University of Virginia Library

FLIRTATION AND FOX-CHASING.

I was moping one day in solitary confinement in
quarantine at Malta, when, in a turn between my stone
window and the back wall I saw the yards of a vessel
suddently cross the light, and heard the next moment
the rattle of a chain let go, and all the bustle of a
merchantman coming to anchor. I had the privilege
of promenading between two ring-bolts on the wharf
below the lazaretto, and with the attraction of a new-comer
to the sleepy company of vessels under the
yellow flag, I lost no time in descending the stone
stairs, and was immediately joined by my vigilant sentinel,
the guardiano, whose business it was to prevent
my contact with the other visiters to the wharf. The
tricolor flew at the peak of the stranger, and we easily
made out that she was a merchantman from Marseilles,
subject therefore to a week's quarantine on account
of the cholera. I had myself come from a
plague port, Smyrna, and was subjected to twenty
days' quarantine, six of which had passed; so that the
Frenchman, though but beginning his imprisonment,
was in a position comparatively enviable.

I had watched for an hour the getting of the vessel
into mooring trim, and was beginning to conclude
that she had come without passengers, when a gentleman
made his appearance on deck, and the jolly-boat
was immediately lowered and manned. A traveller's
baggage was handed over the side, the gentleman took
leave of the captain, and, in obedience to directions
from the quarantine officer on the quarterdeck, the
boat was pulled directly to the wharf on which I stood.
The guardiano gave me a caution to retire a little, as
the stranger was coming to take possession of the next
apartment to my own, and must land at the stairs near
by; but, before I had taken two steps backward, I
began to recognise features familar to me, and with a
turn of the head as he sprang on the wharf the identity
was established completely. Tom Berryman, by all
that was wonderful! I had not seen him since we
were suspended from college together ten years before.
Forgetting lazaretto and guardiano, and all the salt
water between New Haven and Malta, I rushed up to
Tom with the cordiality of other days (a little sharpened
by abstinence from society), and we still had hold
of hands with a firm grip, when the quarantine master
gravely accosted us, and informed my friend that he
had incurred an additional week by touching me — in
short, that he must partake of the remainder of my
quarantine.

Aghast and chap-fallen as Berryman was at the consequences
of our rencontre (for he had fully calculated
on getting into Malta in time for the carnival), he was
somewhat reconciled to his lot by being permitted to
share my room and table instead of living his week in
solitude; and, by enriching our supplies a little from

town, sleeping much, and chatting through the day in
the rich sunshine of that climate of Paradise, we contrived
to shove off the fortnight without any very intolerable
tedium.

My friend and I had begun our travels differently —
he taken England first, which I proposed visiting last.
It is of course the bonne bouche of travel to everybody,
and I was very curious to know Tom's experiences;
and, as I was soon bound thitherward, anxious to pick
out of his descriptions some chart of the rocks and
shoals in the “British channel” of society.

I should say, before quoting my friend, that he was
a Kentuckian, with the manner (to ladies) of mingled
devotion and nonchalance so popular with the sex,
and a chivalric quality of man altogether. His father's
political influence had obtained for him personal letters
of introduction from the president, and, with this advantage,
and his natural air of fashion, he had found
no obstacle to choosing his society in England;
choosing the first, of course, like a true republican!

We were sitting on the water-steps with our feet
immersed up to the ankles (in January too), and in
reply to some question of mine as to the approachability
of noble ladies by such plebeian lovers as himself,
Tom told me the story which follows. I take the
names at random, of course, but, in all else, I shall try
to “tell the tale as 'twas told to me.”

Why, circumstances, as you know, sometimes put
people in the attitude of lovers whether they will or no;
and it is but civil in such a case, to do what fate expects
of you. I knew too much of the difference between
crockery and procelain to enter English society
with the remotest idea of making love within the red
book of the peerage, and though I've a story to tell, I
swear I never put a foot forward till I thought it was
knightly devoir; inevitable, though ever so ridiculous.
Still, I must say, with a beautiful and unreserved
woman beside one, very much like other beautiful and
unreserved woman, a republican might be pardoned for
forgetting the invisible wall. “Right honorable” love-liness
has as much attraction about it, let me tell you,
and is quite as difficult to resist, as loveliness that is
honored, right or wrong, and a man must be brought
up to it, as Englishmen are, to see the heraldric dragons
and griffins in the air when a charming girl is talking
to him.

