CHAPTER XXVI. In which we are at a very Great Distance from Oakhurst
Within the precinct of the White Horse Tavern, and coming up to thewindows of the eating-room, was a bowling-green, with a table or two,where guests might sit and partake of punch or tea. The three gentlemenhaving come to an end of their dinner about the same time, Mr. Morrisproposed that they should adjourn to the Green, and there drink a coolbottle. "Jack Morris would adjourn to the Dust Hole, as a pretext fora fresh drink," said my lord. On which Jack said he supposed eachgentleman had his own favourite way of going to the deuce. His weakness,he owned, was a bottle.
"My Lord Chesterfield's deuce is deuce-ace," says my Lord March. "Hislordship can't keep away from the cards or dice."
"My Lord March has not one devil, but several devils. He loves gambling,he loves horse-racing, he loves betting, he loves drinking, he loveseating, he loves money, he loves women; and you have fallen into badcompany, Mr. Warrington, when you lighted upon his lordship. He willplay you for every acre you have in Virginia."
"With the greatest pleasure in life, Mr. Warrington!" interposes mylord.
"And for all your tobacco, and for all your spices, and for all yourslaves, and for all your oxen and asses, and for everything that isyours."
"Shall we begin now? Jack, you are never without a dice-box or abottle-screw. I will set Mr. Warrington for what he likes."
"Unfortunately, my lord, the tobacco, and the slaves, and the asses, andthe oxen, are not mine, as yet. I am just of age, and my mother, scarcetwenty years older, has quite as good chance of long life as I have."
"I will bet you that you survive her. I will pay you a sum now againstfour times the sum to be paid at her death. I will set you a fair sumover this table against the reversion of your estate in Virginia at theold lady's departure. What do you call your place?"
"Castlewood."
"A principality, I hear it is. I will bet that its value has beenexaggerated ten times at least amongst the quidnuncs here. How cameyou by the name of Castlewood?--you are related to my lord? Oh, stay: Iknow,--my lady, your mother, descends from the real head of the house.He took the losing side in '15. I have had the story a dozen times frommy old Duchess. She knew your grandfather. He was friend of Addison andSteele, and Pope and Milton, I dare say, and the bigwigs. It is a pityhe did not stay at home, and transport the other branch of the family tothe plantations."
"I have just been staying at Castlewood with my cousin there," remarkedMr. Warrington.
"Hm! Did you play with him? He's fond of pasteboard and bones."
"Never, but for sixpences and a pool of commerce with the ladies."
"So much the better for both of you. But you played with Will Esmond ifhe was at home? I will lay ten to one you played with Will Esmond."
Harry blushed, and owned that of an evening his cousin and he had had afew games at cards.
"And Tom Sampson, the chaplain," cried Jack Morris, "was he of theparty? I wager that Tom made a third, and the Lord deliver you from Tomand Will Esmond together!"
"Nay; the truth is, I won of both of them," said Mr. Warrington.
"And they paid you? Well, miracles will never cease!"
"I did not say anything about miracles," remarked Mr. Harry, smilingover his wine.
"And you don't tell tales out of school--the volto sciolto--hey, Mr.Warrington?" says my lord.
"I beg your pardon," said downright Harry, "French is the only languagebesides my own of which I know a little."
"My Lord March has learned Italian at the Opera, and a pretty pennyhis lessons have cost him," remarked Jack Morris. "We must show him theOpera--mustn't we, March?"
"Must we, Morris?" said my lord, as if he only half liked the other'sfamiliarity.
Both of the two gentlemen were dressed alike, in small scratch-wigswithout powder, in blue frocks with plate buttons, in buckskins andriding-boots, in little hats with a narrow cord of lace, and no outwardmark of fashion.
"I don't care about the Opera much, my lord," says Harry, warming withhis wine; "but I should like to go to Newmarket, and long to see a goodEnglish hunting-field."
"We will show you Newmarket and the hunting-field, sir. Can you ridepretty well?"
"I think I can," Harry said; "and I can shoot pretty well, and jumpsome."
