Evenings at Donaldson Manor

M >> Maria J. McIntosh >> Evenings at Donaldson Manor

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The ship lay within a quarter of a mile of the shore, and a boat was
sent to procure water--one man remaining always to fill the empty
vessels while the others returned to the ship with those already filled.
The best means of accomplishing his purpose that occurred to the poor
boy was to feign the utmost degree of terror at the lonely and
unprotected situation of this man during the absence of his comrades. He
spoke his terrors where he knew they would be heard by the prime author
of his miseries. The result was what he had anticipated.

"Ye're afraid, are ye, of being left there by yerself! Ye'd rather be
whipped, or tied up by the thumbs, or be kept at the mast-head all
night, would ye? Then, dam'me, that's just what I'll do to you. Here,
hold on with that boat--take this youngster with you, and you can bring
back Tom, and leave him to fill the casks for you."

Well did the object of his tyranny act his part. He entreated, he
adjured all around him to save him from so dreaded a fate--in vain, of
course--for his affected agonies only riveted the determination of his
tyrant. It was a new delight to see him writhe in agony, and strive to
draw back from those who were urging him to the boat. He was forced in,
borne to the island, and left to his task. But this was not enough. He
could not escape in the broad light of day, from a spot directly under
the eyes of his tormentors, while between him and the ship a boat was
ever coming and going. Through the day he must persist in the part he
had assumed. He did not fail to continue it, and when the day approached
its close, he sent to the ship the most urgent entreaties that he might
be allowed to return there before it was night. The sailors, rough and
hard as they generally were to him, sympathized with his agony of fear,
and asked that he might return; but his demon was now inflamed by drink,
and every word in favor of his petition insured its rejection. He even
made the unusual exertion of going up himself in the last boat, that he
might see the victim of his malice, and feast his ears with the cries
and objurgations which terror would wring from him.

"If we should forget you in the morning, you can take the next homeward
bound ship that stops here, but don't tell your friends at the
poor-house too bad a tale of us," were the parting words of this wretch.

Darkness and silence were around the desolate boy, but they brought no
fear with them. Man, his enemy, was not there. He saw not the beauty of
the heavens, from which the stars looked down on him in their unchanged
serenity, or of the earth, where flowers were springing at his feet, and
graceful shrubs were waving over him. He heard not the deep-toned sea
uttering its solemn music, or the breeze whispering its softer notes in
his ear. He only saw the ship, the abode of men, fading into
indistinctness, as the darkness threw its veil over it; he only heard
the voice in his heart, proclaiming ever and again, "I am free." Before
the morrow dawned, he had surmounted the rocks at the landing place, and
wandered on with no aim, but to put as great a distance as possible
between him and the ship. Two hours' walking brought him again to the
sea, in an opposite direction to that by which he had approached the
island. Here he crawled into a hiding-place among the rocks, and lay
down to rest. The day was again declining before he ventured forth from
his covert, and cautiously approached the distant shore, whence he might
see the ship. He reached the spring by which he had stood yester eve,
when his companions parted from him, with something like pity stirring
in the hearts of all but one among them. Fearfully he looked
around--before him--but no shadow on the earth, no sail upon the
pathless sea, told of man's presence. He was alone--alone indeed, for
the beauty of Nature aroused no emotion in his withered heart, and he
held no communion with Nature's God. He was indeed an orphaned soul.
Could he have loved, had it been but a simple flower, he would have felt
something of the joy of life; but the very power of love seemed to have
been crushed from his heart, by years of cold neglect and harsh
unkindness.

Weeks, months passed, without any event that might awaken the young
solitary from his torpor. By day, he roved through the island, or lay
listlessly under the shadow of a tree; by night, he slept beneath the
rocks which had first sheltered him; while the fruits, that grew and
ripened without his care, gave him food. Thus he lived a merely animal
life, his strongest sensation one of satisfaction for his relief from
positive suffering, but with nothing that could be called joy in the
present, and with no hope for the future; one to whom God had given an
immortal spirit, capable of infinite elevation in the scale of
intelligence and happiness, and whom man had pressed down to--ay,
below--the level of the brutes, which sported away their brief existence
at his side. Such tyranny as he had experienced, is rare; but its
results may well give an impressive, a fearful lesson, to those to whom
are committed the destinies of a being unconnected with them by any of
those ties which awaken tenderness, and call forth indulgence in the
sternest minds. Let them beware, lest the "iron rule" crush out the life
of the young heart, and darken the intellect by extinguishing the light
of hope.

