Part 1 (1/2)

Eric, or Little by Little.

by Frederic W. Farrar.

VOLUME ONE

CHAPTER ONE.

CHILDHOOD.

Ah dear delights, that o'er my soul On memory's wing like shadows fly!

Ah flowers that Joy from Eden stole, While Innocence stood laughing by.

_Coleridge_.

”Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!” cried a young boy, as he capered vigorously about, and clapped his hands. ”Father and mother will be home in a week now, and then we shall stay here a little time, and _then_, and _then_, I shall go to school.”

The last words were enunciated with immense importance, as he stopped his impromptu dance before the chair where his sober cousin f.a.n.n.y was patiently working at her crochet; but she did not look so much affected by the announcement as the boy seemed to demand, so he again exclaimed, ”And then, Miss f.a.n.n.y, I shall go to school.”

”Well, Eric,” said f.a.n.n.y, raising her matter-of-fact quiet face from her endless work, ”I doubt, dear, whether you will talk of it with quite as much joy a year hence.”

”Oh ay, f.a.n.n.y, that's just like you to say so; you're always talking and prophesying; but never mind, I'm going to school, so, hurrah! hurrah!

hurrah!” and he again began his capering,--jumping over the chairs, trying to vault the tables, singing and dancing with an exuberance of delight, till, catching a sudden sight of his little spaniel Flo, he sprang through the open window into the garden, and disappeared behind the trees of the shrubbery; but f.a.n.n.y still heard his clear, ringing, silvery laughter, as he continued his games in the summer air.

She looked up from her work after he had gone, and sighed. In spite of the suns.h.i.+ne and balm of the bright weather, a sense of heaviness and foreboding oppressed her. Everything looked smiling and beautiful, and there was an almost irresistible contagion in the mirth of her young cousin, but still she could not help feeling sad. It was not merely that she would have to part with Eric, ”but that bright boy,” thought f.a.n.n.y, ”what will become of him? I have heard strange things of schools; oh, if he should be spoilt and ruined, what misery it would be.

Those baby lips, that pure young heart, a year may work sad change in their words and thoughts!” She sighed again, and her eyes glistened as she raised them upwards, and breathed a silent prayer.

She loved the boy dearly, and had taught him from his earliest years.

In most things she found him an apt pupil. Truthful, ingenuous, quick, he would acquire almost without effort any subject that interested him, and a word was often enough to bring the impetuous blood to his cheeks, in a flush of pride or indignation. He required the gentlest teaching, and had received it, while his mind seemed cast in such a mould of stainless honour, that he avoided most of the weaknesses to which children are p.r.o.ne. But he was far from blameless. He was proud to a fault; he well knew that few of his fellows had gifts like his, either of mind or person, and his fair face often showed a clear impression of his own superiority. His pa.s.sion, too, was imperious, and though it always met with prompt correction, his cousin had latterly found it difficult to subdue. She felt, in a word, that he was outgrowing her rule. Beyond a certain age no boy of spirit can be safely guided by a woman's hand alone.

Eric Williams was now twelve years old. His father was a civilian in India, and was returning on furlough to England, after a long absence.

Eric had been born in India, but had been sent to England by his parents at an early age, in charge of a lady friend of his mother. The parting, which had been agony to his father and mother, he was too young to feel; indeed the moment itself pa.s.sed by without his being conscious of it.

They took him on board the s.h.i.+p, and, after a time, gave him a hammer and some nails to play with. These had always been to him a supreme delight, and while he hammered away, Mr and Mrs Williams, denying themselves, for the child's sake, even one more tearful embrace, went ash.o.r.e in the boat and left him. It was not till the s.h.i.+p sailed that he was told he would not see them again for a long, long time. Poor child, his tears and cries were piteous when he first understood it; but the sorrows of four years old are very transient, and before a week was over, little Eric felt almost reconciled to his position, and had become the universal pet and plaything of every one on board, from Captain Broadland down to the cabin-boy, with whom he very soon struck up an acquaintance. Yet twice a day at least his mirth would be checked as he lisped his little prayer, kneeling at Mrs Munro's knee, and asked G.o.d ”to bless his dear, dear father and mother, and make him a good boy.”

