Eric; Or, Little by Little

by F. W. Farrar

"Look at that poor fellow asleep on the grass," said Fanny, pointing to a sailor boy, who lay coiled up on the bank beside the gate. "He has had a rough bed, mother, if he has spent the night there, as I fear."

Mrs. Trevor had grasped her arm. "What is Flo' doing?" she said, stopping, as the pretty little spaniel trotted up to the boy's reclining figure, and began snuffing about it, and then broke into a quick short bark of pleasure, and fawned and frisked about him, and leapt upon him, joyously wagging his tail.

The boy rose with the dew wet from the flowers upon his hair; he saw the dog, and at once began playfully to fondle it, and hold its little silken head between his hands; but as yet he had not caught sight of the Trevors.

"It is--oh, good heavens! it is Eric," cried Mrs. Trevor, as she flew towards him. Another moment and he was in her arms, silent, speechless, with long arrears of pent-up emotion.

"O my Eric, our poor, lost, wandering Eric--come home; you are forgiven, more than forgiven, my own darling boy. Yes, I knew that my prayers would be answered; this is as though we received you from the dead." And the noble lady wept upon his neck, and Eric, his heart shaken with accumulated feelings, clung to her and wept.

Deeply did that loving household rejoice to receive back their lost child. At once they procured him a proper dress, and a warm bath, and tended him with every gentle office of female ministering hands. And in the evening, when he told them his story in a broken voice of penitence and remorse, their love came to him like a sweet balsam, and he rested by them, "seated, and clothed, and in his right mind."

The pretty little room, fragrant with sweet flowers from the greenhouse, was decorated with all the refinement of womanly taste, and its glass doors opened on the pleasant garden. It was long, long since Eric had ever seen anything like it, and he had never hoped to see it again. "Oh dearest aunty," he murmured, as he rested his weary head upon her lap, while he sat on a low stool at her feet, "Oh aunty, you will never know how different this is from the foul, horrible hold of the 'Stormy Petrel,' and its detestable inmates."

When Eric was dressed once more as a gentleman, and once more fed on nourishing and wholesome food, and was able to move once more about the garden by Fanny's side, he began to recover his old appearance, and the soft bloom came back to his cheek again, and the light to his blue eye. But still his health gave most serious cause for apprehension; weeks of semi-starvation, bad air, sickness, and neglect, followed by two nights of exposure and wet, had at last undermined the remarkable strength of his constitution, and the Trevors soon became aware of the painful fact that he was sinking to the grave, and had come home only to die.

Above all, there seemed to be some great load at his heart which he could not remove; a sense of shame, the memory of his disgrace at Roslyn, and of the dark suspicion that rested on his name. He avoided the subject, and they were too kind to force it on him, especially as he had taken away the bitterest part of their trial in remembering it, by explaining to them that he was far from being so wicked in the matter of the theft as they had at first been (how slowly and reluctantly!) almost forced to believe.

"Have you ever heard--oh, how shall I put it?--have you ever heard, aunty, how things went on at Roslyn after I ran away?" he asked, one evening, with evident effort.