"What's your weight? I bet you we weigh even, or I weigh most. I bet youJack Morris beats you at birds or a mark, at five-and-twenty paces. Ibet you I jump farther than you on flat ground, here on this green."
"I don't know Mr. Morris's shooting--I never saw either gentlemanbefore--but I take your bets, my lord, at what you please," cries Harry,who by this time was more than warm with Burgundy.
"Ponies on each!" cried my lord.
"Done and done!" cried my lord and Harry together. The young man thoughtit was for the honour of his country not to be ashamed of any bet madeto him.
"We can try the last bet now, if your feet are pretty steady," said mylord, springing up, stretching his arms and limbs, and looking at thecrisp, dry grass. He drew his boots off, then his coat and waistcoat,buckling his belt round his waist, and flinging his clothes down to theground.
Harry had more respect for his garments. It was his best suit. He tookoff the velvet coat and waistcoat, folded them up daintily, and, as thetwo or three tables round were slopped with drink, went to place theclothes on a table in the eating-room, of which the windows were open.
Here a new guest had entered; and this was no other than Mr. Wolfe,who was soberly eating a chicken and salad, with a modest pint of wine.Harry was in high spirits. He told the Colonel he had a bet with my LordMarch--would Colonel Wolfe stand him halves? The Colonel said he was toopoor to bet. Would he come out and see fair play? That he would withall his heart. Colonel Wolfe set down his glass, and stalked through theopen window after his young friend.
"Who is that tallow-faced Put with the carroty hair?" says Jack Morris,on whom the Burgundy had had its due effect.
Mr. Warrington explained that this was Lieutenant-Colonel Wolfe, of the20th Regiment.
"Your humble servant, gentlemen!" says the Colonel, making the company arigid military bow.
"Never saw such a figure in my life!" cries Jack Morris. "Didyou--March?"
"I beg your pardon, I think you said March?" said the Colonel, lookingvery much surprised.
"I am the Earl of March, sir, at Colonel Wolfe's service," said thenobleman, bowing. "My friend, Mr. Morris, is so intimate with me, that,after dinner, we are quite like brothers."
Why is not all Tunbridge Wells by to hear this? thought Morris. And hewas so delighted that he shouted out, "Two to one on my lord!"
"Done!" calls out Mr. Warrington; and the enthusiastic Jack was obligedto cry "Done!" too.
"Take him, Colonel," Harry whispers to his friend.
But the Colonel said he could not afford to lose, and therefore couldnot hope to win.
"I see you have won one of our bets already, Mr. Warrington," my LordMarch remarked. "I am taller than you by an inch or two, but you arebroader round the shoulders."
"Pooh, my dear Will! I bet you you weigh twice as much as he does!"cries Jack Morris.
"Done, Jack!" says my lord, laughing. "The bets are all ponies. Will youtake him, Mr. Warrington?"
"No, my dear fellow--one's enough," says Jack.
"Very good, my dear fellow," says my lord; "and now we will settle theother wager."
Having already arrayed himself in his best silk stockings, blacksatin-net breeches, and neatest pumps, Harry did not care to take offhis shoes as his antagonist had done, whose heavy riding-boots and spurswere, to be sure, little calculated for leaping. They had before thema fine even green turf of some thirty yards in length, enough for a runand enough for a jump. A gravel walk ran around this green, beyond whichwas a wall and gate-sign--a field azure, bearing the Hanoverian WhiteHorse rampant between two skittles proper, and for motto the name of thelandlord and of the animal depicted.
