Five minutes afterwards Gerald, who had exchanged his trusty cutlass for the sword he had been so flatteringly permitted to retain, found himself in the leading boat of the little return squadron, and seated at the side of his generous captor.
"I think you said," he observed, "that you had been informed the conquest of the schooner would not be an easy one. Would it be seeking too much to know who was your informant."
The American officer shook his head. "I fear I am not at liberty exactly to name—but thus much I may venture to state, that the person who has so rightly estimated your gallantry, is one not wholly unknown to you."
"This is ambiguous. One question more—were you prepared to expect the failure of the schooner's principal means of defence, her long gun?"
"If you recollect the cheer that burst from my fellows at the moment when the harmless flash was seen ascending, you will require no further elucidation on that head," replied the American evasively.
This was sufficient for Gerald. He folded his arms, sank his head upon his chest, and continued to muse deeply. Soon afterwards the boat touched the beach, where many of the citizens were assembled to hear tidings of the enterprize and congratulate the victors. Thence he was conducted to the neat little inn, which was the only accommodation the small town, or rather village of Buffalo, at that time afforded.
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
At the termination of the memorable war of the Revolution—that war, which, on the one hand, severed the ties that bound the Colonies in interest and affection with the parent land, and on the other, seemed, as by way of indemnification, to have riveted the Canadas in closer love to their adopted mother—hundreds of families who had remained staunch in their allegiance quitted the American soil, to which they had been unwillingly transferred, and hastened to close, on one side of the vast chain of waters that separated the descendants of France from the descendants of England, the evening of an existence, whose morning and noon had been passed on the other. Among the number of these was Major Grantham, who, at the close of the Revolution, had espoused a daughter (the only remaining child) of Frederick and Madeline De Haldimar, whose many vicissitudes of suffering prior to their marriage, have been fully detailed in Wacousta. When, at that period, the different garrisons on the frontier were given up to the American troops, the several British regiments crossed over into Canada, and, after a short term of service in that country, were successively relieved by fresh corps from England. One of the earliest recalled of these was the regiment of Colonel Frederick De Haldimar. Local interests, however, attaching his son-in-law to Upper Canada, the latter had, on the reduction of his corps, a provincial regiment, well known throughout the war of the Revolution, for its strength, activity, and good service finally fixed himself at Amherstburg.
In the domestic relations of life Major Grantham was exemplary, although perhaps his rigid notions of right had obtained for him more of the respect than of the love of those who came within their influence, and yet no mean portion of both. Tenderly attached to his wife, whom he had lost when Gerald was yet in his twelfth year, he had not ceased to deplore her loss; and this perhaps had contributed to nourish a reservedness of disposition, which, without at all aiming at, or purposing, such effect, insensibly tended to the production of a corresponding reserve on the part of his children, that increased with their years. Indeed, on their mother all the tenderness of their young hearts had been lavished, and, when they suddenly saw themselves deprived of her who loved and had been loved by them, with doting fondness, they felt as if a void had been left in their affections which the less tender evidences of paternal love were but insufficient wholly to supply. Still—although not to the same extent—did they love their father also; and what was wanted in intensity of feeling was more than made up by the deep, the exalted respect, they entertained for his principles and conduct. It was with pride they beheld him, not merely the deservedly idolized of the low, but the respected of the high—the example of one class, and the revered of another; one whose high position in the social circle had been attained, less by his striking exterior advantages than the inward worth that governed every action of his life, and whose moral character, as completely sans tâche as his fulfilment of the social duties was proverbially sans reproche, could not fail, in a certain degree, to reflect the respect it commanded upon themselves.
As we have before observed, however, all the fervor of their affection had been centered in their mother, and that was indeed a melancholy night in which the youths had been summoned to watch the passing away of her gentle spirit for ever from their love. Isabella De Haldimar had, from her earliest infancy, been remarkable for her quiet and contemplative character; and bred amid scenes that brought at every retrospect recollections of some acted horror, it is not surprising that the bias given by nature should have been developed and strengthened by the events that had surrounded her. Not dissimilar in disposition, as she was not unlike in form, to her mother, she was by that mother carefully endowed with those gentler attributes of goodness, which, taking root within a soil so eminently disposed to their reception, could not fail to render her in after life a model of excellence, both as a mother and a wife. Notwithstanding, however, this moulding of her pliant and well-directed mind, there was about her a melancholy, which, while it gave promise of the devoted affection of the mother, offered but little prospect of cheerfulness, in an union with one, who, reserved himself, could not be expected to temper that melancholy by the introduction of a gaiety that was not natural to him. And yet it was for this very melancholy, tender and fascinating in her, that Major Grantham had sought the hand of Isabella De Haldimar; and it was for the very austerity and reserve of his general manner, more than from the manly beauty of his tall dark person, that he too had become the object of her secret choice long before he had proposed for her.