1. CHAPTER I.
DRIVING STANHOPE PRO TEM.
In the edge of a June evening in the summer vacation
of 1827, I was set down by the coach at the gate
of my friend Horace Van Pelt's paternal mansion—a
large, old-fashioned, comfortable Dutch house, clinging
to the side of one of the most romantic dells on
the North river. In the absence of his whole family
on the summer excursion to the falls and lakes (taken
by almost every “well-to-do” citizen of the United
States), Horace was emperor of the long-descended,
and as progressively enriched domain of one of the
earliest Dutch settlers—a brief authority which he exercised
more particularly over an extensive stud, and
bins number one and two.
The west was piled with gold castles, breaking up
the horizon with their burnished pinnacles and turrets,
the fragrant dampness of the thunder-shower that had
followed the heat of noon was in the air, and in a low
room, whose floor opened out so exactly upon the
shaven sward, that a blind man would not have known
when he passed from the heavily-piled carpet to the
grass, I found Horace sitting over his olives and claret,
having waited dinner for me till five (long beyond the
latest American hour), and, in despair of my arrival,
having dined without me. The old black cook was
too happy to vary her vocation by getting a second
dinner; and when I had appeased my appetite, and
overtaken my friend in his claret, we sat with the
moonlight breaking across a vine at our feet, and coffee
worthy of a filagree cup in the Bezestein, and debated,
amid a true embarras des richesses, our plans
for the next week's amusement.
The seven days wore on, merrily at first, but each
succeeding one growing less merry than the last. By
the fifth eve of my sojourn, we had exhausted variety.
All sorts of headaches and megrims in the morning,
all sorts of birds, beasts, and fishes, for dinner, all sorts
of accidents in all sorts of vehicles, left us on the seventh
day out of sorts altogether. We were two discontented
Rasselases in the Happy Valley. Rejoicing
as we were in vacation, it would have been a relief to
have had a recitation to read up, or a prayer-bell to
mark the time. Two idle sophomores in a rambling,
lonely old mansion, were, we discovered, a very insufficient
dramatis personæ for the scene.
It was Saturday night. A violent clap of thunder
had interrupted some daring theory of Van Pelt's on
the rising of champagne-bubbles, and there we sat,
mum and melancholy, two sated Sybarites, silent an
hour by the clock. The mahogany was bare between
us. Any number of glasses and bottles stood in their
less about the table; the thrice-fished juice of an
olive-dish and a solitary cigar in a silver case had been
thrust aside in a warm argument, and, in his father's
sacred gout-chair, buried to the eyes in his loosened
cravat, one leg on the table, and one somewhere in
the neighborhood of my own, sat Van Pelt, the eidolon
of exhausted amusement.
“Phil!” said he, starting suddenly to an erect position,
“a thought strikes me!”
I dropped the claret-cork, from which I was at the
moment trying to efface the “Margaux” brand, and
sat in silent expectation. I had thought his brains as
well evaporated as the last bottle of champagne.
He rested his elbows on the table, and set his chin
between his two palms.
“I'll resign the keys of this mournful old den to the
butler, and we'll go to Saratoga for a week. What
say?”
“It would be a reprieve from death by inanition,”
I answered, “but, as the rhetorical professor would
phrase it, amplify your meaning, young gentleman.”
“Thus: To-morrow is Sunday. We will sleep till
Monday morning to purge our brains of these cloudy
vapors, and restore the freshness of our complexions.
If a fair day, you shall start alone in the stanhope, and
on Monday night sleep in classic quarters at Titus's
in Troy.”
“And you!” I interrupted, rather astonished at his
arrangement for one.
Horace laid his hand on his pocket with a look of
embarrassed care.
“I will overtake you with the bay colts in the
drosky, but I must first go to Albany. The circulating
medium—”
“I understand.”
II.
We met on Monday morning in the breakfast-room
in mutual spirits. The sun was two hours high, the
birds in the trees were wild with the beauty and elasticity
of the day, the dew glistened on every bough,
and the whole scene, over river and hill, was a heaven
of natural delight. As we finished our breakfast, the
light spattering of a horse's feet up the avenue, and
the airy whirl of quick-following wheels, announced
the stanhope. It was in beautiful order, and what
would have been termed on any pave in the world a
tasteful turn-out. Light cream-colored body, black
wheels and shafts, drab lining edged with green, dead-black
harness, light as that on the panthers of Bacchus—it
was the last style of thing you would have
looked for at the “stoup” of a Dutch homestead.
