"You are really very considerate, Mr. Wheatley," I said drily.
"Very gallant, you mean," rejoined my companion. "You must know there is a young lady, with the most beautiful hair, and eyes, and teeth, and lips in the world, and the prettiest foot and ankle, and the most charming little hand, who has got it into her dear little head, that Sir Richard Conway is going to fight some giant or some windmill, and was diplomatizing with me all last night to see if I could not, or would not, tell her all about it, imagining that I had come up to be your second. Now as I was convinced she was in the right--ladies always are right in everything--and knowing that Billy Byles is not the safest man in the world to trust in such matters, I determined to go over with you to act as a sort of moderator."
"I am much obliged to you," I answered, a little mortified, "and much obliged to my sweet Cousin Bessy for the interest she takes in me. But I must say, my good friend, this is altogether a little irregular, according to our notions on the other side of the Atlantic; ladies there do not meddle with such matters, nor friends either, except when they are invited."
"Pray, my dear Sir Richard," interrogated Mr. Wheatley, "do not you, who are clearly a man of the world, fall into the great error of your countrymen, and fancy you can carry England about with you wherever you go? When you are in your own room, with nothing but your trunk, you can be as English as you please; but the moment you are brought in contact with Virginians, you must be Virginian to a certain extent. We manage these little affairs of honour quite differently here and in Great Britain. There, you are obliged to sneak about as if you were going to steal something, breathe no syllable of the matter to anybody, except the choice friend, and seek out some lonely spot on a common, where you can see for ten miles round, for fear you should be interrupted by the police. Now here, the constable of the township would load your pistols for you, and keep the ground clear. The first thing a man does when he is called out is to say to his wife, 'Mary, my dear, I am going to fight Jack Robertson to-morrow. I wish you would look that the lock of my rifle goes easy.' 'I'll look to that,' answers Mary; 'and I'll cut you up some patches. What time would you like the carriage, love? Don't ride on horseback; you know it always shakes your hand.'" I could not help laughing at this description, delivered with capital mimicry of the male and female voices in the colloquy; but I replied, "It would seem all ladies do not take it so quietly, from what you tell me of Miss Davenport."
"Oh, that's quite a different case," said Mr. Wheatley, with a merry glance of the eye. "She is not your wife yet, you know. She has no chance of being an interesting widow, whose husband was killed in a duel. But, joking apart, for I see you wince, Miss Davenport has cause to dislike duels. Her father was killed in a duel by a dear friend and near connection, all in consequence of a confounded mistake; and his death was followed by a long train of law-suits and misfortunes, quite sufficient to give her a horror of the pleasant little practice of being shot at without pay. By the way, I don't think she knows one-half of her own history, poor girl!" he added, in a meditative tone; "if she did, it might make some difference." His words, from the manner in which they were spoken, seemed to me to have more significance than appeared upon the surface; but I had other things to think of, and the next moment he rambled on in his usual way, saying,--
"Now don't be surprised, and don't show any irritation, if you find a dozen or two people on the ground, black and white. It is just as likely as not; and mind, if they chance to get in the line of fire, shoot a white man, and not a black. A white man's life here is worth nothing; a black man is worth from nine hundred to a thousand dollars. We are a commercial people, and always take a business-like view of these transactions. Pray when is this pigeon-shooting to come off?" He proceeded to ask a great number of questions, but I cut him short, saying, "You must excuse me, my good friend, for keeping up some of my Old English prejudices here, while you and I are alone together. From me you shall hear none of the particulars, though I dare say Mr. Byles will tell you all about it. With us, it is a matter of etiquette for a principal in such an affair to talk about it to no one but his second."
"Oh, very well," he answered; "perhaps you are right. In my part of the country, I mean the part where I was born, they carry matters further than even you do in England, for they won't let us fight at all, and send a man to the penitentiary for asking his friend to take a morning's walk with him. In fact, the three great distinctions between the North and South are these. In the South, they fight duels whenever they can; have slaves for their servants; and grow tobacco and cotton. In New England, they never fight if they can help it; are slaves to their own servants, and make wooden clocks and wooden nutmegs." Probably one could not have had a more serviceable or amusing companion, when going about a disagreeable piece of business, than Mr. Wheatley. There was a lightness, or, to use a vulgar expression, a devil-may-carishness about his conversation which imperceptibly led one away from serious views, even of a serious business; and when I got out of his carriage, at the door of Mr. Byles's house, I could have fired a pistol at an antagonist without half the hesitation and remorse which I should have felt an hour before. The house of Mr. Byles was very different from any gentleman's dwelling I had yet seen in Virginia, and was indeed an ornamented sort of cottage--the reality of that whereof we see many imitations in Great Britain. It was all upon one floor--unless indeed there were rooms for the servants upstairs, which I do not know--and parlours, dining-room, bedrooms, &c, stretched out in a confused sort of labyrinth, which I did not attempt to penetrate any further than I was led by others. An enormous swarm of little black boys, with one respectable elderly gentleman of the same colour, were all ready to receive us: and, by the way in which they climbed into Mr. Wheatley's carriage, seized upon all the loose articles it contained, and carried them off, Heaven knows whither, they put me in mind of the little hairy savages, which boarded the ship of Sinbad the sailor, during one of his marvellous voyages. None of them seemed to know anything about their master, however. It was a thing recognized and understood, that whoever came to the house was to make himself comfortable--that the house would contain any possible number, and that all that was in it was at the disposal of the guests. Mr. Wheatley had set about providing for himself as soon as we arrived; Zed had rushed away with my valise, where, and about what, I knew not; and I stood solitary for a moment or two, in the midst of a spacious, low-ceiled drawing-room, filled with as many nicknacks as would have bedizened the boudoir of a London lady. At length, a very neat little boy, of fourteen years of age, with his snowy white jacket and trousers and apron, contrasting magnificently with the jetty hue of his hands and face, came in and asked, with a grace quite oriental, whether I was the Honourable Sir Richard Conway.
"Honourable, I trust I am," I replied, "and my name is Richard Conway."
"Ah, then, here is your room, sir," answered the boy. And he led me into a very handsome bedroom, immediately out of the drawing-room, where I found every possible convenience that either London or Paris could supply. It seemed to have been the pleasure of Mr. Byles to accumulate under the roof of a very unpretending dwelling, the form and structure of which I suspect it would be impossible to describe, all the luxuries of a dozen different climates, and to enjoy them, and make his friends enjoy them, without those conventional restraints with which they are usually associated. Zed was already there, having arrived at my quarters by some undiscovered passages, and was busy in arranging all the toilette apparatus of Palmer and Savory, upon principles conceived by himself, partly indoctrinated by me. I threw myself into a chair, and, for a moment or two, gave myself up to meditation, thinking--"This afternoon all these appliances for luxury and comfort--to-morrow, perhaps, stretched upon that bed with a pistol-shot through my heart!" I am not much given to such considerations; but there are moments when they will force themselves upon me, and I end by exclaiming, "What a farce is life!" Starting up with this conviction upon me, as I knew it must be near the dinner-hour, I proceeded to change my dress, and get rid of the soil and dust which the roads, now thoroughly dry, had left upon me. Not twenty minutes after, my little black friend made his appearance again, with a tumbler full of a bright yellow liquid, upon a silver salver, saying,--
"Dinner will be ready in five minutes, sir."