Evenings at Donaldson Manor; Or, The Christmas Guest

by Maria J. McIntosh

Accordingly, in the evening, I gave them the "o'er true tale" of

[THE YOUNG MISANTHROPE.]

"In the blue summer ocean, far off and alone," lies a little island, known to mariners in the Pacific only for the fine water with which it supplies them, and for the bold shore which makes it possible for ships of considerable tonnage to lie in quiet near the land. Discovered at first by accident, it has been long, for these reasons, visited both by English and American whalers. A few years since, and no trace of man's presence could be found there beyond the belt of rocks, amidst which arose the springs that were the chief, and indeed only attraction the island presented to the rough, hardy men by whom it had been visited. But within that stony girdle lay a landscape soft and lovely as any that arose within the tropical seas. There the plantain waved its leafy crown, the orange shed its rich perfume, and bore its golden fruit aloft upon the desert air, and the light, feathery foliage of the tamarind moved gracefully to the touch of the dallying breeze. All was green, and soft, and fair, for there no winter chills the life of nature, but,

"The bee banquets on through a whole year of flowers."

It was a scene which might have seemed created for the abode of some being too bright and good for the common earth of common men, or for some Hinda and Hafed, who, driven from a world all too harsh and evil for their nobler natures, might have found in it a refuge,

"Where the bright eyes of angels only
Should come around them to behold
A paradise so pure and lonely."

Alas for the dream of the poet! This beautiful island became the refuge, not of pure and loving hearts, but of one from whose nature cruel tyranny seemed to have blotted out every feeling and every faculty save hatred and fear; and he who first introduced into its yet untainted solitudes the bitter sorrows and dark passions of humanity, was a child, who, but ten years before, had lain in all the loveliness of sinless infancy upon a mother's bosom. Of that mother's history he knew nothing—whether her sin or only her sorrows had thrown him fatherless upon the world, he was ignorant—he had only a dim memory of gentle eyes, which had looked on him as no others had ever looked, and of a low, sweet voice, speak to him such words as he had never heard from any other. He had been loved, and that love had made his life of penury in an humble hovel in England, bright and beautiful; but his mother had passed away from earth, and with her all the light of his existence. Child as he was, the succeeding darkness preserved long in brightness the memory of the last look from her fast glazing eyes, the last words from her dying lips, the last touch of her already death-cold hand. She died, and the same reluctant charity which consigned her to a pauper's grave, gave to her boy a dwelling in the parish poor-house. With the tender mercies of such institutions the author of Oliver Twist has made the world acquainted. They were such in the present case, that the poor little Edward Hallett welcomed as the first glad words that had fallen on his ears for two long, weary years, the news that he was to be bound apprentice to a captain sailing from Portsmouth in a whaling ship. He learned rather from what was said near him, than to him, that this man wanted a cabin boy, but would not have one who was not bound to him, or to use the more expressive language in which it reached the ears of his destined victim, "one with whom he could not do as he pleased."

He who had come within the poor-house walls at six years old, a glad, rosy-cheeked, chubby child, went from them at eight, thin, and pale, and grave, with a frame broken by want and labor, a mind clouded, and a heart repressed by unkindness. But, sad as was the history of those years, the succeeding two taught the poor boy to regard them as the vanished brightness of a dream. The man—we should more justly say, the fiend—to whom the next fourteen years of his life were by bond devoted, was a savage by nature, and had been rendered yet more brutal by habits of intoxication. In his drunken orgies, his favorite pastime was to torture the unfortunate being whom the "guardians of the poor" of an English parish had placed in his power. It would make the heart of the reader sick, were we to attempt a detail of the many horrible inventions by which this modern Caligula amused his leisure hours, and made life hideous to his victim. Nor was it only from this arch-fiend that the poor boy suffered. Mate, cook, and sailors, soon found in him a butt for their jokes, an object on which they might safely vent their ill-humor, and a convenient cover for their own delinquencies.

He was beaten for and by them. The evil qualities which man had himself elicited from his nature, if not implanted there—the sullenness, and hardiness, and cunning he evinced, were made an excuse for further injury. During his first voyage of eighteen months, spite of all this, hope was not entirely dead in his heart. The ship was to return to England, and he determined to run away from her, and find his way back to the poor-house. It was a miserable refuge, but it was his only one. He escaped—he found his way thither through many dangers—he told his story. It was heard with incredulity, and he was returned to his tormentors, to learn that there is even in hell "a deeper hell."

Again he went on a whaling voyage. Day after day the fathomless, the seemingly illimitable sea, the image of the Infinite was around him—but his darkened mind saw in it only a prison, which shut him in with his persecutors. Night after night the stars beamed peacefully above him, luring his thoughts upward, but he saw in them only the signals of drunken revelry to others, and of deeper woe to himself. There was but one wish in his heart—it had almost ceased to be a hope—to escape from man; to live and die where he should never see his form, never hear his voice. The ship encountered a severe storm. She was driven from her course, her voyage lengthened, and some of her water-casks were stove in. They made for an island, not far distant, by the chart, to take in a fresh supply of water. Edward Hallett heard the sailors say to each other that this island was uninhabited, and his wish grew into a passionate desire—a hope. For the completion of this hope, he had but one resource—the sword and the shield of the feeble—cunning; and well he exercised his weapon.