I slid into the rear without troubling any one, for no one troubled himself any further about me. The company was excessively lively; there was dalliance and playfulness; trifles were sometimes discussed with an important tone, but oftener important matters with levity; and the wit flew with special gayety over absent friends and their circumstances. I was too strange to understand much of all this; too anxious and introverted to take an interest in such riddles.
We had reached the rosery. The lovely Fanny, who seemed the belle of the day, insisted out of obstinacy in breaking off a blossomed stem herself. She wounded herself on a thorn, and the purple streamed from her tender hand as if from the dark roses. This circumstance put the whole party into a flutter. English plaster was sought for. A quiet, thin, lanky, longish, oldish man who stood near, and whom I had not hitherto remarked, put his hand instantly into the tight breast-pocket of his old gray French taffeta coat; produced thence a little pocket-book, opened it, and presented to the lady with a profound obeisance the required article. She took it without noticing the giver, and without thanks; the wound was bound up and we went forward over the hill, from whose back the company could enjoy the wide prospect over the green labyrinth of the park to the boundless ocean.
The view was in reality vast and splendid. A light point appeared on the horizon between the dark flood and the blue of the heaven. "A telescope here!" cried John; and already, before the servants who appeared at the call were in motion, the gray man, modestly bowing, had thrust his hand into his coat pocket, drawn thence a beautiful Dollond, and handed it to Mr. John. Bringing it immediately to his eye, he informed the company that it was the ship which went out yesterday, and was detained in view of port by contrary winds. The telescope passed from hand to hand, but not again into that of its owner. I however gazed in wonder at the man, and could not conceive how the great machine had come out of the narrow pocket; but this seemed to have struck no one else, and nobody troubled himself any further about the gray man than about myself.
Refreshments were handed round; the choicest fruits of every zone, in the costliest vessels. Mr. John did the honors with an easy grace, and a second time addressed a word to me: "Help yourself; you have not had the like at sea." I bowed, but he did not see it; he was already speaking with some one else.
The company would fain have reclined upon the sward on the slope of the hill, opposite to the outstretched landscape, had they not feared the dampness of the earth. "It were divine," observed one of the party, "had we but a Turkey carpet to spread here." The wish was scarcely expressed when the man in the gray coat had his hand in his pocket, and was busied in drawing thence, with a modest and even humble deportment, a rich Turkey carpet interwoven with gold. The servants received it as a matter of course, and opened it on the required spot. The company, without ceremony, took their places upon it; for myself, I looked again in amazement on the man—at the carpet, which measured about twenty paces long and ten in breadth and rubbed my eyes, not knowing what to think of it, especially as nobody saw anything extraordinary in it.
I would fain have had some explanation regarding the man and have asked who he was, but I knew not to whom to address myself, for I was almost more afraid of the gentlemen's servants than of the served gentlemen. At length I took courage, and stepped up to a young man who appeared to me to be of less consideration than the rest, and who had often stood alone. I begged him softly to tell me who the agreeable man in the gray coat there was.
"He there, who looks like an end of thread that has escaped out of a tailor's needle?"
"Yes, he who stands alone."
"I don't know him," he replied, and—in order to avoid a longer conversation with me, apparently—he turned away and spoke of indifferent matters to another.
The sun began now to shine more powerfully, and to inconvenience the ladies. The lovely Fanny addressed carelessly to the gray man—whom, as far as I am aware, no one had yet spoken to—the trifling question whether he "had not, perchance, also a tent by him?" He answered her by an obeisance most profound, as if an unmerited honor were done him, and had already his hand in his pocket, out of which I saw come canvas, poles, cordage, iron-work,—in short, everything which belongs to the most splendid pleasure-tent. The young gentlemen helped to expand it, and it covered the whole extent of the carpet, and nobody found anything remarkable in it.