“No,” I answered.
“But I did,” returned the youth; “and a braver, nobler heart never beat in the frame of a man. He has been most unhappy, poor fellow, in his relatives.”
“I am sorry to hear it,” I could only reply.
“If I could honour you in any way, sir,” rejoined the youth, “which your heart cares for, beyond its own noble joy, in acting the manly and humane part which you have acted towards my poor friend, I would delight to honour you. You are at least entitled to some information about the deceased, which I may give you in a way which will best show the praise and the heart of poor Crabbe. I have some letters here in my pocket, which I brought with me, alas! that he might explain something to me, which they all, more or less contain, relative to a piece of special business; from one of them I shall read an extract, relative to his early history, and the miserable occasion on which he found his long-lost father, whom, after long and patient efforts to trace his parents, he was at length directed to seek in one of your villages in the south of Scotland.”
The particular letter was selected, and the young Englishman, over the grave of his friend, read as follows:—
“I could have wept tears of blood, on finding things as they are with the unhappy old man who is indeed my father. I shall speak to you now as I would commune with my own heart; but yet it must be in mild terms, lest I be wickedly unfilial. Is not this awful? From the very little which I knew of myself ere I came to this country, and from information which I have gathered within these two weeks from the old clergyman of this village, it appears that my mother had died a few days after giving me birth, and that my uncle, who had never been satisfied with the marriage, took me, when very young, from my father, whose unhappy peculiarities led him readily to resign me; gave me my mother’s name, and carried me with him to Holland, where he was a merchant. He was very kind to me in my youth; and, when I was of proper age, bought me a commission in the British army, in which I have served, as you know, for nearly ten years, and which, you also know, I was obliged to leave, in consequence of a wound in one of my ankles, which, subject to occasional swelling, has rendered me quite unfit for travel. My uncle died about three years ago, and left me heir to his effects, which were considerable. Nothing in his papers led me to suppose that my father might yet be living, but I learned the fact from a confidential friend of his, who communicated it to me, not very wisely, perhaps, since he could not tell me even my real name. Bitterly condemning my uncle’s cruel policy, which had not allowed him to hold any intercourse whatever with my father, and which had cut me off from the natural guardian of my life, I hasted over to this country, with no certain hope of success in finding out whose I was, beyond what my knowledge that I bore my mother’s name led me to entertain. I had my own romance connected with the pursuit. I said to myself, that I might have little sisters, who should be glad to own me, unworthy though I was; I might bring comfort to a good old man, whose infirmities of age were canonized by the respect due to his sanctity; who, in short, had nothing of age but its reverence; and who, like another patriarch, was to fall upon my neck, and weep for joy like a little child. Every night I was on board, hasting to this country, I saw my dream-sisters, so kind, so beautiful: they washed my feet; they looked at the scars of my wounds; they were proud of me for having been a soldier, and leaned on my arm as we went to church, before all the people, who were lingering in the sunny churchyard; and the good old man went before, looking oft back to see that we were near behind, accommodating his step to show that he too was one of the party, though he did his best to appear self-denied.
“After getting the clue, as mentioned in my last letter to you, I took a seat in the mail, which I was told would pass at a little distance from the village whither I was bound. Would to God I had set out the day before, that so I might have prevented a horrid thing! The coach was stopped for me at a little bridge, that I might get out; the village, about a mile off, was pointed out to me; and I was advised to follow a small foot-path, which led along by a rivulet, as being the nearest way to the place in question. Twilight was now beginning to deepen among the elms that skirted the path into which I had struck; and in this softest hour of nature, I had no other thought than that I was drawing near a home of peace. I know not whether the glen which I was traversing could have roused such indescribable emotions within me, had I not guessed that scenes were before me which my childhood must have often seen; but every successive revelation of the pass up which I was going,—pool after pool ringed by night insects, and shot athwart on the surface by those unaccountable diverging lines, so fine, so rapid, which may be the sport too of invisible insects,—stream after stream, with its enamelled manes of cool green velvet, which anon twined themselves out of sight beneath the rooted brakes,—one shy green nook in the bank after another, overwaved by the long pensile boughs of trees, and fringed with many a fairy mass of blent wild flowers;—all these made me start, as at the melancholy recurrence of long-forgotten dreams. And when the blue heron rose from the stream where he had been wading, and with slow flagging wing crossed and re-crossed the water, and then went up the darkened valley to seek his lone haunt by the mountain spring, I was sure I had seen the very same scene, and the very same bird, some time in my life before. My dear Stanley, you cannot guess why I dwell so long on these circumstances! For it enters my very heart with anguish, to tell the moral contrast to my hopes, and to these peaceful accompaniments of outward nature. It must be told. Listen to what follows.
