Eric Part 20

He asked Dr. Underhay whether his fears were correct. "Yes," he said, "he may die at any time; he _must_ die soon. It is even best that he should; besides the loss of a limb, that blow on the head would certainly affect the brain and the intellect if he lived."

Eric shuddered--a long cold shudder.

The holidays drew on; for Russell's sake, and at his earnest wish, Eric had worked harder than he ever did before. All his brilliant abilities, all his boyish ambition, were called into exercise; and, to the delight of every one, he gained ground rapidly, and seemed likely once more to dispute the palm with Owen. No one rejoiced more in this than Mr. Rose, and he often gladdened Russell's heart by telling him about it; for every day he had a long visit to the sick boy's room, which refreshed and comforted them both.

In other respects, too, Eric seemed to be turning over a new leaf. He and Upton, by common consent, had laid aside smoking, and every bad habit or disobedient custom which would have grieved the dying boy, whom they both loved so well. And although Eric's popularity, after the romantic Stack adventure and his chivalrous daring, was at its very zenith,--although he had received a medal and flattering letter from the Humane Society, who had been informed of the transaction by Dr.

Rowlands,--although his success both physical and intellectual was higher than ever,--yet the dread of the great loss he was doomed to suffer, and the friends.h.i.+p which was to be snapped, overpowered every other feeling, and his heart was enn.o.bled and purified by contact with his suffering friend.

It was a June evening, and he and Russell were alone; he had drawn up the blind, and through the open window the summer breeze, pure from the sea and fragrant from the garden, was blowing refreshfully into the sick boy's room. Russell was very, very happy. No doubt, no fear, a.s.sailed him; all was peace and trustfulness. Long and earnestly that evening did he talk to Eric, and implore him to shun evil ways, striving to lead him gently to that love of G.o.d which was his only support and refuge now.

Tearfully and humbly Eric listened, and every now and then the sufferer stopped to pray aloud.

"Good night, Eric," he said, "I am tired, _so_ tired. I hope we shall meet again; I shall give you my desk and all my books, Eric, except a few for Horace, Owen, Duncan, and Monty. And my watch, that dear watch your mother, _my_ mother, gave me, I shall leave to Rose as a remembrance of us both. Good night, brother."

A little before ten that night Eric was again summoned with Upton and Montagu to Russell's bedside. He was sinking fast; and as he had but a short time to live, he expressed a desire to see them, though he could see no others.

They came, and were amazed to see how bright the dying boy looked. They received his last farewells--he would die that night. Sweetly he blessed them, and made them promise to avoid all evil, and read the Bible, and pray to G.o.d. But he had only strength to speak at intervals. Mr. Rose, too, was there; it seemed as though he held the boy by the hand, as fearlessly now, yea, joyously, he entered the waters of the dark river.

"Oh, I should _so_ like to stay with you, Monty, Horace, dear, dear Eric, but G.o.d calls me. I am going--a long way--to my father and mother--and to the light. I shall not be a cripple there--nor be in pain." His words grew slow and difficult. "G.o.d bless you, dear fellows; G.o.d bless you, dear Eric; I am going--to G.o.d."

He sighed very gently; there was a slight sound in his throat, and he was dead. A terrible scene of boyish anguish followed, as they kissed again and again the lifeless brow. But quietly, calmly, Mr. Rose checked them, and they knelt down with streaming eyes while he prayed.

CHAPTER XV

HOME AGAIN

"O far beyond the waters The fickle feet may roam, But they find no light so pure and bright As the one fair star of home; The star of tender hearts, lady, That glows in an English home,"

F.W.F.

That night when Eric returned to No. 7, full of grief, and weighed down with the sense of desolation and mystery, the other boys were silent from sympathy in his sorrow. Duncan and Llewellyn both knew and loved Russell themselves, and they were awestruck to hear of his death; they asked some of the particulars, but Eric was not calm enough to tell them that evening. The one sense of infinite loss agitated him, and he indulged his paroxysms of emotion unrestrained, yet silently. Reader, if ever the life has been cut short which you most dearly loved, if ever you have been made to feel absolutely lonely in the world, then, and then only, will you appreciate the depth of his affliction.

But, like all affliction, it purified and sanctified. To Eric, as he rested his aching head on a pillow wet with tears, and vainly sought for the sleep whose blessing he had never learned to prize before, how odious seemed all the vice which he had seen and partaken in since he became an inmate of that little room. How his soul revolted with infinite disgust from the language which he had heard, and the open glorying in sin of which he had so often been a witness. The stain and the shame of sin fell heavier than ever on his heart; it rode on his breast like a nightmare; it haunted his fancy with visions of guilty memory, and shapes of horrible regret. The ghosts of buried misdoings, which he had thought long lost in the mists of recollection, started up menacingly from their forgotten graves, and made him shrink with a sense of their awful reality. Behind him, like a wilderness, lay years which the locust had eaten; the intrusted hours which had pa.s.sed away, and been reckoned to him as they past.

