27. CHAPTER XXVII.
HOW ST. JOHN MET A FRIEND IN WILLIAMSBURG.
Once more in Williamsburg! It was with new emotions
that the young man gazed upon the scene so familiar to him,
and he scarcely realized that he could be the same person
who had left it, carelessly, so short a time since.
In that time his mind appeared to have altered its whole
character—to have been flooded with emotions and impulses,
new, strange and undreamed of.
He had listened to the voice of a singular and mysterious
personage, he had felt his face flush with fire as he heard
those blazing accents; a new world had opened to him
amid the crash and roar of that storm—a fuller life, in
the old church there, among the memorials of dead generations.
But a world more novel and attractive had expanded itself
in another direction before his enamored eye—a world all sunlight,
and verdure, and perfume, where the uplands and the
fields, lit by suns and moons of surpassing glory, lay sleeping
in the dews of a serener heaven. A world which he
entered with smiles and sighs to the music of a million singing
birds in the foliage, and myriads of streams, that danced
over diamonds and pearls. That music and melody resounded
in his ears like the dreamy music of the Eolian harp, and
a celestial harmony seemed to pervade, like a mysterious undertone,
the sound of the singing-birds and the flowing
water—the voice of a “simple girl.”
The town, thus, seemed to rise on the young man's sight
for the first time, and as he passed along the streets slowly,
and with smiles, he looked up at the houses, and wondered
that he had never before observed how picturesque they
were, relieved against the foliage, and running in long, pretty
rows with the white-sanded street.
Was this the place he had hated so? Could this be the
“odious town” he had maligned so? Why it was a fairy
village in a lovely land, and the children who tripped along
the street with little glancing feet and rippling curls, were
the sweetest forms that the eye could possibly behold.
So true is it that the view we take of life depends on the
eyes which we regard it with. Some lips will sneer, and
others laugh; to the melancholy, the jaundiced the unhappy,
the fairest and most brilliant May day lowers with
clouds; to the happy, the buoyant, the rejoiceful vision of
the lover, the gloomiest December is a flowery spring.
The young man's whole nature was changed, and he even
thought of Lord Dunmore, as he glanced toward the palace,
with indifference and unconcern.
He went toward the old Raleigh tavern, whose long row
of dormer windows sparkled in the May sunlight, and when
the smiling ostler took his horse, the young man rewarded
his cheerful face with a pistole.
With head erect, lips smiling, and eyes full of light, Mr.
St. John then went toward the front of the building, and
here he was quickly accosted by a laughing and hearty
voice, which uttered the words:
“Why morbleu! my dear fellow, you look like a conqueror.
Give you greeting!”
The speaker was a man of thirty-eight or forty, of tall
stature, of vigorous frame, and that erect and martial bearing
which indicates the profession of arms at some portion
of the owner's life. The worthy wore a rich suit of dark
cloth, profusely embroidered, a Flanders hat with a black
feather bound around it, and a pair of large spurs glittered
upon the heels of his horseman's boots, against which a
long sword, buckled by an old leather belt, incessantly rattled.
The face was decidedly a pleasant one, the forehead broad
and skirted by short, dark hair; a heavy mustache as black
as midnight fringed the firm lips, and the brilliant eyes
sparkled and shone with a laughing good humor. The face
of the stranger seemed that of a soldier, a bon camarado of
a thousand adventures and vicissitudes, and the heavy mustache
which was curled toward the eyes seemed to be eternally
agitated by merriment.
“Good morrow, my dear captain,” said St. John, shaking
hands, “how are Madame Waters and the little streamlets,
and what brings you to Williamsburg?”
“Basta!” cried the captain, “there's a flood of questions,
and I content myself with replying to the first—
that the various inhabitants of Flodden are well and jolies.
Where have you been?”
“Everywhere—another comprehensive answer.”
“Ah! you smile!” cried the captain, curling his huge
mustache; “the fact is, mon ami, your face seems made for
smiling, you do it so well.”
“Because I am in good spirits.”
“Is not everybody?”
“I was not the other day.”
The captain shook his head.
“That's unphilosophical,” he said, sagely; “keep up the
spirits.”
“I can't always.”
“Why?”
“They are tried.”
“And this other day?”
“They were tried by his Excellency, Lord Dunmore.”
“Ah, ah! by his Excellency you say! Morbleu! he's a
bucket of cold water in truth, I understand!”
“He acted like a shower-bath for me.”
“But you seem to have had the glow of reaction!” said
the captain, laughing, “and I do n't wonder at it. As I tell
my friend, the Seigneur Mort-Reynard Hamilton, when he
growls sometimes, and abuses even my claret, the wretch!
as I tell him, there's nothing like sunshine and May! Ventre
sainte Gris! what a day! 'Tis enough to make a fellow
swear from pure excess of spirits!”
“Swear away then,” said St. John, laughing, “and draw
on your assortment of French oaths.”
“French! I never swear in French, mon ami, I heartily
despise the Français, morbleu! they're a nation of frog
eaters!”
“You do n't like them?” asked St. John, laughing; “I
can understand then that you never utter a single `morbleu.'”
“Well, well,” said the captain, “perhaps now and then an
oath of this description accidentally escapes me, but prepend,
mon ami, I detest the Gauls, though they're brave as steel.
You see I fought them for a number of years like an insensè
at Gratz, at Lissa, at Minden and elsewhere, and I assure
you they were a devil of a set. I tell you, comrade, if you
give a mounseer his champagne and his
gloire—and add a
few
chansons and the eyes of a young woman—if the
Frenchman has these he will cheerfully march into a trench
and be shoveled in the same trench with pleasure. At Minden—but
here I am running into a story as usual. Basta!
a miserable world where a fellow must be ever fighting his
battles over again!”
And the captain closed his lips as though nothing could induce
him to continue.
“There is some apology for my thinking of Minden, comrade,”
he said, “as the newly-arrived private secretary of
his Excellency was there.”
“Who—Captain Foy?”
“The same.”
“At Minden?”
“And fought like a Trojan. A keen fellow, that Foy;
looks a long way ahead, and's as sharp as a razor, morbleu!”
St. John's eyes were directed down the street.
“What attracts your attention, comrade?” said the soldier.
“The individual who's as sharp as a razor,” said St. John,
laughing; “I hope he won't cut us.”
“Who? why it's Foy in person.”
“And coming straight toward us.”
“Eh bien! we'll give our brother soldier a military salute,”
said the captain, laughing, and placing his left hand
on the hilt of his sword; “let's see if he recognizes his
`compagnon d'armes!'”
