_PROEM:--Introductive of Captain Francis Audaine_
It appears convenient here to pursue Miss Allonby on her stroll about the
Pantiles in company with Captain Audaine. The latter has been at pains to
record the events of the afternoon and evening, so that I give you his own
account of them, though I abridge in consideration of his leisured style.
Pompous and verbose I grant the Captain, even in curtailment; but you are
to remember these were the faults of his age, ingrained and defiant of
deletion; and should you elect to peruse his memoirs [Footnote: There
appears to have been no American edition since that, in 1836, printed in
Philadelphia, "for Thomas Wardle, No. 15 Minor Street." In England the
memoirs of Lord Garendon are to all appearance equally hard to come by,
and seem to have been out of print since 1907.] you will find that I have
considerately spared you a majority of the digressions to which the future
Earl of Garendon was lamentably addicted.
For the purpose of my tale you are to view him as Tunbridge did at this
particular time: as a handsome and formal person, twenty-eight years old
or thereabouts, of whom nobody knew anything quite definite--beyond the
genealogic inference to be drawn from a smatch of the brogue--save that
after a correspondence of gallantries, of some three weeks' duration, he
was the manifest slave of Miss Dorothy Allonby, and had already fought
three duels behind Ormerod House,--with Will Pratchet, Lord Humphrey Degge,
and Sir Eugene Harrabie, respectively, each one of whom was a declared
suitor for her hand.
And with this prelude I begin on my transcription.
I
Miss Allonby (says Captain Audaine) was that afternoon in a mighty cruel
humor. Though I had omitted no reasonable method to convince her of the
immensity of my passion, 'twas without the twitch of an eyelash she endured
the volley of my sighs and the fusillade of my respectful protestations;
and candor compels me to admit that toward the end her silvery laughter
disrupted the periods of a most elegant and sensible peroration. And when
the affair was concluded, and for the seventh time I had implored her to
make me the happiest of men, the rogue merely observed: "But I don't want
to marry you. Why on earth should I?"
"For the sake of peace," I replied, "and in self-protection, since as long
as you stay obdurate I shall continue to importune, and by and by I shall
pester you to death."
"Indeed, I think it more than probable," she returned; "for you dog me
like a bailiff. I am cordially a-weary, Captain Audaine, of your incessant
persecutions; and, after all, marrying you is perhaps the civilest way to
be rid of both them and you."
But by this I held each velvet-soft and tiny hand. "Nay," I dissented; "the
subject is somewhat too sacred for jest. I am no modish lover, dearest and
best of creatures, to regard marriage as the thrifty purchase of an estate,
and the lady as so much bed-furniture thrown in with the mansion. I love
you with completeness: and give me leave to assure you, madam, with a
freedom which I think permissible on so serious an occasion that, even as
beautiful as you are, I could never be contented with your person without
your heart."
She sat with eyes downcast, all one blush. Miss Dorothy Allonby was in the
bloom of nineteen, and shone with every charm peculiar to her sex. But I
have no mind to weary you with poetical rhodomontades till, as most lovers
do, I have proven her a paragon and myself an imbecile: it suffices to say
that her face, and shape, and mien, and wit, alike astounded and engaged
all those who had the happiness to know her; and had long ago rendered her
the object of my entire adoration and the target of my daily rhapsodies.
Now I viewed her with a dissension of the liveliest hopes and fears; for
she had hesitated, and had by this hesitation conceded my addresses to be
not irretrievably repugnant; and within the instant I knew that any life
undevoted to her service and protection could be but a lingering disease.
But by and by, "You shall have your answer this evening," she said, and so
left me.
I fathomed the meaning of "this evening" well enough. For my adored Dorothy
was all romance, and by preference granted me rendezvous in the back
garden, where she would tantalize me nightly, from her balcony, after the
example of the Veronese lady in Shakespeare's spirited tragedy, which she
prodigiously admired. As concerns myself, a reasonable liking for romance
had been of late somewhat tempered by the inclemency of the weather and
the obvious unfriendliness of the dog; but there is no resisting a lady's
commands; and clear or foul, you might at any twilight's death have found
me under her window, where a host of lyric phrases asserted the devotion
which a cold in the head confirmed.
This night was black as a coal-pit. Strolling beneath the casement, well
wrapt in my cloak (for it drizzled), I meditated impartially upon the
perfections of my dear mistress and the tyrannic despotism of love. Being
the source of our existence, 'tis not unreasonably, perhaps, that this
passion assumes the proprietorship of our destinies and exacts of all
mankind a common tribute. To-night, at least, I viewed the world as a brave
pavilion, lighted by the stars and swept by the clean winds of heaven,
wherein we enacted varied rôles with God as audience; where, in turn, we
strutted or cringed about the stage, where, in turn, we were beset and
rent by an infinity of passions; but where every man must play the part
of lover. That passion alone, I said, is universal; it set wise Solomon
a-jigging in criminal byways, and sinewy Hercules himself was no stranger
to its inquietudes and joys. And I cried aloud with the Roman, _Parce
precor!_ and afterward upon high Heaven to make me a little worthier of
Dorothy.