“I am dumb. Were you the doctor, and I knew you not?”
--Shakespeare.
During the five or six minutes that elapsed before the youth and Major
reappeared. Judge Temple and the sheriff together with most of the
volunteers, ascended to the terrace, where the latter began to express
their conjectures of the result, and to recount their individual
services in the conflict. But the sight of the peace-makers ascending
the ravine shut every mouth.
On a rude chair, covered with undressed deer-skins, they supported a
human being, whom they seated carefully and respectfully in the midst of
the assembly. His head was covered by long, smooth locks of the color
of snow. His dress, which was studiously neat and clean, was composed of
such fabrics as none but the wealthiest classes wear, but was threadbare
and patched; and on his feet were placed a pair of moccasins, ornamented
in the best manner of Indian ingenuity. The outlines of his face were
grave and dignified, though his vacant eye, which opened and turned
slowly to the faces of those around him in unmeaning looks, too surely'
announced that the period had arrived when age brings the mental
imbecility of childhood.
Natty had followed the supporters of this unexpected object to the
top of the cave, and took his station at a little distance behind him,
leaning on his rifle, in the midst of his pursuers, with a fearlessness
that showed that heavier interests than those which affected himself
were to be decided. Major Hartmann placed himself beside the aged man,
uncovered, with his whole soul beaming through those eyes which so
commonly danced with frolic and humor. Edwards rested with one hand
familiarly but affectionately on the chair, though his heart was
swelling with emotions that denied him utterance.
All eyes were gazing intently, but each tongue continued mute. At length
the decrepit stranger, turning his vacant looks from face to face, made
a feeble attempt to rise, while a faint smile crossed his wasted face,
like an habitual effort at courtesy, as he said, in a hollow, tremulous
voice:
“Be pleased to be seated, gentlemen. The council will open immediately.
Each one who loves a good and virtuous king will wish to see these
colonies continue loyal. Be seated--I pray you, be seated, gentlemen.
The troops shall halt for the night.”
“This is the wandering of insanity!” said Marmaduke: “who will explain
this scene.”
“No, sir,” said Edwards firmly, “'tis only the decay of nature; who is
answerable for its pitiful condition, remains to be shown.”
“Will the gentlemen dine with us, my son?” said the old stranger,
turning to a voice that he both knew and loved. “Order a repast suitable
for his Majesty's officers. You know we have the best of game always at
command.”
“Who is this man?” asked Marmaduke, in a hurried voice, in which the
dawnings of conjecture united with interest to put the question.
“This man,” returned Edwards calmly, his voice, how ever, gradually
rising as he proceeded; “this man, sir, whom you behold hid in caverns,
and deprived of every-thing that can make life desirable, was once the
companion and counsellor of those who ruled your country. This man, whom
you see helpless and feeble, was once a warrior, so brave and fearless,
that even the intrepid natives gave him the name of the Fire-eater. This
man, whom you now see destitute of even the ordinary comfort of a cabin,
in which to shelter his head, was once the owner of great riches--and,
Judge Temple, he was the rightful proprietor of this very soil on which
we stand. This man was the father of------”
“This, then,” cried Marmaduke, with a powerful emotion, “this, then, is
the lost Major Effingham!”
“Lost indeed,” said the youth, fixing a piercing eye on the other.
“And you! and you!” continued the Judge, articulating with difficulty.
“I am his grandson.”
A minute passed in profound silence. All eyes were fixed on the
speakers, and even the old German appeared to wait the issue in deep
anxiety. But the moment of agitation soon passed. Marmaduke raised his
head from his bosom, where it had sunk, not in shame, but in devout
mental thanksgivings, and, as large tears fell over his fine, manly
face, he grasped the hand of the youth warmly, and said:
“Oliver, I forgive all thy harshness--all thy suspicions. I now see it
all. I forgive thee everything, but suffering this aged man to dwell in
such a place, when not only my habitation, but my fortune, were at his
and thy command.”
“He's true as ter steel!” shouted Major Hartmann; “titn't I tell you,
lat, dat Marmatuke Temple vas a friend dat woult never fail in ter dime
as of neet?”
“It is true, Judge Temple, that my opinions of your conduct have been
staggered by what this worthy gentle man has told me. When I found it
impossible to convey my grandfather back whence the enduring love of
this old man brought him, without detection and exposure, I went to the
Mohawk in quest of one of his former comrades, in whose justice I had
dependence. He is your friend, Judge Temple, but, if what he says be
true, both my father and myself may have judged you harshly.”