My lord's friend laid a
handkerchief on the ground as the mark whencethe leapers were to take their jump, and Mr. Wolfe stood at the otherend of the grass-plat to note the spot where each came down. "My lordwent first," writes Mr. Warrington, in a letter to Mrs. Mountain, atCastlewood, Virginia, still extant. "He was for having me take the lead;but, remembering the story about the Battel of Fontanoy which my dearestGeorge used to tell, I says, 'Monseigneur le Comte, tirez le premier,s'il vous play.' So he took his run in his stocken feet, and for thehonour of Old Virginia, I had the gratafacation of beating his lordshipby more than two feet--viz., two feet nine inches--me jumping twenty-onefeet three inches, by the drawer's measured tape, and his lordship onlyeighteen six. I had won from him about my weight before (which I knewthe moment I set my eye upon him). So he and Mr. Jack paid me these twobetts. And with my best duty to my mother--she will not be displeasedwith me, for I bett for the honor of the Old Dominion, and my opponentwas a nobleman of the first quality, himself holding two Erldomes, andheir to a Duke. Betting is all the rage here, and the bloods and youngfellows of fashion are betting away from morning till night.
"I told them--and that was my mischief perhaps--that there was agentleman at home who could beat me by a good foot; and when they askedwho it was, and I said Col. G. Washington, of Mount Vernon--as you knowhe can, and he's the only man in his county or mine that can do it--Mr.Wolfe asked me ever so many questions about Col. G. W., and showed thathe had heard of him, and talked over last year's unhappy campane asif he knew every inch of the ground, and he knew the names of all ourrivers, only he called the Potowmac Pottamac, at which we had agood laugh at him. My Lord of March and Ruglen was not in the leastill-humour about losing, and he and his friend handed me notes out oftheir pocket-books, which filled mine that was getting very empty, forthe vales to the servants at my cousin Castlewood's house and buyinga horse at Oakhurst have very nearly put me on the necessity of makinganother draft upon my honoured mother or her London or Bristol agent."
These feats of activity over, the four gentlemen now strolled out of thetavern garden into the public walk, where, by this time, a great deal ofcompany was assembled: upon whom Mr. Jack, who was of a frank and freenature, with a loud voice, chose to make remarks that were not alwaysagreeable. And here, if my Lord March made a joke, of which his lordshipwas not sparing, Jack roared, "Oh, ho, ho! Oh, good Gad! Oh, my dearearl! Oh, my dear lord, you'll be the death of me!" "It seemed as if hewished everybody to know," writes Harry sagaciously to Mrs. Mountain,"that his friend and companion was an Erl!"
There was, indeed, a great variety of characters who passed. M.Poellnitz, no finer dressed than he had been at dinner, grinned, andsaluted with his great laced hat and tarnished feathers. Then came bymy Lord Chesterfield, in a pearl-coloured suit, with his blue ribbon andstar, and saluted the young men in his turn.
"I will back the old boy for taking his hat off against the wholekingdom, and France either," says my Lord March. "He has never changedthe shape of that hat of his for twenty years. Look at it. There it goesagain! Do you see that great, big, awkward, pock-marked, snuff-colouredman, who hardly touches his clumsy beaver in reply. D---- his confoundedimpudence--do you know who that is?"
"No, curse him! Who is it, March?" asks Jack, with an oath.
"It's one Johnson, a Dictionary-maker, about whom my Lord Chesterfieldwrote some most capital papers, when his dixonary was coming out, topatronise the fellow. I know they were capital. I've heard Horry Walpolesay so, and he knows all about that kind of thing. Confound the impudentschoolmaster!"
"Hang him, he ought to stand in the pillory!" roars Jack.
"That fat man he's walking with is another of your writing fellows,--aprinter,--his name is Richardson; he wrote Clarissa, you know."
"Great heavens! my lord, is that the great Richardson? Is that the manwho wrote Clarissa?" called out Colonel Wolfe and Mr. Warrington, in abreath.
Harry ran forward to look at the old gentleman toddling along the walkwith a train of admiring ladies surrounding him.
"Indeed, my very dear sir," one was saying, "you are too great and goodto live in such a world; but sure you were sent to teach it virtue!"
"Ah, my Miss Mulso! Who shall teach the teacher?" said the good, fat oldman, raising a kind, round face skywards. "Even he has his faults anderrors! Even his age and experience does not prevent him from stumbl---.Heaven bless my soul, Mr. Johnson! I ask your pardon if I have troddenon your corn."
