University of Virginia Library

16. CHAPTER XVI.
Showing that old Scenes revive old Habits.

They parted each with regret, and as Sybrandt
proceeded on his journey, he tried to persuade himself
he was all, on might be all, Sir William had described.
But certain misgivings and sinkings of the soul, as
he turned his thoughts towards home, and began to
anticipate his reception from his friends, warned him
that he must look well to himself and nerve his heart,
or he might again sink into what honest Bunyan calls
the “slough of Despond,” and never rise again.

The little party, consisting of Sybrandt, old Tjerck,
and the courier, proceeded to the banks of the Mohawk
river, where they embarked in a canoe for
Schenectady, then the frontier town of all the western
settlements of this goodly State, of which it now
constitutes one of the antiquities. Not a house, not
a vestige of cultivated life adorned the banks of the
stream, yet still all was beautiful; for what is more
lovely than the union of crystal waters, verdant
meadows, waving forests, and azure skies—the combination
and the master-work of the great Creator!
There were men alive not many years ago, who still
remembered what the whole country then was, and
whose eyes, though dimmed with age, yet saw what
it had since become. The land itself, and the owners
of the land, are changed; every animate and inanimate
object—every thing living, and every thing
dead—all changed! The red man is gone, and the

white man is in his place. Such are the mutations
of the world! Shall we lament them? No. It is
the will and the work of Him that made all, governs
all, disposes all; and it is all for the best, or chance
is Providence, and Providence is chance.

They arrived without accident at Schenectady,
which, though partly rebuilt, still exhibited deep and
melancholy traces of the deplorable massacre and
conflagration of 1689, when the French and Indians
surprised the inhabitants in their beds, and set fire
to their habitations. It was a cruel butchery of men,
women, and children, which, according to custom,
was laid to the charge of the Indians, whom it is impossible
to restrain at such times. But what right
have civilized men to complain of the excesses of
savages, whom they associate with them as allies;
whose passions they first stimulate, and then pretend
to control? Yet in the midst of these horrors a ray
of humanity breaks out from the darkness of unlimited
massacre. A gentleman of the name of Glen
resided with his family a little way above Schenectady,
on the rich flats on the opposite side of the
river, where his house is, or was lately, standing, and
in possession of his descendants. He had at times
interposed his good offices in favour of the French
prisoners taken by the Mohawks, and the French
now remembered his kindness. They spared his
home, and restored all his relatives to liberty.

As Sybrandt approached nearer towards home, he
began to feel in anticipation certain decided symptoms
of his old disease. He caught himself studying
how he should act, and what he should say to his cousin,
instead of relying on the circumstances of the moment
to direct his conduct. He worked himself up
into a worry of doubt, embarrassment, and apprehension;

he again suffered the tortures of the sly
laughing eye of Catalina, and actually shuddered at
the thought of how awkwardly he should behave
himself. In short, by the time they came to Albany,
he had forgot the manly remonstrances of Sir William,
and instead of the joys of a speedy reunion
with his friends, felt only the fears of their anticipated
ridicule.

He arrived at Albany to dinner, and lingered
some time afterward in that strange indecision which
is characteristic of his state of mind. At length old
Tjerck got out of all patience, and by his ill-humour
brought his young master to a decision. As they
approached the sober and venerable mansion-house,
and saw at a distance its old gray walls, half-hid by
towering elms, with chimneys pointing to the skies,
Sybrandt actually trembled with conflicting emotions.
Had it been possible, he would have passed on to
the abode of his benefactor without stopping. But
his only road lay directly before the mansion-house,
and to pass it would be both absurd and disrespectful.

It was now just after sunset, and honest Ariel was
walking on the long piazza, which looked towards the
river, with Catalina. The scene was lovely and
quiet beyond description, and something had carried
the thoughts of Catalina to the absence of Sybrandt.
I think it happened to be the anniversary of the day he
had saved her life.

“I wonder,” said she, at length, “what has become
or cousin Sybrandt? Is it not time that he should be
home? and is it not strange no one has heard of him,
uncle?”

“Poor fellow!” said the good-natured Ariel, “to
be sure it is. I don't wonder at not hearing from him,
for you know the mail don't travel in the wilderness.

But he ought to have been home some months ago.
I am sadly afraid something has happened to him.
He was such an awkward fellow: he never could
do any thing handy or clever. I never could teach
him to ring a pig's nose, for the life of me.”

“Yet he was brave as a lion,” said the other,
musing. “What day of the month is this, uncle?”

“The twenty-sixth of May.”

“True, the very day.” And again she mused.

“I should not be surprised,” said Ariel, after a
pause, “if he was either murdered, or a prisoner to
the Indians.”

“God forbid!” exclaimed Catalina, lifting up her
hands, and clasping them together; “God forbid my
dear cousin Sybrandt should come to any harm!”

“Aha!” quoth Ariel, “what would the colonel
say if he heard this?—dear cousin Sybrandt!”

“He has no right to say any thing, and if he did
I would not care. But who is that coming yonder?”

“Where,” said little Ariel, standing on tiptoe.

“Yonder, on the Albany road—two persons on
horseback.”