“You name your father!” said Marmaduke tenderly--“was he, indeed, lost
in the packet?”
“He was. He had left me, after several years of fruit less application
and comparative poverty, in Nova Scotia, to obtain the compensation for
his losses which the British commissioners had at length awarded. After
spending a year in England, he was returning to Halifax, on his way to a
government to which he had been appointed, in the West Indies, intending
to go to the place where my grandfather had sojourned during and since
the war, and take him with us.”
“But thou!” said Marmaduke, with powerful interest; “I had thought that
thou hadst perished with him.”
A flush passed over the cheeks of the young man, who gazed about him at
the wondering faces of the volunteers, and continued silent. Marmaduke
turned to the veteran captain, who just then rejoined his command, and
said:
“March thy soldiers back again, and dismiss them, the zeal of the
sheriff has much mistaken his duty.--Dr. Todd, I will thank you to
attend to the injury which Hiram Doolittle has received in this untoward
affair,--Richard, you will oblige me by sending up the carriage to the
top of the hill.--Benjamin, return to your duty in my family.”
Unwelcome as these orders were to most of the auditors, the suspicion
that they had somewhat exceeded the whole some restraints of the law,
and the habitual respect with which all the commands of the Judge were
received, induced a prompt compliance.
When they were gone, and the rock was left to the parties most
interested in an explanation, Marmaduke, pointing to the aged Major
Effingham, said to his grand son:
“Had we not better remove thy parent from this open place until my
carriage can arrive?”
“Pardon me, sir, the air does him good, and he has taken it whenever
there was no dread of a discovery. I know not how to act, Judge Temple;
ought I, can I suffer Major Effingham to become an inmate of your
family?”
“Thou shalt be thyself the judge,” said Marmaduke. “Thy father was my
early friend. He intrusted his fortune to my care. When we separated he
had such confidence in me that he wished on security, no evidence of
the trust, even had there been time or convenience for exacting it. This
thou hast heard?”
“Most truly, sir,” said Edwards, or rather Effingham as we must now call
him.
“We differed in politics. If the cause of this country was successful,
the trust was sacred with me, for none knew of thy father's interest, if
the crown still held its sway, it would be easy to restore the property
of so loyal a subject as Colonel Effingham. Is not this plain?'”
“The premises are good, sir,” continued the youth, with the same
incredulous look as before.
“Listen--listen, poy,” said the German, “Dere is not a hair as of ter
rogue in ter het of Herr Tchooge.”
“We all know the issue of the struggle,” continued Marmaduke,
disregarding both. “Thy grandfather was left in Connecticut, regularly
supplied by thy father with the means of such a subsistence as suited
his wants. This I well knew, though I never had intercourse with
him, even in our happiest days. Thy father retired with the troops
to prosecute his claims on England. At all events, his losses must
be great, for his real estates were sold, and I became the lawful
purchaser. It was not unnatural to wish that he might have no bar to its
just recovery.”
“There was none, but the difficulty of providing for so many claimants.”
“But there would have been one, and an insuperable one, and I announced
to the world that I held these estates, multiplied by the times and my
industry, a hundredfold in value, only as his trustee. Thou knowest that
I supplied him with considerable sums immediately after the war.”
“You did, until--”
“My letters were returned unopened. Thy father had much of thy own
spirit, Oliver; he was sometimes hasty and rash.” The Judge continued,
in a self-condemning manner; “Perhaps my fault lies the other way: I may
possibly look too far ahead, and calculate too deeply. It certainly was
a severe trial to allow the man whom I most loved, to think ill of me
for seven years, in order that he might honestly apply for his just
remunerations. But, had he opened my last letters, thou wouldst have
learned the whole truth. Those I sent him to England, by what my agent
writes me, he did read. He died, Oliver, knowing all, he died my friend,
and I thought thou hadst died with him.”
“Our poverty would not permit us to pay for two passages,” said the
youth, with the extraordinary emotion with which he ever alluded to the
degraded state of his family; “I was left in the Province to wait for
his return, and, when the sad news of his loss reached me, I was nearly
penniless.”
“And what didst thou, boy?” asked Marmaduke in a faltering voice.
“I took my passage here in search of my grandfather; for I well knew
that his resources were gone, with the half pay of my father. On
reaching his abode, I learned that he had left it in secret; though the
reluctant hireling, who had deserted him in his poverty, owned to my
urgent entreaties, that he believed he had been carried away by an old
man who had formerly been his servant. I knew at once it was Natty, for
my father often--”
“Was Natty a servant of thy grandfather?” exclaimed the Judge.