Eh? But to begin with the “Tityre tu patulæ.”

I had been passing a fortnight at the hunting lodge
of that wild devil, Lord — , in the Scotch Highlands,
and what with being freely wet outside every day, and
freely wet inside every night, I had given my principle
of life rather a disgust to its lodgings, and there were
some symptoms of preparation for leave-taking. Unwilling
to be ill in a bachelor's den, with no solace
tenderer than a dandy lord's tiger, I made a twilight
flit to the nearest post-town, and tightening my life-screws
a little with the aid of the village apothecary,
started southward the next morning with four posters.

I expected to be obliged to pull up at Edinboro', but
the doctor's opiates, and abstinence, and quiet did
more for me than I had hoped, and I went on very
comfortably to Carlisle. I arrived at this place after
nightfall, and found the taverns overflowing with the
crowds of a fair, and no bed to be had unless I could
make one in a quartette of snoring graziers. At the
same time there was a great political meeting at
Edinboro', and every leg of a poster had gone north
— those I had brought with me having been transhitched
to a return chaise, and gone off while I was
looking for accommodations.

Regularly stranded, I sat down by the tap-room
fire, and was mourning my disaster, when the horn
of the night-coach reached my ear, and in the minute
of its rattling up to the door, I hastily resolved that it
was the least of two evils, and booked myself accordingly.
There was but one vacant place, an outsider!
With hardly time enough to resolve, and none to repent,
I was presently rolling over the dark road, chilled
to the bone in the first five minutes, and wet through
with a “Scotch mist” in the next half hour. Somewhere
about daybreak we rolled into the little town
of — , five miles from the seat of the earl of Tresethen,
to whose hospitalities I stood invited, and I went
to bed in a most comfortable inn and slept till noon.

Before going to bed I had written a note to be despatched
to Tresethen castle, and the earl's carriage
was waiting for me when I awoke. I found myself
better than I had expected, and dressing at once for
dinner, managed to reach the castle just in time to
hand in Lady Tresenthen. Of that dinner I but remember
that I was the only guest, and that the earl
regretted his daughter's absence from table, Lady
Caroline having been thrown that morning from her
horse. I fainted somewhere about the second remove,
and recovered my wits some days after, on the safe side
of the crisis of a fever.

I shall never forget that first half hour of conscious
curiosity. An exquisite sense of bodily repose mingled
with a vague notion of recent relief from pain, made
me afraid to speak lest I should awake from a dream,
yet, if not a dream, what a delicious reality! A lady
of most noble presence, in a half-mourning dress, sat
by the side of a cheerful fire, turning her large dark eyes
on me, in the pauses of a conversation with a gray-headed
servant. My bed was of the most sumptuous
luxury; the chamber was hung with pictures and
draped with spotless white; the table covered with
the costliest elegancies of the toilet; and in the gentle
and deferential manner of the old liveried menial, and
the subdued tones of inquiry by the lady, there was a
refinement and tenderness which, with the keen susceptibility
of my senses, “lapt me in Elysium.” I was
long in remembering where I was. The lady glided
from the room, the old servant resumed his seat by
my bedside, other servants in the same livery came
softly in on errands of service, and, at the striking of
the half hour by a clock on the mantelpiece, the lady
returned, and I was raised to receive something from
her hand. As she came nearer, I remembered the
Countess Tresethen.

Three days after this I was permitted to take the
air of a conservatory which opened from the countess's
boudoir. My old attendant assisted me to dress, and,
with another servant, took me down in a fauteuil. I
was in slippers and robe-de-chamber, and presumed
that I should see no one except the kind and noble
Lady Tresethen, but I had scarce taken one turn up
the long alley of flowering plants, when the countess
came toward me from the glass door beyond, and on
her arm a girl leaned for support, whose beauty —

(Here Tom dabbled his feet for some minutes in
the water in silence.)

God bless me! I can never give you an idea of it!
It was a new revelation of woman to me; the opening
of an eighth seal. In the minute occupied by her
approach, my imagination (accelerated, as that faculty
always is, by the clairvoyance of sickness), had gone
through a whole drama of love — fear, adoration, desperation,
and rejection — and so complete was it, that
in after moments when these phases of passion came
round in the proper lapse of days and weeks, it seemed
to me that I had been through with them before; that
it was all familiar; that I had met and loved in some
other world, this same glorious creature, with the
same looks, words, and heart-ache; in the same conservatory
of bright flowers, and faith, myself in the
same pattern of a brocade dressing-gown!

