Few situations in life are less enviable than that of the isolated prisoner of war. Far from the home of his affections, and compelled by the absence of all other companionship, to mix with those who, in manners, feelings, and national characteristics, form, as it were, a race apart from himself, his recollections, already sufficiently embittered by the depressing sense of captivity, are hourly awakened by some rude contrast wounding to his sensibilities, and even though no source of graver irritation should exist, a thousand petty annoyances, incident to the position, are magnified by chagrin from mole-hills into mountains. Such, however, would be the effect produced on one only, who, thrown by the accident of war into the situation of a captive, should have no grief more profound, no sorrow deeper seated than what arose from the being severed from old, and associated with new and undesired ties; one to whom life was full of the fairest buds of promise, and whose impatience of the present was only a burning desire to enter upon the future. Not so with Gerald Grantham. Time, place, circumstance, condition, were alike the same—alike indifferent to him. In the recollections of the scenes he had so lately quitted, and in which his fairer and unruffled boyhood had been passed, he took no pleasure, while the future was so enshrouded in gloom that he shrank from its very contemplation. So far from trying to wring consolation from circumstances, his object was to stupify recollection to the uttermost. He would fain have shut out both the past and the future, contenting himself as he might with the present, but the thing was impossible. The worm had eaten into his heart, and its gnawings were too painful, not poignantly to remind him of the manner in which it had been engendered.
Upwards of a fortnight had elapsed since his arrival, and yet, although Captain Jackson, prior to his return to Sandusky, had personally introduced him to many highly respectable families in Frankfort, he uniformly abstained from cultivating their acquaintance, until at length he was, naturally enough, pronounced to be a most disagreeable specimen of a British officer. Even with the inmates of the hotel, many of whom were officers of his own age, and with whom he constantly sat down to the ordinary, he avoided every thing approaching to intimacy—satisfying himself merely with discharging his share of the commonest courtesies of life. They thought it pride—it was but an effect—an irremediable effect of the utter sinking of his sad and broken spirit. The only distraction in which he eventually took pleasure, or sought to indulge, was rambling through the wild passes of the chain of wooded hills, which almost encircles the Kentuckian capital, and extends for a considerable distance in a westerly direction. The dense gloom of these narrow vallies he had remarked on his entrance by the same route, and feeling them more in unison with his sick mind than the hum and bustle of a city, which offered nothing in common with his sympathies, he now frequently passed a great portion of the day in threading their mazes—returning however, at a certain hour to his hotel, conformably with the terms of his parole.
On one occasion, tempted by the mellow beauty of the season (it was now the beginning of October) he had strayed so far, and through passes so unknown to him, that when the fast advancing evening warned him of the necessity of returning, he found he had utterly lost his way. Abstracted as he usually was, he had yet reflection enough to understand that his parole of honor required he should be at his hotel at an hour, which it would put his speed to the proof to accomplish. Despairing of finding his way by the circuitous route he had originally taken, and the proper clue to which he had moreover lost, he determined, familiar as he was with the general bearings of the capital, to effect his return in a direct line across the chain of hills already alluded to. The deepening shadows of the wild scene, as he proposed to ascend that immediately before him, told that the sun had sunk beneath the horizon, and when he gained its summit, the last faint corruscations of light were passing rapidly away in the west. Still, by the indistinct twilight he could perceive that at his feet lay a small valley, completely hemmed in by the circular ridge on which he stood. This traversed, it was but to ascend the opposite section of the ridge, and his destination would be gained. Unlike the narrow rocky passes, which divided the hills in every other direction, in which he had previously wandered, this valley was covered with a luxuriant verdure, and upon this the feet of Gerald moved inaudibly even to himself. As he advanced more into the centre of the little plain, he thought he could perceive, at its extremity on the right, the dark outline of a building—apparently a dwelling house—and while he yet hesitated, whether he should approach it and inquire his most direct way to the town, a light suddenly appeared at that point of the valley for which he was already making. A few minutes sufficed to bring him to the spot whence the light had issued. It was a small circular building, possibly intended for a summer-house, but more resembling a temple in its construction, and so closely bordering upon the forest ridge, by a portion of the foliage by which it had previously been concealed, as to be almost confounded with it. It was furnished with a single window, the same through which the light now issued, and this narrow, elongated, and studded with iron bars, was so placed as to prevent one even taller than our hero from gazing into the interior, without the aid of some elevation. But Gerald, independently of his anxiety to reach the town in time to prevent comment upon his absence, had no desire to occupy himself with subjects foreign to his object. Curiosity was a feeling dead within his bosom, and he was preparing, without once staying his course, to ascend the ridge at the side of the temple, when he fancied he heard a suppressed groan, as of one suffering from intense agony—Not the groan, but the peculiar tone in which it was uttered, arrested his attention, and excited a vague yet stirring interest in his breast. On approaching closer to the temple, he found that at its immediate basement the earth had been thrown up into a sort of mound, which so elevated the footing as to admit of his reaching the bars of the window with his hands. Active as we have elsewhere shown him to be, he was not long in obtaining a full view of the interior, when a scene met his eye which rivetted him, as well it might, in utter astonishment. Upon the rude uncarpeted floor knelt a female, who, with clasped and uplifted hands, had her eyes fixed upon a portrait that hung suspended from the opposite wall—her figure, clad in a loose robe of black, developing by its attitude a contour of such rich and symmetrical proportion as might be difficult for the imagination to embody. And who was the being upon whom his each excited sense now lingered with an admiration little short of idolatry? One whom, a moment before, he believed to be still far distant, whom he had only a few months previously fled from, as from a pestilence, and whom he had solemnly sworn never to behold again, yet whom he continued to love with a passion that defied every effort of his judgment to subdue, making his life a wilderness—Matilda Montgomerie—And if her beauty had THEN had such surpassing influence over his soul, what was not its effect when he beheld her NOW, every grace of womanhood exhibited in a manner to excite admiration the most intense!
It would he vain to describe all that passed through the mind of Gerald Grantham, while he thus gazed upon her whose beauty was the rock on which his happiness had been wrecked. His first impulse had been to fly, but the fascination which rivetted him to the window deprived him of all power until eventually, of all the host of feelings that had crowded tumultuously upon his heart, passion alone remained triumphant. Unable longer to control his impatience, he was on the point of quitting his station, for the purpose of knocking and obtaining admission by a door which he saw opposite to him, when a sudden change in the attitude of Matilda arrested the movement.
She had risen, and with her long and dark hair floating over her white shoulders, now advanced towards the portrait, on which her gaze had hitherto been so repeatedly turned. This was so placed that Gerald had not previously an opportunity of remarking more than the indistinct outline, which proved it to represent a human figure; but as she for a moment raised the light with one hand, while with the other she covered it with a veil which had been drawn aside, he distinctly saw that it was the portrait of an officer dressed in the American uniform; and it even occurred to him that he had before seen the face, although, in his then excited state he could not recollect where. Even had he been inclined to tax his memory, the effort would have been impracticable, for another direction was now given to his interest.
