But to return to my cadets at Sandhurst. I had two young friends there, both Irish, who were known to me from childhood; both greatly attached to my brother; both loving me dearly; and many a happy hour we passed, strolling over the wild heath, or enjoying the cheerfulness of my cottage home. On those two, among many, I looked with especial solicitude as to their future course; and I have had to rejoice, in different ways, over them both. One was early taken to his rest; he died in the faith, looking simply to the Lord Jesus, and finding perfect peace in him. The other was long away on foreign service, and when next I saw him it was as the deliverer, under God, of a whole town, and probably through that of the whole kingdom, from a scene of revolutionary carnage. He commanded the gallant little body of troops at Newport who, on the 4th of November, 1839, quelled the Chartist insurrection, and broke the formidable power that menaced a general outbreak. I cannot pass over this event, it was so delightfully gratifying to me.
A third of those in whom I took a lively interest was Alexander Count Calharez, the eldest son of the Duc de Palmella. He was a most elegant youth, of fine mind, delicate feelings, and the sweetest manners possible. Devotedly attached to Romanism, he constantly attended mass at the house of the old abbé, who added to his professorship in the Royal Military College the duties of a Popish priest. It was a sore grief to me to see Calharez pursuing his solitary way to that house, while we took the road to the college chapel, and met him half-way. I longed to enter a solemn protest against his delusion, but I never did it in direct terms, though very often dwelling, in his presence, on the peculiar truths of Christianity, opposed as they are to the lie in which he trusted. I hoped to have enjoyed many future opportunities of conversing with him, for he always sought our society in preference to many things that appeared more attractive, and took a lively interest in Jack. But the college did not suit his taste; he left it soon and accompanied his father to Portugal. He died at the Azores; and I have been told that his hope at the last was one which maketh not ashamed. He was the subject of many prayers; the last day will tell whether they were answered.
But I cannot hasten through the heaviest part of my task; it is the rending open of a wound never to heal until the leaves of the tree of life shall be laid upon it; and if by any means I do attain to that resurrection from among the dead in which none but the Lord's children shall partake, surely the dear object of all this sorrow will be there beside me.
Six months had passed since my brother's departure to Ireland, and all his letters were full of cheerfulness and pleasant anticipation. On the subject where I most wished to know his feelings, he was silent; but a passage in one of his letters struck me greatly. I had been suffering from a slight local pain, which one of my medical friends erroneously pronounced to be a disease of the heart; and in communicating this to him I had noticed, that I must live in momentary expectation of sudden death. His reply was very affectionate. He said it had given him a great shock, but on a little reflection he was convinced of its being altogether a nervous sensation; adding, "If not, why should you shrink from sudden death? For my own part, I should desire it, as a short and easy passage out of this life." A tremor came over me as I read these words; but again I thought, "Surely there is something on his mind to brighten that passage, or he would not so express himself;" and the thought of many perils surrounding him quickened me to redoubled prayer that God would set his feet upon the Rock of ages.
It was on a bright Sabbath morning at the end of June, that having rather overslept myself, I found, on awaking, the letters brought by early post lying on my pillow. I took one: it was the Horse Guards envelope, in which his letters usually came; and in my eagerness to open one from him, I did not even put up a prayer. Full of smiling anticipation, I unfolded the enclosure, which was from a most dear and valued friend at the Horse Guards; and after some tender preparation, which the sudden reeling of my terrified brain prevented my comprehending, came the paralyzing sequel: A letter had been received from Mullingar—he was on the lake fishing—the boat overset. I could not understand the meaning of the words; but I understood the thing itself.
I sprung to my knees to cry for mercy on him—but Oh, that dreadful, dreadful thought that pierced through my inmost soul—"He is beyond the reach of prayer." I fell back as if really shot. But what avails it to dwell on this? I bore it as God enabled me; I felt crushed, annihilated as it were, under the fierce wrath of the Lord; for to aggravate the blow, I had no power to believe or to hope. It was a light thing to have lost him, my all in this cold, dreary world, who from early infancy had been as the light to my eyes, and the life-blood to my heart—him who had so very lately been restored, as if to show that while he remained all I could desire of earthly happiness was within my reach—him who had been to me instead of every other mortal blessing, and to whom I looked for all that I dared hope of future comfort. It was a light thing to have lost him, and to look upon the anguish of his widowed mother, to whom he had ever been more of a ministering angel than a son, and upon the tears of his little daughter, who had lost a father indeed. All this was a small matter compared with the overwhelming horrors of that fearful thought, that he had lost his soul.
