CHAPTER I
We had spent a merry night of it. Our stars had paled their not ineffectual fires, only in the daylight; and while Dan Phoebus was yet rising, "jocund on the misty mountain tops," I was busy in adjusting my foot in the stirrup and mounting my good steed Priam, to find my way by a close cut, and through narrow Indian trails, to my lodgings in the little town of C——, on the very borders of Mississippi. There were a dozen of us, all merry larks, half mad with wine and laughter, and the ride of seven miles proved a short one. In less than two hours, I was snugly snoozing in my own sheets, and dreaming of the twin daughters of old Hansford Owens.
Well might one dream of such precious damsels. Verily, they seemed, all of a sudden, to have become a part of my existence. They filled my thoughts, excited my imagination, and,—if it be not an impertinence to say any thing of the heart of a roving lad of eighteen,—then were they at the very bottom of mine.—Both of them, let me say,—for they were twins, and were endowed with equal rights by nature. I was not yet prepared to say what was the difference, if any, between their claims. One was fair, the other brown; one pensive, the other merry as the cricket of Venus. Susannah was meek as became an Elder's daughter; Emmeline so mischievous that she might well have worried the meekest of the saints in the calendar from his propriety and position. I confess, though I thought constantly of Susannah, I always looked after Emmeline the first. She was the brunette—one of your flashing, sparkling, effervescing beauties,—perpetually running over with exultation—brimful of passionate fancies that tripped, on tiptoe, half winged, through her thoughts. She was a creature to make your blood bound in your bosom,—to take you entirely off your feet, and fancy, for the moment, that your heels are quite as much entitled to dominion as your head. Lovely too,—brilliant, if not absolutely perfect in features—she kept you always in a sort of sunlight. She sung well, talked well, danced well—was always in air—seemed never herself to lack repose, and, it must be confessed, seldom suffered it to any body else. Her dancing was the crowning grace and glory. She was no Taglioni—not an Ellsler—I do not pretend that. But she was a born artiste. Every motion was a study. Every look was life. Her form subsided into the sweetest luxuriance of attitude, and rose into motion with some such exquisite buoyancy, as would become Venus issuing from the foam. Her very affectations were so naturally worn, that you at length looked for them as essential to her charm. I confess—but no! Why should I do anything so foolish?
Susannah was a very different creature. She was a fair girl—rather pale, perhaps, when her features were in repose. She had rich soft flaxen hair, and dark blue eyes. She looked rather than spoke. Her words were few, her glances many. She was not necessarily silent in silence. On the contrary, her very silence had frequently a significance, taken with her looks, that needed no help from speech. She seemed to look through you at a glance, yet there was a liquid sweetness in her gaze, that disarmed it of all annoyance. If Emmeline was the glory of the sunlight—Susannah was the sovereign of the shade. If the song of the one filled you with exultation, that of the other awakened all your tenderness. If Emmeline was the creature for the dance,—Susannah was the wooing, beguiling Egeria, who could snatch you from yourself in the moments of respite and repose. For my part, I felt that I could spend all my mornings with the former, and all my evenings with the latter. Susannah with her large, blue, tearful eyes, and few, murmuring and always gentle accents, shone out upon me at nightfall as that last star that watches in the vault of night for the coming of the sapphire dawn.
So much for the damsels. And all these fancies, not to say feelings, were the fruit of but three short days' acquaintance with their objects. But these were days when thoughts travel merrily and fast—when all that concerns the fancies and the affections, are caught up in a moment, as if the mind were nothing but a congeries of instincts, and the sensibilities, with a thousand delicate antennae, were ever on the grasp for prey.
Squire Owens was a planter of tolerable condition. He was a widower, with these two lovely and lovable daughters—no more. But, bless you! Mine was no calculating heart. Very far from it. Neither the wealth of the father, nor the beauty of the girls, had yet prompted me to think of marriage. Life was pleasant enough as it was. Why burden it? Let well enough alone, say I. I had no wish to be happier. A wife never entered my thoughts. What might have come of being often with such damsels, there's no telling; but just then it was quite enough to dance with Emmeline, and muse with Susannah, and—vive la bagatelle!
I need say nothing more of my dreams, since the reader sufficiently knows the subject. I slept late that day, and only rose in time for dinner, which, in that almost primitive region, took place at 12 o'clock, M. I had no appetite. A herring and soda water might have sufficed, but these were matters foreign to the manor. I endured the day and headache together, as well as I could, slept soundly that night, with now the most ravishing fancies of Emmeline, and now the pleasant dreams of Susannah, one or other of whom still usurped the place of a bright particular star in my most capacious fancy. Truth is, in those heyday days, my innocent heart never saw any terrors in polygamy. I rose a new man, refreshed and very eager for a start. I barely swallowed breakfast when Priam was at the door. While I was about to mount, with thoughts filled with the meek beauties of Susannah,—I was arrested by the approach of no less a person than Ephraim Strong, the village blacksmith.
"You're guine to ride, I see."
"Yes."
"To Squire Owens, I reckon."