“I had not walked more than a quarter of a mile up the valley, when I heard feeble cries for assistance, as of some one in the last extremity, drowning in the stream. I made what haste I could, and, on getting round a sloping headland of the bank, which shot forward to the edge of the rounding water, I found myself close upon a company of fellows, habited like Christmas mummers, apparently amusing themselves with the struggles of a person in the water, who, even as he secured a footing, and got his head above, was again pushed down by his cruel assailants. I was upon them ere they were aware, and reached one fellow, who seemed particularly active, an excellent thwack with my ratan, from which, however, recovering, he took to his heels, followed by his associates. My next business was to relieve the object of their cruelty; but this was no easy task; for, being probably by this time quite exhausted, he had yielded to the current; and, ere I could reach him, was rolled down into a large black pool. He was on the point of sinking for ever, when I caught hold of him—good God! an old man—by his gray hair, and hauled him out upon the bank, where he lay to all appearance quite dead. Using such means as were in my power to assist in restoring suspended animation, I succeeded so well, that ere long the poor old man showed symptoms of returning life. I looked round me in this emergency, but there was neither house nor living person to be seen; so what could I do, but take the old, bare headed man on my back, and carry him to the village, which I knew was not far off. And there, God in heaven! who should I find him to be, but my own father!
“To you, Stanley, I can say everything which I dare whisper to my own heart; but this is a matter which even my own private bosom tries to eschew. It seems—it seems that the unhappy old man is narrow-hearted—a miser, as they term it here; and that for some low petty thefts he was subjected by some fellows of the village to the above ducking. I know well, Stanley, you will not despise me for all this, nor because I must now wear my own name of Crabbe, which I am determined, in justice to that unhappy old father, henceforth to do. On the contrary, you will only advise me well how to win upon his harder nature, and bring him round to more liberal habits. Listen to the following scheme of my own for the same purpose, which struck me one evening as I sat ‘chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy,’ beside the pool whence I rescued the poor old man. For indeed—indeed, I must grapple with the realities of the moral evil, however painful or disgusting. That being is my father; and no one can tell how much his nature may have been warped and kept perverse by the loss of the proper objects of natural affection. Is it not my bounden duty, then, to be found to him, and by my constant presence, to open his heart, which has been too much constringed by his lonely situation? I shall hedge him round, in the first place, from insults; I shall live with him, in his own house, all at my expense; and our household economy shall be as liberal as my finances will permit. I shall give much money in charity, and make him the dispenser of it; for our best feelings are improved by outward practice. Whenever I may be honoured by an invitation to a good man’s table, the slightest hint to bring him with me shall be taken advantage of; and he shall go, that the civilities of honourable men may help his self-respect, and thereby his virtue. Now, may God aid me in this moral experiment, to try it with discretion, to make the poor old man doubly mine own!”
“From this extract,” said the young Englishman, carefully folding up his deceased friend’s letter, “you will see something of the exalted nature of poor Ramsay—Crabbe, I should say, according to his own decided wish. I may here mention, that the death of the old man, which took place not many weeks after the above brutalities were inflicted upon him, and which, in all likelihood, was hastened by the unhappy infliction, never allowed his son to put in practice those noble institutes of moral discipline, which he had devised, to repair and beautify the degraded fountain of his life. I doubt not that this miserable end of his old parent, and the sense of his own utter loneliness, in respect of kindred, preyed upon the generous soldier, and helped to bring on that frenzy of fever, which so soon turned his large, his noble heart, into dust and oblivion. Peace be with his ashes; and everlasting honour wait upon his name!—To-morrow morning, sir,” continued the youth, “I set out again for England, and I should like to bear your name along with me, coupled with the memory which shall never leave me, of your disinterested kindness towards my late friend. I talk little of thanks; for I hold you well repaid, by the consciousness of having done the last duties of humanity for a brave and good man.”