“It must be the colonel and his man. He has
been to Albany to-day.”

“No, it is not the colonel,” said Catalina, and she
looked still more intently on the travellers, whose
figures were rendered somewhat indistinct in the twilight
now gathering round. They approached the
gate which led into the woody avenue winding up to
the mansion, and one of them dismounted to open it.

“Who can it be?” cried Catalina, while a gentle
heaving of her bosom and a little shortness of breath
marked a more than ordinary interest in the question.

In a few minutes the persons on horseback emerged
from the woody glen, through which the road wound

its way, at a little distance from the mansion, where
they could be more distinctly seen from the piazza.

“One of them seems to have a black face,” observed
Ariel.

“If it should be old Tjerck!” exclaimed the young
damsel, eagerly.

“No, no,” replied the other, despondingly, “I fear
we shall never see either him or his young master
again;” and his good heart overflowed to his eyes.
By this time the horsemen had dismounted in the
dusky evening, and approached the piazza.

“Who can it be?” thought Catalina, while a presentiment
fluttered about her heart. Sybrandt had
distinguished a female on the piazza as he approached,
and a thrill of mingled pleasure and apprehension
came over him. He had rode at such a slow,
lingering pace, that old Tjerck muttered to himself,
“Icod, if young massa been hunting a bear, he make
more hurry dan to see Miss Catalina!”

Ariel received the young man with shouts of joy
and innumerable honest shakes of the hand; but Catalina,
remembering with what leisure and deliberation
he had approached to receive her welcome, repressed
the warm, generous impulses of her heart,
and wrapping herself in the mantle of maidenly pride,
gave him a reception so affectedly flippant and careless
that he felt it in his innermost soul. His pride
and his feelings were equally wounded, and the moment
of meeting between these two young people
was the prelude to a thousand after mistakes and
misapprehensions. Sybrandt, after receiving, with
all his old awkwardness and constraint, the kind congratulations
of the rest of the family, made some
miserable mumbling attempts at an excuse for going
to see his benefactor, and departed with a heart bursting
with its disappointed dreams, that had been

cherished in secret, and a mind wounded by the consciousness
of folly, weakness, and inconsistency.

“You don't seem glad to get home again,” said the
good Dennis, observing that Sybrandt was silent and
abstracted; “but I suppose you are tired and sleepy.
Well, go to bed, and to-morrow you shall tell your
story.”

Sybrandt retired to bed, but not to that balmy rest
which a tried body and a quiet mind brings with it
evermore. He lay awake, thinking over the past,
and blaming his own wayward follies. He recalled
to mind the lessons and the example of Sir William,
and settled the matter a little before daylight, that he
would cast off the chains of the foul fiend that seemed
waiting to resume her empire the moment of his return,
and be what he was every where else but to the
woman he most wished to please. Before he was up
in the morning, he heard the cheerful voice of Ariel
calling upon him to come forth and eat his breakfast,
and tell his story, and go over to the mansion-house,
to see him hive the bees, that he pronounced to be
on the eve of emigrating, from the commotion he observed
among them the day before.

Accordingly, after breakfast, they rode over to the
mansion-house, where Sybrandt behaved himself better,
and was received more to his liking, than the
night before; for Catalina had schooled herself, and
softened herself too, by recollecting she had treated
him thus unkindly on the anniversary of the day he
had saved her from drowning. Catalina inquired the
cause of his long absence, and even condescended to
say she felt great uneasiness lest he should have
been murdered, or taken captive by the hostile Indians
and carried into Canada. This sentiment,
kindly and unaffectedly uttered, warmed the heart of
Sybrandt into a degree of confidence, and he related

the history of his trading voyage with a truth and simplicity
which gave it additional interest. There is
nothing throws greater dignity about a man, and more
contributes to make him an object of interest, than
encountering and overcoming dangers and sufferings.
The tenderness, the love of glory, and the admiration
for courage, which are inherent in the female
heart, are ever excited and called forth by the recital
of perils or the detail of courageous daring.
Every woman is in this respect a Desdemona, and
Catalina was certainly a woman, for she was now
eighteen. The moment she heard the history of
the adventure of the fishing-house, and the escape
from the deputation of the Mohawk chiefs, Sybrandt
gained a new interest in her eyes, by being thus associated
with danger and death. Under the influence
of these feelings, she treated him with a gentle
and frank kindness, which placed him on good terms
with himself, and gave an ease and freedom to his
deportment that made Catalina one day observe,
with a smile, “that he had certainly met with a
dancing-master in the woods.”

“But what has become of your admirer, Colonel
Sydenham?” asked Sybrandt, with no small trepidation,
after finishing his adventures.

“O, he is gone,” said she, slightly blushing. “His
regiment was ordered to Fort George, on the lake,
not long after you left us.”

Sybrandt was pleased with the information, but
he did not like the blush. His old enemies played
about him for a moment, but he whipped them away,
and compelled himself to ask other questions, which
by degrees led to a detail of all that had happened in
his absence. During this period, which was only a
few months, a great revolution had taken place,
which I shall proceed to record with all due fidelity.