CHAPTER IV.
LOVE A LA MODE.
Life was very pleasant at Royallieu.
It lay in the Melton country, and was equally well placed for Pytchley,Quorn, and Belvoir, besides possessing its own small but very perfectpack of "little ladies," or the "demoiselles," as they were severallynicknamed; the game was closely preserved, pheasants were fed on Indiancorn till they were the finest birds in the country, and in the littlewinding paths of the elder and bilberry coverts thirty first-rate shots,with two loading-men to each, could find flock and feather to amuse themtill dinner, with rocketers and warm corners enough to content the mostinsatiate of knickerbockered gunners. The stud was superb; the cook, aFrench artist of consummate genius, who had a brougham to his own useand wore diamonds of the first water; in the broad beech-studded grassylands no lesser thing than doe and deer ever swept through the thickferns in the sunlight and the shadow; a retinue of powdered servantsfilled the old halls, and guests of highest degree dined in its statelybanqueting room, with its scarlet and gold, its Vandykes and itsVernets, and yet--there was terribly little money at Royallieu with itall. Its present luxury was purchased at the cost of the future, and theparasite of extravagance was constantly sapping, unseen, the gallant oldNorman-planted oak of the family-tree. But then, who thought of that?Nobody. It was the way of the House never to take count of the morrow.True, any one of them would have died a hundred deaths rather than havehad one acre of the beautiful green diadem of woods felled by the ax ofthe timber contractor, or passed to the hands of a stranger; but no oneamong them ever thought that this was the inevitable end to which theysurely drifted with blind and unthinking improvidence. The oldViscount, haughtiest of haughty nobles, would never abate one jot of hisaccustomed magnificence; and his sons had but imbibed the teaching ofall that surrounded them; they did but do in manhood what they had beenunconsciously molded to do in boyhood, when they were set to Eton at tenwith gold dressing-boxes to grace their Dame's tables, embryo Dukes fortheir cofags, and tastes that already knew to a nicety the worth ofthe champagnes at the Christopher. The old, old story--how it repeatsitself! Boys grow up amid profuse prodigality, and are launched into aworld where they can no more arrest themselves than the feather-weightcan pull in the lightning stride of the two-year-old, who defies allcheck and takes the flat as he chooses. They are brought up like youngDauphins, and tossed into the costly whirl to float as best they can--onnothing. Then, on the lives and deaths that follow; on the graves wherea dishonored alien lies forgotten by the dark Austrian lakeside, orunder the monastic shadow of some crumbling Spanish crypt; where a redcross chills the lonely traveler in the virgin solitudes of Amazonianforest aisles, or the wild scarlet creepers of Australia trail over anameless mound above the trackless stretch of sun-warmed waters--thenat them the world "shoots out its lips with scorn." Not on them lies theblame.
A wintry, watery sun was shining on the terraces as Lord Royallieu pacedup and down the morning after the Grand Military; his step and limbsexcessively enfeebled, but the carriage of his head and the flash ofhis dark hawk's eyes as proud and untamable as in his earliest years.He never left his own apartments; and no one, save his favorite "littleBerk," ever went to him without his desire. He was too sensitive aman to thrust his age and ailing health in among the young leaders offashion, the wild men of pleasure, the good wits and the good shots ofhis son's set; he knew very well that his own day was past; that theywould have listened to him out of the patience of courtesy, but thatthey would have wished him away as "no end of a bore." He was too shrewdnot to know this; but he was too quickly galled ever to bear to have itrecalled to him.
He looked up suddenly and sharply: coming toward him he saw the figureof the Guardsman. For "Beauty" the Viscount had no love; indeed,well-nigh a hatred, for a reason never guessed by others, and neverbetrayed by him.