Terrible was the retribution which his crimes wrought out for the author
of our young hero's miseries. When he received the intelligence from the
men whom he had sent in the morning to bring him from the island, that
he was nowhere to be found, he read in their countenance what his own
heart was ready to repeat to him, that he was his murderer; for neither
they nor he doubted that the terrified boy had rushed into the sea, and
been drowned in the effort to escape the horrors raised by his wild and
superstitious fancy. From that hour his persecutor suffered tortures as
great as his bitterest enemies could have desired to inflict on him. The
images which drove him with increased eagerness to the bottle, became
more vivid and terrific under the influence of intoxication. He drank
deeper and deeper, in the vain hope to banish them, and died ere many
months had passed, shouting, in his last moments, alternate prayers and
curses to the imagined form of him whom he supposed the hope of revenge
had conjured from the ocean grave to which his cruelties had consigned
him.

Five months passed over Edward Hallett, in the dead calm of an existence
agitated by neither hope nor fear. The calm was broken one evening by
the sight of a seaman, drawing water from the spring which had brought
his former companions to the island. As he came in sight, the man turned
his head, and stood for an instant spell-bound by the unexpected vision
of a human being on that island, whose matted locks and tattered
garments spoke the extreme of misery. There was only one hope for the
sad wild boy--it was in flight--and turning, he ran swiftly back; but
the path was strewn with rocks, and, in his haste, he stumbled and fell.
In a moment his pursuer stood beside him, acclaiming in a coarse, but
kindly meant language:--

"What the devil are you runnin' away from me for, youngster?--I'm sure I
wouldn't hurt ye--but get up, and tell us what you're doing here, and
where ye've come from."

The speaker attempted, while addressing the boy, to raise him from the
ground, but he resisted all his efforts, and met all his questioning
with sullen silence.

"By the powers, I'm thinking I've caught a wild man. I wonder if there's
any more of 'em. If I can only get this one aboard, he'll make my
fortune. I'll try for it, any how, and offer the capting to go shares
with my bargain;" and he proceeded to lift the slight form of the pauper
boy in his brawny arms, and bear him to the boat, which, during the
scene, had approached the shore. One who had had less experience of the
iron nature of man, would have endeavored, in Edward Hallett's
circumstances, to move his captor by entreaties to leave him to his
dearly prized freedom; but he had long believed, with the poet,

"There is no pulse in man's obdurate heart--
It does not feel for man;"

and after the first wild struggle, which had only served to show that
he was an infant in the hands of the strong seaman, he abandoned himself
to his fate, in silent despair. With closed eyes and lips, he suffered
himself, without a movement, to be borne to the boat, and deposited in
it, amidst the many uncouth and characteristic exclamations of his
captor and his companions, who would not be convinced that it was really
a child of the human race, thus strangely found on this isolated spot.
Hastily they bore him to the ship, which the providence of God had sent,
under the guidance of a kind and noble spirit, for the salvation of
this, his not forgotten, though long tried creature.

Captain Durbin, of the barque Good Intent, was one who combined, in no
usual degree, the qualities of boldness and energy with the kindest, the
tenderest, and most generous feelings. These were wrought into beautiful
harmony, by the Christian principles which had long governed his life,
and from which he had learned to be, at the same time, "diligent in
business" and "kindly affectioned"--to have no _fear_ of man, and to
love his brother, whom he had seen, as the best manifestation of
devotion to God, whom he had not seen. Perhaps he had escaped the usual
effect of his rough trade, in hardening the manners, at least, by the
influence on him of his only child, a little girl, now six years old,
who was his constant companion, even in his voyages. Little Emily Durbin
had lost her mother when she was only two years old. The circumstances
of her own childhood had wrought into the mind of the dying Mrs. Durbin,
the conviction that only a parent is a fitting guardian for a child. To
all argument on this subject she would reply, "It seems to me that God
has put so much love into a parent's heart, only that he may bear with
all a child's waywardness, which other people can't be expected to bear
with."