And the thought of Russell mingled with all--Russell, as he fondly imagined him now, glorified with the glory of heaven, crowned, and in white robes, and with a palm in his hand. Yes, he had walked and talked with one of the Holy Ones. Had Edwin's death, quenched his human affections, and altered his human heart? If not, might not he be there even now, leaning over his friend with the beauty of his invisible presence? The thought startled him, and seemed to give an awful l.u.s.tre to the moonbeam which fell into the room. No; he could not endure such a presence now, with his weak conscience and corrupted heart; and Eric hid his head under the clothes, and shut his eyes.

Once more the pang of separation entered like iron into his soul. Should he ever meet Russell again? What if _he_ had died instead of Edwin, where would he have been? "Oh, no! no!" he murmured aloud, as the terrible thought came over him of his own utter unfitness for death, and the possibility that he might never, never again hear the beloved accents, or gaze on the cherished countenance of his school friend.

In this tumult of accusing thoughts he fell asleep; but that night the dew of blessing did not fall for him on the fields of sleep. He was frightened by unbidden dreams, in all of which his conscience obtruded on him his sinfulness, and his affection called up the haunting lineaments of the dear dead face. He was wandering down a path, at the end of which Russell stood with open arms inviting him earnestly to join him there; he saw his bright ingenuous smile, and heard, as of old, his joyous words, and he hastened to meet him; when suddenly the boy-figure disappeared, and in its place he saw the stern brow, and gleaming garments, and drawn flaming sword of the Avenger. And then he was in a great wood alone, and wandering, when the well-known voice called his name, and entreated him to turn from that evil place; and he longed to turn,--but, whenever he tried, ghostly hands seemed to wave him back again, and irresistible cords to drag him into the dark forest, amid the sound of mocking laughs. Then he was sinking, sinking, sinking into a gulf, deep and darker even than the inner darkness of a sin-desolated heart; sinking, helplessly, hopelessly, everlastingly; while far away, like a star, stood the loved figure in light infinitely above him, and with pleading hands implored his deliverance, but could not prevail; and Eric was still sinking, sinking, infinitely, when the agony awoke him with a violent start and stifled scream.

He could sleep no longer. Whenever he closed his eyes he saw the pale, dead, holy features of Edwin, and at last he fancied that he was praying beside his corpse, praying to be more like _him_, who lay there so white and calm; sorrowing beside it, sorrowing that he had so often rejected his kind warnings, and pained his affectionate heart. So Eric began again to make good resolutions about all his future life. Ah! how often he had done so before, and how often they had failed. He had not yet learned the lesson which David learned by sad experience; "Then I said, it is mine own infirmity, _but I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High_."

That, too, was an eventful night for Montagu. He had grown of late far more thoughtful than before; under Edwin's influence he had been laying aside, one by one, the careless sins of school life, and his tone was n.o.bler and manlier than it had ever been. Montagu had never known or heard much about G.o.dliness; his father, a gentleman, a scholar, and a man of the world, had trained him in the principles of refinement and good taste, and given him a high standard of conventional honor; but he pa.s.sed through life lightly, and had taught his son to do the same.

Possessed of an ample fortune, which Montagu was to inherit, he troubled himself with none of the deep mysteries of life, and

"Pampered the coward heart With feelings all too delicate for use; Nursing in some delicious solitude His dainty love and slothful sympathies."

But Montagu in Edwin's sick-room and by his death bed; in the terrible storm at the Stack, and by contact with Dr. Rowlands' earnestness, and Mr. Rose's deep, unaffected, sorrow-mingled piety; by witnessing Eric's failures and recoveries; and by beginning to take in his course the same heartfelt interest which Edwin taught him--Montagu, in consequence of these things, had begun to see another side of life, which awoke all his dormant affections and profoundest reasonings. It seemed as though, for the first time, he began to catch some of

"The still gad music of humanity,"

and to listen with deep eagerness to the strain. Hitherto, to be well dressed, handsome, agreeable, rich, and popular, had been to him a realised ideal of life; but now he awoke to higher and worthier aims; and once, when Russell, whose intelligent interest in his work exceeded that of any other boy, had pointed out to him that solemn question of Euripides--

"[Greek: Ohiei su tous thanontas o Nichaezate Tzuphaes hapasaes metalabontas en bips Pepheugenai to theion];"

he fell into a train of reflection, which made a lasting impression upon his character.

