University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.
ST. LEGER.

Harley uttered the words recorded at the end of the last chapter
in a tone which left no doubt of his meaning. Whence had arisen
this antipathy? From some disappointment in love, as Miss Clementina
had asserted? It was possible; but other peculiarities of
the man were not so easily explained, and seemed to have had their
origin in some personal experience of a more serious character.

What impressed people most forcibly, at first sight of Harley, was
his gloomy composure. He attempted plainly to hide this melancholy
under a phlegmatic exterior—but there it was. Could a mere
love-affair, resulting unfortunately, have caused this? The fact
seemed doubtful. The man's mind was evidently strong, healthful,
well-poised, free from the least tendency to fanciful regrets or sadness,
and yet there was plainly something on his mind. Something
in his life had clearly made him gloomy, and spoiled his sunshine.
A happy man, with nothing in his memory to depress him, laughs,
plays with children, jest with his friends, lolls, talk of the weather,
and is commonplace and natural in his moods—grave or gay. Justin
Harley had not the least tendency toward any one of the proceedings
here mentioned. He did not laugh; he did not jest; he took
no interest in the little home details of life. He moped.

He had acquired in Germany the habit of smoking a short black
pipe, and used powerful tobacco. Tho “Virginia weed,” as it was
once called, is a mild and pleasing narcotic to mind and body, with
most persons, bringing cheerful reverie and golden moods; but it
seemed only to deaden Harley, making him duller. The statement
already made sums up all. He seemed to have something on his
mind, and this something strained the cords of his brain, producing
lassitude and unrest. He was never long out of the saddle,
and rode as often at night as by day. Often he could not sleep, and
read and walked to and fro in his room until daylight—a habit
which probably explained the peculiarity mentioned by Judge
Bland, that he would never sleep without a light in his apartment.
The outline here drawn of a man possessed by some thought ever-present
to his consciousness, and unable to banish it, may seem a

distorted and exaggerated one to those excellent and fortunate persons
with good digestions, happy firesides, and the evening newspaper;
but humanity is none the less subject—from accident, if
there be such, or their own fault—to these moods. The physicians
tell you, in a matter-of-fact way, that it is the liver.

From this digression we come back to Justin Harley, and add
that, ten days after his visit to Blandfield, he spent nearly the whole
night walking up and down his chamber, and at daylight rang for
his old body-servant, a gray-haired African, and ordered his horse
to be saddled, also the hounds to be unloosed. He was determined
to have a fox-hunt.

Having taken a slight breakfast, chiefly consisting of some very
strong tea, Harley mounted, called his tawny pack around him,
started on his hunt, and soon the distant cry of the hounds indicated
that the fox was unearthed.

Two hours afterward, a young man of about twenty-five, elegantly
clad, and riding a fine English hunter, rode up to the front door of
Huntsdon, and, calling to a servant, asked if this was the residence
of Mr. Justin Harley. The reply was a respectful affirmative.

“Where was Mr. Harley?”

He was hunting—toward the river.

“What river?”

They called it the Blackwater river.

The servant pointed in the direction of the stream as he spoke,
and, after hesitating a moment, the visitor rode in the direction indicated.

Harley followed his dogs for four hours, riding like the wild
huntsman. The exercise brought some color to his cheeks, and
better than all, seemed to have banished the moody thought which
had strained to high pressure his mental machinery. Nothing stupefies
like a gallop, or rather, nothing diverts and exhilarates so
much. Every fence cleared took a part of the load from his mind,
and the ditches were so deep and dangerous often, that he had to
think of them.

A gray fox is a tough adversary. This one circled over twenty
miles, and came back—his tail up, with long leaps, and apparently
unfatigued—to the spot from whence he had started. Harley and
the dogs were coming, but they had not come. The horseman who
had stopped at Huntsdon, and then followed in the direction taken
by Harley, was riding along a narrow road on the banks of the
Blackwater, not far from the pond which had been the scene of
Judge Bland's misadventure, when the cry of the hounds was heard
in the distance. It steadily approached, and then the fox darted
across the road, and made through a field beyond, toward a brush-fence

crowning a high bank, formed of the earth thrown up from a
very deep ditch.

The sight of the game, and the close cry of the hounds, ever approaching
nearer, excited the horseman. He wheeled, put spurs to
his hunter, and rode on the track of the fox. Before he had gone
twenty yards, he found that his horse was in no condition for a run.
But excitement mastered him. The dogs burst from the bushes,
and shot by him, wild at sight of the fox, which leaped the ditch
and the fence. The horseman dug the spur into his animal, and
pushed him at the ditch and fence; the hunter rose to the leap, but
his hind-feet slipped: he pawed the air, reeled backward, and fell
on his rider, who rolled under him in the ditch.

The unlucky horseman was striving to avoid the heels of the
kicking and terrified animal, and extricate himself, when he felt a
strong grasp on his shoulder. He was dragged from under the
horse, and a voice said,

“St. Leger! Is it possible! You in Virginia?”

“Precisely, my dear Harley, and hurt a little, I'm afraid. That
worthless animal—” He turned somewhat pale as he spoke, and
said, “I think the brute has dislocated my shoulder.”