On the left, and close under the window, stood a rude sofa and ruder table, the only pieces of furniture which Gerald could observe within the temple. Upon the former Matilda now reclined herself, and placing the candle upon the table at her side, proceeded to unfold and peruse a letter which she had previously taken from her pocket book. The same unconsciousness of observation inducing the same unstudiedness of action, the whole disposition of the form bore a character of voluptuousness, which the presumed isolation of her who thus exhibited herself, a model of living grace, alone could justify. But although the form was full of the eloquence of passion, one had but to turn to the pale and severe face, to find there was no corresponding expression in the heart. As heretofore, the brow of the American wore a cast of thought—only deeper, more decided—and even while her dark eyes flashed fire, as if in disappointment and anger at sundry passages in the letter over which she lingered, not once did the slightest color tinge her cheek, or the gloom dissipate itself from that cold brow. Emotion she felt, for this her heaving bosom and occasionally compressed lip betokened. Yet never was contrast more marked than that between the person and the face of Matilda Montgomerie, as Gerald Grantham then beheld her.
On one who had seen her thus for the first time, the cold, calm countenance of the singular girl, would have acted as a chastener to the emotions called up by the glowing expression of her faultless form, but although there was now a character of severity on her features, which must have checked and chilled the ardent admiration produced by that form on a mere stranger, Gerald but too well remembered occasions when the harmony of both had been complete, and when the countenance, rich in all those fascinations, which, even in her hours of utmost collectedness, never ceased to attach to the person, had beamed upon him in a manner to stir his very soul into madness. There were other and later recollections too, that forced themselves upon his memory; but these, even though they recalled scenes in which the voluptuous beauty of Matilda shone paramount, were as blots upon the fair picture of the past, and he fain would have banished them from his mind for ever.
The letter on which the American was now engaged, Grantham had recognized, from its fold and seal, to be one he had written prior to parting with her, as he had supposed, for ever. While he was yet dwelling on this singularity, Matilda threw the letter upon the table at her side, and leaning her head upon her hand, seemed as if musing deeply upon its contents. The contraction of her brow became deeper, and there was a convulsed pressure of her lips as of one forming some determination, requiring at once strong moral and physical energy to accomplish. A cold shudder crept through the reins of Gerald, for too well did he fancy he could divine what was passing in the soul of that strange yet fascinating woman. For a moment a feeling of almost loathing came over his heart, but when, in the next moment, he saw her rise from the sofa, revealing the most inimitable grace, he burned with impatience to throw himself reckless of consequences at her feet, and to confess his idolatry.
After pacing to and fro for some moments, her dark and kindling eye alone betraying the excitement which her colorless cheek denied, Matilda again took up the light, and having once more approached the portrait, was in the act of raising the veil, when a slight noise made by Gerald, who in his anxiety to obtain a better view of her, had made a change in his position, arrested her ear; and she turned and fixed her eye upon the window, not with the disturbed manner of a person who fears observation, but with the threatening air of one who would punish an intrusion.
Holding the light above her head, she advanced firmly across the room, and stopping beneath the window, fixed her eye steadily and unshrinkingly upon it. The mind of Gerald had become a chaos of conflicting and opposing feelings. Only an instant before and he would have coveted recognition, now his anxiety was to avoid it; but cramped in his attitude, and clinging as he was compelled, with his face close to the bars, his only means of doing so was by quitting his position altogether. He therefore loosened his hold, and dropped himself on the mound of earth from which he had contrived to ascend, but not so noiselessly, in the unbroken stillness of the night, as to escape the keen ear of the American. In the next moment Gerald heard a door open, and a well known voice demand, in tones which betrayed neither alarm nor indecision.
"Who is there?"
The question was repeated in echo from the surrounding woods, and then died away in distance.
"Who of my people," again demanded Matilda, "has dared to follow me here in defiance of my orders?"
Another echo of indistinct sounds, and all again was still.
"Whoever you are, speak," resumed the courageous girl. "Nay," she pursued more decidedly, as having moved a pace or two from the door, she observed a human form standing motionless beneath the window. "Think not to escape me. Come hither slave that I may know you. This curiosity shall cost you dear."
The blood of Gerald insensibly chilled at the harsh tone in which these words were uttered, and had he followed a first impulse he would at once have retired from the influence of a command, which under all the circumstances, occurred to him as being of prophetic import. But he had gazed on the witching beauty of the syren, until judgment and reason had yielded the rein to passion, and filled with an ungovernable desire to behold and touch that form once more—even although he should the next moment tear himself from it for ever—he approached and stood at the entrance of the temple, the threshold of which Matilda had again ascended.
No exclamation of surprise escaped the lips of the ever- collected American; and yet, for the first time that night, her cheek was suffused with a deep glow, the effect of which was to give to her whole style of beauty a character of radiancy.
"Gerald Grantham!"
"Yes, Matilda," exclaimed the youth, madly heedless of the past, while he rivetted his gaze upon her dazzling loveliness with such strong excitement of expression as to cause her own to sink beneath it, "your own Gerald— your slave kneels before you," and he threw himself at her feet.
"And what punishment does not that slave merit?" she asked, in a tone so different from that in which she had addressed her supposed domestic, that Gerald could scarcely believe it to be the same. "What reparation can he make for having caused so much misery to one who loved and cherished him so well. Oh! Gerald, what days, what nights of misery, have I not passed since you so unkindly left me." As she uttered the last sentence, she bent herself over the still kneeling form of her lover, while her long dark hair, falling forward, completely enveloped him in its luxuriant and waving folds.
"You will be mine, Matilda," at length murmured the youth, as he sat at her side on the sofa, to which on rising he had conducted her.
"Yours, only yours," returned the American, while she bent her face upon his shoulder. "But you know the terms of our union."
Had a viper stung him, Gerald could not have recoiled with more dismay and horror from her embrace. Again the features of Matilda became colorless, and her brow assumed an expression of care and severity.
"Then, if not to fulfil that compact, wherefore are you here?" and the question was put half querulously, half contemptuously.
"Chance, Destiny, Fate,—call it what you will," cried Gerald, obeying the stronger impulse of his feelings, and clasping her once more to his beating heart. "Oh! Matilda, if you knew how the idea of that fearful condition has haunted me in my thoughts by day, and my dreams by night, you would only wonder that at this moment I retain my senses, filled as my soul is with maddening—with inextinguishable love for you."
"And do you really entertain for me that deep, that excessive passion you have just expressed," at length observed Matilda, after some moments of silence, and with renewed tenderness of voice and manner, "and yet refuse the means by which you may secure me to you for ever?"
"Matilda," said Gerald, with vehemence, "my passion for you is one which no effort of my reason can control; but let me not deceive you—it is NOW one of the senses."
An expression of triumph, not wholly unmingled with scorn, animated the features of Matilda. It was succeeded by one of ineffable tenderness.
"We will talk of this no more tonight, Gerald, but tomorrow evening, at the same hour, be here: then our mutual hopes, and fears, and doubts shall be then realized or disappointed, as the event may show. Tomorrow will determine if, as I cannot but believe, Destiny has sent you to me at this important hour. It is very singular," she added, as if to herself, her features again becoming deadly pale—"very singular, indeed!"
"What is singular, Matilda?" asked Gerald.
"You shall know all tomorrow," she replied; "but mind," and her dark eye rested on his with an expression of much tenderness, "that you come prepared to yield me all I ask."
