MORNING came, and the great majority of the gentlemen rose early as Aurora. The chase is the favourite pastime of man and boy; yet some preferred plundering their host’s preserves, by which means their slumbers were not so brief and their breakfast less disturbed. The battue, however, in time, called forth its band, and then one by one, or two by two, or sometimes even three, leaning on each other’s arms and smiling in each other’s faces, the ladies dropped into the breakfast-room at Castle Dacre. There, until two o’clock, a lounging meal might always be obtained, but generally by twelve the coast was clear; for our party were a natural race of beings, and would have blushed if flaming noon had caught them napping in their easy couches. Our bright bird, May Dacre, too, rose from her bower, full of the memory of the sweetest dreams, and fresh as lilies ere they kiss the sun.
She bends before her ivory crucifix, and gazes on her blessed mother’s face, where the sweet Florentine had tinged with light a countenance
Too fair for worship, too divine for love!
And innocence has prayed for fresh support, and young devotion told her holy beads. She rises with an eye of mellowed light, and her soft cheek is tinted with the flush that comes from prayer. Guard over her, ye angels! wheresoe’er and whatsoe’er ye are! For she shall be your meet companion in an after-day. Then love your gentle friend, this sinless child of clay!
The morning passed as mornings ever pass where twenty women, for the most part pretty, are met together. Some read, some drew, some worked, all talked. Some wandered in the library, and wondered why such great books were written. One sketched a favourite hero in the picture gallery, a Dacre, who had saved the State or Church, had fought at Cressy, or flourished at Windsor: another picked a flower out of the conservatory, and painted its powdered petals. Here, a purse, half-made, promised, when finished quite, to make some hero happy. Then there was chat about the latest fashions, caps and bonnets, séduisantes, and sleeves. As the day grew’ old, some rode, some walked, some drove. A pony-chair was Lady Faulconcourt’s delight, whose arm was roundly turned and graced the whip; while, on the other hand, Lady St. Jerome rather loved to try the paces of an ambling nag, because her figure was of the sublime; and she looked not unlike an Amazonian queen, particularly when Lord Mildmay was her Theseus.
He was the most consummate, polished gentleman that ever issued from the court of France. He did his friend Dacre the justice to suppose that he was a victim to his barbarous guests; but for the rest of the galloping crew, who rode and shot all day, and in the evening fell asleep just when they were wanted, he shrugged his shoulders, and he thanked his stars! In short, Lord Mildmay was the ladies’ man; and in their morning dearth of beaux, to adopt their unanimous expression, ‘quite a host!’
Then there was archery for those who could draw a bow or point an arrow; and we are yet to learn the sight that is more dangerous for your bachelor to witness, or the ceremony which more perfectly develops all that the sex would wish us to remark, than this ‘old English’ custom.
With all these resources, all was, of course, free and easy as the air. Your appearance was your own act. If you liked, you might have remained, like a monk or nun, in your cell till dinner-time, but no later. Privacy and freedom are granted you in the morning, that you may not exhaust your powers of pleasing before night, and that you may reserve for those favoured hours all the new ideas that you have collected in the course of your morning adventures.
But where was he, the hero of our tale? Fencing? Craning? Hitting? Missing? Is he over, or is he under? Has he killed, or is he killed? for the last is but the chance of war, and pheasants have the pleasure of sometimes seeing as gay birds as themselves with plumage quite as shattered. But there is no danger of the noble countenance of the Duke of St. James bearing today any evidence of the exploits of himself or his companions. His Grace was in one of his sublime fits, and did not rise. Luigi consoled himself for the bore of this protracted attendance by diddling ............