Mosses from an old manse
magnificently adorned with golden foliage, a pair of splendid scarlet
breeches, and the finest and glossiest of white silk stockings. His
head was covered with a peruke, so daintily powdered and adjusted that
it would have been sacrilege to disorder it with a hat; which,
therefore (and it was a gold-laced hat, set off with a snowy feather),
he carried beneath his arm. On the breast of his coat glistened a star.
He managed his gold-headed cane with an airy grace, peculiar to the
fine gentlemen of the period; and, to give the highest possible finish
to his equipment, he had lace ruffles at his wrist, of a most ethereal
delicacy, sufficiently avouching how idle and aristocratic must be the
hands which they half concealed.
It was a remarkable point in the accoutrement of this brilliant
personage that he held in his left hand a fantastic kind of a pipe,
with an exquisitely painted bowl and an amber mouthpiece. This he
applied to his lips as often as every five or six paces, and inhaled a
deep whiff of smoke, which, after being retained a moment in his lungs,
might be seen to eddy gracefully from his mouth and nostrils.
As may well be supposed, the street was all astir to find out the
stranger’s name.
“It is some great nobleman, beyond question,” said one of the
townspeople. “Do you see the star at his breast?”
“Nay; it is too bright to be seen,” said another. “Yes; he must needs
be a nobleman, as you say. But by what conveyance, think you, can his
lordship have voyaged or travelled hither? There has been no vessel
from the old country for a month past; and if he have arrived overland
from the southward, pray where are his attendants and equipage?”
“He needs no equipage to set off his rank,” remarked a third. “If he
came among us in rags, nobility would shine through a hole in his
elbow. I never saw such dignity of aspect. He has the old Norman blood
in his veins, I warrant him.”
“I rather take him to be a Dutchman, or one of your high Germans,” said
another citizen. “The men of those countries have always the pipe at
their mouths.”
“And so has a Turk,” answered his companion. “But, in my judgment, this
stranger hath been bred at the French court, and hath there learned
politeness and grace of manner, which none understand so well as the
nobility of France. That gait, now! A vulgar spectator might deem it
stiff—he might call it a hitch and jerk—but, to my eye, it hath an
unspeakable majesty, and must have been acquired by constant
observation of the deportment of the Grand Monarque. The stranger’s
character and office are evident enough. He is a French ambassador,
come to treat with our rulers about the cession of Canada.”
“More probably a Spaniard,” said another, “and hence his yellow
complexion; or, most likely, he is from the Havana, or from some port
on the Spanish main, and comes to make investigation about the piracies
which our government is thought to connive at. Those settlers in Peru
and Mexico have skins as yellow as the gold which they dig out of their
mines.”
“Yellow or not,” cried a lady, “he is a beautiful man!—so tall, so
slender! such a fine, noble face, with so well-shaped a nose, and all
that delicacy of expression about the mouth! And, bless me, how bright
his star is! It positively shoots out flames!”
“So do your eyes, fair lady,” said the stranger, with a bow and a
flourish of his pipe; for he was just passing at the instant. “Upon my
honor, they have quite dazzled me.”
“Was ever so original and exquisite a compliment?” murmured the lady,
in an ecstasy of delight.
Amid the general admiration excited by the stranger’s appearance, there
were only two dissenting voices. One was that of an impertinent cur,
which, after snuffing at the heels of the glistening figure, put its
tail between its legs and skulked into its master’s back yard,
vociferating an execrable howl. The other dissentient was a young
child, who squalled at the fullest stretch of his lungs, and babbled
some unintelligible nonsense about a pumpkin.
Feathertop meanwhile pursued his way along the street. Except for the
few complimentary words to the lady, and now and then a slight
inclination of the head in requital of the profound reverences of the
bystanders, he seemed wholly absorbed in his pipe. There needed no
other proof of his rank and consequence than the perfect equanimity
with which he comported himself, while the curiosity and admiration of
the town swelled almost into clamor around him. With a crowd gathering
behind his footsteps, he finally reached the mansion-house of the
worshipful Justice Gookin, entered the gate, ascended the steps of the
front door, and knocked. In the interim, before his summons was
answered, the stranger was observed to shake the ashes out of his pipe.
“What did he say in that sharp voice?” inquired one of the spectators.
“Nay, I know not,” answered his friend. “But the sun dazzles my eyes
strangely. How dim and faded his lordship looks all of a sudden! Bless
my wits, what is the matter with me?”
“The wonder is,” said the other, “that his pipe, which was out only an
instant ago, should be all alight again, and with the reddest coal I
ever saw. There is something mysterious about this stranger. What a
whiff of smoke was that! Dim and faded did you call him? Why, as he
turns about the star on his breast is all ablaze.”
“It is, indeed,” said his companion; “and it will go near to dazzle
pretty Polly Gookin, whom I see peeping at it out of the chamber
window.”
The door being now opened, Feathertop turned to the crowd, made a
stately bend of his body like a great man acknowledging the reverence
of the meaner sort, and vanished into the house. There was a mysterious
kind of a smile, if it might not better be called a grin or grimace,
upon his visage; but, of all the throng that beheld him, not an
individual appears to have possessed insight enough to detect the
illusive character of the stranger except a little child and a cur dog.