True to her principles, she had exacted a promise from her husband, in
her dying hour, that he would never part from their Emily. The promise
had been sacredly kept.

"I will retire from sea as soon as I have enough to buy a place on
shore, for Emily's sake; but till then, her home must be in my cabin.
She is under God's care there, as well as on shore, and perhaps it would
be better for her, should I be lost at sea, to share my fate." Such were
the remarks of Captain Durbin, in reply to the well-meant remonstrances
of his friends.

Emily had a little hammock slung beside his own--the books in which he
taught her made a large part of his library; and he who had seen her
kneel beside her father to lisp her childish prayer, or who had heard
the simple, beautiful faith with which she commended herself to the care
of her Father in Heaven, when the waves roared and the winds howled
around her floating home, would have felt, perhaps, that the most
important end of life, the cultivation of those affections that connect
us with God and with our fellow-creatures, might be attained as
perfectly there as elsewhere.

The astonishment of Captain Durbin and the pity of his gentle child may
be conceived, at the sight of the poor boy, who was brought up from the
boat by his captor and owner, as he considered himself, and laid at
their feet, while they sat together in their cabin--he writing in his
log-book, and she conning her evening lesson. To the proposition that he
should give the prize so strangely obtained a free passage, and share in
the advantages to be gained by its exhibition in America, Captain Durbin
replied by showing the disappointed seaman the impossibility of the
object of these speculations being some product of Nature's freaks--some
hitherto unknown animal, with the form, but without the faculties of
man.

"Do you not see that he has clothes----"

"Clothes do ye call them!" interrupted the blunt sailor, touching the
pieces of cloth that hung around, but no longer covered the thin limbs.

"Rags, perhaps I had better say--but the rags have been clothes, woven
and sewn by man's hands--so he must have lived among men--civilized
men--and he has grown but little, as you may perceive, since those
clothes were made--therefore, he cannot have been long on the island."

"But how did he get there? Who'd leave a baby like this there by
himself?"

"That we may never know, for the boy must either be an idiot--which he
does not look like, however--or insane, or dumb--but let that be as it
will, we will do our duty by him, and I thank God for having sent us
here in time to save him."

The master of the ship usually gives the tone to those whom he commands,
and Captain Durbin found no difficulty in obtaining the help of his men
in his kind intentions to the boy so strangely brought amongst them. By
kind, yet rough hands, he was washed, his hair was cut and combed, and a
suit of clean, though coarse garments, hastily fitted to him by the best
tailor among them--fitted, not with the precision of Stultz certainly,
but sufficiently well to enable him to walk in them without danger of
walking on them or of leaving them behind. But he showed no intention of
availing himself of these capabilities. Wherever they carried him he
went without resistance--wherever they placed him he remained--he ate
the food that was offered him--but no word escaped his lips, no
voluntary movement was made by him, no look marked his consciousness of
aught that passed before him. He had again assumed his only shield from
violence--cunning. He could account in no way for his being left
unmolested, except from the belief, freely expressed before him, that
nature, by depriving him of intelligence, or of speech, had unfitted him
for labor, and he resolved to do nothing that should unsettle that
belief. But he found it more difficult than he had supposed it would be
to preserve this resolution, for he was subjected to the action of a
more potent influence than any he had yet encountered--kindness. All
were ready to show him this in its common forms, but none so touchingly
or so tenderly as the little Emily Durbin. It was a beautiful sight to
see that gentle child, with eyes blue as the heavens, whose pure and
lovely spirit they seemed to mirror, gazing up at the dark boy as though
she hoped to catch some ray of the awakening spirit flitting over the
handsome but stolid features. Sometimes she would sit beside him, take
his hand in hers, or stroke gently the dark locks that began again to
hang in neglected curls around his face, and speak to him in the
tenderest accents, saying, "I love you very much, pretty boy, and my
father loves you too, and we all love you--don't you love us?--but you
can't tell me--I forgot that--never mind, I'll ask our Heavenly Father
to make you talk. Don't you know Jesus made the dumb to speak when he
was here on earth? Did you ever hear about it? Poor boy! you can't
answer me--but I'll tell you all about it:" and then in her sweet words
and pitying voice she would tell of the Saviour of men--how he had made
the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak, and she would repeat his lessons
of love, dwelling often on her favorite text, "This is my commandment,
that ye love one another--even as I have loved you, that ye also love
one another."