And Tempest! I think I see him now!—his small inquisitive
ears, arched neck, eager eye, and fine, thin
nostril—his dainty feet flung out with the grace of a
flaunted riband—his true and majestic action and his
spirited champ of the bit, nibbling at the tight rein with
the exciting pull of a hooked trout—how evenly he
drew!—how insensibly the compact stanhope, just
touching his iron-gray tail, bowled along on the road
after him!
Horace was behind with the drosky and black boy,
and with a parting nod at the gate, I turned northward,
and Tempest took the road in beautiful style. I
do not remember to have been ever so elated. I was
always of the Cyrenaic philosophy that “happiness is
motion,” and the bland vitality of the air had refined
my senses. The delightful feel of the reins thrilled me
to the shoulder. Driving is like any other appetite,
dependant for the delicacy of its enjoyment on the
system, and a day's temperate abstinence, long sleep,
and the glorious perfection of the morning, had put
my nerves “in condition.” I felt the air as I rushed
through. The power of the horse was added to my
consciousness of enjoyment, and if you can imagine a
centaur with a harness and stanhope added to his living
body, I felt the triple enjoyment of animal exercise
which would then be his.
It is delightful driving on the Hudson. The road is
very fair beneath your wheels, the river courses away
under the bold shore with the majesty inseparable
from its mighty flood, and the constant change of outline
in its banks gives you, as you proceed, a constant
variety of pictures, from the loveliest to the most sublime.
The eagle's nest above you at one moment, a
sunny and fertile farm below you at the next—rocks,
trees, and waterfalls, wedded and clustered as, it
seems to me, they are nowhere else done so picturesquely—it
is a noble river, the Hudson! And every
few minutes, while you gaze down upon the broad
waters spreading from hill to hill like a round lake, a
gayly-painted steamer with her fringed and white awnings
and streaming flag, shoots out as if from a sudden
cleft in the rock, and draws across it her track of
foam.
Well—I bowled along. Ten o'clock brought me
to a snug Dutch tavern, where I sponged Tempest's
mouth and nostrils, lunched and was stared at by the
natives, and continuing my journey, at one I loosed
rein and dashed into the pretty village of —, Tempest
in a foam, and himself and his extempore master
creating a great sensation in a crowd of people, who
stood in the shade of the verandah of the hotel, as if
that asylum for the weary traveller had been a shop for
the sale of gentlemen in shirt-sleeves.
Tempest was taken round to the “barn,” and I ordered
rather an elaborate dinner, designing still to go
on some ten miles in the cool of the evening, and having,
of course, some mortal hours upon my hands.
The cook had probably never heard of more than
three dishes in her life, but those three were garnished
with all manner of herbs, and sent up in the best
china as a warranty for an unusual bill, and what with
coffee, a small glass of new rum as an apology for a
chasse café, and a nap in a straight-backed chair, I
killed the enemy to my satisfaction till the shadows of
the poplars lengthened across the barnyard.
I was awoke by Tempest, prancing round to the
door in undiminished spirits; and as I had begun the
day en grand seigneur, I did not object to the bill,
which considerably exceeded the outside of my calculation,
but giving the landlord a twenty-dollar note,
received the change unquestioned, doubled the usual
fee to the ostler, and let Tempest off with a bend forward
which served at the same time for a gracious bow
to the spectators. So remarkable a coxcomb had probably
not been seen in the village since the passing of
Cornwallis's army.
The day was still hot, and as I got into the open
country, I drew rein and paced quietly up hill and
down, picking the road delicately, and in a humor of
thoughtful contentment, trying my skill in keeping the
edges of the green sod as it leaned in and out from the
walls and ditches. With the long whip I now and
then touched the wing of a sulphur butterfly hovering
over a pool, and now and then I stopped and gathered
a violet from the unsunned edge of the wood.
I had proceeded three or four miles in this way,
when I was overtaken by three stout fellows, galloping
at speed, who rode past and faced round with a
peremptory order to me to stop. A formidable pitchfork
in the hand of each horseman left me no alternative.
I made up my mind immediately to be robbed
quietly of my own personals, but to show fight, if necessary,
for Tempest and the stanhope.
“Well, gentlemen,” said I, coaxing my impatient
horse, who had been rather excited by the clatter of
hoofs behind him, “what is the meaning of this?”