When Eric arrived in England, he was entrusted to the care of a widowed aunt, whose daughter, f.a.n.n.y, had the main charge of his early teaching.

At first, the wayward little Indian seemed likely to form no accession to the quiet household, but he soon became its brightest ornament and pride. Everything was in his favour at the pleasant home of Mrs Trevor. He was treated with motherly kindness and tenderness, yet firmly checked when he went wrong. From the first he had a well-spring of strength against temptation, in the long letters which every mail brought from his parents; and all his childish affections were entwined round the fancied image of a brother born since he had left India. In his bedroom there hung a cherub's head, drawn in pencil by his mother, and this winged child was inextricably identified in his imagination with his ”little brother Vernon.” He loved it dearly, and whenever he went astray, nothing weighed on his mind so strongly as the thought, that if he were naughty he would teach little Vernon to be naughty too when he came home.

And Nature also--wisest, gentlest, holiest of teachers--was with him in his childhood. Fairholm Cottage, where his aunt lived, was situated in the beautiful Vale of Ayrton, and a clear stream ran through the valley at the bottom of Mrs Trevor's orchard. Eric loved this stream, and was always happy as he roamed by its side, or over the low green hills and scattered dingles which lent unusual loveliness to every winding of its waters. He was allowed to go about a good deal by himself, and it did him good. He grew up fearless and self-dependent, and never felt the want of amus.e.m.e.nt. The garden and orchard supplied him a theatre for endless games and romps, sometimes with no other companion than his cousin and his dog, and sometimes with the few children of his own age whom he knew in the hamlet. Very soon he forgot all about India; it only hung like a distant golden haze on the horizon of his memory. When asked if he remembered it, he would say thoughtfully, that in dreams and at some other times, he saw a little boy, with long curly hair, running about in a flower-garden, near a great river, in a place where the air was very bright. But whether the little boy was himself or his brother Vernon, whom he had never seen, he couldn't quite tell.

But, above all, it was happy for Eric that his training was religious and enlightened. With Mrs Trevor and her daughter, religion was not a system but a habit--not a theory but a continued act of life. All was simple, sweet, and unaffected, about their charity and their devotions.

They loved G.o.d, and they did all the good they could to those around them. The floating gossip and ill-nature of the little village never affected them; it melted away insensibly in the presence of their cultivated minds; so that friends.h.i.+p with them was a bond of union among all, and from the vicar to the dairyman every one loved and respected them, asked their counsel, and sought their sympathy.

They called themselves by no sectarian name, nor could they have told to what ”party” they belonged. They troubled themselves with no theories of education, but mingled gentle nurture with ”wholesome neglect.”

There was nothing exotic or constrained in the growth of Eric's character. He was not one of the angelically good children at all, and knew none of the phrases of which infant prodigies are supposed to be so fond. But to be truthful, to be honest, to be kind, to be brave, these lessons had been taught him, and he never _quite_ forgot them; nor amid the sorrows of after life did he ever quite lose the sense--learnt at dear quiet Fairholm--of a present loving G.o.d, of a tender and long-suffering Father.

As yet he could be hardly said to know what school was. He had been sent indeed to Mr Lawley's grammar school for the last half-year, and had learned a few declensions in his Latin grammar. But as Mr Lawley allowed his upper cla.s.s to hear the little boys their lessons, Eric had managed to get on pretty much as he liked. Only _once_ in the entire half-year had he said a lesson to the dreadful master himself, and of course it was a ruinous failure, involving some tremendous pulls of Eric's hair, and making him tremble like a leaf. Several things combined to make Mr Lawley terrific to his imagination. Ever since he was quite little, he remembered hearing the howls which proceeded from the ”Latin-school” as he pa.s.sed by, whilst some luckless youngster was getting caned; and the reverend pedagogue was notoriously pa.s.sionate.