Bertie was not like the Royallieu race; he resembled his mother'sfamily. She, a beautiful and fragile creature whom her second son hadloved, for the first years of his life, as he would have thought it nowimpossible that he could love anyone, had married the Viscount with noaffection toward him, while he had adored her with a fierce and jealouspassion that her indifference only inflamed. Throughout her marriedlife, however, she had striven to render loyalty and tenderness towarda lord into whose arms she had been thrown, trembling and reluctant; ofhis wife's fidelity he could not entertain a doubt; though, that he hadnever won her heart, he could not choose but know. He knew more, too;for she had told it him with a noble candor before he wedded her; knewthat the man she did love was a penniless cousin, a cavalry officer, whohad made a famous name among the wild mountain tribes of Northern India.This cousin, Alan Bertie--a fearless and chivalrous soldier, fitter forthe days of knighthood than for these--had seen Lady Royallieu at Nice,some three years after her marriage; accident had thrown them acrosseach other's path; the old love, stronger, perhaps, now than it hadever been, had made him linger in her presence--had made her shrinkfrom sending him to exile. Evil tongues at last had united their namestogether; Alan Bertie had left the woman he idolized lest slander shouldtouch her through him, and fallen two years later under the dark dankforests on the desolate moor-side of the hills of Hindostan, where longbefore he had rendered "Bertie's Horse" the most famous of all the wildIrregulars of the East.
After her death, Lord Royallieu found Alan's miniature among her papers,and recalled those winter months by the Mediterranean till he cherished,with the fierce, eager, self-torture of a jealous nature, doubts andsuspicions that, during her life, one glance from her eyes would havedisarmed and abashed. Her second and favorite child bore her familyname--her late lover's name; and, in resembling her race, resembled thedead soldier. It was sufficient to make him hate Bertie with a crueland savage detestation, which he strove indeed to temper, for he wasby nature a just man, and, in his better moments, knew that his doubtswronged both the living and the dead; but which colored, too stronglyto be dissembled, all his feelings and his actions toward his son, andmight both have soured and wounded any temperament less nonchalantlygentle and supremely careless than Cecil's.
As it was, Bertie was sometimes surprised at his father's dislike tohim, but never thought much about it, and attributed it, when he didthink of it, to the caprices of a tyrannous old man. To be jealous ofthe favor shown to his boyish brother could never for a moment have comeinto his imagination. Lady Royallieu with her last words had left thelittle fellow, a child of three years old, in the affection and the careof Bertie--himself then a boy of twelve or fourteen--and little as hethought of such things now, the trust of his dying mother had never beenwholly forgotten.
A heavy gloom came now over the Viscount's still handsome aquiline,saturnine face, as his second son approached up the terrace; Bertiewas too like the cavalry soldier whose form he had last seen standingagainst the rose light of a Mediterranean sunset. The soldier had beendead eight-and-twenty years; but the jealous hate was not dead yet.
Cecile took off his hunting-cap with a courtesy that sat very well onhis habitual languid nonchalance; he never called his father anythingbut "Royal"; rarely saw, still less rarely consulted him, and carednot a straw for his censure or opinion; but he was too thoroughbred bynature to be able to follow the underbred indecorum of the day whichmakes disrespect to old age the fashion. "You sent for me?" he asked,taking the cigarette out of his mouth.
"No, sir," answered the old lord curtly; "I sent for your brother. Thefools can't take even a message right now, it seems."
"Shouldn't have named us so near alike; it's often a bore!" said Bertie.
"I didn't name you, sir; your mother named you," answered his fathersharply; the subject irritated him.
"It's of no consequence which!" murmured Cecil, with an expostulatorywave of his cigar. "We're not even asked whether we like to come intothe world; we can't expect to be asked what we like to be called in it.Good-day to you, sir."
He turned to move away to the house, but his father stopped him; he knewthat
he had been discourteous--a far worse crime in Lord Royallieu'seyes than to be heartless.
"So you won the Vase yesterday?" he asked pausing in his walk with hisback bowed, but his stern, silver-haired head erect.
"I didn't--the King did."
"That's absurd, sir," said the Viscount, in his resonant and yetmelodious voice. "The finest horse in the world may have his back brokeby bad riding, and a screw has won before now when it's been finelyhandled. The finish was tight, wasn't it?"
"Well--rather. I have ridden closer spins, though. The fallows werelight."
Lord Royallieu smiled grimly.
"I know what the Shire 'plow' is like," he said, with a flash of hisfalcon eyes over the landscape, where, in the days of his youth, hehad led the first flight so often; George Rex, and Waterford, and theBerkeleys, and the rest following the rally of his hunting-horn. "Youwon much in bets?"
"Very fair, thanks."
"And won't be a shilling richer for it this day next week!" retortedthe Viscount, with a rasping, grating irony; he could not help dartingsavage thrusts at this man who looked at him with eyes so cruelly likeAlan Bertie's. "You play 5 pound points, and lay 500 pounds on theodd trick, I've heard, at your whist in the Clubs--pretty prices for ayounger son!"