Before I could get an answer, one of the fellows
had dismounted and given his bridle to another, and
coming round to the left side, he sprang suddenly into
the stanhope. I received him as he rose with a well-placed
thrust of my heel which sent him back into the
road, and with a chirrup to Tempest, I dashed through
the phalanx and took the road at a top speed. The
short lash once waved round the small ears before me,
there was no stopping in a hurry, and away sped the
gallant gray, and fast behind followed my friends in
their short sleeves, all in a lathering gallop. A couple
of miles was the work of no time, Tempest laying his
legs to it as if the stanhope had been a cobweb at his
heels; but at the end of that distance there came a
sharp descent to a mill-stream, and I just remember
an unavoidable milestone and a jerk over a wall, and
the next minute, it seemed to me, I was in the room
where I had dined, with my hands tied, and a hundred
people about me. My cool white waistcoat was matted
with mud, and my left temple was, by the glass
opposite me, both bloody and begrimed.
The opening of my eyes was a signal for a closer
gathering around me, and between exhaustion and the
close air I was half suffocated. I was soon made to
understand that I was a prisoner, and that the three
white frocked highwaymen, as I took them to be, were
among the spectators. On a polite application to the
landlord, who, I found out, was a justice of the peace
as well, I was informed that he had made out my mittimus
as a counterfeiter, and that the spurious note I
had passed upon him for my dinner was safe in his
possession! He pointed at the same time to a placard
newly stuck against the wall, offering a reward for the
apprehension of a notorious practiser of my supposed
craft, to the description of whose person I answered,
to the satisfaction of all present.
Quite too indignant to remonstrate, I seated myself
in the chair considerately offered me by the waiter,
and listening to the whispers of the persons who were
still permitted to throng the room, I discovered, what
might have struck me before, that the initials on the
panel of the stanhope and the handle of the whip had
been compared with the card pasted in the bottom of
my hat, and the want of correspondence was taken as
decided corroboration. It was remarked also by a by-stander
that I was quite too much of a dash for an
honest man, and that he had suspected me from first
seeing me drive into the village! I was sufficiently
humbled by this time to make an inward vow never
again to take airs upon myself if I escaped the county
jail.
The justice meanwhile had made out my orders,
and a horse and cart had been provided to take me to
the next town. I endeavored to get speech of his
worship as I was marched out of the inn parlor, but
the crowd pressed close upon my heels, and the dignitary
landlord seemed anxious to rid his house of me.
I had no papers, and no proofs of my character, and
assertion went for nothing. Besides, I was muddy,
and my hat was broken in on one side, proofs of villany
which appeal to the commonest understanding.
I begged for a little straw in the bottom of the cart,
and had made myself as comfortable as my two rustic
constables thought fitting for a culprit, when the vehicle
was quickly ordered from the door to make away
for a carriage coming at a dashing pace up the road.
It was Van Pelt in his drosky.
Horace was well known on the road, and the stanhope
had already been recognised as his. By this
time it was deep in the twilight, and though he was instantly
known by the landlord, he might be excused
for not so readily identifying the person of his friend
in the damaged gentleman in the straw.
“Ay, ay! I see you don't know him,” said the landlord,
while Van Pelt surveyed me rather coldly; “on
with him, constables! he would have us believe you
knew him, sir! walk in, Mr. Van Pelt! Ostler, look
to Mr. Van Pelt's horses! Walk in, sir!”
“Stop!” I cried out in a voice of thunder, seeing
that Horace really had not looked at me, “Van Pelt!
stop, I say!”
The driver of the cart seemed more impressed by
the energy of my cries than my friends the constables,
and pulled up his horse. Some one in the crowd cried
out that I should have a hearing or he would “wallup
the comitatus,” and the justice, called back by this expression
of an opinion from the sovereign people, requested
his new guest to look at the prisoner.
I was preparing to have my hands untied, yet feeling
so indignant at Van Pelt for not having recognised
me that I would not look at him, when, to my surprise,
the horse started off once more, and looking back, I
saw my friend patting the neck of his near horse, evidently
not having thought it worth his while to take
any notice of the justice's observation. Choking with
rage, I flung myself down upon the straw, and jolted
on without further remonstrance to the county town.
I had been incarcerated an hour when Van Pelt's
voice, half angry with the turnkey and half ready to
burst into a laugh, resounded outside. He had not
heard a word spoken by the officious landlord, till after
the cart had been some time gone. Even then, believing
it to be a cock-and-bull story, he had quietly
dined, and it was only on going into the yard to see
after his horses that he recognised the debris of his
stanhope.
The landlord's apologies, when we returned to the
inn, were more amusing to Van Pelt than consolatory
to Philip Slingsby.
