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 suddenly 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 visitors 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
deek, 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
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 familiar 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 taking
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 porcelain 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” loveliness 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 trans-hitched 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 Tresethen. 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 grey-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 mantlepiece, 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 fautcuil. I was in slippers and robe-de-chambre,
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 Coutness came toward me from
the glass door beyond, and on her arm a girl leaned for support,
whose beauty—

(Here Tem 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 grey, 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 upon 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-possession,
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 towards 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 cannot 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 arbitary 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 Valetta, 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!”