Heavens! what a beautiful girl was that Lady Caroline!
Her eyes were of a light gray, the rim of the

lids perfectly inky with the darkness of the long sweeping
lashes, and in her brown hair there was a gold
lustre that seemed somehow to illuminate the curves
of her small head like a halo. Her mouth had too
much character for a perfectly agreeable first impression.
It was nobility and sweetness educated over
native high spirit and scornfulness — the nature shining
through the transparent blood, like a flaw through
enamel. She would have been, in other circumstances,
a maid of Saragossa or a Gertrude Von Wart;
a heroine; perhaps a devil. But her fascination was
resistless!

“My daughter,” said Lady Tresethen (and in that
beginning was all the introduction she thought necessary),
“is, like yourself, an invalid just escaped from
the doctor; you must congratulate each other. Are
you strong enough to lend her an arm, Mr. Berryman?”

The countess left us, and with the composure of a
sister who had seen me every day of my life, Lady
Caroline took my arm and strolled slowly to and fro,
questioning me of my shooting at the lodge, and talking
to me of her late accident, her eyes sometimes
fixed upon her little embroidered slippers, as they
peeped from her snowy morning dress, and sometimes
indolently raised and brought to bear on my flushed
cheek and trembling lips; her singular serenity operating
on me as anything but a sedative! I was taken
up stairs again, after an hour's conversation, in a fair
way for a relapse, and the doctor put me under embargo
again for another week, which, spite of all the
renewed care and tenderness of Lady Tresethen,
seemed to me an eternity! I'll not bother you with
what I felt and thought all that time!

It was a brilliant autumnal day when I got leave to
make my second exodus, and with the doctor's permission
I prepared for a short walk in the park. I
declined the convoy of the old servant, for I had heard
Lady Caroline's horse gallop away down the avenue,
and I wished to watch her return unobserved. I had
just lost sight of the castle in the first bend of the path,
when I saw her quietly walking her horse under the
trees at a short distance, and the moment after she
observed and came toward me at an easy canter. I
had schooled myself to a little more self-possessions,
but I was not prepared for such an apparition of splendid
beauty as that woman on horseback. She rode an
Arabian bay of the finest blood; a lofty, fiery, matchless
creature, with an expression of eye and nostril
which I could not but think a proper pendant to her
own, limbed as I had seldom seen a horse, and his
arched neck, and forehead, altogether, proud as a steed
for Lucifer. She sat on him as if it were a throne
she was born to, and the flow of her riding-dress
seemed as much a part of him as his mane. He appeared
ready to bound into the air, like Pegasus, but
one hand calmly stroked his mane, and her face was
as tranquil as marble.

“Well met!” she said; “I was just wishing for a
cavalier. What sort of a horse would you like, Mr.
Berryman? Ellis!” (speaking to her groom), “is old
Curtal taken up from grass?”

“Yes, miladi!”

“Curtal is our invalid horse, and as you are not
very strong, perhaps his easy pace will be best for you.
Bring him out directly, Ellis. We'll just walk along
the road a little way; for I must show you my Arabian;
and we'll not go back to ask mamma's permission,
for we shouldn't get it! You won't mind riding
a little way, will you?”

Of course I would have bestrided a hippogriff at
her bidding, and when the groom came out, leading
a thorough-bred hunter, with apparently a very elastic
and gentle action, I forgot the doctor and mounted
with great alacrity. We walked our horses slowly
down the avenue and out at the castle gate, followed
by the groom, and after trying a little quicker pace on
the public road, I pronounced old Curtal worthy of
her ladyship's eulogium, and her own Saladin worthy,
if horse could be worthy, of his burthen.

We had ridden perhaps a mile, and Lady Caroline
was giving me a slight history of the wonderful feats
of the old veteran under me, when the sound of a horn
made both horses prick up their ears, and on rising
a little acclivity, we caught sight of a pack of hounds
coming across the fields directly toward us, followed
by some twenty red-coated horsemen. Old Curtal
trembled and showed a disposition to fret, and I observed
that Lady Caroline dexterously lengthened
her own stirrup and loosened the belt of her riding-dress,
and the next minute the hounds were over the
hedge, and the horsemen, leap after leap, after them,
and with every successive jump, my own steed reared
and plunged unmanageably.

