University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.
THE BRIDAL PARTY.

In the centre of the lawn arose the substantial
stone mansion of Major Tracy, a building of some
magnitude, overshadowed by a towering sycamore
that grew in the garden behind the house, and rising
in all the strength and grandeur of ages, threw
its leaning trunk over the gabled roof, while its far
reaching branches, bursting out on every side, clad
with a thick and luxuriant foliage, afforded a pleasant
and agreeable defence from the rigor of the sun
in the heat of summer, and now, as the moon sank
below the horizon, enveloped the edifice and the
lawn in its vicinity in deepest shadows. The darkness
was broken by long lines of light streaming
from the half-closed shutters of the chamber looking
out upon the portico which fronted the verdant
grass, and extended along the entire front of the
mansion.

“Now keep your eyes about you, Irish,” exclaimed
Harry, as he glanced hurriedly round at
the spacious mansion and the range of out-buildings.
“By the Continental Congress, if I aint very much
mistaken, them lights, flashing from the windows,

out upon the porch, have a tale of their own to tell.
Let's reccini'tre, Irish.”

“Be St. Pathrick! what's that?” muttered Dennis
in a tone of suppressed wonder, as they approached
the porch. “Do ye see anything there,
my darlint crittur?”

Harry Heft followed the finger of the Irishman
with his eye, and discovered, fastened by their bridle
reins to a pillar of the portico, two gallant
steeds, whose trappings, the ornamented saddle
cloth and the holsters, all showed that their riders
were at least military men, if not officers of rank
and authority.

With hushed breath and cautious step, Harry
Heft stole along the floor of the portico toward the
window shutters from whence emerged the light,
and which reached from the roof of the portico to
the floor. Each window served the purposes of a
door, as well as a medium for the admittance of
daylight. Gazing through the crevice of the shutters—the
sashes opened after the fashion of folding
doors, being thrown back—Harry Heft beheld a
scene which he regarded with evident wonder and
astonishment, although he had anticipated something
of the kind.

The apartment within was spacious, large, and
furnished after the fashion of some sixty years
since. It was lighted by a chandelier, filled with
stately candles of wax, and suspended from the

stuccoed ceiling. In the centre of the apartment
with his back turned to the window, stood a portly
man, with a very red, round face, a very brilliant
nose, and a very small mouth, and his ample figure
arrayed in the gown and surplice of a clergyman,
while his little fat hands, with short gouty fingers,
grasped a gilt edged book, from which he was reading.
It was the book of Common Prayer, and he
read the marriage ceremony. In front of him
were the bridegroom and bride; on one side stood
Major Tracy, with a settled frown on his brow: a
spacious arm-chair on the opposite side contained
the form of the invalid Squire Waltham, who gazed
with a half vacant, half imbecile stare upon the
company around. At his elbow stood a gentleman
of some fifty winters, attired in the undress of a
colonel in the British army, and with an impressive
countenance, marked by the lines of care and
thought. He was named Colonel Musgrave, and
he held the baton of command over the fortieth
regiment. The arrival of this gentleman had been
somewhat late and hurried, for his boots were bespattered
with mud, and his entire costume was
marked by the unfinished and disarranged air that
attends a journey undertaken and executed in haste.
Opposite to this gentleman, and forming the right
wing of the circle, was a young gentleman, attired
as a cornet in the dragoon service of his Majesty's
—th regiment, and with a face and air expressive
of nothing in especial, except a very apparent desire
to play as critical a part in his capacity of
right wing of the picture, as his disordered dress
and soiled boots would possibly admit.

The bridegroom, arrayed in a lustrous coat of
snow white silk, with small clothes and stockings
to match, buckles of shining silver, and square toed
shoes, seemed disposed to do particular justice to
his situation as a prominent point of the picture.
Halting on his left leg, with the right advanced, he
extended one delicate white hand, sparkling with
rings, to the bride, displaying all the beauty and
finish of the ruffle at his wrist in the action, while
his other hand was disposed very gracefully, with
the little finger deposited in a fold of his snow white
and gaudily embroidered vest, as with his head
erect, and his powdered hair flowing in graceful
folds over his shoulder, Lieutenant Wellwood Tracy
looked straight forward over the head of the clerical
gentleman, and a complacent expression mantled
over his face, which seemed to intimate that he
considered himself a very fine point of the picture
indeed, and worthy of the pencil of a Vandyke, or
a Godfrey Kneller.

The whole scene was a mockery of a solemn
sacrifice, but the victim destined to be offered up
at the altar, appeared in all the splendor of her
queenly beauty even at that dread hour, when the
utterance of a few simple words, and the transposition

of a ring, would place her destiny in the hands
of one, for whom she cared little, and of whom she
knew less, and sever her fate from the silken cord
that entwined it with the destiny of him, whom
she loved with all the purity and self devotion of a
maiden passion.