"You have done both, sir. You have trodden on the corn, and received thepardon," said Mr. Johnson, and went on mumbling some verses, swaying toand fro, his eyes turned towards the ground, his hands behind him, andoccasionally endangering with his great stick the honest, meek eyes ofhis companion-author.
"They do not see very well, my dear Mulso," he says to the young lady,"but such as they are, I would keep my lash from Mr. Johnson's cudgel.Your servant, sir." Here he made a low bow, and took off his hat to Mr.Warrington, who shrank back with many blushes, after saluting the greatauthor. The great author was accustomed to be adored. A gentler windnever puffed mortal vanity. Enraptured spinsters flung tea-leaves roundhim, and incensed him with the coffee-pot. Matrons kissed the slippersthey had worked for him. There was a halo of virtue round his nightcap.All Europe had thrilled, panted, admired, trembled, wept, over the pagesof the immortal little, kind, honest man with the round paunch. Harrycame back quite glowing and proud at having a bow from him. "Ah!" sayshe, "my lord, I am glad to have seen him!"
"Seen him! why, dammy, you may see him any day in his shop, I suppose?"says Jack, with a laugh.
"My brother declared that he, and Mr. Fielding, I think, was the name,were the greatest geniuses in England; and often used to say, that whenwe came to Europe, his first pilgrimage would be to Mr. Richardson,"cried Harry, always impetuous, honest, and tender, when he spoke of thedearest friend.
"Your brother spoke like a man," cried Mr. Wolfe, too, his pale facelikewise flushing up. "I would rather be a man of genius, than a peer ofthe realm."
"Every man to his taste, Colonel," says my lord, much amused. "Yourenthusiasm--I don't mean anything personal--refreshes me, on my honourit does."
"So it does me--by gad--perfectly refreshes me," cries Jack
"So it does Jack--you see--it actually refreshes Jack! I say, Jack,which would you rather be?--a fat old printer," who has written a storyabout a confounded girl and a fellow that ruins her,--or a peer ofParliament with ten thousand a year?"
"March--my Lord March, do you take me for a fool?" says Jack, with atearful voice. "Have I done anything to deserve this language from you?"
"I would rather win honour than honours: I would rather have genius thanwealth. I would rather make my name than inherit it, though my father's,thank God, is an honest one," said the young Colonel. "But pardon me,gentlemen," and here making, them a hasty salutation, he ran across theparade towards a young and elderly lady and a gentleman, who were nowadvancing.
"It is the beautiful Miss Lowther. I remember now," says my lord. "See!he takes her arm! The report is, he is engaged to her."
"You don't mean to say such a fellow is engaged to any of the Lowthersof the North?" cries out Jack. "Curse me, what is the world come to,with your printers, and your half-pay ensigns, and your schoolmasters,and your infernal nonsense?"
The Dictionary-maker, who had shown so little desire to bow to my LordChesterfield, when that famous nobleman courteously saluted him, washere seen to take off his beaver, and bow almost to the ground, beforea florid personage in a large round hat, with bands and a gown, whomade his appearance in the Walk. This was my Lord Bishop of Salisbury,wearing complacently the blue riband and badge of the Garter, of whichNoble Order his lordship was prelate.
Mr. Johnson stood, hat in hand, during the whole time of hisconversation with Dr. Gilbert; who made many flattering and benedictoryremarks to Mr. Richardson, declaring that he was the supporter ofvirtue, the preacher of sound morals, the mainstay of religion, of allwhich points the honest printer himself was perfec
tly convinced.
Do not let any young lady trip to her grandpapa's bookcase inconsequence of this eulogium, and rashly take down Clarissa from theshelf. She would not care to read the volumes, over which her prettyancestresses wept and thrilled a hundred years ago; which were commendedby divines from pulpits and belauded all Europe over. I wonder, are ourwomen more virtuous than their grandmothers, or only more squeamish? Ifthe former, then Miss Smith of New York is certainly more modest thanMiss Smith of London, who still does not scruple to say that tables,pianos, and animals have legs. Oh, my faithful, good old SamuelRichardson! Hath the news yet reached thee in Hades that thy sublimenovels are huddled away in corners, and that our daughters may no moreread Clarissa than Tom Jones? Go up, Samuel, and be reconciled withthy brother-scribe, whom in life thou didst hate so. I wonder whethera century hence the novels of to-day will be hidden behind locks andwires, and make pretty little maidens blush?
