such circumstances,
is only a sort of whim.”

“Something like it,” said he. “Twenty miles
off, I might be under a roof bigger than the bonnet
of a tobacco hogshead, and surrounded by brick
walls. But my affairs require me here so often,
(for I am about to build here,) that I had this
shanty put up, to screen me from the sun. Then
I set up a bed, that I might not always have
to go to the house of a neighbour at night; and
then my lady wife made me a visit, and likes the
frolic so well, that she will not go away; and I
cannot leave her, you know. But frost is coming,
and then I shall get rid of her.”

“Indeed you shan't,” said she. “I will make
the workmen build a chimney, and stop the cracks,
and stay here as long as you do.”

“Imitation, or contrast!” said he; “nothing between
the two. Fashion or innovation! Exactly
like everybody else, or totally different from everybody
else; which is best? Neither. First one
and then the other. That's woman. Is it not so,
Bet? When I build, my house must be just like
your father's, furniture and all; until then, a hollow

tree, or a tobacco hogshead with an outside chimney,
is all too good. But come; I see you have
breakfasted. Let us get to our den, and leave my
lady to her housewifery.”

He now turned to a bureau, on which lay several
volumes.

“You must help yourself to a book,” said he;
`for I have some letters to write, which will afford
you a respite from my tediousness.”

I took one accordingly, and we adjourned to the
other side of the passage, where he wrote and I
read for an hour or two. I could hardly be said
to read. The allusion to the wrongs of my family,
and the mention of the name of Montague, coupled
with an imputation of dishonour, tallied so exactly
with my suspicions, that I felt a hope that this
strange being knew the truth of what I had suspected.
I waited, accordingly, with impatience,
until the closing of his letters should again open
the door to conversation. But although he had
volunteered a remark which invited inquiry, I was
at a loss how to make it; and no man, about to
make his decisive love speech to his dulcinea, ever
turned over his thoughts and words in his mind
with more solicitude than I did.