Gerald promised that he would, and Matilda, expressing a desire to hear what had so unexpectedly restored him to her presence, he entered into a detail of all that had befallen him from the moment of their separation. She appeared to be much touched by the relation, and, in return, gave him a history of what she too had felt and suffered. She, moreover, informed him that Major Montgomerie had died of his wound shortly after their parting, and that she had now been nearly two months returned to her uncle's estate at Frankfort, where she lived wholly secluded from society, and with a domestic establishment consisting of slaves. These short explanations having been entered into, they parted—Matilda to enter her dwelling, (the same Gerald had remarked in outline,) in which numerous lights were now visible, and her lover to make the best of his way to the town.
Morning dawned, and yet no sleep had visited the eyes of Gerald Grantham. The image of Matilda floated in his mind, and, to the recollection of her beauty, he clung with an aching eagerness of delight that attested the extent of its influence over his imagination. Had there been nothing to tarnish that glorious picture of womanly perfection, the feelings it called up would have been too exquisite for endurance; but alas! with the faultless image, came also recollections, against which it required all the force of that beauty to maintain itself. One ineffaceable spot was upon the soul of that fascinating being; and though, like the spots on the sun's disk, it was hidden in the effulgence which surrounded it, still he could not conceal from himself that it DID exist, to deface the symmetry of the whole. It was his knowledge of that fearful blemish that had driven him to seek in drunkenness, and subsequently in death, a release from the agonizing tortures of his mind. Virtue and a high sense of honor had triumphed so far, as not merely to leave his own soul spotless, but to enable him to fly from her who would have polluted it with crime; yet, although respect and love—the pure sentiments by which he had originally been influenced—had passed away, the hour of their departure had been that of the increased domination of passion, and far from her whose beauty was ever present to his mind, his imagination had drawn and lingered on such pictures, that assured as he was they could never be realized, he finally resolved to court death wherever it might present itself.
Restored thus unexpectedly to the presence of her who had been the unceasing subject of his thoughts, and under circumstances so well calculated to inflame his imagination, it cannot appear wonderful that Gerald should have looked forward to his approaching interview with emotions of the intensest kind. How fated, too, seemed the reunion. He had quitted Matilda with the firm determination never to behold her more, yet, by the very act of courting that death which would fully have accomplished his purpose, he had placed himself in the position he most wished to avoid. Presuming that Major Montgomerie, who had never alluded to Frankfort as his home, was still with his niece a resident in the distant State in which he had left them—he had gladly heard Colonel Forrester name the Kentucky capital as the place of his destination; for, deep and maddening as was his passion for Matilda, no earthly considerations could have induced him voluntarily to have sought her. Even since his arrival in Frankfort, it had been a source of consolation to him to feel that he was far removed from her who could have made him forget that, although the heart may wither and die, while self-esteem and an approving conscience remain to us, the soul shares not in the same decay—confesses not the same sting. Could he even have divined that in the temple to which his curiosity had led him, he should have beheld the being on whose image he doted, even while he shunned it, he would have avoided her as a pestilence.
The result of this terrible struggle of his feelings was a determination to see her once more—to yield up his whole soul to the intoxication of her presence, and then, provided she should still refuse to unite her fate to his, unhampered by the terrible condition of past days, to tear himself from her for ever.
Strong in this resolution, Gerald, to whom the hours bad appeared as days since his rising, and who quitted Frankfort about his usual time, and, in order to avoid observation, took the same retired and circuitous route by which he had reached the valley the preceding evening. As he descended into the plain, the light from the window of the temple was again perceptible—In a few minutes he was in the room.
"Gerald—my own Gerald," exclaimed Matilda, as carefully closing the door after her lover, she threw herself into his embrace. Alas, weak man! Like the baseless fabric of a dream, disappeared all the lately formed resolutions of the youth.
"Yes! Matilda, your own Gerald. Come what will henceforth,I am yours."
A pause of some moments ensued, during which each felt the beating of the other's heart.
"Will you swear it, Gerald?" at length whispered Matilda.
"I will—I do swear it."
There was a sudden kindling of the dark eye of the American, and an outswelling of the full bust, that seemed to betoken exultation in the power of her beauty; but this was quickly repressed, and sinking on the sofa at the side of her lover, her whole countenance was radiant with the extraordinary expression Gerald had, for the first time, witnessed while she lingered on the arm of his uncle, Colonel D'Egville.
"Gerald," she said tenderly, "confirm the oath which is to unite us heart and soul, in one eternal Destiny. Swear upon this sacred volume, that your hand shall avenge the wrongs of your Matilda—of your wife. Ha! your wife, think of that," she added with sudden energy.
Gerald caught the book eagerly to his lips. "I swear it,Matilda—he shall die."
But scarcely had he sworn, when a creeping chill passed through his frame. His features lost all their animation, and throwing away the book on which the impious oath had been taken, he turned away his face from Matilda, and sinking his head upon his chest, groaned and wept bitterly.
"What! already Gerald, do you repent? Nay, tell me not that one thus infirm of purpose, can be strong of passion. You love me not, else would the wrongs of her you love arm you with the fiercest spirit of vengeance against him who has so deeply injured her. But, if you repent, it is but to absolve you from your oath, and then the deed must be my own."
The American spoke in tones in which reproach, expostulation, and wounded affection, were artfully and touchingly blended, and as she concluded, she too dropped her head upon her chest and sighed.
"Nay, Matilda, you do me wrong. It is one thing to swerve from the guilty purpose to which your too seductive beauty has won my soul, another to mourn as man should mourn, the hour when virtue, honor, religion, all the nobler principles in which my youth has been nurtured, have proved too weak to stem the tide of guilty passion. You say I love you not!" and he laughed bitterly. "What greater proof would you require than the oath I have just taken?"
"It's fulfilment," said Matilda, impressively.
"It shall be fulfilled," he returned quickly, "but at least deny me not the privilege of cursing the hour when crime of so atrocious a dye could be made so familiar to my soul."
"Crime is a word too indiscriminately bestowed," said Matilda, after a momentary pause. "What the weak in mind class with crime, the strong term virtue."
"Virtue! what, to spill the blood of a man who has never injured me; to become a hired assassin, the price of whose guilt is the hand of her who instigates to the deed? If this be virtue, I am indeed virtuous."
"Never injured you!" returned the American, while she bent her dark eyes reproachfully upon those of the unhappy Gerald. "Has he not injured ME; injured beyond all power of reparation, her who is to be the partner of your life?"
"Nay, Matilda," and Gerald again passionately caught and enfolded her to his heart, "that image alone were sufficient to mould me to your will, even although I had not before resolved. And yet," he pursued, after a, short pause, "how base, how terrible to slay an unsuspecting enemy. Would we could meet in single combat—and why not? Yes it can—it shall be so. Fool that I was not to think, of it before. Matilda, my own love, rejoice with me, for there is a means by which your honor may be avenged, and my own soul unstained by guilt. I wilt seek this man, and fasten a quarrel upon him. What say you, Matilda— speak to me, tell me that you consent." Gerald gasped with agony.
"Never, Gerald," she returned, with startling impressiveness, while the color, which during the warm embrace of her lover had returned to it once more, fled from her cheek. "To challenge him would be but to ensure your own doom, for few in the army of the United States equal him in the use of the pistol or the small sword; and, even were it otherwise," she concluded, her eye kindling into a fierce expression, "were he the veriest novice in the exercise of both, my vengeance would be incomplete, did he not go down to his grave with all his sins on his head. No, no, Gerald, in the fulness of the pride of existence must he perish. He must not dream of death until he feels the blow that is aimed at his heart."