“Indeed, I can not stand this!” cried Lady Caroline,
gathering up her reins, “Ellis! see Mr. Berryman
home!” and away went the flying Arabian over
the hedge with a vault that left me breathless with
astonishment. One minute I made the vain effort to
control my own horse and turn his head in the other
direction, but my strength was gone. I had never
leaped a fence in my life on horseback, though a
tolerable rider on the road; but before I could think
how it was to be done, or gather myself together for
the leap, Curtal was over the hedge with me, and
flying across a ploughed field like the wind — Saladin
not far before him. With a glance ahead I saw the
red coats rising into the air and disappearing over
another green hedge, and though the field was crossed
in twenty leaps, I had time to feel my blood run cold
with the prospect of describing another parabola in
the air, and to speculate on the best attitude for a
projectile on horseback. Over went Saladin like a
greyhound, but his mistress's riding-cap caught the
wind at the highest point of the curve, and flew back
into my face as Curtal rose on his haunches, and over
I went again, blinded and giddy, and, with the cap
held flat against my bosom by the pressure of the air,
flew once more at a tremendous pace onward. My
feet were now plunged to the instep in the stirrups,
and my back, too weak to support me erect, let me
down to my horse's mane, and one by one, along the
skirt of a rising woodland, I could see the red coats
dropping slowly behind. Right before me like a
meteor, however, streamed back the loosened tresses
of Lady Caroline, and Curtal kept close on the track
of Saladin, neither losing nor gaining an inch apparently,
and nearer and nearer sounded the baying of the
hounds, and clearer became my view of the steady and
slight waist riding so fearlessly onward. Of my horse
I had neither guidance nor control. He needed none.
The hounds had crossed a morass, and we were rounding
a half-circle on an acclivity to come up with them.
and Curtal went at it too confidently to be in error.
Evenly as a hand-gallop on a green sward his tremendous
pace told off, and if his was the ease of muscular
power, the graceful speed of the beautiful creature
moving before me seemed the aerial buoyancy of a
bird. Obstructions seemed nothing. That flowing
dress and streaming hair sailed over rocks and ditches,
and over them, like their inseparable shadow, glided
I, and, except one horseman who still kept his distance
ahead, we seemed alone in the field. The
clatter of hoofs, and the exclamations of excitement
had ceased behind me, and though I was capable of
no exertion beyond that of keeping my seat, I no
longer feared the leap nor the pace, and began to anticipate
a safe termination to my perilous adventure.
A slight exclamation from Lady Caroline reached my
ear and I looked forward. A small river was before
us, and, from the opposite bank, of steep clay, the
rider who had preceded us was falling back, his horse's

forefeet high in the air, and his arms already in the
water. I tried to pull my reins. I shouted to my
horse in desperation. And with the exertion, my
heart seemed to give way within me. Giddy and faint
I abandoned myself to my fate. I just saw the flying
heels of Saladin planted on the opposite bank and the
streaming hair still flying onward, when, with a bound
that, it seemed to me, must rend every fibre of the
creature beneath me, I saw the water gleam under
my feet, and still I kept on. We flew over a fence
into a stubble field, the hounds just before us, and over
a gate into the public highway, which we followed for
a dozen bounds, and then, with a pace slightly moderated,
we successively cleared a low wall and brought
up, on our horses' haunches, in the midst of an uproar
of dogs, cows, and scattering poultry — the fox having
been run down at last in the enclosure of a barn. I
had just strength to extricate my feet from the stirrups,
take Lady Caroline's cap, which had kept its place
between my elbows and knees, and present it to her
as she sat in her saddle, and my legs gave way under
me. I was taken into the farmhouse, and, at the close
of a temporary ellipse, I was sent back to Tresethen
Castle in a post-chaise, and once more handed over to
the doctor!

Well, my third siege of illness was more tolerable,
for I received daily, now, some message of inquiry or
some token of interest from Lady Caroline, though I
learned from the countess that she was in sad disgrace
for her inveiglement of my trusting innocence. I also
received the cards of the members of the hunt, with
many inquiries complimentary to what they were
pleased to consider American horsemanship, and I
found that my seizure of the flying cap of Lady Caroline
and presentation of it to her ladyship at “the
death,” was thought to be worthy, in chivalry of
Bayard, and in dexterity of Ducrow. Indeed, when
let out again to the convalescent walk in the conservatory,
I found that I was counted a hero even by the
stately earl. There slipped a compliment, too, here
and there, through the matronly disapprobation of
Lady Tresethen — and all this was too pleasant to put
aside with a disclaimer — so I bid truth and modesty
hold their peace, and took the honor the gods chose
to provide!

