Part 8 (1/2)
”Father, how did you know I was hurt?”
”He whom we have thought a dumb boy called me, and told me he could not find you,” said Captain Durbin, looking earnestly, almost sternly at Edward, who colored as he felt that eyes he dared not meet were upon him. But the gentle, loving Emily took his hand, and said, ”Did our good Heavenly Father make you speak?--I am so glad--please speak to me!”
Edward could not raise his eyes to hers, but covering his face with his other hand, he fell on his knees, saying to her and Captain Durbin, ”I am afraid it was very wicked, but indeed I couldn't help it. I could speak all the time, Emily, but I was afraid of being beaten as I used to be, if I seemed like other people--now if they beat me I must bear it--better for me to be beaten than to have Emily lie there with no one to help her.”
”But who is going to beat you? n.o.body will beat you--we all love you--don't we, father?” cried Emily, bending forward and putting her arm around the neck of her _protege_.
”We must hear first whether he is worthy of our love, my dear,” said Captain Durbin, as he attempted to withdraw his daughter's arm, and to make her lie down again--but Edward had seized the little hand and held it around his neck, while he exclaimed in the most imploring tones, ”Oh, sir I let Emily love me--n.o.body else except my poor mother ever loved me. Beat me as much as you please, and I will not say a word, but oh!
pray, sir! don't tell Emily she must not love me.”
”And, father, if he were wicked, you know you told me once that we must love the wicked and try to do them good, because our Father in Heaven loved us while we were yet sinners,” urged Emily.
That gentle voice could not be unheeded, and as Captain Durbin kissed her, he laid his hand kindly on the boy's head, saying in more friendly tones, ”I hope he has not been wicked, but we will hear more about it to-morrow--I cannot stay longer with you now, and you must lie still just where I have put you, or you may roll out and get hurt. We shall have a rough sea most of the night, though, thank G.o.d! no danger, for the wind had s.h.i.+fted and slackened a little before that great wave swept you away!”
”May I not stay by Emily, sir, and tell her what made me not speak? I will not let her sit up again.”
”Oh, yes! do, father, let him stay till you come down again.”
Captain Durbin consented, and when he came down again at midnight from the deck, the children had both fallen asleep, but their hands were clasped in each other's, and the flushed cheeks and dewy lashes of both showed that they had been weeping. The next morning Captain Durbin heard the story of the orphan boy. Emily Durbin stood beside him while he told it, and he needed the courage which her presence gave him, for his cowed spirit could not yet rise to confidence in man. The mingled indignation and pity with which Captain Durbin heard the simple but touching narrative of his life--the earnest kindness with which, at the conclusion, he drew him to his side, and told him that he would be his father, and Emily his sister, adding, ”G.o.d gave you to me, and as His gift I will love you and care for you,” first taught him that his friend Emily was not the one only angel of mercy in our world. As time pa.s.sed on, and Captain Durbin kept well the promise of those words, instructing him with care and guarding him with tenderness as well as with fidelity, his faith became firm, not only in his fellow-men, but in Him who had brought such great good for him out of the darkest evil. His long repressed affections sprang into vigorous growth, his intellect expanded rapidly in their glow, his eye grew bright, his step elastic, and his whole air redolent of a joy which none but those who have suffered as he had done can conceive. In the handsome youth who returned two years afterwards with Captain Durbin to Boston, and who walked so proudly at his side, leading Emily by the hand, few could have recognized the wild boy of that western Island.
Such was the transformation which the spirit of love, breathing itself through the lips of a little child, had effected. ”Verily, of such”
children ”is the kingdom of heaven.”
CHAPTER VI.
The entertainment of the evening gave its character to our conversation on the following morning. It was a conversation too grave for introduction into a work intended only to aid in the entertainment of festive hours: it commenced with the English ”poor-laws,” and ended with a discussion of the tenure of property in that land, and the wisdom of our own republican fathers in abolis.h.i.+ng entails--a subject affording a fair opportunity to us Americans, to indulge a little in that self-glorification which we are accused of loving so well.
”What a curious book would a 'History of Entails' be!” exclaimed Mr.
Arlington, ”how full of the romance of life!”
”Romance!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Annie.
”Yes, romance; for under this system, the poor man, whose life seemed doomed to one unbroken struggle with fortune, for the necessaries of existence, finds himself, by some unexpected casualty, the possessor of rank, and of what seems to him boundless wealth.”
”Ah, yes!” said I, ”but you have given us only the bright side of the picture. To make room for this stranger, whose only connection with the house of which he has so unexpectedly become the head is probably that preserved in genealogical tables, the daughters of the house, or their children it may be, reared in luxury, must go forth to a life of comparative privation. I met, some years ago, in one of my visits to the Far West, a young Englishman, who--but I will read you the story of his life, as I wrote it out soon after parting with him.”
”Have you a picture of him, Aunt Nancy?” asked Robert Dudley.
”Yes, Robert,” I replied with a smile, ”but you must have patience, for I shall neither show the picture nor tell the story till evening.”
When we were a.s.sembled in the evening, Annie, with much ceremony, led me to the high-backed arm-chair, which she called the Speaker's Chair, and placed before me the small travelling desk, in which she knew my ma.n.u.scripts were kept. I unlocked it, and soon found the scroll of which I was in search.
”But the picture, Aunt Nancy--where is the picture?” cried the eager Robert.
”Here it is,” I cried, as I loosened the ribbon with which the ma.n.u.script was bound together, and produced a small engraving; a fancy subject, however, rather than an actual portrait, and of no general interest. The print was eagerly caught by Robert, and handed around the circle, with exclamations of, ”How handsome!” ”What an exquisite picture!” Mr. Arlington looked at it a moment, then, with a smiling glance at me, handed it, without a word of comment, to Col. Donaldson.
”The impertinent puppy!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Colonel, ”engrossed with his hawk and his hound, and wearing such an insolent air of self-absorption in the presence of a lady” (for the artist had introduced a lovely young maiden in the scene). ”Poor girl!” continued the Colonel; ”if she were in any way connected with him, I am not surprised that she should look so sad and reproachful.”