The agitation of Matilda was profound beyond any thing she had ever yet exhibited. Her words were uttered in tones that betrayed a fixed and unbroken purpose of the soul, and when she had finished, she threw her face upon the bosom of her lover, and ground her teeth together with a force that showed the effect produced upon her imagination, by the very picture of the death she had drawn.
A pause of some moments ensued. Gerald was visibly disconcerted, and the arm which encircled the waist of the revengeful woman dropped, as if in disappointment, at his side.
"How strange and inconsistent are the prejudices of man," resumed Matilda, half mournfully, half in sarcasm; "here is a warrior—a spiller of human life by profession; his sword has been often dyed in the heart blood of his fellow man, and set he shudders at the thought of adding one murder more to the many already committed. What child-like weakness!"
"Murder! Matilda; call you it murder to overcome the enemies of one's country in fair and honorable combat, and in the field of glory?"
"Call YOU it what you will—disguise it under whatever cloak you may—it is no less murder. Nay, the worst of murders, for you but do the duty of the hireling slayer. In cold blood, and for a stipend, do you put an end to the fair existence of him who never injured you in thought or deed, and whom, under other circumstances, you would perhaps have taken to your heart in friendship."
"This is true, but the difference of the motive, Matilda? The one approved of heaven and of man, the other alike condemned of both."
"Approved of man, if you will; but that they have the sanction of heaven, I deny. Worldly policy and social interests alone have drawn the distinction, making the one a crime, the other a virtue; but tell me not that an all wise and just God sanctions or approves the slaying of his creatures because they perish, not singly at the will of one men, but in thousands and tens of thousands at the will of another. What is there more sacred in the brawls of Kings and Potentates, that the blood they cause to be shed in torrents for some paltry breach of etiquette, should sit more lightly on their souls than the few solitary drops, spilt by the hand of revenge, on that of him whose existence is writhing under a sense of acutest injury?"
The energy with which she expressed herself, communicated a corresponding excitement to the whole manner and person of Matilda. Her eye sparkled and dilated, and the visible heaving of her bosom told how strongly her own feelings entered into the principles she had advocated. Never did her personal beauty shine forth more triumphantly or seducingly than at the moment when her lips were giving utterance to sentiments from which the heart recoiled.
"Oh Matilda," sighed Gerald, "with what subtlety of argument do you seek to familiarize my soul with crime. But the attempt is vain. Although my hand is pledged to do your will, my heart must ever mourn its guilt."
"Foolish Gerald," said Matilda; "why should that seem guilt to you, a man, which to me, a woman, is but justice; but that unlike me you have never entered into the calm consideration of the subject. Yes," she pursued with greater energy, "what you call subtlety of argument is but force of conviction. For two long years have I dwelt upon the deed, reasoning, and comparing, until at length each latent prejudice has been expelled, and to avenge my harrowing wrongs appeared a duty as distinctly marked as any one contained in the decalogue. You saw me once, Gerald, when my hand shrank not from what you term the assassin's blow, and had you not interfered then, the deed would not now remain to be accomplished."
"Oh, why did I interfere? why did my evil Genius conduct me to such a scene. Then had I lived at least in ignorance of the fearful act."
"Nay, Gerald, let it rather be matter of exultation with you that you did. Prejudiced as you are, this hand (and she extended an arm so exquisitely formed that one would scarce even have submitted it to the winds of Heaven) might not seem half so fair, had it once been dyed in human blood. Besides who so proper to avenge a woman's wrongs upon her destroyer, as the lover and the husband to whom she has plighted her faith for ever? No, no, it is much better as it is; and fate seems to have decreed that it should be so, else why the interruption by yourself on that memorable occasion, and why, after all your pains to avoid me, this our final union, at a moment when the wretch is about to return to his native home, inflated with pride and little dreaming of the fate that awaits him—Surely, Gerald, you will admit there is something more than mere chance in this?"
"About to return," repeated Grantham shuddering. "When,Matilda?"
"Within a week at the latest—perhaps within three days. Some unimportant advantage which he has gained on the frontier, has been magnified by his generous fellow citizens into a deed of heroism, and, from information conveyed to me, by a trusty and confidential servant, I find he has obtained leave of absence, to attend a public entertainment to be given in Frankfort, on which occasion a magnificent sword, is to be presented to him. Never, Gerald," continued Matilda her voice dropping into a whisper, while a ghastly smile passed over and convulsed her lips, "never shall he live to draw that sword. The night of his triumph is that which I have fixed for mine."
"An unimportant advantage upon the frontier," asked Gerald eagerly and breathlessly. "To what frontier, Matilda, do you allude?"
"The Niagara," was the reply.
"Are you quite sure of this?"
"So sure that I have long known he was there," returnedMatilda.
Gerald breathed more freely—but again he questioned:
"Matilda, when first I saw you last night, you were gazing intently upon yon portrait, (he pointed to that part of the temple where the picture hung suspended.) and it struck me that I had an indistinct recollection of the features."
"Nothing more probable," returned the American, answering his searching look with one of equal firmness. You cannot altogether have forgotten Major Montgomerie."
"Nay, the face struck me not as his. May I look at it?"
"Assuredly. Satisfy yourself."
Gerald quitted the sofa, took up the light, and traversing the room raised the gauze curtain that covered the painting. It was indeed the portrait of the deceased Major, habited in full uniform.
"How strange," he mused, "that so vague an impression should have been conveyed to my mind last night, when now I recal without difficulty those well remembered features." Gerald sighed as he recollected under what different circumstances he had first beheld that face, and dropping the curtain once more, crossed the room and flung himself at the side of Matilda.
"For whom did you take it, if not for Major Montgomerie?" asked the American after a pause, and again her full dark eye was bent on his.
"Nay I scarcely know myself, yet I had thought it had been the portrait of him I have sworn to destroy."
There was a sudden change of expression in the countenance of Matilda, but it speedily passed away, and she said with a faint smile.
"Whether is it more natural to find pleasure in gazing on the features of those who have loved, or those who have injured us!"
"Then whose was the miniature on which you so intently gazed, on that eventful night at Detroit?" asked Gerald.
"That," said Matilda quickly, and paling as she spoke— "that was HIS—I gazed on it only the more strongly to detest the original—to confirm the determination I had formed to destroy him."
"If THEN," returned the youth, "why not NOW—may I not see that portrait Matilda? May I not acquire some knowledge of the unhappy man whose blood will so shortly stain my soul?"
"Impossible," she replied. "The miniature I have since destroyed. While I thought the original within reach of my revenge, I could bear to gaze upon it, but no sooner had I been disappointed in my aim, than it became loathsome to me as the sight of some venemous reptile, and I destroyed it." This was said with undisguised bitterness.
Gerald sighed deeply. Again he encircled the waist of his companion, and one of her fair, soft, velvet hands was pressed in his.
"Matilda," he observed, "deep indeed must be the wrong that could prompt the heart of woman to so terrible a hatred. When we last parted you gave me but an indistinct and general outline of the injury you had sustained. Tell me now all—tell me every thing," he continued with energy, "that can infuse a portion of the hatred which fills your soul into mine, that my hand may be firmer— my heart more hardened to the deed.
