First Love: A Novel. Vol. 1 of 3

by Mrs. Loudon

During the latter part of this speech he turned to his bundle, and kneeling on one knee, untied it, took a small parcel out of it, unrolled a long bandage of unbleached linen cloth from about the parcel, next a covering of old leather, that seemed to have once formed a part of a shamoy for cleaning plate, then several pieces of torn and worn paper, and at length, from out the inmost fold, he produced a letter, which, as he concluded, he held up between his thumb and finger, saying, “There it is now! I mane no harm at all at all, to the misthress; nothing but to give her this small bit of paper, that the dying woman put into my hands, in presence of the priest, and that hasn’t seen the light o’ day since till now.”

John told him, that if that was all, he might be quite easy, as his delivering the letter at the house was the same thing as if he handed it to his lady herself; for that all his lady’s letters were carried in by the servants.

“And is she so great a lady as all that,” said the stranger, “that a poor man can’t have spache of her? But I’ve had spache, before now, of the great lady up at the castle, sure, and its twiste, aye, three times as big as that house.”

After some more parleying, in the course of which John disclosed the peculiar circumstances in which his mistress then was, our faithful messenger, after ejaculating, with a countenance of true commiseration, “And has she, the crathur?” at length seemed to feel the necessity of consenting to what he considered a very irregular proceeding, namely, the sending in of the letter; not, however, till he had first compelled John to kiss the back of it, and, in despite of the evidence of his own senses, to call it a blessed book, and holding one end, while our pertinacious friend held the other, to repeat after him the words of a long oath, to deliver it in safety. This, John proceeded to say, he did immediately, by giving the letter to one of the women to carry into his mistress’s room.

“I suppose,” said Mrs. Montgomery, with a sigh, “I must have laid it down without opening, and forgotten it.”

Mr. Jackson observed, that from the expression, “over seas to the harvest,” and also the man’s appearance, it was very evident he must be one of those poor creatures who come over in shiploads from the north of Ireland to Whitehaven, during the reaping season; and that this fact, once admitted, seemed to render it more than probable, that the noble family spoken of were Irish. As to the important particulars of names and titles, there seemed but one chance of obtaining them; which was, to institute an immediate search after the young man who had brought the letter. Every inquiry was accordingly made, but in vain.

After some months, Mr. Jackson himself, in the warmth of his zeal, undertook a journey to Ireland; but returned, without having been able to discover any clue to the business. Advertisements were next resorted to, but no one claimed Edmund. The letter had said, that “those it concerned most were,” in the nurse’s phraseology, “not to the fore.” Whether death, or absence from the kingdom was meant, it was impossible to say.

The harvest season of the next year came and went, but the wandering knight of the reaping-hook was heard of no more; and Mrs. Montgomery, while her better judgment condemned the feeling, could not conceal from herself, that she experienced a sensation of reprieve, on finding that she was not immediately to be called upon to resign her little charge. Poor Edmund had now become to her a kind of sacred pledge; every thought and feeling that regarded him, was associated with the memory of her dear departed child, who had taken so benevolent a delight in protecting and cherishing the helpless being she had rescued from misery, and almost certain death. Could the mourning mother then leave undone any thing that that dear child, had she lived, would have done? The absolute seclusion too, in which grief for the loss of her daughter, induced Mrs. Montgomery to live, gave all that concerned this object, of an interest thus connected with the feelings of the time, an importance in her eyes, which, under any other circumstances, would scarcely, perhaps, have been natural.

Gradually, however, the prospect of discovering who Edmund’s parents were, faded almost entirely away; but the conviction that they must be noble was, from the period of the receipt of the nurse’s packet, firmly fixed on the mind, both of his benefactress and of Mr. Jackson. The style, indeed, of the letter itself, left no doubt of the veracity of the writer; while the manners of him who had been the bearer of the strange epistle, the conversation of the man and woman on the Keswick road, nay, the very state in which the poor child was first found—were all corroborating evidences.