University of Virginia Library

Early Friends.

Where are they?

I cannot sit now, as once, upon the edge of the
brook, hour after hour, flinging off my line and hook
to the nibbling roach, and reckon it great sport.
There is no girl with auburn ringlets to sit beside me,
and to play upon the bank. The hours are shorter
than they were then; and the little joys that furnished
boyhood till the heart was full, can fill it no longer.
Poor Tray is dead, long ago; and he cannot swim
into the pools for the floating sticks; nor can I sport
with him hour after hour, and think it happiness.
The mound that covers his grave is sunken; and the
trees that shaded it, are broken and mossy.

Little Lilly is grown into a woman, and is married;
and she has another little Lilly, with flaxen hair, she
says,—looking as she used to look. I dare say the
child is pretty; but it is not my Lilly. She has a
little boy too, that she calls Paul;—a chubby
rogue—she writes,—and as mischievous as ever I
was. God bless the boy!

Ben,—who would have liked a ride in the coach
that carried me away to school—has had a great
many rides since then—rough rides, and hard ones,

over the road of life. He does not rake up the falling
leaves for bonfires, as he did once; he is grown a
man, and is fighting his way somewhere in our
western world, to the short-lived honours of time. He
was married not long ago; his wife I remembered as
one of my playmates at my first school: she was
beautiful, but fragile as a leaf. She died within a
year of their marriage. Ben was but four years my
senior; but this grief has made him ten years older.
He does not say it; but his eye and his figure tell it.

The nurse who put the purse in my hand that dismal
morning, is grown a feeble old woman. She was
over fifty then; she may well be seventy now. She
did not know my voice when I went to see her the
other day, nor did she know my face at all. She
repeated the name when I told it to her—Paul,
Paul,—she did not remember any Paul, except a
little boy, a long while ago.

—“To whom you gave a purse when he went
away, and told him to say nothing to Lilly or to
Ben?”

—“Yes, that Paul”—says the old woman exultingly—“do
you know him?”

And when I told her—“she would not have believed
it!” But she did; and took hold of my hand again,
(for she was blind); and then smoothed down the plaits
of her apron, and jogged her cap strings, to look tidy in

the presence of `the gentleman.' And she told me
long stories about the old house and how other people
came in afterward; and she called me `sir' sometimes,
and sometimes `Paul.' But I asked her to say only
Paul; she seemed glad for this, and talked easier;
and went on to tell of my old playmates, and how we
used to ride the pony—poor Jacko!—and how we
gathered nuts—such heaping piles; and how we used
to play at fox and geese through the long winter
evenings; and how my poor mother would smile—
but here I asked her to stop. She could not have
gone on much longer, for I believe she loved our house
and people, better than she loved her own.

As for my uncle, the cold, silent man, who lived
with his books in the house upon the hill, and who
used to frighten me sometimes with his look, he grew
very feeble after I had left, and almost crazed. The
country people said that he was mad; and Isabel
with her sweet heart clung to him, and would lead
him out when his step tottered, to the seat in the
garden, and read to him out of the books he loved to
hear. And sometimes, they told me, she would read
to him some letters that I had written to Lilly or to
Ben, and ask him if he remembered Paul, who saved
her from drowning under the tree in the meadow?
But he could only shake his head, and mutter something
about how old, and feeble he had grown.

They wrote me afterward that he died; and was
buried in a far-away place, where his wife once lived,
and where he now sleeps beside her. Isabel was sick
with grief, and came to live for a time with Lilly;
but when they wrote me last, she had gone back to
her old home—where Tray was buried,—where we
had played together so often, through the long days
of summer.

I was glad I should find her there, when I came
back. Lilly and Ben were both living nearer to the
city, when I landed from my long journey over the
seas; but still I went to find Isabel first. Perhaps I
had heard so much oftener from the others, that I felt
less eager to see them; or perhaps I wanted to save
my best visits to the last; or perhaps—(I did think
it) perhaps I loved Isabel, better than them all.

So I went into the country, thinking all the way,
how she must have changed since I left. She must
be now nineteen or twenty; and then her grief must
have saddened her face somewhat; but I thought I
should like her all the better for that. Then perhaps
she would not laugh, and tease me, but would be
quieter, and wear a sweet smile—so calm, and beautiful,
I thought. Her figure too must have grown
more elegant, and she would have more dignity in her
air.

