Stimulated by jealousy, and prompted by a desire to satisfy myself of Ellen's truth, I resolved to visit a college friend who lived in the immediate vicinity of her father's residence, and there patiently wait until I might have an opportunity of seeing her. My uncle was my confidant; and when I entered his room for the purpose of disclosing my intentions, I found him seated as usual amid a crowd of antique volumes, while his eyes were keenly gloating over the original-brained tittle-tattle of "Howel's Letters." His large centre table displayed a motley mixture of the stable, chase, and library. On a copy of the Divine Legation lay a curb-bit. The Castle of Indolence was crowded into an old-fashioned stirrup. A dog collar belonging to one of King Charles' breed, surmounted Clarendon. Two broken throat-lashes were placed on State Trials, and a pair of spurs had worked their rowels deep into the binding of Stith's History of Virginia. The Defence of Poesy, Rhymer's Foedera, Fuller's Holy State, Catullus, and Tom Jones, were tied together with a bridle rein; while a full record (tested by the clerk of the council, and dated July 9th, 1630,) of the trial of Doctor John Pott, late Governor of Virginia, for cattle stealing, spread its broad pages over the whole table. I caught a glimpse of a long and copious commentary which my uncle had written at the foot of it, in which he had proved the innocence of the Ex-Governor, and the perjury of Kingsmell, the principal witness, whom as the record narrates, "Doctor Pott endeavored to prove an hypocrite by a story of Gusman of Alfrach the rogue."
I soon declared the purpose of my visit, and that I was determined to see Ellen Pilton.
"I do not like her name," said my uncle; "it would have a plebeian sound in any part of the world; yet her mother bore a proud title, and as she loves you, do not act dishonorably. I take it for granted that she loves you merely because you affirm it, but you may rest assured that she will yet make a goose of you. Coquetry—arrant coquetry, is the business, the pursuit, the occupation of woman's life. They learn its treacheries when they dress their first doll; its edge is sharpened by every lover; and many a belle who dies in early glory, coquettes with the priest who shrives her. Venus commenced its practice the moment she was born; and though untaught in its mysteries, she laughingly bid the Tritons to look some other way. Horace reads us many a fine truth about it, and Tibullus and Propertius tell in trembling lines of the fascinations of that female garb which was brought from the Coian Isle. Our Virginian girls have a prescriptive right to all its prerogatives. Oh, there was rare coquetry when that gentle ship landed its blushing freight at Jamestown! Old "Dust and Ashes,"1 that fast friend of the colony, and he who stole this title from a sexton, that under its shade he might nobly endow a free school in Virginia, made their invoice in a gay doublet, and copied the bill of lading with a smile on his care-worn cheek, and a fresh posy in his bosom. Our proud ancestor, Sir Eyre Granby, was present when they landed, and saw them leaping and gambolling about the shore like young minnows in a mountain stream. One fair girl, with a dove-like face and a sparkling eye, gave Sir Eyre a silver tobacco pipe, which she had brought from home for the stranger who should most interest her maiden heart. Alas! he was a married man; and all he could do was to kiss her hand and give her a bunch of flowers. The anxious bachelors who found a wife on that day, imitated his example; and to this hour, Virginia's maidens ask no better declaration of love than this silly compliment. Take care, my dear boy, of their hands; do not look at their rings; and let the flowers grow where God planted them. If they should be sick, do not show too much tenderness. I have known coquetry assume every type of fierce fever and pining atrophy; and remember, that the last dyke in the fortress of coquetry, is the coral cheek of consumption. Go, and learn from experience, and may Cupid prosper you."
1 "Mr. Nathaniel Barber, the chief manager and book-keeper of the Company's lotteries." Stith 216. Even at that dark period public education though a puling was a lusty child—'tis now a paper mummy.
