FAITHFUL HEARTS.
On a pleasant summer evening Dan and Ellen and George Marvel were sitting in the shade of the veranda which surrounded three sides of their house. The house was built of wood, and was all on one floor, and there was a garden in the front and in the rear. George Marvel was smoking his pipe as usual, and having by this time got used to the short clays, which were the only ones he could now obtain, had just declared that he enjoyed a short pipe as well as a long one; "though I couldn't stomach them at first, Dan, as you know." Dan nodded in acquiescence; he had no time to reply; for at that moment a great shouting was heard, and the mail-cart was seen driving round the corner towards them. The arrival of the mail-cart in the village was an event of the utmost importance, and was always greeted with cheers by the excited population. There was a mail-service once a fortnight, and sometimes it would be a day or two behind, which was most serviceable to the inhabitants of the village, as giving them something to be anxious about and to talk about. The driver (who was contractor for the mail, owner of the mail-cart, and driver of it, all in one) had one invariable excuse when he was late; he had been waiting for the birds. Now, when Dan first heard this, he, without knowing its meaning, felt instantly attracted to the driver of the mail, whose name was Ramsay; and when he had an explanation from the lips of a neighbor to whom Ramsay had given a lift (he was always giving kindly "lifts" to one and another), Dan was disposed to be affectionately familiar with him. This feeling being reciprocated by Ramsay, an intimacy sprung up between them, the consequence of which was, that Ramsay, after delivering his mails to the postmaster (a rheumatic old woman, deaf, and almost blind), came as regularly as a clock to have a smoke and a chat with Dan and the Marvels. A curious character was Ramsay; a man who had seen better days--who had, indeed, once been very wealthy--who had been plundered and deceived from his youth upwards--and who yet retained a kindliness to every living thing with which he came in contact. Thus, his waiting for the birds: it was whimsical, pretty childish, some said; consisting in stopping whichever of his two steady old mares he was driving, immediately he saw a bird on the bush track before him. "Get out of my way, little bird," he would say in a singularly gentle voice, and he would give his whip a flick at the back of his cart, which had not the slightest effect in disturbing the little creature that blocked the road. But Ramsay could no more drive past it than he could drive through a wire fence; and he often found it necessary to descend from his cart, and walk softly towards the bird, which, having probably by that time finished its pecking, would jerk up its cunning head towards the intruder, and leisurely take flight to the nearest tree, where it would watch the lazy old mare trotting along and would receive perhaps a comical "Good-morning, little bird!" from the gentle-hearted mail-contractor.
When Ramsay had delivered his mail to the rheumatic old female postmaster, he would look over the letters and newspapers (five minutes was long enough to sort the lot of them) to see whether there was any thing for Dan and Mr. Marvel. On this evening there was a newspaper; and Ramsay, taking possession of it, walked leisurely to the house of his friends. Ellen's child, Maggie, saw him, and ran to him for a jump in the air, and he stopped to indulge her until he was out of breath, when he was glad to deliver her into her mother's charge, shaking his head laughingly in answer to her cries for "more!"
"Hi, Mrs. Wattles!" he shouted to a woman who was passing. "There's a letter for you at the post-office." Which sent Mrs. Wattles off, in eager haste, to receive her missive.
"You're a day late," said Dan, as Ramsay opened the gate.
"Waiting for the birds, Dan; couldn't get along for the creatures. Here's a newspaper for you."
The newspaper had an English postage-stamp upon it, and there was something marked inside.
"It's from the Old Sailor!" cried Dan, and pressed it to his lips and so did Ellen, and all those simple foolish people, in turns, one after another. The paragraph that was marked related how a ship, with all hands, was reported lost ten years ago, and there was nothing more heard of her until a week before the newspaper was printed, when into the London Docks came a vessel from China, which had been driven out of her course, luckily, and had in consequence picked up six men off an island, who had been living there for many years; and how that these men belonged to the crew who were supposed to have gone to the bottom ten years before. You may imagine that they read this paragraph half a dozen times at the least, having Joshua in their minds all the time, and that Ellen and Mrs. Marvel disappeared for a few minutes to have a cry together. While they were away, the men sat silent and grave, Dan reading the newspaper, and George Marvel and Ramsay smoking their pipes.
Now, once in every month--that is, by every other mail--Ramsay had to deliver a mail-bag at a cattle-station known as Bull's Run. The station was between forty and fifty miles distant from the village, and Ramsay took two days for the journey, out of a merciful regard for his old mare. As he had to start for Bull's Run early in the morning, he did not stay late with his friends, but bade them goodnight at about nine o'clock. When he was gone, the Old Sailor became the subject of conversation, and every circumstance of their intimacy was recalled and dwelt upon with loving affection. Every night they sat together--Susan as well, although she never joined in the conversation--talking of one thing and another. Time had softened their grief, but it had not made them less constant; their hearts beat as fondly and devotedly for Joshua as ever they had done.
Susan and Mr. and Mrs. Marvel had gone to bed; Ellen and Dan were alone. Between these two an undefinable sympathy existed; they could almost read each other's thoughts; and this night Ellen lingered when the others had retired to rest, because she had read in Dan's face the signs of something more than usually important in his mind. For a long time they were silent; the stillness of every thing around impressed them deeply. The nature of their thoughts and the stillness of the night, in which there was something solemn, brought to both of them the memory of another night, years ago, when they had sat alone as they were sitting now, with Basil Kindred's unopened diary before them.