The golden hair, unconfined by band or cincture,
fell in a shower of waving tresses over her robes
of white, down to her very waist; while with
head drooped low, and eyes downcast, the maiden,
scarce knowing what she did, tendered her hand—
cold as the marble of a statue—to her gallant bridegroom,
and muttered the responses of the ceremony
with a vacant manner and absent air, as though her
mind wandered amid the shadowy creations of a
dream.

Harry Heft beheld the scene at a glance, and as
he gazed, he became instinctly aware of the relative
positions of the parties.

He had scarce time to think of some means of
delivering the fair maiden, when the marriage
ceremony reached the point, near its accomplishment,
where the least binding words are said, and
the ring is placed upon the finger of the bride. At
this moment Harry felt some one pressing against
his shoulder, and a face touching his own, while
his quick ear caught the sound of suppressed breathing.
He turned his head aside, whispering—“Hist!
Dennis!” when a hand, placed over his mouth,

hushed the exclamation of sudden surprise that was
bursting from his lips, and he beheld the face of
Herbert Tracy gazing over his shoulder with his lip
compressed and his eye flashing, as he regarded the
marriage scene within the apartment.

Every lineament of his countenance was impressed
with an expression so strange, so dread, so
unreal and fearful in its character, that the Ranger
scarce might recognize the face of his Leader in
that high forehead all seamed by deep wrinkles,
and relieved by the hair, thrown wildly aside from
the countenance; the full, black eye, glaring from
beneath the eyebrows; the lips compressed as fixedly
and firmly as those of a chiselled statue; and the
lines of each cheek so clearly marked with the settled
appearance that betokens powerful yet suppressed
emotion, and the entire visage, with every
outline, shown in the boldest relief, by the glaring
light which streamed from the chandelier within
the apartment, seemed so much changed and altered,
that Harry Heft only knew his captain from the
simple reason, that it were impossible to forget one
lineament of the face and features that he had
known and looked upon from earliest childhood.

Harry felt his hand grasped by that of his
leader, with a quick, hurried, but expressive movement—

“As God lives, stand by me!” whispered the
captain.

“As God lives, I will, to the death!” returned
the soldier in as deep a whisper.

“With this ring thee I wed”—exclaimed the
bridegroom within the apartment, as, bending aside
with a most graceful bow, he took the fair hand of
Marian in his own, and with a delicate movement
of the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, proceeded
to place the marriage ring on the ivory
finger of the maiden. The gold had touched the
finger of Marian, and every eye was fixed upon the
twain; Major Tracy smiled grimly as he viewed
the accomplishments of his scheme; the invalid
father looked up into the face of his daughter; the
eyes of the clerical gentleman wandered from his
book; and even the face of the colonel, as well as
the cornet, betrayed some interest in the matter; the
ring, I say, had touched, but not encircled the finger,
when a rushing sound was heard, a hurried footstep,
and the tall form of Herbert Tracy stood between
the bridegroom and bride, the ring was
dashed on the floor, and Wellwood Tracy was
hurled aside by a blow from the scabbard of the
captain's sword.

“She is mine! Mine before God and Heaven!”
exclaimed Herbert, as Marian fell in his arms, with
a shriek and a glance of wild rapture, that told of
recognition. “Mine before God and Heaven!
This for the man that shall say me nay!”

Unsheathing his sword with his good right hand,

he gathered the fainting maiden to his bosom with
his other hand, and glanced around upon the bridal
party, like a noble stag at bay, as he retired one step
toward the window.

Had some sudden and fearful spell fallen upon
the stern Major Tracy, the invalid Waltham, the
round faced parson, the sedate colonel, the smooth
faced cornet, or the silken bridegroom, they could
not, each and all of them, have formed more finished
and perfect statues of surprise than they did for a
single instant after Herbert had burst into the room.
Had a column of fire shot upwards from the floor;
had a thunder bolt severed the ceiling, and scattered
its rays of death at their feet; had the mansion
been rocked by the heavings of an earthquake, the
bridal party, it is very probable, would have been
somewhat surprised, if not thunderstricken; but
here was column of fire, thunder bolt, and earthquake
all combined in one form, and that form the
figure of the gallant Ranger. I trow the bridal
party were more than surprised.

Herbert Tracy took advantage of this first instant
of speechless astonishment, and pressing his betrothed
closer to his bosom, strode with a hurried,
yet even step toward the window—“Mine she is
before God and Heaven!” he cried—“mine by all
that is good and hallowed! Mine by her plighted
troth—mine by her vows of love!” he continued,
reaching the window, and extending his sword,

while, with a bitter sneer on his lip, he glanced
around the room—“And think ye I will surrender
my claim to any man that lives? Curses may be
heaped upon my head by him, whom I am bound
to name my father, and death and ruin may stand
in my path, but still—by the Lord that lives—
Herbert Tracy will not show himself unworthy of
his name! A merry even to you, gentlefolks!”

