University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.
JACQUES SHOWS THE ADVANTAGE OF BEING LED CAPTIVE
BY A CROOK.

IT was a delicious day, such a day as the month of flowers
alone can bring into the world, and all nature
seemed to be rejoicing. The peach and cherry blossoms
shone like snow upon the budding trees, the oriole
shot from elm to elm, a ball of fire against a background
of blue and emerald, and from every side came the murmuring
flow of streamlets, dancing in the sun and filling
the whole landscape with their joyous music.

May reigned supreme—a tender blue-eyed maiden,
treading upon a carpet of young grass with flowers in
their natural colors; and nowhere were her smiles softer
or more bright than there at Shadynook, which looks still
on the noble river flowing to the sea, and on the distant
town of Williamsburg, from which light clouds of smoke
curl upward and are lost in the far-reaching azure.

Shadynook was one of those old hip-roofed houses
which the traveller of to-day meets with so frequently,
scattered throughout Virginia, crowning every knoll and
giving character to every landscape. Before the house
stretched a green lawn bounded by a low fence; and in
the rear a garden full of flowers and blossoming fruit
trees made the surrounding air faint with the odorous
breath of Spring.

Over the old house, whose dormer windows were
wreathed with the mosses of age, stretched the wide
arms of two noble elms; and the whole homestead
had about it an air of home comfort, and a quiet, happy
repose, which made many a wayfarer from far countries
sigh, as he gazed on it, embowered in its verdurous grove.

In the garden is an arbor, over which flowering vines
of every description hover and bloom, full of the wine
of spring. Around the arbor extend flower plats carefully
tended and fragrant with violets, crocuses, and early
primroses. Foliage of the light tender tint of May clothes
the background, and looking from the arbor you clearly
discern the distant barn rising above the trees.

In this arbor sits or rather reclines a young girl—for she
has stretched herself upon the trellised seat, with a languid
and careless ease, which betrays total abandon—
an abandon engendered probably by the warm languid
air of May, and those million flowers burdening the air
with perfume.

This is Miss Belle-bouche, whom we have heard the
melancholy Jacques discourse of with such forlorn eloquence
to his friend Tom, or Sir Asinus, as the reader
pleases.

Belle-bouche, Pretty-mouth, Belinda, or Rebecca—
for this last was the name given her by her sponsors—
is a young girl of about seventeen, and of a beauty
so fresh and rare that the enthusiasm of Jacques was
scarcely strange. The girl has about her the freshness
and innocence of childhood, the grace and elegance of
the inhabitants of that realm of fairies which we read
of in the olden poets—all the warmth, and reality, and
beauty of those lovelier fairies of our earth. Around her

delicate brow and rosy cheeks fall myriads of golden
“drop curls,” which veil the deep-blue eyes, half closed
and fixed upon the open volume in her hand. Belle-bouche
is very richly clad, in a velvet gown, a satin underskirt
from which the gown is looped back, wide cuffs
and profuse lace at wrists and neck; and on her diminutive
feet, which peep from the skirt, are red morocco
shoes tied with bows of ribbon, and adorned with heels
not more than three inches in height. Her hair is powdered
and woven with pearls—she wears a pearl necklace;
she looks like a child dressed by its mother for a
ball, and spoiled long ago by “petting.”

Belle-bouche reads the “Althea” of Lovelace, and
smiles approvingly at the gallant poet's assertion, that
the birds of the air know no such liberty as he does, fettered
by her eyes and hair. It is the fashion for Lovelaces
to make such declarations, and with a coquettish little
movement she puts back the drop curls, and raises her
blue eyes to the sky from which they have stolen their
hue.

She remains for some moments in this reverie, and
is not aware of the approach of a gallant Lovelace, who,
hat in hand, the feather of the said hat trailing on the
ground, draws near.

Who is this gallant but our friend of one day's standing,
the handsome, the smiling, the forlorn, the melancholy—and,
being melancholy, the interesting—Jacques.

He approaches smiling, modest, humble—a consummate
strategist; his ambrosial curls and powdered queue
tied with its orange ribbon, shining in the sun. He
wears a suit of cut velvet with gold buttons; a flowered

satin waistcoat reaching to his knees; scarlet silk stock
ings, and high-heeled worsted shoes. His cuffs would
enter a barrel with difficulty, and his chin reposes upon
a frill of irreproachable Mechlin lace.

Jacques finds the eyes suddenly turned upon him, and
bows low. Then he approaches, falls upon one knee, and
presses his lips gallantly to the hand of the little beauty,
who smiling carelessly rises in a measure from her recumbent
position.

“Do I find the fair Belinda reading?” says the gallant;
“what blessed book is made happy by the light of
her eyes?”