"Never bet on the odd trick; spoils the game; makes you sacrificeplay to the trick. We always bet on the game," said Cecil, with gentleweariness; the sweetness of his temper was proof against his father'sattacks upon his patience.
"No matter what you bet, sir; you live as if you were a Rothschild whileyou are a beggar!"
"Wish I were a beggar: fellows always have no end in stock, they say;and your tailor can't worry you very much when all you have to thinkabout is an artistic arrangement of tatters!" murmured Bertie,whose impenetrable serenity was never to be ruffled by his father'sbitterness.
"You will soon have your wish, then," retorted the Viscount, with theunprovoked and reasonless passion which he vented on everyone, but onnone so much as the son he hated. "You are on a royal road to it. I liveout of the world, but I hear from it sir. I hear that there is not aman in the Guards--not even Lord Rockingham--who lives at the rateof imprudence you do; that there is not a man who drives such costlyhorses, keeps such costly mistresses, games to such desperation, foolsgold away with such idiocy as you do. You conduct yourself as if youwere a millionaire, sir; and what are you? A pauper on my bounty, andon your brother Montagu's after me--a pauper with a tinsel fashion,a gilded beggary, a Queen's commission to cover a sold-out poverty, adandy's reputation to stave off a defaulter's future! A pauper, sir--anda Guardsman!"
The coarse and cruel irony flushed out with wicked, scorching malignity;lashing and upbraiding the man who was the victim of his own unwisdomand extravagance.
A slight tinge of color came on his son's face as he heard; but he gaveno sign that he was moved, no sign of impatience or anger. He lifted hiscap again, not in irony, but with a grave respect in his action that wastotally contrary to his whole temperament.
"This sort of talk is very exhausting, very bad style," he said, withhis accustomed gentle murmur. "I will bid you good-morning, my lord."
And he went without another word. Crossing the length of theold-fashioned Elizabethan terrace, little Berk passed him: he motionedthe lad toward the Viscount. "Royal wants to see you, young one."
The boy nodded and went onward; and, as Bertie turned to enter the lowdoor that led out to the stables, he saw his father meet the lad--meethim with a smile that changed the whole character of his face, andpleasant, kindly words of affectionate welcome; drawing his arm aboutBerkeley's shoulder, and looking with pride upon his bright and graciousyouth.
More than an old man's preference would be thus won by the young one;a considerable portion of their mother's fortune, so left that it couldnot be dissipated, yet could be willed to which son the Viscount chose,would go to his brother by this passionate partiality; but there was nota tinge of jealousy in Cecil; whatever else his faults he had nomean ones, and the boy was dear to him, by a quite unconscious, yetunvarying, obedience to his dead mothers' wish.
"Royal hates me as game-birds hate a red dog. Why the deuce, I wonder?"he thought, with a certain slight touch of pain, despite his idlephilosophies and devil-may-care indifference. "Well--I am good fornothing, I suppose. Certainly I am not good for much, unless it's ridingand making love."
With which summary of his merits, "Beauty," who felt himself to be amaster in those two arts, but thought himself a bad fellow out ofthem, sauntered away to join the Seraph and the rest of his guests; hisfather's words pursuing him a little, despite his carelessness, for theyhad borne an unwelcome measure of truth.
"Royal can hit hard," his thoughts continued. "'A pauper and aGuardsman!' By Jove! It's true enough; but he made me so. They broughtme up as if I had a million coming to me, and turned me out among thecracks to take my running with the best of them--and they give me justabout what pays my groom's book! Then they wonder that a fellow goes tothe Jews. Where the deuce else can he go?"
And Bertie, whom his gains the day before had not much benefited, sincehis play-debts, his young brother's needs, and the Zu-Zu's insatiatelittle hands were all stretched ready to devour them without leavinga sovereign for more serious liabilities, went, for it was quite earlymorning, to act the M. F. H. in his fathers' stead at the meet on thegreat lawns before the house, for the Royallieu "lady-pack" were veryfamous in the Shires, and hunted over the same country alternate dayswith the Quorn. They moved off ere long to draw the Holt Wood, in asopen a morning and as strong a scenting wind as ever favored MeltonPink.