"Who is yonder queer person in the high headdress of my grandmother'stime, who stops and speaks to Mr. Richardson?" asked Harry, as afantastically dressed lady came up, and performed a curtsey and acompliment to the bowing printer.
Jack Morris nervously struck Harry a blow in the side with the butt endof his whip. Lord March laughed.
"Yonder queer person is my gracious kinswoman, Katharine, Duchess ofDover and Queensberry, at your service, Mr. Warrington. She was a beautyprice! She is changed now, isn't she? What an old Gorgon it is! She is agreat patroness of your book-men and when that old frump was young, theyactually made verses about her."
The Earl quitted his friends for a moment to make his bow to the oldDuchess, Jack Morris explaining to Mr. Warrington how, at the Duke'sdeath, my Lord of March and Ruglen would succeed to his cousin'sdukedoms.
"I suppose," says Harry, simply, "his lordship is here in attendanceupon the old lady?"
Jack burst into a loud laugh.
"Oh yes! very much! exactly!" says he. "Why, my dear fellow, you don'tmean to say you haven't heard about the little Opera-dancer?"
"I am but lately arrived in England, Mr. Morris," said Harry, with asmile, "and in Virginia, I own, we have not heard much about the littleOpera-dancer."
Luckily for us, the secret about the little Opera-dancer never wasrevealed, for the young men's conversation was interrupted by a lady ina cardinal cape, and a hat by no means unlike those lovely headpieceswhich have returned into vogue a hundred years after the date of ourpresent history, who made a profound curtsey to the two gentlemen andreceived their salutation in return. She stopped opposite to Harry; sheheld out her hand, rather to his wonderment:
"Have you so soon forgotten me, Mr. Warrington?" she said.
Off went Harry's hat in an instant. He started, blushed, stammered, andcalled out Good Heavens! as if there had been any celestial wonder inthe circumstance! It was Lady Maria come out for a walk. He had not beenthinking about her. She was, to say truth, for the moment so utterlyout of the young gentleman's mind, that her sudden re-entry there andappearance in the body startled Mr. Warrington's faculties, and causedthose guilty blushes to crowd into his cheeks.
No. He was not even thinking of her! A week ago--a year, a hundred yearsago it seemed--he would not have been surprised to meet her anywhere.Appearing from amidst darkling shrubberies, gliding over green gardenterraces, loitering on stairs or corridors, hovering even in his dreams,all day or all night, bodily or spiritually, he had been accustomed tomeet her. A week ago his heart used to beat. A week ago, and at the veryinstant when he jumped out of his sleep, there was her idea smiling onhim. And it was only last Tuesday that his love was stabbed and slain,and he not only had left off mourning for her, but had forgotten her!
"You will come and walk with me a little?" she said. "Or would you likethe music best? I dare say you will like the music best."
"You know," said Harry, "I don't care about any music much, except"--hewas thinking of the evening hymn--"except of your playing." He turnedvery red again as he spoke, he felt he was perjuring himself horribly.