Which remarkable words, we must beg the reader to
remember, were after the fashion of the time and scarcely
more than commonplace. The fairer portion of humanity
had even then perfected that sovereignty over the
males which in our own day is so very observable. So,
instead of replying in a tone indicating surprise, the little
beauty answers quite simply:

“My favorite—Lovelace.”

Jacques heaves a sigh; for the music of the voice has
touched his heart—nay, overwhelmed it with a new flood
of love.

He dangles his bonnet and plume, and carefully arranges
a drop curl. He, the prince of wits, the ornament
of ball rooms, the star of the minuet and reel, is
suddenly quite dumb, and seems to seek for a subject
to discourse upon in surrounding objects.

A happy idea strikes him; a thought occurs to him;
he grasps at it with the desperation of a drowning
man. He says:

“'Tis a charming day, fairest Belle-bouche—Belinda,
I mean. Ah, pardon my awkwardness!”

And the unhappy Corydon betrays by his confusion
how much this slip of the tongue has embarrassed him
—at least, that he wishes her to think so.

The little beauty smiles faintly, and bending a fatal
languishing glance upon her admirer, says:

“You called me—what was it?”

“Ah, pardon me.”

“Oh certainly!—but please say what you called me.”

“How can I?”

“By telling me,” says the beauty philosophically.

“Must I?” says Jacques, reflecting that after all his
offence was not so dreadful.

“If you please.”

“I said Belle-bouche.”

“Ah! that is——?”

“Pretty-mouth,” says Lovelace, with the air of a man
who is caught feloniously appropriating sheep; but
unable to refrain from bending wistful looks upon the
topic of his discourse.

Belle-bouche laughs with a delicious good humor,
and Jacques takes heart again.

“Is that all?” she says; “but what a pretty name!”

“Do you like it, really?” asks the forlorn lover.

“Indeed I do.”

“And may I call you Belle-bouche?”

“If you please.”

Jacques feels his heart oppressed with its weight of
love. He sighs. This manœuvre is greeted with a
little laugh.

“Oh, that was a dreadful heigho!” she says; “you
must be in love.”

“I am,” he says, “desperately.”

A slight color comes to her bright cheek, for it is
impossible to misunderstand his eloquent glance.

“Are you?” she says; “but that is wrong. Fie on't!
Was ever Corydon really in love with his Chloe—or are
his affections always confined to the fluttering ribbons,
and the crook, wreathed with flowers, which make her a
pleasant object only, like a picture?”

Jacques sighs.

“I am not a Corydon,” he says, “much less have I
a Chloe—at least, who treats me as Chloes should treat
their faithful shepherds. My Chloe runs away when I
approach, and her crook turns into a shadow which I
grasp in vain at. The shepherdess has escaped!”

“It is well she don't beat you,” says the lovely girl,
smiling.

“Beat me!”

“With her crook.”

“Ah! I ask nothing better than to excite some emotion
in her tender heart more lively than indifference.
Perhaps were she to hate me a little, and consequently
beat me, as you have said, she might end by drawing
me towards her with her flowery crook.”

The young girl laughs.

“Would you follow?”

“Ah, yes—for who knows——?”

He pauses, smiling wistfully.

“Ah, finish—finish! I know 'tis something pretty by
the manner in which you smile,” she says, laughing.

“Who knows, I would say, but in following her,
fairest Belle-bouche—may I call you Belle-bouche?”

“Oh yes, if you please—if you think it suits me.”

And she pours the full light of her eyes and smiles
upon him, until he looks down, blinded.

“Pity, pity,” he murmurs, “pity, dearest Miss Belle-bouche——”

She pretends not to hear, but, turning away with a
blush at that word “dearest,” says, with an attempt
at a laugh:

“You have not told me why you would wish your
Chloe to draw you after her with her crook.”

“Because we should pass through the groves——”

“Well.”

“And I should wrap her in my cloak, to protect her
from the boughs and thorns.”

“Would you?”

“Ah, yes! And then we should cross the beautiful
meadows and the flowery knolls——”

“Very well, sir.”

“And I should gather flowers for her, and kneeling
to present them, would approach near enough to kiss
her hand——”

“Oh goodness!”

“And finally, fairest Belle-bouche, we should cross
the bright streams on the pretty sylvan bridges——”

“Yes, sir.”

“And most probably she would grow giddy; and I
should take her in my arms, and holding her on my
faithful bosom——”

Jacques opens his arms as though he would really
clasp the fair shepherdess, who, half risen, with her

golden curls mingled with the flowers, her cheeks the
color of her red fluttering ribbons, seeks to escape the
declaration which her lover is about to make.

“Oh, no! no!” she says.

He draws back despairingly, and at the same moment
hears a merry voice come singing down the blossom-fretted
walk, upon which millions of the snowy leaves have
fallen.

“One more chance gone!” the melancholy Jacques
murmurs; and turning, he bows to the new comer—the
fair Philippa.