Eric; Or, Little by Little

by F. W. Farrar

"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 passed 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 lustre 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 nobler and manlier than it had ever been. Montagu had never known or heard much about godliness; 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 passed 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