A whimper and "gone away!" soon echoed from Beebyside, and the pack,not letting the fox hang a second, dashed after him, making straight forScraptoft. One of the fastest things up-wind that hounds ever ran tookthem straight through the Spinnies, past Hamilton Farm, away beyondBurkby village, and down into the valley of the Wreake without a check,where he broke away, was headed, tried earths, and was pulled downscarce forty minutes from the find. The pack then drew Hungerton foxholeblank, drew Carver's spinnies without a whimper; and lastly, drawing theold familiar Billesden Coplow, had a short, quick burst with a brace ofcubs, and returning, settled themselves to a fine dog fox that was racedan hour-and-half, hunted slowly for fifty minutes, raced again anotherhour-and-quarter, sending all the field to their "second horses"; andafter a clipping chase through the cream of the grass country, nearlysaved his brush in the twilight when the scent was lost in a rushinghailstorm, but had the "little ladies" laid on again like wildfire, andwas killed with the "who-whoop!" ringing far and away over Glenn Gorse,after a glorious run--thirty miles in and out--with pace that tired thebest of them.
A better day's sport even the Quorn had never had in all its brilliantannals, and faster things the Melton men themselves had never wanted:both those who love the "quickest thing you ever knew--thirty minuteswithout a check--such a pace!" and care little whether the finale be"killed" or "broke away," and those of the old fashion, who prefer "longday, you know, steady as old time; the beauties stuck like wax throughfourteen parishes, as I live; six hours, if it were a minute; horsesdead-beat; positively walked, you know; no end of a day!" but must havethe fatal "who-whoop" as conclusion--both of these, the "new style andthe old," could not but be content with the doings of the "demoiselles"from start to finish.
Was it likely that Cecil remembered the caustic lash of his father'sironies while he was lifting Mother of Pearl over the posts and rails,and sweeping on, with the halloo ringing down the wintry wind as thegrasslands flew beneath him? Was it likely that he recollected thedifficulties that hung above him while he was dashing down the Gorsehappy as a king, with the wild hail driving in his face, and a break ofstormy sunshine just welcoming the gallant few who were landed at thedeath, as twilight fell? Was it likely that he could unlearn all thelessons of his life, and realize in how near a neighborhood he stoodto ruin when he was drinking Regency sherry out of his gold flask ashe crossed the saddle of his
second horse, or, smoking, rode slowlyhomeward; chatting with the Seraph through the leafless, muddy lanes inthe gloaming?
Scarcely; it is very easy to remember our difficulties when we areeating and drinking them, so to speak, in bad soups and worse winesin continental impecuniosity; sleeping on them as rough Australianshake-downs, or wearing them perpetually in Californian rags andtatters--it were impossible very well to escape from them then; butit is very hard to remember them when every touch and shape of life ispleasant to us--when everything about us is symbolical and redolent ofwealth and ease--when the art of enjoyment is the only one we are calledon to study, and the science of pleasure all we are asked to explore.
It is well-nigh impossible to believe yourself a beggar while you neverwant sovereigns for whist; and it would be beyond the powers of humannature to conceive your ruin irrevocable while you still eat turbotand terrapin, with a powdered giant behind your chair daily. Up in hisgarret a poor wretch knows very well what he is, and realizes in sternfact the extremities of the last sou, the last shirt, and the lasthope; but in these devil-may-care pleasures--in this pleasant, reckless,velvet-soft rush down-hill--in this club-palace, with every luxurythat the heart of man can devise and desire, yours to command at yourwill--it is hard work, then, to grasp the truth that the crossingsweeper yonder, in the dust of Pall Mall, is really not more utterly inthe toils of poverty than you are!
"Beauty" was never, in the whole course of his days, virtuallyor physically, or even metaphorically, reminded that he was not amillionaire; much less still was he ever reminded so painfully.
Life petted him, pampered him, caressed him, gifted him, though of halfhis gifts he never made use; lodged him like a prince, dined him likea king, and never recalled to him by a single privation or a singlesensation that he was not as rich a man as his brother-in-arms, theSeraph, future Duke of Lyonnesse. How could he then bring himself tounderstand, as nothing less than truth, the grim and cruel insult hisfather had flung at him in that brutally bitter phrase--"A Pauper anda Guardsman"? If he had ever been near a comprehension of it, which henever was, he must have ceased to realize it when--pressed to dine withLord Guenevere, near whose house the last fox had been killed, while agroom dashed over to Royallieu for his change of clothes--he caught aglimpse, as they passed through the hall, of the ladies taking theirpreprandial cups of tea in the library, an enchanting group of lace andsilks, of delicate hue and scented hair, of blond cheeks and brunettetresses, of dark velvets and gossamer tissue; and when he had changedthe scarlet for dinner-dress, went down among them to be the darling ofthat charmed circle, to be smiled on and coquetted with by those soft,languid aristocrats, to be challenged by the lustrous eyes of hischatelaine and chere amie, to be spoiled as women will spoil theprivileged pet of their drawing rooms whom they had made "free ofthe guild," and endowed with a flirting commission, and acquitted ofanything "serious."
