The Tale of Chloe | Page 8

courage--except about death, and I'm worse
about death than I was when I was a simple body with a gawk's
"lawks!" in her round eyes and mouth for an egg. I wonder why that is?
But isn't death horrible? And skeletons!' The duchess shuddered.
'It depends upon the skeleton,' said Beau Beamish, who had joined the
conversation. 'Yours, madam, I would rather not meet, because she

would precipitate me into transports of regret for the loss of the flesh. I
have, however, met mine own and had reason for satisfaction with the
interview.'
'Your own skeleton, sir!' said the duchess wonderingly and appalled.
'Unmistakably mine. I will call you to witness by an account of him.'
Duchess Susan gaped, and, 'Oh, don't!' she cried out; but added, 'It 's
broad day, and I've got some one to sleep anigh me after dark'; with
which she smiled on Chloe, who promised her there was no matter for
alarm.
'I encountered my gentleman as I was proceeding to my room at night,'
said the beau, 'along a narrow corridor, where it was imperative that
one of us should yield the 'pas;' and, I must confess it, we are all so
amazingly alike in our bones, that I stood prepared to demand place of
him. For indubitably the fellow was an obstruction, and at the first
glance repulsive. I took him for anybody's skeleton, Death's ensign,
with his cachinnatory skull, and the numbered ribs, and the
extraordinary splay feet--in fact, the whole ungainly and shaky
hobbledehoy which man is built on, and by whose image in his weaker
moments he is haunted. I had, to be frank, been dancing on a supper
with certain of our choicest Wits and Beauties. It is a recipe for
conjuring apparitions. Now, then, thinks I, my fine fellow, I will
bounce you; and without a salutation I pressed forward. Madam, I give
you my word, he behaved to the full pitch as I myself should have done
under similar circumstances. Retiring upon an inclination of his
structure, he draws up and fetches me a bow of the exact middle nick
between dignity and service. I advance, he withdraws, and again the
bow, devoid of obsequiousness, majestically condescending. These,
thinks I, be royal manners. I could have taken him for the Sable King in
person, stripped of his mantle. On my soul, he put me to the blush.'
'And is that all?' asked the duchess, relieving herself with a sigh.
'Why, madam,' quoth the beau, 'do you not see that he could have been
none other than mine own, who could comport himself with that grand

air and gracefulness when wounded by his closest relative? Upon his
opening my door for me, and accepting the 'pas,' which I now right
heartily accorded him, I recognized at once both him and the reproof he
had designedly dealt me--or the wine supper I had danced on, perhaps I
should say' and I protest that by such a display of supreme good
breeding he managed to convey the highest compliment ever received
by man, namely the assurance, that after the withering away of this
mortal garb, I shall still be noted for urbanity and elegancy. Nay, and
more, immortally, without the slip I was guilty of when I carried the
bag of wine.'
Duchess Susan fanned herself to assist her digestion of the anecdote.
'Well, it's not so frightful a story, and I know you are the great Mr.
Beamish;' she said.
He questioned her whether the gentleman had signalled him to her on
the hill.
'What can he mean about a gentleman?' she turned to Chloe. 'My duke
told me you would meet me, sir. And you are to protect me. And if
anything happens, it is to be your fault.'
'Entirely,' said the beau. 'I shall therefore maintain a vigilant guard.'
'Except leaving me free. Oof! I've been boxed up so long. I declare,
Chloe, I feel like a best dress out for a holiday, and a bit afraid of
spoiling. I'm a real child, more than I was when my duke married me. I
seemed to go in and grow up again, after I was raised to fortune. And
nobody to tell of it! Fancy that! For you can't talk to old gentlemen
about what's going on in your heart.'
'How of young gentlemen?' she was asked by the beau.
And she replied, 'They find it out.'
'Not if you do not assist them,' said he.

Duchess Susan let her eyelids and her underlie half drop, as she looked
at him with the simple shyness of one of nature's thoughts in her head
at peep on the pastures of the world. The melting blue eyes and the
cherry lip made an exceedingly quickening picture. 'Now, I wonder if
that is true?'