“Of that too were you ignorant?” said the youth in evident surprise.
“How should I know it? I never met the Major, nor was the name of Bumppo
ever mentioned to me. I knew him only as a man of the woods, and one who
lived by hunting. Such men are too common to excite surprise.”
“He was reared in the family of my grandfather; served him for many
years during their campaigns at the West, where he became attached to
the woods; and he was left here as a kind of locum tenens on the lands
that old Mohegan (whose life my grandfather once saved) induced the
Delawares to grant to him when they admitted him as an honorary member
of their tribe.
“This, then, is thy Indian blood?”
“I have no other,” said Edwards, smiling--“Major Effingham was adopted
as the son of Mohegan, who at that time was the greatest man in his
nation; and my father, who visited those people when a boy, received the
name of the Eagle from them, on account of the shape of his face, as I
understand. They have extended his title to me, I have no other Indian
blood or breeding; though I have seen the hour, Judge Temple, when I
could wish that such had been my lineage and education.”
“Proceed with thy tale,” said Marmaduke.
“I have but little more to say, sir, I followed to the lake where I had
so often been told that Natty dwelt, and found him maintaining his old
master in secret; for even he could not bear to exhibit to the world, in
his poverty and dotage, a man whom a whole people once looked up to with
respect.”
“And what did you?”
“What did I? I spent my last money in purchasing a rifle, clad myself
in a coarse garb, and learned to be a hunter by the side of
Leather-Stocking. You know the rest, Judge Temple.”
“Ant vere vas olt Fritz Hartmann?” said the German, reproachfully;
“didst never hear a name as of olt Fritz Hartmann from ter mout of ter
fader, lat?”
“I may have been mistaken, gentlemen,” returned the youth, “but I had
pride, and could not submit to such an exposure as this day even
has reluctantly brought to light. I had plans that might have been
visionary; but, should my parent survive till autumn, I purposed taking
him with me to the city, where we have distant relatives, who must
have learned to forget the Tory by this time. He decays rapidly,” he
continued mournfully, “and must soon lie by the side of old Mohegan.”
The air being pure, and the day fine, the party continued conversing
on the rock, until the wheels of Judge Temple's carriage were
heard clattering up the side of the mountain, during which time the
conversation was maintained with deep interest, each moment clearing
up some doubtful action, and lessening the antipathy of the youth to
Marmaduke. He no longer objected to the removal of his grandfather, who
displayed a childish pleasure when he found himself seated once more in
a carriage. When placed in the ample hall of the mansion-house, the eyes
of the aged veteran turned slowly to the objects in the apartment, and
a look like the dawn of intellect would, for moments flit across his
features, when he invariably offered some use less courtesies to those
near him, wandering painfully in his subjects. The exercise and the
change soon produced an exhaustion that caused them to remove him to
his bed, where he lay for hours, evidently sensible of the change in his
comforts, and exhibiting that mortifying picture of human nature, which
too plainly shows that the propensities of the animal continue even
after the nobler part of the creature appears to have vanished.
Until his parent was placed comfortably in bed, with Natty seated at
his side, Effingham did not quit him. He then obeyed a summons to the
library of the Judge, where he found the latter, with Major Hartmann,
waiting for him.
“Read this paper, Oliver,” said Marmaduke to him, as he entered, “and
thou wilt find that, so far from intending thy family wrong during life,
it has been my care to see that justice should be done at even a later
day.”
The youth took the paper, which his first glance told him was the will
of the Judge. Hurried and agitated as he was, he discovered that the
date corresponded with the time of the unusual depression of Marmaduke.
As he proceeded, his eyes began to moisten, and the hand which held the
instrument shook violently.
The will commenced with the usual forms, spun out by the ingenuity of
Mr. Van der School: but, after this subject was fairly exhausted, the
pen of Marmaduke became plainly visible. In clear, distinct, manly,
and even eloquent language, he recounted his obligations to Colonel
Effingham, the nature of their connection, and the circumstances in
which they separated. He then proceeded to relate the motives of his
silence, mentioning, however, large sums that he had forwarded to his
friend, which had been returned with the letters unopened. After
this, he spoke of his search for the grandfather who unaccountably
disappeared, and his fears that the direct heir of the trust was buried
in the ocean with his father.
