Erema; Or, My Father's Sin

by R. D. Blackmore

And, even after that, they say that he never would have cared to be a man again, never would have calmed his conscience with the reflection, so commonplace and yet so high—that having done our best according to our lights, we must not dwell always on our darkness—if once again, and for the residue of life, there had not been some one to console him—a consolation that need not have, and is better without, pure reason, coming, as that would come, from a quarter whence it is never quite welcome. Enough for me that he never laid hand to a weapon of war again, and never shall unless our own home is invaded.

For after many months—each equal to a year of teaching and of humbling—there seemed to be a good time for me to get away and attend to my duties in England. Of these I had been reminded often by letters, and once by a messenger; but all money matters seemed dust in the balance where life and death were swinging. But now Uncle Sam and his grandson, having their love knit afresh by disaster, were eager to start for the Saw-mill, and trust all except their own business to Providence.

I had told them that, when they went westward, my time would be come for starting eastward; and being unlikely to see them again, I should hope for good news frequently. And then I got dear Uncle Sam by himself, and begged him, for the sake of Firm's happiness, to keep him as far as he could from Pennsylvania Sylvester. At the same time I thought that the very nice young lady who jumped upon his nose from the window, Miss Annie—I forgot her name, or at any rate I told him so—would make him a good straightforward wife, so far as one could tell from having seen her. And that seemed to have been settled in their infancy. And if he would let me know when it was to be, I had seen a thing in London I should like to give them.

When I asked the Sawyer to see to this, instead of being sorry, he seemed quite pleased, and nodded sagaciously, and put his hat on, as he generally did, to calculate.

“Both of them gals have married long ago,” he said, looking at me with a fine soft gaze; “and bad handfuls their mates have got of them. But what made you talk of them, missy—or 'my lady,' as now you are in old country, I hear—what made you think of them like that, my dearie?”

“I can't tell what made me think of them. How can I tell why I think of every thing?”

“Still, it was an odd thing for your ladyship to say.”

“Uncle Sam, I am nobody's ladyship, least of all yours. What makes you speak so? I am your own little wandering child, whose life you saved, and whose father you loved, and who loses all who love her. Even from you I am forced to go away. Oh, why is it always my fate—my fate?”

“Hush!” said the old man; and I stopped my outburst at his whisper. “To talk of fate, my dearie, shows either one thing or the other—that we have no will of our own, or else that we know not how to guide it. I never knew a good man talk of fate. The heathens and the pagans made it. The Lord in heaven is enough for me; and He always hath allowed me my own free-will, though I may not have handled 'un cleverly. And He giveth you your own will now, my missy—to go from us or to stop with us. And being as you are a very grand young woman now, owning English land and income paid in gold instead of greenbacks—the same as our nugget seems likely—to my ideas it would be wrong if we was so much as to ask you.”

“Is that what you are full of, then, and what makes you so mysterious? I did think that you knew me better, and I had a right to hope so.”