But now came dangers more perilous than my ride
on Curtal. Lady Caroline was called upon to be kind
to me! Daily as the old servant left me in the alley
of japonicas, she appeared from the glass door of her
mother's boudoir and devoted herself to my comfort —
walking with me, while I could walk, in those fragrant
and balmy avenues of flowers, and then bringing me
into her mother's luxurious apartment, where books,
and music, and conversation as frank and untrammelled
as man in love could ask, wiled away the day. Wiled
it away? — winged it — shod it with velvet and silence,
for I never knew how it passed! Lady Caroline had
a mind of the superiority stamped so consciously on
her lip. She anticipated no consequences from her
kindness, therefore she was playful and unembarrassed.
She sang to me, and I read to her. Her rides were
given up, and Saladin daily went past the window to
his exercise, and with my most zealous scrutiny I
could detect in her face neither impatience of confinement
nor regret at the loss of weather fitter for
pleasures out of doors. Spite of every caution with
which hope could be chained down, I was flattered.

You smile — (Tom said, though he was looking
straight into the water, and had not seen my face for
half an hour) — but, without the remotest hope of
taking Lady Caroline to Kentucky, or of becoming
English on the splendid dowry of the heiress of Tresethen,
I still felt it impossible to escape from my lover's
attitude — impossible to avoid hoarding up symptoms,
encouragements, flatteries, and all the moonshine of amatory
anxiety. I was in love — and who reasons in love?

One morning, after I had become an honorary
patient — an invalid only by sufferance — and was slowly
admitting the unwelcome conviction that it was
time for me to be shaping my adieux — the conversation
took rather a philosophical turn. The starting
point was a quotation in a magazine from Richter:
“Is not a man's universe within his head, whether a
king's diadem or a torn scullcap be without?” — and I
had insisted rather strenuously on the levelling privilege
we enjoyed in the existence of a second world around
us — the world of revery and dream — wherein the tyranny,
and check, and the arbitrary distinctions of the
world of fact, were never felt — and where he, though
he might be a peasant, who had the consciousness in
his soul that he was a worthy object of love to a princess,
could fancy himself beloved and revel in imaginary
possession.

“Why,” said I, turning with a sudden flush of self-confidence
to Lady Caroline, “Why should not the
passions of such a world, the loving and returning of
love in fancy, have the privilege of language? Why
should not matches be made, love confessed, vows exchanged,
and fidelity sworn, valid within the realm of
dream-land only? Why should I not say to you, for
example, I adore you, dear lady, and in my world of
thought you shall, if you so condescend, be my bride
and mistress; and why, if you responded to this and
listened to my vows of fancy, should your bridegroom
of the world of fact feel his rights invaded?”

“In fancy let it be then!” said Lady Caroline, with
a blush and a covert smile, and she rang the bell for
luncheon.

Well, I still lingered a couple of days, and on the
last day of my stay at Tresethen, I became sufficiently
emboldened to take Lady Caroline's hand behind the
fountain of the conservatory, and to press it to my lips
with a daring wish that its warm pulses belonged to
the world of fancy.

She withdrew it very kindly, and (I thought) sadly,
and begged me to go to the boudoir and bring her a
volume of Byron that lay on her work-table.

I brought it, and she turned over the leaves a moment,
and, with her pencil, marked two lines and gave
me the book, bidding me an abrupt good morning.
I stood a few minutes with my heart beating and my
brain faint, but finally summoned courage to read —

I left Tresethen the next morning, and —

“Hold on, Tom!” cried I — “there comes the boat
with our dinner from Valletta, and we'll have your
sorrows over our Burgundy.”

“Sorrows!” exclaimed Tom, “I was going to tell
you of the fun I had at her wedding!”

“Lord preserve us!”

“Bigamy — wasn't it? — after our little nuptials in
dream-land! She told her husband all about it at the
wedding breakfast, and his lordship (she married the
Marquis of — ) begged to know the extent of my
prerogatives. I was sorry to confess that they did not
interfere very particularly with his!”