The poor lady was agitated herself by the flutter and agitation whichshe saw in her young companion. Gracious Heaven! Could that tremorand excitement mean that she was mistaken, and that the lad was stillfaithful? "Give me your arm, and let us take a little walk," she said,waving round a curtsey to the other two gentlemen: "my aunt is asleepafter her dinner." Harry could not but offer the arm, and press the handthat lay against his heart. Maria made another fine curtsey to Harry'sbowing companions, and walked off with her prize. In her griefs, inher rages, in the pains and anguish of wrong and desertion, how a womanremembers to smile, curtsey, caress, dissemble! How resolutely theydischarge the social proprieties; how they have a word, or a hand, ora kind little speech or reply for the passing acquaintance who crossesunknowing the path of the tragedy, drops a light airy remark or two(happy self-satisfied rogue!) and passes on. He passes on, and thinksthat woman was rather pleased with what I said. "That joke I made wasrather neat. I do really think Lady Maria looks rather favourably at me,and she's a dev'lish fine woman, begad she is!" O you wiseacre! Such wasJack Morris's observation and case as he walked away leaning on the armof his noble friend, and thinking the whole Society of the Wells waslooking at him. He had made some exquisite remarks about a particularrun of cards at Lady Flushington's the night before, and Lady Maria hadreplied graciously and neatly, and so away went Jack perfectly happy.
The absurd creature! I declare we know nothing of anybody (but that formy part I know better and better every day). You enter smiling to seeyour new acquaintance, Mrs. A. and her charming family. You make yourbow in the elegant drawing-room of Mr. and Mrs. B.? I tell you that inyour course through life you are for ever putting your great clumsy footupon the mute invisible wounds of bleeding tragedies. Mrs. B.'s closetsfor what you know are stuffed with skeletons. Look there under thesofa-cushion. Is that merely Missy's doll, or is it the limb ofa stifled Cupid peeping out? What do you suppose are those ashessmouldering in the grate?--Very likely a suttee has been offered upthere just before you came in: a faithful heart has been burned out upona callous corpse, and you are looking on the cineri doloso. You see B.and his wife receiving their company before dinner. Gracious powers! Doyou know that that bouquet which she wears is a signal to Captain C.,and that he will find a note under the little bronze Shakespeare onthe mantelpiece in the study? And with all this you go up and saysome uncommonly neat thing (as you fancy) to Mrs. B. about the weather(clever dog!), or about Lady E.'s last party (fashionable buck!), orabout the dear children in the nursery (insinuating rogue!). Heaven andearth, my good sir, how can you tell that B. is not going to pitch allthe children out of the nursery window this very night, or that his ladyhas not made an arrangement for leaving them, and running off withthe Captain? How do you know that those footmen are not disguisedbailiffs?--that yonder large-looking butler (really a skeleton) is notthe pawnbroker's man? and that there are not skeleton rotis and entreesunder every one of the covers? Look at their feet peeping from under thetablecloth. Mind how you stretch out your own lovely little slippers,madam, lest you knock over a rib or two. Remark the death's-head mothsfluttering among the flowers. See, the pale winding-sheets gleaming inthe wax-candles! I know it is an old story, and especially that thispreacher has yelled vanitas vanitatum five hundred times before. I can'thelp always falling upon it, and cry out with particular loudness andwailing, and become especially melancholy, when I see a dead love tiedto a live love. Ha! I look up from my desk, across the street: and therecome in Mr. and Mrs. D. from their walk in Kensington Gardens. How shehangs on him! how jolly and happy he looks, as the children frisk round!My poor dear benighted Mrs. D., there is a Regent's Park as well asa Kensington Gardens in the world. Go in, fond wretch! Smilingly laybefore him what you know he likes for dinner. Show him the children'scopies and the reports of their masters. Go with Missy to the piano, andplay your artless duet together; and fancy you are happy!
There go Harry and Maria taking their evening walk on the common,
awayfrom the village which is waking up from its after-dinner siesta, andwhere the people are beginning to stir and the music to play. With themusic Maria knows Madame de Bernstein will waken: with the candlesshe must be back to the tea-table and the cards. Never mind. Here is aminute. It may be my love is dead, but here is a minute to kneel overthe grave and pray by it. He certainly was not thinking about her: hewas startled and did not even know her. He was laughing and talkingwith Jack Morris and my Lord March. He is twenty years younger than she.Never mind. To-day is to-day in which we are all equal. This moment isours. Come, let us walk a little way over the heath, Harry. She will go,though she feels a deadly assurance that he will tell her all is overbetween them, and that he loves the dark-haired girl at Oakhurst.