"The story of my wrongs must be told in a few words, for I cannot bear to linger on them," commenced the American, again turning deadly pale, while her quivering lips and trembling voice betrayed the excitement of her feelings. The monster was the choice of my heart—judge how much so when I tell you that, confiding in HIS honor, and in the assurance that our union would take place immediately, surrendered to him MINE. A constant visitor at Major Montgomerie's, whose brother officer he was, we had ample opportunities of being together. We were looked upon in society as affianced lovers, and in fact it was the warmest wish of Major Montgomerie that we should be united. A day had even been fixed for the purpose, and it wanted, but eight and forty hours of the time, when an occurrence took place which blasted all prospect of our union for ever.
"I have already told you, I think," resumed Matilda, "that this little temple had been exclusively erected for my own use. Here however my false lover had constant ingress, and being furnished with a key, was in the habit of introducing himself at hours when, having taken leave of the family for the evening, he was supposed by Major Montgomerie and the servants to have retired to his own home. On the occasion to which I have just alluded, I had understood from him some business, connected with our approaching marriage, would detain him in the town to an hour too advanced to admit of his paying me his usual visit. Judge my surprise, and indeed my consternation, when at a late hour of the night I heard the lock of the door (from which I had removed my own key) turn, and my lover appear at the entrance."
There was a short pause, and Matilda again proceeded.
"Scarcely had he shown himself when he had again vanished, closing the door with startling violence. I sprang from the sofa and flew forth after him, but in vain. He had already departed, and with a heart sinking under an insurmountable dread of coming evil, I once more entered the temple, and throwing myself upon the sofa, gave vent to my feelings in an agony of tears."
"But why his departure, and whence your consternation?" asked Gerald, whose curiosity had been deeply excited.
"I was not alone," resumed Matilda, in a deep and solemn voice. "When he entered I was hanging on the neck of another."
Gerald gave a half start of dismay, his arm dropped from the waist of the American, and he breathed heavily and quickly.
Matilda remarked the movement, and a sickly and half scornful smile passed over her pale features. "Before we last parted, Gerald, I told you, not only that I was in no way connected with Major Montgomerie by blood, but that I was the child of obscure parents."
"What then?"
"The man on whose neck I hung was my own father."
"It was Desborough!" said the youth, with an air and in a voice of extreme anguish.
"It was," returned Matilda, her face crimsoning as she reluctantly acknowledged the parentage. "But how knew you it?"
"Behold the proof," exclaimed Gerald, with uncontrollable bitterness, as he drew from his bosom the portrait of a child which, from its striking resemblance, could be taken for no other than her to whom he now presented it.
"This is indeed mine," said Matilda, mournfully. "It was taken for me, as I have since understood, in the very year when I was laid an orphan and a stranger at the door of that good man, who calling himself my uncle, has been to me through life a more than father. Thank God," she pursued with greater animation, her large dark eyes upturned, and sparkling through the tears that forced themselves upwards, "thank, God he at least lives not to suffer through the acts of his adopted child. Where got you this, Gerald?" she proceeded, when after a short struggle she had succeeded in overcoming her emotion.
Gerald, who in his narrative of events, had purposely omitted all mention of Desborough, now detailed the occurrence at the hut, and concluded what the reader already knows, by stating that he had observed and severed from the settler, as he slept heavily on the floor, the portrait in question, which, added to the previous declaration of Matilda as to the obscurity of her birth, connected with other circumstances on board his gun boat, on his trip to Buffalo, had left an impression little short of certainty that he was indeed the father of the woman whom he so wildly loved.
For some minutes after this explanation there was a painful silence, which neither seemed anxious to interrupt—at length Gerald asked.
"But what had a circumstance, so capable of explanation, to do with the breaking off of your engagement, Matilda, or, did he, more proud—perhaps I should say less debased—than myself, shrink from uniting his fate with the daughter of a murderer?"
"True," said Matilda, musingly; "you have said, I think, that he slew your father. This thirst for revenge then would seem hereditary. THAT is the only, because it is the noblest, inheritance I would owe to such a being."
"But your affair with your lover, Matilda—how terminated that?" demanded Gerald—with increasing paleness, and in a faltering tone.
"In his falsehood and my disgrace. Early the next morning I sent to him, and bade him seek me in the temple at the usual hour. He came, but it was only to blast my hopes— to disappoint the passion of the woman who doated upon him. He accused me of a vile intercourse with a slave, and almost maddened me with ignoble reproaches. It was in vain that I swore to him most solemnly, the man he had seen was my father; a being whom motives of prudence compelled me to receive in private, even although my heart abhorred and loathed the relationship between us. He treated my explanation with deriding contempt, bidding me either produce that father within twenty-four hours, or find some easier fool to persuade—that one, wearing the hue and features of the black could, by human possibility, be the parent of a white woman. Again I explained the seeming incongruity, by urging that the hasty and imperfect view he had taken was of a mask, imitating the features of a negro, which my father had brought with him as a disguise, and which he had hastily resumed on hearing the noise of the key in the door. I even admitted, as an excuse for seeing him thus clandestinely, the lowly origin of my father, and the base occupation he followed of a treacherous spy who, residing in the Canadas, came, for the mere consideration of gold, to sell political information to the enemies of the country that gave him asylum and protection. I added that his visit to me was to extort money, under a threat of publishing our consanguinity, and that dread of his (my lover's) partiality being decreased by the disclosure, had induced me to throw my arms, in the earnestness of entreaty upon his neck, and implore his secrecy; promising to reward him generously for his silence. I moreover urged him, if he still doubted, to make inquiry of Major Montgomerie, and ascertain from him whether I was not indeed the niece of his adoption, and not of his blood. Finally I humbled myself in the dust and, like a fawning reptile, clasped his knees in my arms, entreating mercy and justice. But no," and the voice of Matilda grew deeper, and her form became more erect; "neither mercy nor justice dwelt in that hard heart, and he spurned me rudely from him. Nothing short of the production of him he persisted in calling my vile paramour, would satisfy him; but my ignoble parent had received from me the reward of his secrecy, and he had departed once more to the Canadas. And thus," pursued Matilda, her voice trembling with emotion, "was, I made the victim of the most diabolical suspicion that ever haunted the breast of man."
Gerald was greatly affected. His passion for Matilda seemed to increase in proportion with his sympathy for her wrongs, and he clasped her energetically to his heart.
"Finding him resolute in attaching to me the debasing imputation," pursued the American, "it suddenly flashed upon my mind, that this was but a pretext to free himself from his engagement, and that he was glad to accomplish his object through the first means that offered. Oh, Gerald, I cannot paint the extraordinary change that came over my feelings at this thought; much less give, you an idea of the rapidity with which that change was effected. One moment before and, although degraded and unjustly accused, I had loved him with all the ardour of which a woman's heart is capable: NOW I hated, loathed, detested him; and had he sunk at my feet, I would have spurned him from me with indignation and scorn. I could not but be conscious that the very act of having yielded myself up to him, had armed my lover with the power to accuse me of infidelity, and the more I fingered on the want of generosity such a suspicion implied, the more rooted became my dislike, the more profound my contempt for him, who could thus repay so great a proof of confidingness and affection."