Early on the next morning I left Chalgrave; and finding the outer gate of the plantation closely barred with fence rails, I was about to dismount and open it, when my old nurse made her appearance, exclaiming, "Let it alone, Mass Lionel; I barred it—for I did not want you to go from home to-day till I could see you. Bad luck is hanging over our family. Is not this the seventh day of the month?—the day on which your stout old grandfather died, and on which your father sickened unto death. Did I not last night gather the wild hemlock from his grave; and with a lock of his hair, and a piece of the caul which covered your baby face, try seven times the charm which an Obi man taught my mother? Oh! it was a dreadful sight; I saw you mangled and wounded, and your white hand was red with blood. I heard an owl shriek seven times on the wall of our graveyard; it flew in at my window, put out my light, and left me in darkness. Do not go away now."
"Do you still take me for a child? I must go; farewell, dear mammy."
"Oh! call me dear mammy once more," she replied, "and let me kiss you for the last time."
I granted her request, and rode rapidly away, while I vainly endeavored to keep down the fear and superstition with which her narrative had filled my bosom. My journey was long and tedious, and ere night I had lost myself in the mazes and tortuous paths of a forest road. On every side I was met by gates, drawbars, and gaps—the necessary appendages in the economy of Virginian idleness,—and wandered about until I was finally fairly lost in a broad thicket of luxuriant myrtle. Trusting to the sagacity of my horse, he brought me into an open road, at the extremity of which a feeble light caught my eye. Advancing to it, I found a crowd of negroes gathered in a cabin, and dancing with that joyous flush of elastic carelessness which a negro only feels, to the music of a banjo, triangle, and squirrel-skin fiddle. All of them offered to show me the way, and each invariably decreased the distance in proportion to the anxiety which my inquiries expressed. I took the direction which I had thus received, and late at night I passed by an old-fashioned house, from a lower window of which shot a feeble and fluttering light. Here I met a negro who informed me that I was on the Pilton plantation—that the mansion-house was before me—that he was the best axe-man on the land—that his Mass Edmund had just come home on a fine horse—and that Miss Ellen was sick and poorly. A pang of remorse passed through my bosom; and reckless of every principle of honor, I determined to approach nearer to the house, and gaze, like the pilgrim, on that shrine which held the worshipped idol of my heart. Riding rapidly away from the negro, I suddenly turned my course, and dismounting from my horse, leaped over the garden wall. Cautiously threading my path through tangled shrubbery, leafless rosebushes, and crooked hedges, I quickly turned, as the light from the house streamed before me, and looking up to the window, I beheld the form of Ellen Pilton in an attitude which arrested my attention, and chained my footsteps to the earth. Her head was resting on her right hand, while in her left she held the fatal evergreen which had marked with tenderness our earliest acquaintance. A dark and fleecy cloud of long and luxuriant hair swept over her marbled brow. Her cheek was illuminated with a vermillion glow, like those bright colors which decorate the holiness of some antique missal, while the ardent gaze which she bestowed on this memorial of my treachery, mingled itself with the patient melancholy which disease had written on her face. I saw her weep like a child, as she replaced it in her bosom; and at that moment the giant voice of conscience rang through my heart, pealing the knell of my perfidy and duplicity. Chastened by contrition—humbled by the consciousness of my own falsehood—and elevated by this unerring indication of her singleness of heart, I felt the contagion of resistless sympathy, and on that silent spot I poured out the pure orisons of a love which had sprung from the blackest passion of my nature. I continued in a fixed posture for many moments, inebriated into utter forgetfulness of my flagrant violation of honor. A feeling of debasement came over me, and yielding to its influence, I turned away from the window. My position was no sooner changed, than I was met by Edmund Pilton,—his face almost touching my shoulder.
"Mr. Granby," said he, in a voice of stifled anger, "an eavesdropper!—a cowardly intruder on female privacy!—I wish him profit in his honorable profession, and may darkness ever hide his blush of shame."
I staggered back with fear and agitation; and for the only time in my life I felt as a coward. Nature had given me courage, and education had endowed me with that chivalry which feared only the shame of fear; yet that consciousness of disgrace which wrecks the proudest heart, left me the shuddering craven of its withering power.