Emerging from the window, he rushed across
the porch, and stood beside the steeds that had so
lately borne the colonel and the cornet to the bridal
party, but which were now held ready for mounting,
by Dennis at one bridle rein, and Harry at the
other.

“Mount, capt'in, mount”—cried Harry—“They
're comin'—they're comin'! Mount, and away
down the Paper Mill Run road! Push for the
Quaker's farm house! Mount, by the Continental
Congress, mount!”

Ere Harry had finished his favorite expletive,
Herbert had sprang upon the stoutest of the steeds,
and with the fainting Marian in his arms, struck
for the road that led around the rock down to the
Wissahikon.

“Now's your time, Dennis? If you've any
sperrit in your lazy bones, mount that horse by the
stable yonder—I'll mount this! Hurray, boy, for
your neck's in danger! Now then—” cried the
gallant trooper as he sprang upon the cornet's

horse, and enveloped his form in the blanket that
hung at the saddle bow—“now then, `Irish,' strike
for Rittenhouse's Mill, right across the fields—
they'll mistake the fluttering of this blanket for the
young lady's dress. Take the fields for it, and
lead 'em on a wrong scent. By the Continental
Congress—”

“Yes, be jabers!” shouted Dennis. “Will it
plase your leddyshep to rid the laste bit closer to
me! Och, darlin'! Whoop!”

And off they went, like mad devils as they were,
the sound of their horses' hoofs echoing far around,
and the white blanket of Harry Heft fluttering in
the moonlight, like the robe of an uneasy spirit,
amusing itself with a midnight ride.

The sounds of the horses' hoofs roused the astonished
bridal party from the spell of surprise, and
with one assent, they rushed out on the portico,
leaving the invalid in her arm-chair.

“Call the servants”—shouted the Colonel—
“Wilson, I say—where's that lazy trooper!”

“There he goes!” muttered the enraged Lieutenant
Tracy with an oath, as he ran from one end
of the porch to the other; “there he goes down
the Wissahikon—by the G—s!”

“I ra-yther think they've taken a cut across
the fe-eld, Lev'tenant,” lisped the cornet, smiling
at the idea of telling the whole story at the mess
table. “There they go! How her dwess does

fluttaw,” he continued, as the white blanket met his
eye.

Without a word, without an exclamation of surprise,
did Major Tracy assemble the domestics, and
rouse the trooper, who was sleeping on a wheelbarrow
near the stable door, under the influence of
plentiful potations. A short and hurried council
was held; men were despached to the stables at a
hundred yards distance, to saddle other horses;
some started on foot in pursuit of the fugitives; but
amid all their conversation, their imprecations, and
their vows of vengeance, the ears of the bridal party
were saluted with the sound of the retreating
hoofs, echoing from the grounds north of the mansion,
to the road on the east, and from the road,
through the woods to the grounds again.

Full ten minutes elapsed ere horses could be saddled
for the major, the colonel, the cornet, and
the lieutenant; and the oaths and imprecations
of the three latter did not by any means tend to
increase the speed of the domestics in their employment.

“Scour the country in every direction!” shouted
the colonel, as he beheld his companions mounted,
together with the half sober trooper and three of
the domestics. “The fugitives cannot pass the
British lines without alarming the picquets! This
side of the lines they're in our power! Cornet,
you will join me, with that drunken lout yonder, in

pursuing the rebel captain across the field. Major,
perhaps it would be best for you and the lieutenant
to take the Wissahikon road. We can traverse the
country in different directions, and meet at Rittenhouse's
mill.”

Major Tracy nodded assent.

“Look ye, sirs,” he exclaimed to the three stout
fellows, who, with pistols in their hands, were
mounted on strong fleet horses by his side. “Look
'ye, sirs—should ye come across the fugitives, be
careful that you do not harm the lady in white,
Miss Waltham. You are all good marksmen—I'll
make the man of you comfortable for life who
shall pick the rebel officer in black from his horse!
Mark 'ye—he is a traitor, and deserves no quarter!
Away!”

And as they galloped away in various directions,
one of the frightened female domestics, a weak and
aged woman, entered the scene of the late bridal
ceremony, and beheld the clerical gentleman, on
his knees, before Mr. Waltham, who was still
seated in his armed-chair, with his head fallen to
one side, his eyes closed, and his lips parted. The
clergyman was engaged in chafing the hands of the
invalid, and the servant drew nearer, and looked
over his shoulder into the face of the sick man, and
started back with a cry of horror, as she discovered
the ghastly paleness of his cheeks, the blue livid
circles around his eyes, and the sunken eye-sockets.

His spirit had gone from the scenes of marrying
and giving in marriage, from the scenes of man's
passions, and man's wrong to his fellow, from his
daughter, his lands and his gold, up to that Tribunal
that knows no earthly passion or prejudice,
there—in the solemn words of the Sacred Book—
“To give account of the deeds done in the body.”