The garrison had been surprised on the previous midnight by the sudden outbreak of the sound on the icy air of certain familiar old Christmas carols sung by a few of the soldiers, who had the memory and the voice to compass the feat, and who had been wont for a time to steal off to the woods to rehearse in secret, in order to bring to the Yule-tide, so surely coming, even to these far-away fastnesses, something of the blithe association and yet the spirit of sanctity of the old remembered Yule-tides of long distances agone both of time and place. The enthusiasm that this reminder awakened nullified all thought of the breach of discipline. The singers were summoned into the hall by the commandant, and the embers stirred up, and they drank his health and the king's as long as he dared let them have the liquor. And now, all unseen in the darkness, the waits were stationed at a little distance to mellow the sound, and were singing these old Christmas carols while the guests gathered. The rough martial voices rang out with a sort of jubilant solemnity and a strongly defined tempo giusto, very natural to men who "mark time" for their sins, and whose progress through life is to the sound of the drum.
The iterative beat pulsed through the open doors to the groups about the big Yule-tide fires and those coming in out of the dark wilderness, not daring to stir without firelock, knife, and pistol, for fear of a treacherous foe. And in the hearts and minds of the full-armed guests was roused a sentiment not new but half-forgotten, to hear in those confident, mellow, assured tones—
"God rest ye, merry gentlemen,
Let nothing ye dismay;
For Jesus Christ our Saviour
Was born upon this day."
Between each stanza when silence came unwelcome to the ear and the chatter of tongues seemed dull and trivial a bugle sang out suddenly, its golden-sweet notes vibrating and ringing in the air in the intervals of this sweet old hymning theme.
After this tribute, such as they could pay to the holier character of the day and the reminder of home, the festivity and jollity began. The introduction was auspicious and touched the sense of the picturesque of those to whom life was wont to show but a sordid aspect. The settlers were pleased with the pomp and ceremony of their reception, genuinely delighted with the effect of the carols and the summoning up of old memories and homing thoughts so tenderly stirred, satisfied with themselves and disposed to admire each other.
One would hardly have believed that there was so much finery in the settlement—of different dates and fashions, it is true, and various nationalities. The wife of one settler wore a good gown of brocade, although her husband seemed quite assured in his buckskins. Two or three heads were held the higher from a proud consciousness of periwigs[7] and powder. Mrs. Halsing had a tall, curious comb of filigree silver and great silver ear-rings, a sad-colored stuff gown, but a queer foreign apron across which were two straight bands of embroidery of a pattern and style that might have graced a museum; Odalie, the expert, determined that the day was not far distant when she should sue for the privilege of examining the stitch. She herself was clad in the primrose-flowered paduasoy, with a petticoat of dark red satin and all her Mechlin lace for a fichu, while pearls—her grand'maman's necklace—were in her dark hair. Mrs. Beedie had woven her own frock with her own sturdy hands, and with a fresh mob-cap on her head and a very fresh rose on her cheek actively danced the whole night through.
The widow of the man who had come hither to forward his passion for the ministry to the Indian savages, and who had lost his life in the fruitless effort, now probably deemed dissent a grievous folly and had returned to earlier ways of thinking and conventional standards. She wore no weeds—one could not here alter the fashion of one's dress, the immutable thing, for so transitory a matter as grief. She regarded the scene with the face of one who has little share, although she wore a puce-colored satin with some fine lace frills and a modish cap on her thin hair.
But the daughter! With a lordly carriage of her delicate head that might have been reminiscent of her grandfather, the bishop, and yet joyous girlish red lips, full and smiling and set about with deep dimples; with her hair of red-gold, and sapphire eyes, she was eminently calculated to shatter what poor remnant of peace of mind the young ensign and two young lieutenants who clustered about her had been able to keep in this desert place—the more precarious since it was well understood that the fair Belinda had high expectations, and as to matrimonial bait hoped for the opportunity to "bob for whale." This gay exile herself, born and reared in the provinces and surrounded always by the little court her beauty summoned about her, did not look forward to a life on the frontier. She anticipated at some time an invasion of England and a life worthy the brilliance of her aspect, and occasionally when her interlocutors were such as could attribute to her no braggart pride, she would mention that she had relatives there—of good quality—who would doubtless be glad to receive her. The mother, poor sad-visaged martyr of deceit, would only draw her thin wrinkled collapsed lips the closer, holding hard hidden the fact that the girl's father had been looked upon by these relatives "of good quality" as a monster of ingratitude, and at the same time as a candidate for a strait waist-coat, whose apostasy and voluntary exile had hastened the good bishop's old age and broken his heart; that the children of the ingrate would be avoided by this conventional clique, like the leprosy, and esteemed sure to develop sooner or later terrible and infinitely inconvenient heresies, and occasion heaven only knew what bouleversement in any comely and orthodox and reasonable method of life. She had not much vigor of sentiment, but such flicker of hatred as could burn among the ashes of her nature glowed toward those who had cut her husband off and ostracized him, and made of his earnest sacrificial effort to do his duty, as it was revealed to him, a scoff, a burlesque, a reproach, and a bitter caricature. She knew, too, how much of money, of dress, and of connections it would require to return to that country where they would have no base from which to organize the brave campaign that the brilliantly equipped daughter contemplated with such gay and confident courage.
The girl's brother, however, Hamilton Rush, five years her senior, forgetting that he was the grandson of a prelate and the son of a martyr by election, bent all the energies he had inherited from both in the effort to build up home and wealth and a fair future in this rich land, which held out such bounties to the strong hand and the brave heart. He was here to-night, looking on at the scene of pleasure with as absent and absorbed a face as a London stockbroker might have worn in the midst of a financial crisis.
The brilliant mirage before the shining anticipative eyes of the fair Belinda did not preclude her from entering with youthful ardor into these festivities now faute de mieux garbed in a canary-colored tabby, of which the moiré effect, as we should say nowadays, glistened and shoaled in the light and the luster of the silk. It was worn opening over a skirt of white satin with yellow stripes, enclosing in each a delicate pattern of a vine of roses in several natural tints from pink to a deep purplish red, all having that sere sort of freshness which comes from solicitous preservation rather than newness—like a pressed flower; one might imagine that garbed thus the galvanized widow had captured the affections of the bishop's son, not then perhaps so severely ascetic of outlook. But Miss Belinda danced as graciously with the ensign as if she had no splendid ulterior views, and graced the minuet which Odalie and Captain Demeré led. Hamish looking at them thought that though she was as unlike Odalie as a splendid tulip differs from the stately, tender sweetness of the aspect of a white rose, they both adorned the dance like flowers in a parterre. He resolved with a glow of fraternal pride that he would tell Odalie how beautiful she was in her primrose-tinted gown and deep red jupon with her dark hair rolled high, and its string of white pearls, her step so deliberate and smooth with its precision of grace as with uplifted clasped hands she and the officer opened the dance.