He was the recognized darling and permitted property of the youngmarried beauties; the unwedded knew he was hopeless for them, andtacitly left him to the more attractive conquerors, who hardly prizedthe Seraph so much as they did Bertie, to sit in their barouches andopera boxes, ride and drive and yacht with them, conduct a Boccacciointrigue through the height of the season, and make them really believethemselves actually in love while they were at the moors or down theNile, and would have given their diamonds to get a new distraction.
Lady Guenevere was the last of these, his titled and wedded captors;and perhaps the most resistless of all of them. Neither of them believedvery much in their attachment, but both of them wore the masqueradedress to perfection. He had fallen in love with her as much as he everfell in love, which was just sufficient to amuse him, and never enoughto disturb him. He let himself be fascinated, not exerting himselfeither to resist or advance the affair till he was, perhaps, a littlemore entangled with her than it was, according to his canons, expedientto be; and they had the most enchanting--friendship.
Nobody was ever so indiscreet as to call it anything else; and my Lordwas too deeply absorbed in the Alderney beauties that stood knee-deep inthe yellow straw of his farmyard, and the triumphant conquests that hegained over his brother peers' Shorthorns and Suffolks, to trouble hishead about Cecil's attendance on his beautiful Countess.
They corresponded in Spanish; they had a thousand charming ciphers; theymade the columns of the "Times" and the "Post" play the unconscious roleof medium to appointments; they eclipsed all the pages of Calderon's orCongreve's comedies in the ingenuities with which they met, wrote, gotinvitations together to the same houses, and arranged signals for mutecommunication: but there was not the slightest occasion for it all. Itpassed the time, however, and went far to persuade them that they reallywere in love, and had a mountain of difficulties and dangers to contendwith; it added the "spice to the sauce," and gave them the "relish ofbeing forbidden." Besides, an open scandal would have been very shockingto her brilliant ladyship, and there was nothing on earth, perhaps,of which he would have had a more lively dread than a "scene"; but hispresent "friendship" was delightful, and presented no such dangers,while his fair "friend" was one of the greatest beauties and thegreatest coquettes of her time. Her smile was honor; her fan was ascepter; her face was perfect; and her heart never troubled herself orher lovers; if she had a fault, she was a trifle exacting, but that wasnot to be wondered at in one so omnipotent, and her chains, after all,were made of roses.
As she sat in the deep ruddy glow of the library fire, with the lightflickering on her white brow and her violet velvets; as she floatedto the head of her table, with opals shining among her priceless pointlaces, and some tropical flower with leaves of glistening gold crowningher bronze hair; as she glided down in a waltz along the polished floor,or bent her proud head over ecarte in a musing grace that made heropponent utterly forget to mark the king or even play his cards at all;as she talked in the low music of her voice of European imbrogli, andconsols and coupons, for she was a politician and a speculator, orlapsed into a beautifully tinted study of la femme incomprise, whentime and scene suited, when the stars were very clear above the terraceswithout, and the conservatory very solitary, and a touch of Musset orOwen Meredith chimed in well with the light and shade of the oleandersand the brown luster of her own eloquent glance--in all these how superbshe was!
And if in truth her bosom only fell with the falling of Shares, and rosewith the rising of Bonds; if her soft shadows were only taken up, likethe purple tinting under her lashes, to embellish her beauty; if in herheart of hearts she thought Musset a fool, and wondered why "Lucille"was not written in prose, in her soul far preferring "Le Follet";why--it did not matter, that I can see. All great ladies gamble instocks nowadays under the rose, and women are for the most part as cold,clear, hard, and practical as their adorers believe them the contrary;and a femme incomprise is so charming, when she avows herselfcomprehended by you, that you would never risk spoiling the confidenceby hinting a doubt of its truth. If she and Bertie only played at love;if neither believed much in the other; if each trifled with a prettygossamer soufflet of passion much as they trifled with the soufflets atdinner; if both tried it to trifle away ennui much as they tried stakinga Friedrich d'Or at Baden, this light, surface, fashionable, philosophicform of a passion they both laughed at, in its hot and serious follies,suited them admirably. Had it ever mingled a grain of bitterness in herladyship's Souchong before dinner, or given an aroma of bitterness toher lover's Naples punch in the smoking room, it would have been out ofall keeping with themselves and their world.
