He was near the end of it when I came up, and I would willingly have encored it; but he changed at once to a very merry air; and a group of young people of the same complexion as himself, who had been standing round resting, I presumed, commenced dancing on the lawn with a right good will. They threw themselves into strange and grotesque, but sometimes picturesque and not ungraceful attitudes; and their whirling dark figures, the bright moonlight, and the flashing of the fireflies, actually amongst their feet, formed a scene I shall not easily forget. We stood gazing until the clock struck ten, little or no conversation going on meanwhile; but then Bessy Davenport and Louisa Thornton, my host's eldest daughter, came towards the door near which I stood. The former held out her hand frankly, saying.--
"Good night, Cousin Howard. We are all early birds here. May quiet dreams attend you; and if you ask me civilly, tomorrow, I will sing you 'Old Virginia,' or something equally classical." Thus ended my first evening on a Virginia plantation. In my own room, I ruminated on it all for half an hour, with sober pleasure. There had been something to amuse, something to interest, but nothing to excite or to disturb; and the mind could rest upon the memories of that day without one agitating sensation. I was a little fatigued with my hot ride, however, and at length I lay down on as soft a bed as I had ever met with, and my eyes closed quietly.
[CHAPTER VI.]
I woke early in the morning, after having passed the night in dreamless slumber. Not a memory of the day's doings--not a vague shadow of thoughts, or words, or deeds--flitted across the chasm of sleep. When I opened my eyes, however, the daylight--faint and unconfirmed--was streaming in at the windows; and, for half an hour or more, I enjoyed one of those pleasant, idle lapses of existence which we so rarely have leisure to indulge, when life, like a river between its cataracts and rapids, rests unruffled by thought or action, without a ripple to mark that it is flowing on; and with nothing reflected from its tranquil surface but the faint, glistening images of the quiet things which surround it. I saw a patch of the blue sky through the window, and a soft white cloud float slowly across. I looked at the large, brass-topped andirons in the wide fireplace, and contemplated the lions' heads which adorned them. I made a human face out of the sleeve of my coat, as it hung over the back of a chair, with a large nose and a heavy eye-brow; and it looked so sleepy, that I had almost dropped into slumber again, out of mere sympathy, when suddenly the door of the room opened, and in came a nice-looking black boy, with a clean white jacket and apron, and a tray with several well-filled glasses upon it. He walked composedly up to my bedside, and presented the tray.
"What is this, my friend?" I said, taking one of the glasses, which appeared full of a clear brownish liquid, some lumps of ice and some fresh green herbs.
"The mint juleps, sir," replied the boy, waiting for me to drink, in order to take the glass away.
"The mint juleps!" I thought. "I wonder if it is one of the laws of the land that every one must drink a mint julep before he rises." However, I tasted the beverage, and it was delicious and most refreshing, at least for the time. The coolness imparted by the ice effectually screened the palate from all the hotter things which it contained; and it was not till afterwards that I found it would be advisable not to drink brandy with mint steeped in it so early in the morning. Hardly had the little limonadier gone, when my friend Zed appeared, and, while he was engaged with great skill and assiduity in putting all my dressing things to wrongs with true negro officiousness, he opened his morning budget of gossip by telling me that we could not have arrived at a better time, for there was soon to be a great camp-meeting in the immediate neighbourhood, where some very godly men were to hold forth. I had long wished to see one of these curious assemblages, and I accordingly took care to inform myself of the day and place where the exercises were to be held. Zed then proceeded, while I dressed, to tell me the whole politics of the family, with the business-like manner and volubility of a Spanish barber. From him I thus learned that Mr. Byles--or bold Billy Byles--was a suitor for the hand of Louisa, Mr. Thornton's eldest daughter, but that it was the general opinion of the kitchen and adjacent domains that he would not succeed in his suit, for that young Mr. Whitehead, the Presbyterian minister, came often to see Miss Lou in the morning, and was a very gentle, engaging young man. Master Harry, he said, my cousin's eldest boy, was a wild young dog, showing the true Virginian fondness for horse-flesh and fire-arms, having broken the knees of one of his father's best steeds, and burst two guns already, besides setting fire to the stables by exploding a percussion-cap with a hammer. How long he would have gone on I know not, had my dressing not been brought to an end; when, telling him to be within call after breakfast, I went down to the lower floor. I found the drawing-room--or parlour as they call it here--vacant, and sauntered out into the porch, where the first thing I saw was Mr. Lewis, walking his horse quietly along the road from the overseer's house towards the highway. The next instant I perceived one of the servants start out upon him, like a spider from the corner of his web upon an entangled blue-bottle, and hand him a paper. I knew well enough what sort of document it was, namely, a caveat against