Thus by this babe, God was in his love leading the chilled heart of that
poor, desolate boy, back to himself--to hope--to heaven. It was
impossible that the dew of mercy should thus, day by day and hour by
hour, distil upon a spirit indurated by man's cruelties, without
softening it. Edward Hallett began to love that sweet child, to listen
to her step and voice, to gaze upon her fair face, to return her loving
looks, and to long to tell her all his story. Emily became aware of the
new expression in his face, and redoubled her manifestations of
interest. She entreated that he should be brought in when her father
read the Bible and prayed with her, night and morning. "Who knows, it
may be that our Heavenly Father will make him hear us," was her simple
and pathetic response to Captain Durbin's assurance that it was useless,
as he either could not or would not understand them. Never had Edward
Hallett's resolution been more severely tried than when he saw her
kneel, with clasped hands and uplifted face, at her father's knee, and
heard her pray in her own simple words that "God would bless the poor
little dumb boy whom he had sent to them, and that he would make him
speak, and give him a good heart, that he might love them." Captain
Durbin turned his eyes upon the object of her prayer at that moment, and
he almost thought that his lips moved, and was quite certain that his
eyes glistened with emotion. From this time he was as anxious as Emily
herself for the attendance of the strange boy at their devotions.

For many weeks the ship had sped across that southern sea with light and
favoring breezes, but at length there came a storm. The heavens were
black with clouds--the wind swept furiously over the ocean, and drove
its wild waves in tremendous masses against the reeling ship. Captain
Durbin was a bold sailor, as we have said, and he had weathered many a
storm in his trim barque; but Emily knew by the way in which he pressed
her to his heart this night, before he laid her, not in her hammock, but
on the narrow floor of his state-room, and by the tone in which he
ejaculated, "God bless you, and take care of you, my beloved
child!"--that there was more danger tonight than they had ever before
encountered together; and as he was leaving her she drew him back and
said, "Father, I can't sleep, and I should like to talk to the little
dumb boy; won't you bring him here, and let him sit on my mattress with
me?"

Captain Durbin brought Edward Hallett and placed him beside Emily,
where, by bracing themselves against the wall of the state-room, they
might prevent their being dashed about by the rolling of the vessel.
Emily welcomed him with an affectionate smile, and taking his hand,
which now sometimes answered the clasp of hers, told him that he must
not be afraid, though there was a great storm, for their Father in
Heaven could deliver them out of it if it were His will, and if it were
not, He would take them to himself, if they loved Him, and loved one
another as the blessed Saviour had commanded them. "And you know we must
die some way," continued the sweet young preacher, "and father says it
is just as easy to go to Heaven from the sea as from any other place."
She paused a moment, and then added in a low tone, "But I think I had
rather die on shore, and be buried by my mother in the green, shady
church-yard--it is so quiet there."

Emily crept nearer and nearer to her young companion as she spoke, with
that clinging to human love and care which is felt by the hardest breast
in moments of dread. His heart was beating high with the tenderest and
the happiest emotions he had ever known, when a wave sweeping over the
deck of the ship, and breaking through the skylight, came tumbling in
upon them. It forced them asunder, and the falling of their lantern at
the same moment left them in darkness amidst the tossing of the ship,
the rolling of the furniture, and the noise of the many waters. Edward
Hallett's first thought was for Emily;--he felt for her on every side,
but she was not in the state-room; he groped his way into the cabin, but
he could not find her, and he heard no sound that told of her existence.
In terror for her, self was forgotten--love conquered fear, as it had
already obtained the empire over hate, and he called her--"Emily--dear
Emily!--hear me--answer me, Emily?"

He listened in vain for the faint voice for which he thirsted. Suddenly
he bounded up the cabin steps and rushed to the post at which he knew
Captain Durbin was most likely to be found in such a scene, crying as he
went, "Emily! Emily! oh bring a light and look for Emily!"