After, in short, recounting in a clear narrative, the events which our
readers must now be able to connect, he proceeded to make a fair and
exact statement of the sums left in his care by Colonel Effingham. A
devise of his whole estate to certain responsible trustees followed; to
hold the same for the benefit, in equal moieties, of his daughter, on
one part, and of Oliver Effingham, formerly a major in the army of Great
Britain, and of his son Ed ward Effingham, and of his son Edward Oliver
Effingham, or to the survivor of them, and the descendants of such
survivor, forever, on the other part. The trust was to endure until
1810, when, if no person appeared, or could be found, after sufficient
notice, to claim the moiety so devised, then a certain sum, calculating
the principal and interest of his debt to Colonel Effingham, was to be
paid to the heirs-at-law of the Effingham family, and the bulk of his
estate was to be conveyed in fee to his daughter, or her heirs.
The tears fell from the eyes of the young man, as he read this
undeniable testimony of the good faith of Marmaduke, and his bewildered
gaze was still fastened on the paper, when a voice, that thrilled on
every nerve, spoke near him, saying:
“Do you yet doubt us, Oliver?”
“I have never doubted you!” cried the youth, recovering his recollection
and his voice, as he sprang to seize the hand of Elizabeth; “no, not one
moment has my faith in you wavered.”
“And my father--”
“God bless him!”
“I thank thee, my son,” said the Judge, exchanging a warm pressure of
the hand with the youth; “but we have both erred: thou hast been too
hasty, and I have been too slow. One-half of my estates shall be thine
as soon as they can be conveyed to thee; and, if what my suspicions tell
me be true, I suppose the other must follow speedily.” He took the hand
which he held, and united it with that of his daughter, and motioned
toward the door to the Major.
“I telt you vat, gal!” said the old German, good-humoredly; “if I vas
as I vas ven I servit mit his grand-fader on ter lakes, ter lazy tog
shouldn't vin ter prize as for nottin'.”
“Come, come, old Fritz,” said the Judge; “you are seventy, not
seventeen; Richard waits for you with a bowl of eggnog, in the hall.”
“Richart! ter duyvel!” exclaimed the other, hastening out of the room;
“he makes ter nog as for ter horse vilt show ter sheriff mit my own
hants! Ter duyvel! I pelieve he sweetens mit ter Yankee melasses!”
Marmaduke smiled and nodded affectionately at the young couple, and
closed the door after them. If any of our readers expect that we are
going to open it again, for their gratification, they are mistaken.
The tete-a-tete continued for a very unreasonable time--how long we
shall not say; but it was ended by six o'clock in the evening, for
at that hour Monsieur Le Quoi made his appearance agreeably to the
appointment of the preceding day, and claimed the ear of Miss Temple.
He was admitted; when he made an offer of his hand, with much suavity,
together with his “amis beeg and leet', his père, his mere and his
sucreboosh.” Elizabeth might, possibly, have previously entered into
some embarrassing and binding engagements with Oliver, for she declined
the tender of all, in terms as polite, though perhaps a little more
decided, than those in which they were made.
The Frenchman soon joined the German and the sheriff in the hall, who
compelled him to take a seat with them at the table, where, by the aid
of punch, wine, and egg nog, they soon extracted from the complaisant
Monsieur Le Quoi the nature of his visit, it was evident that he had
made the offer, as a duty which a well-bred man owed to a lady in such
a retired place, before he had left the country, and that his feelings
were but very little, if at all, interested in the matter. After a few
potations, the waggish pair persuaded the exhilarated Frenchman that
there was an inexcusable partiality in offering to one lady, and not
extending a similar courtesy to another. Consequently, about nine,
Monsieur Le Quoi sallied forth to the rectory, on a similar mission to
Miss Grant, which proved as successful as his first effort in love.
When he returned to the mansion-house, at ten, Richard and the Major
were still seated at the table. They at tempted to persuade the Gaul,
as the sheriff called him, that he should next try Remarkable Pettibone.
But, though stimulated by mental excitement and wine, two hours of
abstruse logic were thrown away on this subject; for he declined their
advice, with a pertinacity truly astonishing in so polite a man.
When Benjamin lighted Monsieur Le Quoi from the door, he said, at
parting:
“If-so-be, Mounsheer, you'd run alongside Mistress Pettybones, as the
Squire Dickens was bidding ye, 'tis my notion you'd have been grappled;
in which case, d'ye see, you mought have been troubled in swinging clear
agin in a handsome manner; for thof Miss Lizzy and the parson's young
'un be tidy little vessels, that shoot by a body on a wind, Mistress
Remarkable is summat of a galliot fashion: when you once takes 'em in
tow, they doesn't like to be cast off agin.”