the sale or purchase of any of the slaves of good Aunt Bab, signed by Mr. Thornton as agent, and Mr. Hubbard as attorney of Sir Richard Conway, under a power which had been drawn up the night before. This power had been rapidly and informally executed, and probably was invalid; but my presence rendered it unnecessary, except inasmuch as it enabled me to remain incognito for some time longer, and watch the proceedings of the conspirators. I must remark, it was not dated, and was merely alluded to in the caveat, so that no immediate indication of my visit to Virginia was afforded by that document. Mr. Lewis had just passed on his way, after reading the paper with feelings which of course I could not divine, when, from the other side, I saw approaching a pretty little female figure, dressed in a peculiar style, or rather in a medley of a great number of styles and fashions, outraging all of them in some respects. She had no bonnet on, but merely a parasol over her head; the length of her dress, instead of being of that extensive flow which has succeeded the short petticoats of a few years ago, was brief enough to show an exceedingly pretty foot and ankle, but it was so conspicuously full as to put me in mind of the costume of some of the Swiss cantons. Her shoes had minute buckles in them instead of being sandalled in modern style; and her hair, instead of being propped up to a towering height with a scaffolding of tortoise-shell, lay flat, and was gathered into a knot behind, in the antique Greek mode. As soon as her parasol was turned a little aside, I perceived it was Miss Davenport; and though she came quietly on, with her eyes bent upon the path, apparently unconscious that I was in the porch, I was, I am afraid, unjust to her, and imagined that there was a good deal of coquetry in both dress and manner. She had puzzled me the night before--she puzzled me still. There was something of frankness, something of archness, which was not displeasing; but something also of daring, of independence, of wilfulness, which I did not like. Pretty she certainly was, nay, beautiful; for the more one examined the small features and delicate form, the more symmetry and the more grace were apparent. But I never was one of those who can fall in love with pictures, or statues, or even marionettes. Pygmalion's statue might have remained ivory to the great conflagration, before I would have sighed or prayed it into life; and as for actresses, I always feel a green curtain falling between me and them, even before the end of the play. It seemed that morning as if some peculiar demon had seized upon me, and made me resolve, for my sins, to see what really was in Bessy Davenport--to tease her, to worry her, and to bring out the latent soul. I went forward to meet her; and, as soon as she really saw me, her whole aspect and manner changed. A gay, light, half-sarcastic smile played upon her lip, her eyes sparkled, and, holding out her hand, she said,--
"Good morning, cousin; I hope your aristocratic head has been able to repose quietly in this democratic community." I might feel a little staggered by this easy salutation. It was rather like a small masked battery opening upon one when marching gaily up to an attack; but I rallied my forces at once, and replied, "As well as if all the coronets that ever were lined with ermine had rested beside me on the pillow. Democracy is not a catching disease, I should imagine, from all I have seen of it. But may I ask how you slept? I trust without any painful visions of slaughtered swains and disconsolate lovers, or any twinges of remorse for all the woes you have and will inflict upon mankind."
"None, in truth," she answered at once. "Do you know I once killed a rattlesnake?--yes, with my own hand; and when I saw the shining reptile lie dead before me, I remembered he had given honourable warning before he sprang, and then I might feel a little regret that I had struck him so hastily with the butt of my riding-whip. But man is a very different sort of reptile: he gives no warning, and is far more venomous." A strange sort of painful feeling was produced in my mind by her words. I asked myself, "Can this young girl, apparently not twenty, have already tasted of that bitter cup which man so often holds to woman's lip?" The shadow of the thought must have crossed my face, for I was roused from my half-reverie by a clear, gay laugh. "Now I will show you," she said, "how women can divine. I am no love-lorn maiden, pining for some faithless swain--no man-hater from personal experience of man's unworthiness. I never saw the man yet, and never shall, who could raise my pulse one beat to hear his coming or his going step. But let me do justice to both sides. No man ever said to me in a sweet maudlin tone, 'Bessy, will you marry me?' nor even, to my face, declared I was the most charming of my sex, or anything of that kind. But I judge men from what I have seen of their conduct towards others; and I believe them to be the most thoroughly selfish class of beings--at least as far as women are concerned--that God ever created."
"And when it becomes your case to listen and have sweet words spoken," I replied, "you will think you and the speaker are two bright exceptions." She coloured a little, and looked almost angry, saying, "Never! I will never give any one the opportunity; for I go very much with the old saying, 'no gentleman was ever refused by a lady.' I mean, no man who is really a gentleman would propose to a lady who had not given him such encouragement as would preclude her, if really a lady, from refusing him if he did propose."