The holidays were approaching. Eric, to escape as much, as possible from his sorrow, plunged into the excitement of working for the examination, and rapidly made up for lost ground. He now spent most of his time with the best of his friends, particularly Montagu, Owen, and Upton; for Upton, like himself, had been much sobered by sorrow at their loss. This time he came out _second_ in his form, and gained more than one prize.

This was his first glimpse of real delight since Russell's death; and when the prize-day came, and he stood with his companions in the flower-decorated room, and went up amid universal applause to take his prize-books, and receive a few words of compliment from the governor who took the chair, he felt almost happy, and keenly entered into the pleasure which his success caused, as well as into the honors won by his friends. One outward sign only remained of his late bereavement--his mourning dress. All the prize-boys wore rosebuds or lilies of the valley in their b.u.t.ton-holes on the occasion, but on this day Eric would not wear them. Little Wright, who was a great friend of theirs, had brought some as a present both to Eric and Montagu, as they stood together on the prize-day morning; they took them with thanks, and, as their eyes met, they understood each other's thoughts.

"No," said Eric to Wright, "we won't wear these to-day, although we have both got prizes. Come along I know what we will do with them."

They all three walked together to the little green, quiet churchyard, where, by his own request, Edwin had been buried. Many a silent visit had the friends paid to that grave, on which the turf was now green again, and the daisies had begun to bloom. A stone had just been placed

SACRED TO THE MEMORY

OF

AN ORPHAN,

WHO DIED AT ROSLYN SCHOOL, MAY 1847,

AGED FIFTEEN YEARS.

"_Is it well with the child? It is well_."

2 KINGS iv. 26.

The three boys stood by the grave in silence and sorrow for a time.

"He would have been the gladdest at our success. Monty," said Eric; "let us leave the signs of it upon his grave."

And, with reverent hand, scattering over that small mound the choice rosebuds and fragrant lilies with their green leaves, they turned away without another word.

The next morning the great piles of corded boxes which crowded the pa.s.sage were put on the coach, and the boys, gladly leaving the deserted building, drove in every sort of vehicle to the steamer. What joyous triumphant mornings those were! How the heart exulted and bounded with, the sense of life and pleasure, and how universal was the gladness and good humor of every one. Never were voyages so merry as those of the steamer that day, and even the "good-byes" that had to be said at Southpool were lightly borne. From thence the boys quickly scattered to the different railways, and the numbers of those who were travelling together got thinner and thinner as the distance increased. Wright and one or two others went nearly all the way with Eric, and when he got down at the little roadside station, from whence started the branch rail to Ayrton, he bade them merry and affectionate farewell. The branch train soon started, and in another hour he would be at Fairholm.

It was not till then that his home feelings woke in all their intensity.

He had not been there for a year. At Roslyn the summer holidays were nine weeks, and the holidays at Christmas and Easter were short, so that it had not been worth while to travel so far as Fairholm, and Eric had spent his Christmas with friends in another part of the island. But now he was once more to see dear Fairholm, and his aunt, his cousin f.a.n.n.y, and above all, his little brother. His heart was beating fast with joy, and his eyes sparkling with pleasure and excitement. As he thrust his head out of the window, each well-remembered landmark gave him the delicious sensation of meeting again an old friend. "Ah! there's the white bridge, and there's the ca.n.a.l, and the stile; and _there_ runs the river, and there's Velvet Lawn. Hurrah! here we are." And springing out of the train before it had well stopped, he had shaken hands heartily with the old coachman, who was expecting him, and jumped up into the carriage in a moment.

Through the lanes he knew so well, by whose hedgerows he had so often plucked sorrel and wild roses; past the old church with its sleeping churchyard; through, the quiet village, where every ten yards he met old acquaintances who looked pleased to see him, and whom he greeted with glad smiles and nods of recognition; past the Latin school, from which came murmurs and voices as of yore (what a man he felt himself now by comparison!);--by the old Roman camp, where he had imagined such heroic things when he was a child; through all the scenes so rich with the memories and a.s.sociations of his happy childhood, they flew along; and now they had entered the avenue, and Eric was painfully on the look-out.

Yes! there they were all three--Mrs. Trevor, and f.a.n.n.y, and Vernon, on the mound at the end of the avenue; and the younger ones ran to meet him. It was a joyous meeting; he gave f.a.n.n.y a hearty kiss, and put his arm round Vernon's neck, and then held him in front to have a look at him.

"How tall you've grown, Verny, and how well you look," he said, gazing proudly at him; and indeed the boy was a brother to be justly proud of.

And Vernon quite returned the admiration as he saw the healthy glow of Eric's features, and the strong graceful development of his limbs.