Nothing on earth is so pleasant as being a little in love; nothing onearth so destructive as being too much so; and as Cecil, in the idleenjoyment of the former gentle luxury, flirted with his liege lady thatnight; lying back in the softest of lounging-chairs, with his dark,dreamy, handsome eyes looking all the eloquence in the world, and hishead drooped till his mustaches were almost touching her laces, hisQueen of Beauty listened with charmed interest, and to look at him hemight have been praying a
fter the poet:
How is it under our control To love or not to love?
In real truth he was gently murmuring:
"Such a pity that you missed to-day! Hounds found directly; three of thefastest things I ever knew, one after another; you should have seen the'little ladies' head him just above the Gorse! Three hares crossed usand a fresh fox; some of the pack broke away after the new scent, butold Bluebell, your pet, held on like death, and most of them kept afterher--you had your doubts about Silver Trumpet's shoulders; they're notthe thing, perhaps, but she ran beautifully all day, and didn't show asymptom of rioting."
Cecil could, when needed, do the Musset and Meredith style of thing toperfection, but on the whole he preferred love a la mode; it is so mucheasier and less exhausting to tell your mistress of a ringing run, or aclose finish, than to turn perpetual periods on the luster of her eyes,and the eternity of your devotion.
Nor did it at all interfere with the sincerity of his worship that theZu-Zu was at the prettiest little box in the world, in the neighborhoodof Market Harborough, which he had taken for her, and had been at themeet that day in her little toy trap, with its pair of snowy ponies andits bright blue liveries that drove so desperately through his finances,and had ridden his hunter Maraschino with immense dash and spirit for ayoung lady who had never done anything but pirouette till the last sixmonths, and a total and headlong disregard of "purlers" very recklessin a white-skinned, bright-eyed, illiterate, avaricious little beauty,whose face was her fortune; and who most assuredly would have beenadored no single moment longer, had she scarred her fair, tinted cheekwith the blackthorn, or started as a heroine with a broken nose likeFielding's cherished Amelia. The Zu-Zu might rage, might sulk, mighteven swear all sorts of naughty Mabille oaths, most villainouslypronounced, at the ascendancy of her haughty, unapproachable patricianrival--she did do all these things--but Bertie would not have beenthe consummate tactician, the perfect flirt, the skilled and steeledcampaigner in the boudoirs that he was, if he had not been equal to thedelicate task of managing both the peeress and the ballet-dancer withinimitable ability; even when they placed him in the seemingly difficultdilemma of meeting them both, with twenty yards between them, on theneutral ground of the gathering to see the Pytchley or the Tailby throwoff--a task he had achieved with victorious brilliance more than oncealready this season.
"You drive a team, Beauty--never drive a team," the Seraph had said onoccasion, over a confidential "sherry-peg" in the mornings, meaningby the metaphor of a team Lady Guenevere, the Zu-Zu, and various othercontemporaries in Bertie's affections. "Nothing on earth so dangerous;your leader will bolt, or your off-wheeler will turn sulky, or youryoung one will passage and make the very deuce of a row; they'll nevergo quiet till the end, however clever your hand is on the ribbons. Now,I'll drive six-in-hand as soon as any man--drove a ten-hander last yearin the Bois--when the team comes out of the stables; but I'm hanged ifI'd risk my neck with managing even a pair of women. Have one clean outof the shafts before you trot out another!"
To which salutary advice Cecil only gave a laugh, going on his own wayswith the "team" as before, to the despair of his fidus Achates; theSeraph being a quarry so incessantly pursued by dowager-beaters,chaperone-keepers, and the whole hunt of the Matrimonial Pack, withthose clever hounds Belle and Fashion ever leading in full cry afterhim, that he dreaded the sight of a ballroom meet; and, shunning therich preserves of the Salons, ran to earth persistently in the shadyWood of St. John's, and got--at some little cost and some risk oftrapping, it is true, but still efficiently--preserved from all otherhunters or poachers by the lawless Robin Hoods aux yeux noirs of thosewelcome and familiar coverts.