"It was even while I lay grovelling at his feet," pursued Matilda, after a momentary pause, during which she evinced intense agitation, "that this sadden change (excited by this most unheard of injustice) came over my mind—I rose and stood before him; then asked, in a voice in which no evidence of passion could be traced, what excuse he meant to make to Major Montgomerie, for having thus broken off his engagement. He started at my sudden calmness of manner, but said that he thought it might be as well for my sake to name, what I had already stated to him, in regard to the obscurity of my birth, as a plea for his seceding from the connexion. I told him that, under all the circumstances I thought this most advisable, and then pointing to the door, bade him begone, and never under any pretext whatever again to insult me with his presence. When he had departed, I burst into a paroxysm of tears, but they were tears shed not for the loss of him I now despised, but of wild sorrow at my unmerited degradation. That conflict over, the weakness had for ever passed away, and never since that hour, has tear descended cheek of mine, associated with the recollection of the villain who had thus dared to trifle with a heart, the full extent of whose passions he has yet to learn."
There was a trembling of the whole person of Matilda, which told how much her feelings had been excited by the recollection of what she narrated, and Gerald, as he gazed on her beautiful form, could not but wonder at the apathy of the man who could thus have heartlessly thrown if from him for ever.
"Had the injury terminated here," resumed Matilda, "bitter as my humiliation was my growing dislike for him who had so ungenerously inflicted it, might have enabled me to endure it. But, not satisfied with destroying the happiness of her who had sacrificed all for his sake, my perfidious lover had yet a blow in reserve for me, compared with which his antecedent conduct was mercy. Gerald," she continued, as she pressed his arm with a convulsive grasp, "will you believe that the monster had the infamy to confide to one of his most intimate associates, that his rupture with me was occasioned by his having discovered me in the arms of a slave—of one of those vile beings communion with whom my soul in any sense abhorred? How shall I describe the terrible feeling that came over my insulted heart at that moment. But no, no—description were impossible. This associate—this friend of his— dared, on the very strength of this infamous imputation, to pollute my ear with his disrespectful passion, and when, in a transport of contempt and anger, I spurned him from me, he taunted me with that which I believed confined to the breast, as it had been engendered only in the suspicion, of my betrayer. Oh! if it be dreadful to be falsely accused by those whom we have loved in intimacy, how much more so it to know that they have not had even the common humanity to conceal our supposed weakness from the world. From that moment revenge took possession of my soul, and I swore that my destroyer should perish by the hand of her whose innocence and whose peace he had blasted for ever."
"Shortly after this event," resumed Matilda, "my base lover was ordered to join his Regiment then, stationed at Detroit. A year passed away, and during that period, my mind pondered unceasingly on the means of accomplishing my purpose of revenge; and so completely did I devote myself to a cool and unprejudiced examination of the subject, that what the vulgar crowd term guilt, appeared to me plain virtue. On the war breaking out, Major Montgomerie was also ordered to join the Regiment at Detroit, and thither I entreated him, to suffer me to accompany him. He consented, for knowing nothing of the causes which had turned my love into gall, he thought it not improbable that a meeting with my late lover might be productive of a removal of his prejudices, and our consequent reunion. Little did he dream that it was with a view to plunge a dagger into my destroyer's false heart, that I evinced so much eagerness to undertake so long, and so disagreeable a journey."
"Little more remains to be added," pursued Matilda, as she fixed her dark eyes with a softened expression on those of Gerald, "since, with the occurrences at Detroit you are already sufficiently acquainted. Yet there is one point upon which I would explain myself. When I first became your prisoner, my mind had been worked up to the highest pitch of determination, and in my captor I at first beheld but an evil Genius who had interposed himself between me and my just revenge, when on the very eve of its consummation. Hence my petulance and impatience while in the presence of your noble General."
"And whence that look Matilda, that peculiar glance, which you bestowed upon me even within the same hour?"
Because in your frank and fearless mien I saw that manly honor and fidelity, the want of which had undone me; besides it flashed across my mind that daring, such as I have witnessed yours in the capture of our boat, might, if enlisted in my behalf, securely accomplish my revenge.
"Then, if so, why the cold, the mortifying reserve, you manifested when we met at dinner at my uncle's table?"
"Because I had also recollected that, degraded as I was, I ought not to seek the love of an honorable man, and that to win you to my interest would be of no avail, as, separated by the national quarrel, you could not, by possibility, be near to aid me in my plans."
"Then," said Gerald reproachfully, "it was merely to make me an instrument of vengeance that you sought me. Unkind Matilda!"
"Nay, Gerald,—recollect, that then I had not learnt to know you as I do now—I will not deny that when first I saw you, a secret instinct told me you were one whom I would have deeply loved had I never loved before; but betrayed and disappointed as I had been, I looked upon all men with a species of loathing—my kind, good, excellent, more than father, excepted—and yet, Gerald, there were moments when I wished even him dead." (Gerald started)—"yes! dead—because I knew the anguish that would crush his heart if he should ever learn that the false brand of the assassin: had been affixed to the brow of his adopted child." Matilda sighed profoundly, and then resumed. "Later however, when the absence of its object had in some degree abated the keenness of my thirst for revenge, and when more frequent intercourse had made me acquainted with the generous qualities of your mind, I loved you Gerald, although I would not avow it, with a fervor I had never believed myself a second time capable of entertaining."
Again the countenance of Matilda was radiant with the expression just alluded to by her lover. Gerald gazed at her as though his very being hung upon the continuance of that fascinating influence, and again he clasped her to his heart.
"Matilda! oh my own betrothed Matilda!" he murmured.
"Yes your own betrothed," repeated the American highly excited, the wife of your affection and your choice, who has been held up to calumny and scorn. Think of that, Gerald; she on whose fond bosom you are to repose your aching head, she who glories in her beauty only because it is beauty in your eyes, has been, betrayed, accused of a vile passion for a slave; yet he—the fiend who has done this grievous wrong—he who has stamped your wife with ignominy, and even published her shame-still lives. Within a week," she resumed, in a voice hoarse from exertion. "Yes, within a week, Gerald, he will be here—perhaps to deride and contemn you for the choice you have made."
"Within a week he dies," exclaimed the youth. "Matilda, come what will, he dies. Life is death without you, and with you even crime may sit lightly on my soul. But we will fly far from the habitations of man. The forest shall be our home, and when the past recurs to me you shall smile upon me with that smile—look upon me with that look, and I will forget it all. Yes" he pursued, with a fierce excitement snatching up the holy book, and again carrying it to his lips—"once more I repeat my oath. He who has thus wronged you, my own Matilda, dies—dies by the hand of Gerald Grantham—of your affianced husband."
There was another long embrace, after which the plan of operations was distinctly explained and decided upon. They then separated for the night—the infatuated Gerald with a load of guilt at his heart, no effort of his reason could remove, returning by the route he had followed on the preceding evening to his residence in the town.
Leaving the lost Gerald for a time to all the horrors of his position, in which it would be difficult to say whether remorse or passion (each intensest of its kind) predominated, let us return to the scene where we first introduced him to the reader, and take a review of the Military events passing in that quarter.
