We could easily have arranged to meet at Quickster, which is about the same distance from him that it is from me. But a ride of twenty miles, most of them slow ones, beside a man with whom you are not in full sympathy, is a trial. I did not feel called upon to undergo it for him. When he took leave of me, he again seemed about to propose something, and I felt it was this plan which was so natural; but he was again withheld, by pride or by delicacy. Either feeling I could sympathize with, and I was more touched by this reserve than by all his friendly advances; but I hardened my heart. He mounted his horse. I saw him go slowly down the path to the road, stoop from the saddle to open the gate,—pass out. And then I was seized with sudden compunction. I heard the slow step of his horse, receding as if reluctantly, and ready to be checked at a hint. I ran to the gate. Frederic was just turning away, as if he had been looking back, expecting to see me; but in the same instant he gave an intimation to his horse, and was out of the reach of my repentance.
"I liked him." With Harry these words mean a great deal. Could Harry ever have liked him, if he had not been worthy to be liked? How sad his look was, when he spoke of his happy boyish days!—happier than these only because they were blameless. Was not this regret itself an earnest of the power of return? He had good blood in him. He is Charles Shaler's cousin. He has a weak, shallow mother,—a father whose good qualities and whose faults are overlaid with the same worldly varnish impartially. He feels the need of other influences, and clings to Harry. He comes to me instinctively seeking something he has not in his home. My mother has always judged him more kindly than I have. If he had been a poor outcast child, I should have felt his coming to me so frankly and so persistently to be a sign I was to do something for him. Is there a greater need than that of sympathy and honest counsel? I have been selfish, but this pain is punishment enough. I feel a remorse surely out of proportion to my sin. I do not prevent his going to meet Harry by not asking him to go with me. He is not one to give up his wish; and in this case there is no reason that he should. He will arrive; I am sure of it. And I will atone, at least in part. I will ask him to join me on the ride home.
Old Jasper has told me stories of Frederic Harvey's good-heartedness in childhood: tells them to me, indeed, every time he sees me. I remember one in particular, of the pretty little boy in his foreign dress, and speaking his foreign language, carrying his own breakfast one morning to the cabin where the old man lay sick; and another of his taking away part of her load from a feeble woman; and another of his falling on a driver and wresting from him the whip with which he was lashing a fainting boy. But Jasper has only these early stories to tell of him; and what different ones are current now!
In dear old New England the child is father of the man. There the lovely infancy is the sure promise of the noble maturity. But where justice is illegal! where mercy is a criminal indulgence! where youth is disciplined to selfishness, and the man's first duty is to deny himself his virtues! If the nephew of Augustus had lived, would he indeed have been Marcellus? Heu pietas! Heu prisca fides!—these might have been mourned, though Octavia had not wept her son.
Thursday, April 18, 1844.
It is thirty-five miles to Omocqua by the common road through Metapora and Tenpinville; but I shall save myself five, going across fields and through wood-paths, and coming out at Quickster. You left the Omocqua road there, and took that to Quarleston. I shall stop half an hour at Quickster to rest my horse and have a little talk with Barton. I mean to allow myself ample time for the journey, that Brownie may take it easily and yet bring me to Omocqua in season for a stroll about the neighborhood with the Doctor and Harry before nightfall. Some miles of my way are difficult with tree-stumps and brush; a part of it is sandy; the last third is hilly. I have never been farther on that road than Ossian, about three miles beyond Quickster; but the country between Ossian and Omocqua is, I know, very much like that between Quarleston and Cyclops, which you found so beautiful and so tiresome.
I do not mean that my parting with Harry shall be a sad one. After that day at Omocqua, I shall not meet his smile,—his hand will not clasp mine again; but he will leave with me something of himself which will not go from me. His courage, the energy of his straightforward will, shall still nerve and brace me, though his cordial voice may never again convey their influence to my heart. Wherever he is, I shall know we are thinking, feeling together, and working together; for I shall surely do what he asks of me: that he thinks it worth doing is enough.
And Dr. Borrow does not leave me what he found me. It was with a continual surprise that I learned how much there is of interest and variety in our uniform neighborhood for a man who knows the meaning of what he sees. How many things are full of suggestion now that were mute before! He has given me glimpses of undreamed-of pleasures. A practical man, following him in his walks, and gathering up the hints he lets fall, might turn them to great real use.