“Comedy!” call you this, Mr. Fane! I felt my
heart turn black as I threw down the letter. After a
thousand plans of revenge formed and abandoned, borrowing
old Barhydt's rifles, loading them deliberately,
and discharging them again into the air, I flung myself
exhausted on the bed, and reasoned myself back to my
magnanimity. I
would be his groomsman!
It was a morning like the burst of a millenium on
the world. I felt as if I should never forgive the birds
for their mocking enjoyment of it. The wild heron
swung up from the reeds, the lotuses shook out their
dew into the lake as the breeze stirred them, and the
senseless old Dutchman sat fishing in his canoe, singing
one of his unintelligible psalms to a quick measure that
half maddened me. I threw myself upon the yielding
floor of pine-tassels on the edge of the lake, and with
the wretched school philosophy, “Si gravis est, brevis
est,” endeavored to put down the tempest of my
feelings.
A carriage rattled over the little bridge, mounted the
ascent rapidly, and brought up at Barhydt's door.
“Phil!” shouted Tom, “Phil!”
I gulped down a choking sensation in my throat, and
rushed up the bank to him. A stranger was dismounting
from his horse.
“Quick!” said Tom, shaking my hand hurriedly,
“there is no time to lose. Out with your inkhorn,
Mr. Poppletree, and have your papers signed while I
tie up my ponies.”
“What is this, Sir?” said I, starting back as the
stranger deliberately presented me with a paper, in
which my own name was written in conspicuous letters.
The magistrate gazed at me with a look of astonishment.
“A contract of marriage, I think, between
Mr. Philip Slingsby and Miss Katherine Lorimer, spinster.
Are you the gentleman named in that instrument,
Sir?”
At this moment my sister, leading the blushing girl
by the hand, came and threw her arms about my neck,
and drawing her within my reach, ran off and left us
together.
There are some pure moments in this life that description
would only profane.
We were married by the village magistrate in that
magnificent sanctuary of the forest, old Barhydt and
his lotuses the only indifferent witnesses of vows as
passionate as ever trembled upon human lips.
I had scarce pressed her to my heart and dashed the
tears from my eyes, when Fane, who had looked more
at my sister than at the bride during the ceremony, left
her suddenly, and thrusting a roll of parchment into
my pocket, ran off to bring up his ponies. I was on
the way to Saratoga, a married man, and my bride on
the seat beside me, before I had recovered from my astonishment.
“Pray,” said Tom, “if it be not an impertinent
question, and you can find breath in your ecstasies,
how did you find out that your sister had done me the
honor to accept the offer of my hand?”
The resounding woods rung with his unmerciful
laughter at the explanation.
“And pray,” said I, in my turn, “if it is not an impertinent
question, and you can find a spare breath in
your ecstasies, by what magic did you persuade old
Frump to trust his ward and her title-deeds in your
treacherous keeping?”
“It is a long story, my dear Phil, and I will give you
the particulars when you pay me the `Virginia bloods'
you wot of. Suffice it for the present, that Mr. Frump
believes Mr. Tom Fane (alias Jacob Phipps, Esq.,
sleeping partner of a banking-house at Liverpool) to
be the accepted suitor of his fair ward. In his extreme
delight at seeing her in so fair a way to marry into a
bank, he generously made her a present of her own
fortune, signed over his right to control it by a document
in your possession, and will undergo as agreeable
a surprise in about five minutes as the greatest lover of
excitement could desire.”
The ponies dashed on. The sandy ascent by the
Pavilion Spring was surmounted, and in another minute
we were at the door of Congress Hall. The last
stragglers from the breakfast-table were lounging down
the colonnade, and old Frump sat reading the newspaper
under the portico.
“Aha! Mr. Phipps,” said he, as Tom drove up,
“back so soon, eh? Why, I thought you and Kitty
would be billing it till dinner-time!”
“Sir!” said Tom, very gravely, “you have the honor
of addressing Captain Thomas Fane, of his Majesty's
—th Fusileers, and whenever you have a moment's
leisure I shall be happy to submit to your perusal a
certificate of the marriage of Miss Katherine Lorimer
to the gentleman I have the pleasure to present to you.
Mr. Frump, Mr. Slingsby!”
At the mention of my name, the blood in Mr.
Frump's ruddy complexion turned suddenly to the color
of the Tiber. Poetry alone can express the feeling
pictured in his countenance:—
“If every atom of a dead man's flesh
Should creep, each one with a particular life,
Yet all as cold as ever—'twas just so:
Or had it drizzled needle-points of frost,
Upon a feverish head made suddenly bald.”
George Washington Jefferson Frump, Esq., left
Congress Hall the same evening, and has since ungraciously
refused an invitation to Captain Fane's wedding—possibly
from his having neglected to invite him
on a similar occasion at Saratoga. This last, however,
I am free to say, is a gratuitous supposition of my own.