I shuddered a little at this; for I thought,—she

will hardly think so much of me then; perhaps she
will have seen those whom she likes a great deal better.
Perhaps she will not like me at all; yet I knew
very well that I should like her.

I had gone up almost to the house; I had passed
the stream where we fished on that day, many years
before; and I thought that now since she was grown
to womanhood, I should never sit with her there
again, and surely never drag her as I did out of the
water, and never chafe her little hands, and never
perhaps kiss her, as I did, when she sat upon my
mother's lap—oh, no—no—no!

I saw where we buried Tray, but the old slab was
gone; there was no ribbon there now. I thought
that at least, Isabel would have replaced the slab;—
but it was a wrong thought. I trembled when I went
up to the door—for it flashed upon me, that perhaps,
—Isabel was married. I could not tell why she
should not; but I knew it would make me uncomfortable,
to hear that she had.

There was a tall woman who opened the door; she
did not know me; but I recognized her as one of the
old servants. I asked after the housekeeper first,
thinking I would surprise Isabel. My heart fluttered
somewhat, thinking that she might step in suddenly
herself—or perhaps that she might have seen me

coming up the hill. But even then, I thought, she
would hardly know me.

Presently the housekeeper came in, looking very
grave; she asked if the gentleman wished to see her?

The gentleman did wish it, and she sat down on
one side of the fire;—for it was autumn, and the
leaves were falling, and the November winds were
very chilly.

—Shall I tell her—thought I—who I am, or ask
at once for Isabel? I tried to ask; but it was hard
for me to call her name; it was very strange, but I
could not pronounce it at all.

“Who, sir?”—said the housekeeper, in a tone so
earnest, that I rose at once, and crossed over, and
took her hand:—“You know me,” said I,—“you
surely remember Paul?”

She started with surprise, but recovered herself,
and resumed the same grave manner. I thought I
had committed some mistake, or been in some way
cause of offence. I called her—Madame, and asked
for—Isabel?

She turned pale, terribly pale—“Bella?” said she.

“Yes, Bella.”

“Sir—Bella is dead!”

I dropped into my chair. I said nothing. The
housekeeper—bless her kind heart!—slipped noiselessly
out. My hands were over my eyes. The

winds were sighing outside, and the clock ticking
mournfully within.

I did not sob, nor weep, nor utter any cry.

The clock ticked mournfully, and the winds were
sighing; but I did not hear them any longer; there
was a tempest raging within me, that would have
drowned the voice of thunder.

It broke at length in a long, deep sigh,—“oh God!”
—said I. It may have been a prayer;—it was not
an imprecation.

Bella—sweet Bella was dead! It seemed as if
with her, half the world were dead—every bright face
darkened—every sunshine blotted out,—every flower
withered,—every hope extinguished!

I walked out into the air, and stood under the trees
where we had played together with poor Tray—where
Tray lay buried. But it was not Tray I thought of,
as I stood there, with the cold wind playing through
my hair, and my eyes filling with tears. How could
she die? Why was she gone? Was it really true?
Was Isabel indeed dead—in her coffin—buried?
Then why should anybody live? What was there to
live for, now that Bella was gone?

Ah, what a gap in the world, is made by the death
of those we love! It is no longer whole, but a poor
half-world that swings uneasy on its axis, and makes
you dizzy with the clatter of its wreck!

The housekeeper told me all—little by little, as I
found calmness to listen. She had been dead a
month; Lilly was with her through it all; she died
sweetly, without pain, and without fear,—what can
angels fear? She had spoken often of `Cousin Paul;'
she had left a little pacquet for him, but it was not
there; she had given it into Lilly's keeping.

Her grave, the housekeeper told me, was only a
little way off from her home—beside the grave of a brother
who died long years before. I went there that
evening. The mound was high and fresh. The sods
had not closed together, and the dry leaves caught in
the crevices, and gave a ragged and a terrible look to
the grave. The next day, I laid them all smooth—
as we had once laid them on the grave of Tray;—I
clipped the long grass, and set a tuft of blue violets
at the foot, and watered it all with—tears. The
homestead, the trees, the fields, the meadows—in the
windy November, looked dismally. I could not like
them again;—I liked nothing, but the little mound,
that I had dressed over Bella's grave. There she
sleeps now,—the sleep of Death!