Our legend here loses somewhat of its continuity, and, passing over the
preliminary explanation between Feathertop and the merchant, goes in
quest of the pretty Polly Gookin. She was a damsel of a soft, round
figure, with light hair and blue eyes, and a fair, rosy face, which
seemed neither very shrewd nor very simple. This young lady had caught
a glimpse of the glistening stranger while standing on the threshold,
and had forthwith put on a laced cap, a string of beads, her finest
kerchief, and her stiffest damask petticoat in preparation for the
interview. Hurrying from her chamber to the parlor, she had ever since
been viewing herself in the large looking-glass and practising pretty
airs-now a smile, now a ceremonious dignity of aspect, and now a softer
smile than the former, kissing her hand likewise, tossing her head, and
managing her fan; while within the mirror an unsubstantial little maid
repeated every gesture and did all the foolish things that Polly did,
but without making her ashamed of them. In short, it was the fault of
pretty Polly’s ability rather than her will if she failed to be as
complete an artifice as the illustrious Feathertop himself; and, when
she thus tampered with her own simplicity, the witch’s phantom might
well hope to win her.
No sooner did Polly hear her father’s gouty footsteps approaching the
parlor door, accompanied with the stiff clatter of Feathertop’s
high-heeled shoes, than she seated herself bolt upright and innocently
began warbling a song.
“Polly! daughter Polly!” cried the old merchant. “Come hither, child.”
Master Gookin’s aspect, as he opened the door, was doubtful and
troubled.
“This gentleman,” continued he, presenting the stranger, “is the
Chevalier Feathertop,—nay, I beg his pardon, my Lord Feathertop,—who
hath brought me a token of remembrance from an ancient friend of mine.
Pay your duty to his lordship, child, and honor him as his quality
deserves.”
After these few words of introduction, the worshipful magistrate
immediately quitted the room. But, even in that brief moment, had the
fair Polly glanced aside at her father instead of devoting herself
wholly to the brilliant guest, she might have taken warning of some
mischief nigh at hand. The old man was nervous, fidgety, and very pale.
Purposing a smile of courtesy, he had deformed his face with a sort of
galvanic grin, which, when Feathertop’s back was turned, he exchanged
for a scowl, at the same time shaking his fist and stamping his gouty
foot—an incivility which brought its retribution along with it. The
truth appears to have been that Mother Rigby’s word of introduction,
whatever it might be, had operated far more on the rich merchant’s
fears than on his good will. Moreover, being a man of wonderfully acute
observation, he had noticed that these painted figures on the bowl of
Feathertop’s pipe were in motion. Looking more closely he became
convinced that these figures were a party of little demons, each duly
provided with horns and a tail, and dancing hand in hand, with gestures
of diabolical merriment, round the circumference of the pipe bowl. As
if to confirm his suspicions, while Master Gookin ushered his guest
along a dusky passage from his private room to the parlor, the star on
Feathertop’s breast had scintillated actual flames, and threw a
flickering gleam upon the wall, the ceiling, and the floor.
With such sinister prognostics manifesting themselves on all hands, it
is not to be marvelled at that the merchant should have felt that he
was committing his daughter to a very questionable acquaintance. He
cursed, in his secret soul, the insinuating elegance of Feathertop’s
manners, as this brilliant personage bowed, smiled, put his hand on his
heart, inhaled a long whiff from his pipe, and enriched the atmosphere
with the smoky vapor of a fragrant and visible sigh. Gladly would poor
Master Gookin have thrust his dangerous guest into the street; but
there was a constraint and terror within him. This respectable old
gentleman, we fear, at an earlier period of life, had given some pledge
or other to the evil principle, and perhaps was now to redeem it by the
sacrifice of his daughter.
It so happened that the parlor door was partly of glass, shaded by a
silken curtain, the folds of which hung a little awry. So strong was
the merchant’s interest in witnessing what was to ensue between the
fair Polly and the gallant Feathertop that, after quitting the room, he
could by no means refrain from peeping through the crevice of the
curtain.
But there was nothing very miraculous to be seen; nothing—except the
trifles previously noticed—to confirm the idea of a supernatural peril
environing the pretty Polly. The stranger it is true was evidently a
thorough and practised man of the world, systematic and self-possessed,
and therefore the sort of a person to whom a parent ought not to
confide a simple, young girl without due watchfulness for the result.
The worthy magistrate who had been conversant with all degrees and
qualities of mankind, could not but perceive every motion and gesture
of the distinguished Feathertop came in its proper place; nothing had
been left rude or native in him; a well-digested conventionalism had
incorporated itself thoroughly with his substance and transformed him
into a work of art. Perhaps it was this peculiarity that invested him
with a species of ghastliness and awe. It is the effect of anything
completely and consummately artificial, in human shape, that the person
impresses us as an unreality and as having hardly pith enough to cast a
shadow upon the floor. As regarded Feathertop, all this resulted in a
wild, extravagant, and fantastical impression, as if his life and being
were akin to the smoke that curled upward from his pipe.