The shrill cry of a human heart in agony was heard above the bellowing
of the winds and the rush of the waves, and without waiting for a
question, without heeding even the miracle that the dumb had spoken,
Captain Durbin hastened below, followed by his agitated summoner. As
quickly as his trembling hands permitted, he struck a light and looked
around for his child. She had been dashed against a chest, and lay pale
and seemingly lifeless, with the red blood oozing slowly from a cut in
the temple. Edward Hallett had lifted her before Captain Durbin could
lay aside his light, and as he approached him, looking up with a face
almost as pale as that which lay upon his arm, he exclaimed, "Oh, sir,
surely she is not dead!"

It was not till Emily had again opened her soft eyes and assured her
father that she was not much hurt, that any notice was taken of the very
unusual fact of Edward Hallett's speaking.

"Father, how did you know I was hurt?"

"He whom we have thought a dumb boy called me, and told me he could not
find you," said Captain Durbin, looking earnestly, almost sternly at
Edward, who colored as he felt that eyes he dared not meet were upon
him. But the gentle, loving Emily took his hand, and said, "Did our good
Heavenly Father make you speak?--I am so glad--please speak to me!"

Edward could not raise his eyes to hers, but covering his face with his
other hand, he fell on his knees, saying to her and Captain Durbin, "I
am afraid it was very wicked, but indeed I couldn't help it. I could
speak all the time, Emily, but I was afraid of being beaten as I used to
be, if I seemed like other people--now if they beat me I must bear
it--better for me to be beaten than to have Emily lie there with no one
to help her."

"But who is going to beat you? Nobody will beat you--we all love
you--don't we, father?" cried Emily, bending forward and putting her arm
around the neck of her _protege_.

"We must hear first whether he is worthy of our love, my dear," said
Captain Durbin, as he attempted to withdraw his daughter's arm, and to
make her lie down again--but Edward had seized the little hand and held
it around his neck, while he exclaimed in the most imploring tones, "Oh,
sir I let Emily love me--nobody else except my poor mother ever loved
me. Beat me as much as you please, and I will not say a word, but oh!
pray, sir! don't tell Emily she must not love me."

"And, father, if he were wicked, you know you told me once that we must
love the wicked and try to do them good, because our Father in Heaven
loved us while we were yet sinners," urged Emily.

That gentle voice could not be unheeded, and as Captain Durbin kissed
her, he laid his hand kindly on the boy's head, saying in more friendly
tones, "I hope he has not been wicked, but we will hear more about it
to-morrow--I cannot stay longer with you now, and you must lie still
just where I have put you, or you may roll out and get hurt. We shall
have a rough sea most of the night, though, thank God! no danger, for
the wind had shifted and slackened a little before that great wave swept
you away!"

"May I not stay by Emily, sir, and tell her what made me not speak? I
will not let her sit up again."

"Oh, yes! do, father, let him stay till you come down again."

Captain Durbin consented, and when he came down again at midnight from
the deck, the children had both fallen asleep, but their hands were
clasped in each other's, and the flushed cheeks and dewy lashes of both
showed that they had been weeping. The next morning Captain Durbin heard
the story of the orphan boy. Emily Durbin stood beside him while he told
it, and he needed the courage which her presence gave him, for his cowed
spirit could not yet rise to confidence in man. The mingled indignation
and pity with which Captain Durbin heard the simple but touching
narrative of his life--the earnest kindness with which, at the
conclusion, he drew him to his side, and told him that he would be his
father, and Emily his sister, adding, "God gave you to me, and as His
gift I will love you and care for you," first taught him that his friend
Emily was not the one only angel of mercy in our world. As time passed
on, and Captain Durbin kept well the promise of those words, instructing
him with care and guarding him with tenderness as well as with fidelity,
his faith became firm, not only in his fellow-men, but in Him who had
brought such great good for him out of the darkest evil. His long
repressed affections sprang into vigorous growth, his intellect expanded
rapidly in their glow, his eye grew bright, his step elastic, and his
whole air redolent of a joy which none but those who have suffered as he
had done can conceive. In the handsome youth who returned two years
afterwards with Captain Durbin to Boston, and who walked so proudly at
his side, leading Emily by the hand, few could have recognized the wild
boy of that western Island.

Such was the transformation which the spirit of love, breathing itself
through the lips of a little child, had effected. "Verily, of such"
children "is the kingdom of heaven."

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