The object of such an unusual convocation of guests at Gilbert's Folly, could not long remain a mystery; and indeed it was known, several days before, that it was to do honour to the nuptials of Henry Falconer with the daughter of Captain Loring. The wealth and standing of the bridegroom's father were sufficient to secure him the means of giving éclat to the ceremony, at a day when that ceremony was always one of festivity; and accordingly there appeared guests enough, and of sufficient figure, long before night, at the mansion, to convince those who took note of such circumstances, that it would be such a wedding as had never before been known in all that county.—And such indeed it proved; though not even the most imaginative could have foreseen from what unusual circumstances it was to owe its claim to be remembered.
Upon that day, while all others were laughing and smiling, a deep and moody dejection seized upon the spirits of the bridegroom's father; and although he displayed his wonted courtesy in receiving his guests, (they should be considered his, for the bride was without kinsfolk, and her father had invited none to partake of his joy, save a few villagers,) the task of continuing to trifle with them during the entire day became intolerably irksome, and perhaps the more so that his habits had for so many years accustomed him to solitude and privacy. Worn out at last, he exchanged the noisy apartments of the mansion for the shaded garden-walks; until, finally, driven from these by an increase of his melancholy and the presence of a bevy of maidens, seeking flowers to decorate their fair persons, or perhaps that of the bride, he fled from them to the more unfrequented walks in the park.
"Why should I mingle with this mockery?" he muttered to himself, "and on this unhappy spot? Let me look upon those scenes I have not beheld for twenty-four years, and see if they have yet power to move me.—There are none here to miss me; and they will feel the freer and gayer, when frightened no more by my death's-head countenance.—I would the silly Captain had spared the poplar-row: and yet I know not,—the old white-oak, where——Faugh! that should be forgotten. There is something new at least in the forest. The shrubs have become maple-trees and beeches, the old oaks and sycamores have rotted in their places, and nothing is the same save the rocks and the water.—Why should I fear, then, to revisit scenes that have changed like myself? I shall never look on them again, after this day."
He composed his countenance into its ordinary expression of severe and frowning calm, and directing his steps through the grounds, as one familiarly acquainted with their most hidden retreats, made his way towards the Run, until he had reached the path along its rocky borders, previously trodden by Catherine and his daughter. He even sat down under the sycamore, where Catherine had begun the story of the wild Gilberts, and his own early adventures; and here, as if there were something in the spot to conjure up such memories, he mused long and painfully on the same dark subjects. Perhaps, also, as he looked upon the turbulent water rushing at his feet, he pictured to himself the resemblance it bore to the course of his own life,—a current, which, although now sunk into the composure of a river just losing itself in the vast ocean, had dashed so long in a channel full of rocks and caverns.
| 'Are not thy waters sweeping, dark, and strong? Such as my feelings were, and are, thou art; And such as thou art were my passions long.' |
The current of his early life had been indeed as wild, as tortuous, as tumultuous, as that before him; and as he looked backwards upon its broken course, he saw that the freshes of passion had left as many ruins around it as now deformed the margin of the streamlet.
When he rose from his meditations, it was with a brow indicative of a deeply suffering mind; and as he strode onwards, still pursuing the course of the brook, a spectator looking at him from a concealment, might have detected on his visage the workings even of an agonized spirit, though it was observable, that, even in this solitude, where there seemed to be so little fear of observation, he still struggled to preserve an air of serenity. The roar of the waterfall fell upon his ear, and perhaps as the voice of an old acquaintance; it did not rouse him from his dream of pain, but seemed, although he essayed to approach it, to plunge him deeper in gloom; and he would perhaps have crossed the rustic bridge without being conscious of the act, had not his footsteps been suddenly arrested by a figure that started suddenly in the path, and recalled him to his senses. He looked up, and beheld a young man, in a hunting suit and leather hat, with the rifle and other equipments of a woodman, standing before him. The texture of his garments was coarse, and there was nothing in them to indicate any superiority in the wearer above the young rustics of the country; but he wore them with an air of ease, a savoir s'habiller, by no means common to the class. His figure was light and handsome, and so was his face, though the latter was miserably pale and thin, and marked with the traces of grief, and the former considerably emaciated. As he stepped into the path, he dropped the butt of his rifle upon the earth, as if for the purpose of arousing the abstracted comer by the clash; and when the Colonel looked up it was not without some alarm at opposition so unexpected.
"Fear not," said the young man, eyeing him with a mournful, yet steadfast gaze, "I design you no hurt."
"And why should you?" cried Colonel Falconer, returning his gaze, with one that seemed meant to rend him through. As he looked, however, he faltered, turned pale, and thrust his hand into his bosom, as if to grasp at a concealed pistol. The act was observed by the stranger, and he instantly repeated his words,—
"Fear nothing,—at least fear nothing from me: I desire to serve you, not injure.—Accident, or Providence, has given me the means. You are Colonel Falconer?"