After the defeat of the British columns at Sandusky, so far from any renewed attempt being made to interrupt the enemy in his strong holds, it became a question whether the position on the Michigan frontier could be much longer preserved. To the perseverance and promptitude of the Americans, in bringing new armies into the field, we have already had occasion to allude; but there was another quarter in which their strength had insensibly gathered, until it eventually assumed an aspect that carried apprehension to every heart. Since the loss of their flotilla at Detroit, in the preceding year, the Americans had commenced with vigour to equip one at Buffalo, which, in number and weight of metal, was intended to surpass the naval force on Lake Erie; and so silently and cautiously had they accomplished this task, that it was scarcely known at Amherstburg that a squadron was in the course of preparation, when that squadron (to which had been added the schooner captured from Gerald Grantham the preceding autumn) suddenly appeared off the harbour, defying their enemies to the combat. But the English vessels were in no condition to cope with so powerful an enemy, and although many a gallant spirit burned to be led against those who so evidently taunted them, the safety of the Garrisons depended too much on the issue, for that issue to be lightly tempted.
But misfortune was now beginning to overcast the hitherto fair prospects of the British arms in the Western District of the Canadas; and what the taunts of an enemy, triumphing in the consciousness of a superior numerical force, could not effect, an imperative and miserably provided for necessity eventually compelled. Maintaining as we did a large body of wild and reckless warriors, together with their families, it may be naturally supposed the excesses of these people were not few; but it would have required one to have seen, to have believed, the prodigal waste of which they were often guilty. Acknowledging no other law than their own will, following no other line of conduct than that suggested by their own caprice, they had as little respect for the property of the Canadian inhabitant as they would have entertained for that of the American enemy. And hence it resulted, that if an Indian preferred a piece of fresh, to the salted meat daily issued from the Commissariat, nothing was more common than for him to kill the first head of cattle he found grazing on the skirt of the forest; secure the small portion he wanted; and leave the remainder to serve as carrion to the birds of prey of the country. Nay, to such an extent wax this wanton spoliation carried, that instances have repeatedly occurred wherein cattle have been slain and left to putrify in the sun, merely because a warrior found it the most convenient mode by which to possess himself of a powder horn. All this was done openly—in the broad face of day, and in the full cognizance of the authorities; yet was there no provision made to meet the difficulties so guilty a waste was certain eventually to entail. At length the effect began to make itself apparent, and it was shortly after the first appearance of the American fleet that the scarcity of food began to be so severely felt as to compel the English squadron, at all hazards, to leave the port in search of supplies.
At this period, the vessel described in the commencement of our story, as having engaged so much of the interest and attention of all parties, had just been launched and rigged. Properly armed she was not, for there were no guns of the description used on ship board wherewith to arm her; but now that the occasion became imperative, all nicety was disregarded In the equipment; and guns that lately bristled from the ramparts of the fort were soon to be seen protruding their long and unequal necks from the ports. She was a gallant ship, notwithstanding the incongruity of her armament, and had her brave crew possessed but the experience of those who are nursed on the salt waves of ocean, might have fought a more fortunate fight (a better or a braver was impossible) than she did. But in the whole of the English fleet there could not be counted three score able or experienced seamen; the remainder were children of the Canadian Lakes, warm with the desire to distinguish themselves in the eyes of their more veteran European companions, but without the knowledge to make their enthusiasm sufficiently available. The Americans, on the contrary, were all sons of the ocean.
It was a glorious day in September, the beautiful September of Canada, when the gallant Commodore Barclay sailed with his fleet, ostensibly in fulfilment on the mission for which it was dispatched, but in reality winder the firm expectation of being provoked to action by his stronger and better disciplined enemy. To say that he would have sought that enemy, under the disadvantages beneath which he knew himself to labor, would be to say that which would reflect little credit on his judgment; but, although not in a condition to hold forth the flag of defiance, where there was an inferiority in all but the skill of the leader and the personal courage of the men, he was not one to shun the battle that should be forced upon him. Still to him it was an anxious moment, because the fame of other days hung upon an issue over which no efforts of his own could hold mastery, and as he gazed at his armless sleeve, he sighed for the presence of those whose agency had coupled the recollection of past victory with that mutilated proof of honorable conduct. He knew, moreover, the magnitude of the stake for which he was thus compelled to play, and that defeat to him would be the loss of the whole of the Western District. While the British ascendancy could be maintained on the Lake, there was little fear, lined as the forests were with Indian warriors, that the Americans would push any considerable force beyond the boundaries they had assigned themselves at Sandusky and on the Miami; but a victory once obtained by their fleet, there could be nothing to oppose the passage of their army in vessels and boats across the Lake.
Such were the thoughts that filled the mind of the Commodore (in common with all who calmly reasoned on the subject) as he crossed the bar that separated him from his enemy; but neither in look, nor word, nor deed, was there aught to reveal what was passing in the inward man; and when later the hostile fleet was signalized as bearing down upon them, he gave his orders to prepare formation, in the animated voice of one who finds certain victory within his reach, and exultingly hastens to secure it.
The events of that day the page of History has already, recorded in terms alike flattering to the conqueror and the conquered. Let it suffice that the Americans triumphed. What the issue would have been, independently of all the disadvantages under which the English Commodore labored, had the latter not been borne severely wounded to his cabin early in the action, it is impossible to say; but as the final defeat was owing to his two principal vessels getting foul of each other, without being able to extricate themselves, it is not unfair to presume that his presence on deck would have done much to remedy the confusion produced by the accident.
One incident only connected with this action, and in which two individuals with whom our readers have made partial acquaintance, were the principal performers, we will venture to relate. It will be recollected that at the dinner table at Colonel D'Egville's on the day of the capture of Major Montgomerie, and his party, among the guests were the chiefs Split-log and Walk-in-the-Water, the former distinguished by a huge bulbous excrescence miscalled a nose, and exquisitely slit ears that dangled gracefully upon his shoulders, at every movement of his Memnon-like head: the latter by his striking resemblance to the puritans of the days of the Commonwealth. Now it so happened that Messieurs Split-log and Walk-in-the-water were filled with an unconquerable desire to distinguish themselves at sea, as they had often done on terra firma, and they accordingly proffered their services in the forth-coming struggle. We hope we shall not be considered as detracting in the slightest degree from the courage of these chiefs, when we state that the position chosen by them on board the Commodore's ship, was one where they apprehended the least danger to themselves—namely in the tops; for although an Indian will scorn to shrink from a rifle bullet or tomahawk, it by no means enters into his code of bravery that he is to submit himself to the terrible ordeal of being battered to a jelly by a huge globe of solid iron. With, an alertness not common to the habits and corpulence of these celebrated chiefs, and fully calculating on exemption from danger while they plied their rifles successfully themselves, they ascended to the main top long before the action commenced. But they had counted without their host, for no sooner did the enemy begin to suffer from their fire, and perceive the quarter whence it came, when a swivel gun, loaded with grape, was brought to hear upon the point where they lay concealed. They had provided themselves with a breast work against small arms, but no breast work could resist the shower of iron hail that was directed towards them; and in proportion as the splinters and shot flew about their ears, so did their desire to distinguish themselves oze forth from the palms of Messrs. Split-log and Walk-in-the-Water; in so much so indeed that, without waiting to descend the rigging in the usual manner, each abandoning his rifle, slid down by the first rope on which he could lay his hands; nor stayed his course until he found himself squatted, out of all reach of danger in the lowest hold, and within the huge coils of a cable where already lay ensconced a black bear, the pet of one of the sailors. In this comfortable hiding place were Messrs Split-log and Walk-in-the-Water found, when at the close of the action they became, in common with those with whose fortunes they had identified themselves, prisoners of the Americans.
