Matilda Montgomerie; Or, The Prophecy Fulfilled. Major Richardson
Colonel D'Egville was about to enter the gate of the fort, with his fair charge leaning on his arm, Gerald Grantham approached the party, with the intention of addressing the general in regard to the prisoner Arnoldi; but finding him engaged in close conversation with Major Montgomerie, he lingered, as if awaiting a fitting opportunity to open the subject.
While he yet loitered, the eye of Miss Montgomerie met his. What it expressed we will not venture to describe, but its effect upon the young officer was profound. The moment before, discouraged by her apparent reserve, he had stood coldly by, but now startled into animation, he bent upon her an earnest and corresponding look; then, with a wild tumult at his heart, which he neither sought to stifle nor to analyze, and wholly forgetting what had brought him to the spot, he turned and joined his brother, who, at a short distance, stood awaiting his return.
CHAPTER IV.
At the garrison mess-table that evening the occurrences of the day naturally formed a chief topic of conversation; and a variety of conjectures, more or less probable, regarding the American lady, were hazarded by the officers to some of whom she had become an object of curiosity, as she had to others of interest. This conversation, necessarily parenthèsed with much extraneous matter, in the nature of rapid demands for solids and liquids, during the interesting period devoted to the process of mastication, finally assumed a more regular character when the cloth had been removed, and the attendants retired.
"Apropos," remarked Captain Granville, who filled the president's chair. "We ought to have toasted your brother's gallant exploit, Henry; gentlemen, fill your glasses—all full? Then I will give you the health of Lieutenant Grantham, of the squadron."
The toast was responded to by all but Captain Molineux. His glass had been filled and raised, but its contents remained untasted.
The omission was too marked not to be noticed by more than one of the party; Henry Grantham, whose eye had been fixed on Captain Molineux at the time, of course detected the slight. He sat for some minutes conversing with an unusual and evidently forced animation; then, excusing his early departure under the plea of an engagement with his brother, rose and quitted the mess-room.
"What have you done with the ugly lout you took charge of, De Courcy?" inquired Captain Cranstoun, interrupting the short and meaning pause which had succeeded to Grantham's departure.
"Why, I calculate, captain," returned the lively aid-de-camp, imitating the nasal drawl and language which had called up so much mirth, even in presence of the general—"I calculate as how I have introduced Ensign Paul, Emilius, Theophilus Arnoldi, of the United States Michigan Militia, into pretty considerable snug quarters—I have billeted him at the inn, in which he had scarcely set foot, when his first demand was for a glass of 'gin sling,' wherewith to moisten his partick'lar damn'd hot, baked clay."
"What a vulgar and uncouth animal," observed St. Clair, a Captain of Engineers—"I am not at all surprised at Major Montgomerie's disinclination to acknowledge him as a personal acquaintance."
"It is to be hoped," said De Courcy, "we shall not encounter many such during the approaching struggle, for, since we have been driven into this war, it will be a satisfaction to find ourselves opposed to an enemy rather more chivalrous than this specimen seems to promise."
"Nay, nay, De Courcy," remarked Captain Granville, "you must not judge of the American officers of the line by that standard; as, for example, Major Montgomerie and the person just alluded to. Last winter," he continued, "there was a continued interchange of hospitalities between the two posts, and, had you been here to participate in them, you would have admitted that among the officers of Detroit, there were many very superior men indeed."
"Pleasant ball, that last they gave," said Lieutenant Villiers, with a malicious laugh, and fixing his eyes on the Captain of Grenadiers.
"The devil take the ball," impatiently retorted Cranstoun, who did not seem to relish the allusion; "don't talk about it now, man."
"What was it, Villiers? do pray tell us. Something good, I am sure from Cranstoun's manner," eagerly asked the aid-de-camp, his curiosity excited by the general titter that followed the remark.
"Shall I tell him, Cranstoun?" asked Villiers, in the same bantering tone.
"Don't bother me," petulantly returned the other, as, thrusting his long legs under the table and turning his back upon the questioner, he joined, or affected to join, in a conversation that was passing, in a low tone, at his end of the room.
"I must premise," began Villiers, addressing himself to the attentively listening De Courcy, "that such is the mania for dancing in this country scarcely any obstacle is sufficient to deter a Canadian lady, particularly a French Canadian, from indulging in her favorite amusement. It is, therefore, by no means unusual to see women drawn in sleighs over drifting masses of ice, with chasms occasionally occurring of from fifteen to twenty feet—and that at a moment when, driven by wind and current, the huge fragments are impelled over each other with a roar that can only be likened to continuous thunder, forming, in various directions, hillocks from which the sun's rays are reflected in a thousand fantastic shades and shapes. On these occasions the sleighs, or carioles, are drawn, not as otherwise customary, by the fast-trotting little horses of the country, but by expert natives whose mode of transportation is as follows: A strong rope is fastened to the extremity of the shafts, and into this the French Canadian, buried to the chin in his blanket coat, and provided with a long pole terminating in an iron hook, harnesses himself, by first drawing the loop of the cord over the back of his neck, and then passing it under his arms. In this manner does he traverse the floating ice, stepping from mass to mass with a rapidity that affords no time for the detached fragment to sink under the weight with which it is temporarily laden. As the iron-shod runners obey the slightest impulsion, the draught is light; and the only fatigue encountered is in the act of bringing the detached bodies together. Wherever an opening intervenes, the Canadian throws forward his pole, and, securing the pointed hook in some projection of the floating ice, drags it towards that on the extreme verge of which he stands. In like manner he passes on to the next, when the same operation remains to be performed, until the passage is fully effected. Sometimes it happens that a chasm of more than ordinary extent occurs, in which case the pole is unavailable, and then his only alternative is to wait patiently until some distant mass, moving in a direction to fill up the interstice, arrives within his reach. In the meanwhile the ice on which he stands sinks slowly and gradually, until sometimes it quite disappears beneath the surface of the water."
"And the women, all this time?" demanded De Courcy, with something of the nervousness which might be attributed to such a situation.
"Sit as quietly and as unconcernedly, wrapped in their furs, as if they were merely taking their customary drive on terra firma," continued Villiers; "nay, I am persuaded that if they ever entertain an anxiety on those occasions, it is either lest the absence of one of these formidable masses should compel them to abandon an enterprise, the bare idea of entering upon which would give an European woman an attack of nerves, or that the delayed aid should be a means of depriving them of one half minute of their anticipated pleasure."
"Why," interrupted Middlemore, despite of a dozen ohs and ahs—"why, I say, is Villiers like a man of domestic habits? Do you give it up? Because he is fond of dwelling on his own premises."
"Middlemore, when will you renounce that vile habit of punning?" said De Courcy, with an earnestness of adjuration that excited a general laugh at his end of the table. "Come, Villiers, never mind his nonsense, for your premises, although a little long, are not without deep interest—but what has all this to do with our good friend above?"
"You shall hear. After a succession of balls last winter, to which the ladies of either shore were invariably invited, the concluding one was given by the officers in garrison at Detroit. This was at the very close of the season, and it chanced that, on the preceding night, the river had broken up, so that the roar and fracas of crashing ice might have been likened, during forty-eight