I had fallen much into the common, dangerous error of looking to my own faith rather than to the object of it for salvation; and I did in my heart, exceedingly glory in this supposed faith of mine. The dreadful dispensation under which I was laid showed me at once, that of faith I had not to the value of a grain of mustard-seed; and now I felt the desolation of spirit which none can know who have not been so compelled to make such a discovery. I did not rebel; I owned the justice of God: nay, the very first words I could find breath to utter broke forth in the confession, "Righteous art thou, O Lord; just and true are thy ways, O King of saints!" But it was a fearful trembling beneath the hand that had smote me; and as for being contented to have it so, I was not: I do not wish that I had been contented to believe my brother was lost; I do not understand that feeling, nor wish to understand it; for surely while we remain in the flesh, we cannot divest ourselves of what God has interwoven with our very nature, nor cease to feel for the spiritual, the eternal interests of those most fondly endeared to us—a solicitude as great, aye, much greater, than what we, in our unconverted state, once knew in regard to their temporal concerns. I speak of those instances where, after being ourselves brought to know the Lord, we have labored and prayed perseveringly for others, and then have suddenly lost them. I was not content to think that my prayers had been cast out: I wanted some token that they had been answered. Blessed be the God of all mercies, I was not disappointed. * * *
Meanwhile, what a tenfold recompense for all the care bestowed on him did I reap in the beautiful sympathy of the dumb boy. When I came down stairs that dreadful morning, he met me with a face of such wild dismay as even then arrested my attention. He uttered an audible "Oh!" of most touching tone, and thus expressed the impossibility he felt of realizing the tidings: "Jack what? Jack asleep? Jack see, no—think, no. Jack afraid, very. Beautiful Captain B—— gone?—dead? What?" and he stamped with the impatience of that fearfully inquisitive what. I answered, "Captain B—— gone; water kill—dead." Tears stole down his loving face as he responded, "Poor mam! Mam one;" meaning I was now alone in the world. "God see poor mam one; Jesus Christ love poor mam one." With a feeling of bitter agony I asked him, "What? Jesus Christ love Captain B——?" "Yes," he replied, after a moment's solemn thought on the question, "Yes, Jack much pray; mam much pray; Jesus Christ see much prays." This was true comfort; all the eloquence of all the pulpits in England could not have gone to my heart like that assurance, that Jesus Christ had seen his many dumb prayers on behalf of that lost—Oh, I could not, even in the depth of my unbelieving heart, say, "lost one." I again asked the boy, "Jack much prays?" He answered with solemn fervency, "Very, very much prays. Jack pray morning, pray night; Jack pray church, pray bed. Yes, Jack many days, very, pray God make"—and he finished by signs, that wings should be made to grow from my brother's shoulders, for him to fly to heaven, adding, Jesus Christ must make the wings; and then, with a burst of delighted animation, he told me that he was a "very tall angel, very beautiful."
I have repeated this conversation to show the broken language carried on between us; and also how powerfully he expressed his thoughts. Soon after, when I was nearly fainting, a glass of water was held to my lips. I am ashamed to say, I dashed it down, exclaiming, "That murderer!" Jack caught my eye, and echoing my feelings, said, in a bitter way, "Bad water!" then with a look of exulting contempt at the remaining fluid, he added, "Soul gone water? No!" This idea, that the soul was not drowned, electrified me; so good is a word spoken in due season, however trite a truism that word may be.
That night I pretended to go to bed, that others might do so too; and then I left my room, went to my little study, which was hung round with Jack's sweet drawings, and sat down, resting my elbows on the table, my face on my hands, and so remained for a couple of hours. Day had scarcely broken, brightly upon me, about two in the morning, when the door opened softly, and Jack entered, only partially dressed, his face deadly pale, and altogether looking most piteously wretched. He paused at the door, saying, "Jack sleep, no; Jack sick, head bad—no more see beautiful Captain B——." I could only shake my head, and soon buried my face in my hands again. However, I still saw him through my fingers; and after lifting up his clasped hands and eyes in prayer for me, he proceeded to execute the purpose of his visit to that room. Softly, stealthily, he went round, mounting a chair, and unpinned from the wall every drawing that contained a ship, a boat, or water under any form of representation. Still peeping at me, hoping he was not observed, he completed this work, which nothing but a mind refined to the highest degree of delicate tenderness could ever have prompted, and then stopping at the door, cast over his shoulder such a look of desolate sorrow at me, that its very wretchedness poured balm into my heart. Oh what a heavenly lesson is that, "Weep with them that do weep," and how we fly in its face when going to the mourner with our inhuman, cold- blooded exhortations to leave off grieving. Even Job's tormenting friends gave him seven days' true consolation while they sat silent on the earth weeping with him.