“You need a carriage!—we will talk afterwards. What good star
sent you? But come!—yonder is a cabin. You may stay there
until my coach comes and takes you to Huntsdon!”

Harley's face glowed. He passed his arm around his friend, supported
him as he walked, and they reached the cabin. It was a
rude hut, apparently a trapper's or fisherman's, in a sort of gash in
the hills, and in front of the door sat a girl mending a hand-net.
The girl seemed to be about fourteen, though she was not, probably,
so old, and what impressed one, at first sight, was the singular contrast
between her dress and surroundings and her appearance. She
wore the plainest homespun, but had the air of a little princess.
She was an exquisite blonde, with very large blue eyes, a complexion
delicately fair, and a figure as graceful as though she had
moved all her life in saloons. When she turned her head to look at
Harley and his friend, her attitude—the bend of the neck, the droop
of the shoulders—all was so perfect as to cause Harley the utmost
astonishment. In this rude cabin seemed to have bloomed a flower
of the woods more delicate than those of the most carefully-cultivated
garden.

One circumstance Harley afterwards recalled, with some surprise,
as it recurred to him. The bearing and expression of the girl had
been calm, gentle, and perfectly composed, as they came; her large,
soft eyes surveyed them without surprise or fear; but all at once
the red in her cheeks dissappeared, her eyes filled with sudden

fright, and her gaze was riveted upon the young man called St.
Leger.

“What is the matter, my child?” said Harley, struck by this
look.

“Blood!—there is blood!” said the girl, shuddering.

“Oh it's nothing—a mere trifle, my pretty maid!” said St. Leger.
Harley assisted him into the cabin, explained why they had come,
and then, returning to his horse, who was grazing where he had
dismounted, rode back rapidly to procure the coach.

The young stranger was left with the girl, who busied herself
arranging the pillows on a little white bed, in a small room behind
the cabin. This room was evidently her own. Everything about
it was spotless; some books lay on a small rude table, and a flowering
vine festooned the window. This nest was the haunt of a girl
as plainly as the main cabin, with its rude couch, and nest, and
fishing-tackle, was the haunt of a man. The stranger declared,
with a light, friendly laugh, that he could not disarrange the bed;
but the girl begged him, in a very sweet and earnest voice, to lie
down. He yielded, and then, as his forehead appeared feverish,
she quickly proceeded to bathe it with a damp cloth—shivering,
now and then, as her eyes fell upon the blood from the bruise on
his shoulder. The young man closed his eyes: there was something
delightful in the touch of the delicate fingers. When he opened
them again, he saw bending over him the fresh, tender face, framed
in its auburn hair, with the large eyes looking into his own. He
again closed his eyes, and fell into a delicious reverie. He was
aroused from it by the sound of wheels, and, opening his eyes again,
became conscious of something which made him laugh.

In a purely unconscious manner, one of his hands had fallen at
his side, had there encountered one of the girl's which was hanging
down, and closed around it, and she, fearing to wake him, had left
her hand in his own.

Harley came in, and informing his friend that the coach had
arrived, assisted him to rise and walk to it. St. Leger turned his
head and held out his hand to the girl.

“I am told that in Virginia everybody shakes hands,” he said,
laughing. The girl gave him her small hand with perfect simplicity
and grace.

“And now your name, my little guardian angel. I would like to
have a name to think of you by, you know?”

“My name is Fanny, sir.”

“And your father's?”

“Puccoon,” she said.

Harley turned round.

“Puccoon, the hunter and trapper, my child?”

“Yes, sir; he went out hunting this morning.”

“He is an old friend of mine, and you must tell him that I have
come back. My name is Justin Harley, and he must come and see
me at Huntsdon.”

The girl promised to deliver the message. Following his friend
into the coach, Harley demanded an explanation of his sudden appearance.

“Nothing easier, my dear Harley,” returned the joyous young
fellow, “and you shall have the narrative with the brevity of a
military dispatch. You know I left diplomacy for the career of
arms; that is, to become ensign in the Royal Guard, “The Blues,”
which of all the tiresome—but I wander! Well, I grew weary; I
thirsted for travel. I asked my uncle, the earl, who is a minister,
to give me dispatches to some part of the world. He laughed, like
the jolly old boy he is, and said, `Would you like Virginia?' `Of
all things!' I said. And behold me in Virginia, with orders for his
Excellency the Governor. He was absent on my arrival, in pursuit
of Indians, so I thought I would look at the country, and I had
heard there was a strange spot call the Dismal Swamp, south of
James River. I took a hunter from my lord's stable; crossed the
river; rode on; spent the night at an ordinary; saw a fine house on
a hill this morning; heard that it was Justin Harley's; thought it
possible, barely, that he might be in Virginia, and ascertaining that
fact, with the further fact that he was out hunting, followed, and—
you know the rest.”

“You are the prince of raconteurs,” said Harley; “you come to
the point. I am happy, to the full extent of my power to be happy,
at your coming, St. Leger. Yonder is my house. Welcome!”

“I knew I should be welcome, and your house is admirable. I
like all in Virginia—down to our little princess of the hills yonder,
who is as delicate as a duchess, and far prettier.”

“A beauty—and, strangely, has a rough trapper for a father. But
here we are at Huntsdon.”