The action between the adverse fleets had been witnessed by many of the inhabitants of Amherstburg, and by the officers of the Garrison who, at the first sounds of conflict, had ridden along the banks of the lake to be as near spectators of the event as the distance of the combatants, and the thick smoke in which they speedily became enveloped, would allow. High in hope, and strong in the reliance they placed upon the skill and experience of the English Commodore, each had looked forward with confidence to the overthrow of the enemy, even with the limited means and unequal resources placed at his disposal. Great therefore was the disappointment of all, when after the firing, which raged for two hours without intermission, had finally ceased, they found the English squadron lay a mere wreck upon the waters, and in the very act of being towed by their more fortunate enemies into the harbour they had but recently quitted to engage them. But on none did the disappointment of that hour sit more heavily than on Tecumseh. He had watched the whole conflict with an anxious eye and a swelling heart, for he well knew what important results to himself and kindred hung upon the issue; but filled with enthusiastic admiration as he was of the Naval Captain, he had believed that personal devotedness and heroism alone were sufficient to compensate for the absence of advantages he had heard named, without fully comprehending either their import or their influence upon the chances of victory. The event painfully undeceived him, and although his generous heart warmed with the same love for him whose valour, profitless even though it proved, was sufficiently attested by the shattered condition of almost every vessel of his little Squadron, he read in the downfall of him in whose aid he had so much confided, the annihilation of the English power in that remote region of the Canadas, and the consequent destruction of all his hopes of retrieving his race from the hated thraldom of American tyranny and American usurpation. Such was the first feeling of that noble Warrior, but his was not a soul to despond under the infliction of even a worse trial than that just recorded, and in proportion as the danger and difficulty increased, so rose his energy and his desire to surmount them.
The result of the unlucky contest was, as had been anticipated, to open a free passage across the lake to the American armies, whose advance by land had been so repeatedly and effectually checked on former occasions, as to leave them little inclination for a renewal of an attempt in that quarter. Now however that they could forward a fleet of boats, under cover of the guns of their Squadron, to the very outworks of Amherstburg, the difficulty was at once removed; and an overwhelming army of not less than ten thousand men, were speedily assembled near Sandusky, with a view to the final invasion of Amherstburg and consequent recapture of Detroit.
Under these disheartening circumstances—the want of provisions being daily more and more felt by the troops and inhabitants—it became necessary to hold a council of war, to determine upon the course that should be pursued. Accordingly the whole of the chiefs and officers of the Garrison met in the hall already described in the beginning of our narrative, when it was proposed by General Proctor, at the conclusion of a speech in which the increasing difficulties and privations of the garrison were emphatically enumerated, that the fortifications should be razed to the ground, the dock yards and other public works destroyed, and the allied forces of English and Indians make the best of their way by land to join the centre division of the army on the Niagara frontier.
The indignation of Tecumseh, at what he conceived to be a base and cowardly abandonment of a position which stout hearts and willing hands might yet make available against any force the enemy should push forward for its reduction, was excessive and appropriately expressed. Filled with esteem as he was for the character and courage of General Brock, while a no less sincere admiration of the gallant but unfortunate Commodore Barclay animated his noble and generous heart, he could ill disguise his contempt for the successor of the former. Little familiarized as he was with the habits of European warfare, it could not escape the penetrating observation of such a mind, that the man who now proposed giving up his command without a struggle in its defence, was the same who, at French town, had suffered his troops to be cut to pieces, through mere nervousness to attack with the bayonet; and who, later at Sandusky, had through grossest neglect and ignorance, not only lost the means of securing a certain victory, but occasioned the most shameful waste of human life; neither had it escaped his observation that on almost every occasion wherein the hostile armies were brought in contact, he who called himself a leader was invariably a follower, and a follower at a most respectful distance—a mode of heading an army, so differing from Tecumseh's own view of the duties of a great chief, that he could not understand by what perversion of the judgment of his really brave fellows, who were erroneously called his followers, he had been suffered to continue in his command so long.
Under this impression of feeling towards the General, it may readily be supposed that Tecumseh was not sparing of his censure on the mode of proceeding which had been suggested by that officer—nay, he even carried his contempt and indignation so far, as to term him the coward he believed him to be; and had this merit, that he told, in plain and unvarnished language, what many of the English officers most religiously believed also, although their tongues dared not of course give utterance to the thought. He threw additional force into his spirited and exciting speech, by instituting a comparison between him to whom he addressed himself, and the gallant but unfortunate officer whose defeat had driven them to the necessity of debating the unworthy question of flight—a comparison which tended but to show how high the one had been raised, how low the other had been sunk, in the estimation of the truly brave; and concluded by a vivid expression of his determination to remain with the warriors and maintain the contest alone.
The animated delivery of the Warrior had communicated to the lesser chiefs an enthusiasm of approbation that carried them wholly beyond the bounds of the quiet and grave demeanor, so usually distinguishing their deliberative assemblies; and like the wild outburst of a fitful storm, rose the clamorous yells that told how responsively the heart of each excited chief beat to that of his great leader. There was a moment during that wild and tumultuous expression of the common feeling, when the British officers looked as if they expected some more serious results of the General's proposition than the mere utterance of the dissatisfaction it, had created. But the apprehension soon passed away, for a sudden and commanding movement of the proud Tecumseh stayed the tempest his own powerful eloquence had raised,—and the quiet and order of the scene were restored, with a promptitude not inferior to that with which it had been interrupted.
The result of the proceedings of the day, was a compromise of the views of the two parties; and it was decided, that although the defences of Amherstburg and Detroit should be destroyed, and those forts evacuated, a final stand should be made near the Moravian village, on the banks of the narrow river Thames, on the line of communication with the Niagara frontier. If the opportunity permitted, and the Americans suffered them to remain unmolested, fortifications were to be constructed on this spot, and a rallying point for the numerous tribes of dispersed Indians finally preserved.
A few days later, and the work of destruction was entered upon and soon completed. The little British Army, scarcely exceeding eight hundred men of all arms, commenced its march at night, lighted by the flames of the barracks which had given them shelter for the last time. As they passed the fort of Detroit the next day, dense columns of smoke and flame were to be seen rising high in air, from the various public edifices, affording a melancholy evidence of the destruction which usually tracks a retreating army. Many an American inhabitant looked on at the work of destruction, as if he would fain have arrested the progress of an element which at once defaced the beauty of the town, and promised much trouble and inconvenience to those whom they knew to be at hand, for their final deliverance frem the British yoke. But the Garrison continued stern spectators of the ruin—they had been compelled to effect, until the flames had attained a power which rendered their suppression an impossibility; then and then only, did they quit the scene of conflagration, and embarking in the boats which had been kept in readiness for their transport, joined their comrades, who waited for them on the opposite bank. The two Garrisons thus united; the whole preceded by a large body of Indians, were pushed forward to the position which had been selected on the Thames, and both shores of the Detroit were left an unresisting conquest to the Americans.