On a beautiful summer morning a party of friends were sitting round a breakfast-table in a garden summer-house. They seemed very merry, laughing and chattering, and drinking the health of the young bride and bridegroom, and wishing them long life and happiness. The young couple themselves were not present; the beauty herself being still engaged at her toilet, while the bridegroom was wandering up and down the walks at the other end of the garden, to enjoy in solitude the sweetness of his own reflections.
"What a shame it is," said Anderson, "that we are not to have any music! All our young ladies are put out about it: they say they never longed so much for a dance, and it is not to be: it is said he cannot endure it."
"We are to have a ball though, I can tell you, and a right mad and merry one too," said a young officer; "every thing is arranged; the musicians are come, and we have stowed them away where no one shall know any thing about them. Roderick has taken the direction on himself; he says we ought not to give way to him too much; and that to-day, of all days in the world, his whims and fancies must not be indulged."
"He is so much more sociable and like his fellow-creatures than he used to be," said another young man, "that I do not think he will be displeased at the alteration. The whole affair of this marriage has come on so suddenly, so little like what we expected of him, he must be changed."
"His whole life," said Anderson, "has been as remarkable as his character is. You all know how he came last autumn to the city on a tour he was making, and lived all the winter through there by himself, shut up in his room as if he was melancholy mad. He never went near the theatre, or any other of our places of diversion; and had very nearly quarrelled with Roderick, who was his most intimate friend, for trying to dissipate him a little, and prevent him from for ever indulging his gloomy humours. All this excitableness and irritability of temper was at the bottom nothing but disease, as the event proved; for four months ago, I believe you know, he fell into a violent nervous fever, and was so ill that every one gave him up. He recovered at last, and got rid of some of his fancies; but the strange thing was, that when he came to his senses again, his memory was entirely gone: his memory, that is, of all that had happened immediately previous to his sickness. He could remember his childhood, and all his boyish adventures were fresh as ever; but the last year or two were blanks. All his friends, even Roderick, he had to become acquainted with over again; and it is only by slow degrees that here and there faint glimmerings of the past are beginning to come back upon his recollection. When he was taken ill, his uncle took him into his own house, where he could be better attended to: he was just like a child in their hands, and let them do any thing they pleased with him. The first time he went out to enjoy the fresh spring-air in the park, he saw by the road-side a young maiden sitting apparently in deep thought on a bank. She looked up as he passed; their eyes met, and, as if overcome by some indescribable feeling, he sprung out of the carriage, sat down at her side, caught her hands in his, and dissolved into a flood of tears. His friends were afraid that this outburst of feeling was a relapse into fever; he was quite quiet, however, and seemed happy and good-humoured. He paid a visit to the parents of the young lady, and the first time he saw her again he asked her to marry him. Her father and mother made no difficulty, and she consented. He was now happy; a new life seemed to have sprung up in him; every day he got better and stronger, and his mind easier: a fortnight ago he came here on a visit to me, and the place delighted him so much that nothing would satisfy him but what I must part with it to him. If I had pleased, I might have turned his inclination to my advantage: any thing I asked he was ready to give, so that the bargain be concluded immediately. He made his arrangements, sent furniture down, and his plan is to spend all the summer months here. And so it has come to pass that here we are all of us to-day gathered together at my old place for his wedding."