Dear, how you interrupt one, said Miss Trafford, pettishly; well, a very short man, then, wrapped up in a cloak
In a great coat, drawled Lady Nelthorpe. Miss Trafford went on without noticing the emendation,had not with incredible rapidity sprung down the rock and
Called him off, said Lady Nelthorpe.
Yes, called him off, pursued Miss Trafford, looking round for the necessary symptoms of our wonder at this very extraordinary incident.
What is the most remarkable, said Lady Nelthorpe, is, that though he seemed from his dress and appearance to be really a gentleman, he never stayed to ask if we were alarmed or hurtscarcely even looked at us (I dont wonder at that! said Mr. Wormwood, who, with Lord Vincent, had just entered the room;)and vanished among the rocks as suddenly as he had appeared.
Oh, youve seen that fellow, have you? said Lord Vincent: so have I, and a devilish queer looking person he is,
The balls of his broad eyes rolld in his head, And glard betwixt a yellow and a red; He looked a lion with a gloomy stare, And oer his eyebrows hung his matted hair.
Well remembered, and better appliedeh, Mr. Pelham!
Really, said I, I am not able to judge of the application, since I have not seen the hero.
Oh! its admirable, said Miss Trafford, just the description I should have given of him in prose. But pray, where, when, and how did you see him?
Your question is religiously mysterious, tria juncta in uno, replied Vincent; but I will answer it with the simplicity of a Quaker. The other evening I was coming home from one of Sir Lionels preserves, and had sent the keeper on before in order more undisturbedly to
Con witticisms for dinner, said Wormwood.
To make out the meaning of Mr. Wormwoods last work, continued Lord Vincent. My shortest way lay through that churchyard about a mile hence, which is such a lion in this ugly part of the country, because it has three thistles and a tree. Just as I got there, I saw a man suddenly rise from the earth, where he appeared to have been lying; he stood still for a moment, and then (evidently not perceiving me) raised his clasped hands to Heaven, and muttered some words I was not able distinctly to hear. As I approached nearer to him which I did with no very pleasant sensations, a large black dog, which, till then, had remained couchant, sprung towards me with a loud growl,
Sonat hic de nare canina Litera,
as Persius has it. I was too terrified to move
Obstupuisteteruntque comae
and I should most infallibly have been converted into dogs meat, if our mutual acquaintance had not started from his reverie, called his dog by the very appropriate name of Terror, and then slouching his hat over his face, passed rapidly by me, dog and all. I did not recover the fright for an hour and a quarter. I walkedye gods, how I did walkno wonder, by the by, that I mended my pace, for as Pliny says truly: Timor est emendator asperrimus.
Mr. Wormwood had been very impatient during this recital, preparing an attack upon Lord Vincent, when Mr. Davison entering suddenly, diverted the assault.
Good God! said Wormwood, dropping his roll, how very ill you look to-day, Mr. Davison; face flushedveins swelledoh, those horrid truffles! Miss Trafford, Ill trouble you for the salt.
CHAPTER V
Be she fairer than the day,
Or the flowery meads in May;
If she be not so to me,
What care I how fair she be?
It was a great pity, so it was, That villainous saltpetre should be digged Out of the bowels of the harmless earth, Which many a good tall fellow had destroyed.First Part of King Henry IV.
Several days passed. I had taken particular pains to ingratiate myself with Lady Roseville, and so far as common acquaintance went, I had no reason to be dissatisfied with my success. Any thing else, I soon discovered, notwithstanding my vanity, (which made no inconsiderable part in the composition of Henry Pelham) was quite out of the question. Her mind was wholly of a different mould from my own. She was like a being, not perhaps of a better, but of another world than myself; we had not one thought or opinion in common; we looked upon things with a totally different vision; I was soon convinced that she was of a nature exactly contrary to what was generally believedshe was any thing but the mere mechanical woman of the world. She possessed great sensibility, and even romance of temper, strong passions, and still stronger imagination; but over all these deeper recesses of her character, the extreme softness and languor of her manners, threw a veil which no superficial observer could penetrate. There were times when I could believe that she was inwardly restless and unhappy; but she was too well versed in the arts of concealment, to suffer such an appearance to be more than momentary.
I must own that I consoled myself very easily for my want, in this particular instance, of that usual good fortune which attends me aupres des dames; the fact was, that I had another object in pursuit. All the men at Sir Lionel Garretts were keen sportsmen. Now, shooting is an amusement I was never particularly partial to. I was first disgusted with that species of rational recreation at a battue, where, instead of bagging anything, I was nearly bagged, having been inserted, like wine in an ice pail, in a wet ditch for three hours, during which time my hat had been twice shot at for a pheasant, and my leather gaiters once for a hare; and to crown all, when these several mistakes were discovered, my intended exterminators, instead of apologizing for having shot at me, were quite disappointed at having missed.
Seriously, that same shooting is a most barbarous amusement, only fit for majors in the army, and royal dukes, and that sort of people; the mere walking is bad enough, but embarrassing ones arms moreover, with a gun, and ones legs with turnip tops, exposing oneself to the mercy of bad shots and the atrocity of good, seems to me only a state of painful fatigue, enlivened by the probability of being killed.
This digression is meant to signify, that I never joined the single men and double Mantons that went in and off among Sir Lionel Garretts preserves. I used, instead, to take long walks by myself, and found, like virtue, my own reward, in the additional health and strength these diurnal exertions produced me.
One morning, chance threw into my way une bonne fortune, which I took care to improve. From that time the family of a farmer Sinclair, (one of Sir Lionels tenants) was alarmed by strange and supernatural noises: one apartment in especial, occupied by a female member of the household, was allowed, even by the clerk of the parish, a very bold man, and a bit of a sceptic, to be haunted; the windows of that chamber were wont to open and shut, thin airy voices confabulate therein, and dark shapes hover thereout, long after the fair occupant had, with the rest of the family, retired to repose. But the most unaccountable thing was the fatality which attended me, and seemed to mark me out, nolens volens, for an untimely death. I, who had so carefully kept out of the way of gunpowder as a sportsman, very narrowly escaped being twice shot as a ghost. This was but a poor reward for a walk more than a mile long, in nights by no means of cloudless climes and starry skies; accordingly I resolved to give up the ghost in earnest rather than in metaphor, and to pay my last visit and adieus to the mansion of Farmer Sinclair. The night on which I executed this resolve was rather memorable in my future history.