A Love Story, by a Bushman by - (classic literature books TXT) 📖

a lone recess in the Hartz mountains, with neither superiors nor

equals to commune with, he first entered the miniature world, as a student

at Heidelberg.

 

His education had been miserably neglected. He had read much; but his

reading had been without order and without system.

 

The deepest metaphysics, and the wildest romances had been devoured in

succession; until the young man hardly knew which was the real, or which

was the visionary world:—the one he actually lived in, or the one he was

always brooding over:—where souls are bound together by mysterious and

hidden links, and where men sell themselves to Satan;—the penalty merely

being:—to walk through life, and throw no shadow.

 

Enrolled amongst a select corps of brüschen, warm and true; his ear was

caught by the imposing jargon of patriotism; and his imagination dwelt on

those high sounding words, “the rights of man;”—until he became the

staunch advocate and unflinching votary of a state of things, which, for

aught we know, may exist in one of the planets, but which never can, and

which never will exist on this earth of ours.

 

“What!” would exclaim our enthusiast, “have we not all our bodily and our

mental, energies? Doth not dame Nature, in our birth, as in our death,

deal out impartial justice? She may endow me with stronger limbs, than

another:—our feelings as we grow up, may not be chained down to one

servile monotony;—the lip of the precocious cynic”—this was addressed to

a young matter of fact Englishman—“who sneers at my present animation,

may not curl with a smile as often as my own; but let our powers of

acting be equal,—our prerogatives the same.”

 

Carl Obers, with his youth and his vivacity, carried his auditors—a

little knot of beer drinking liberty-mongers—_with_ him, and for him,

in all he said; and the orator would look round, with conscious power, and

considerable satisfaction; and flatter himself, that his specious

arguments were as unanswerable, as they were then unanswered.

 

Many of our generation may remember the unparalleled enthusiasm, which,

like an electric flash, spread over the civilised world; as Greece armed

herself, to shake off her Moslem ruler.

 

It was one that few could help sharing.

 

To almost all, is Greece a magic word. Her romantic history—the legacies

she has left us—our early recollections, identifying with her existence

as a nation, all that is good and glorious;—no wonder these things should

have shed a bright halo around her,—and have made each breast deeply

sympathise with her in her unwonted struggle for freedom.

 

Carl Obers did not hear of this struggle with indifference. He at once

determined to give Greece the benefit of his co-operation, and the aid of

his slender means. He immediately commenced an active canvass amongst his

personal friends, in order to form a band of volunteers, who might be

efficient, and worthy of the cause on which his heart was set.

 

He now first read an useful lesson from life’s unrolled volume.

 

Many a voice, that had rung triumphantly the changes on liberty, was

silent now, or deprecated the active attempt to establish it.

 

The hands that waved freely in the debating room, were not the readiest to

grasp the sword’s hilt. Many who had poetically expatiated on the

splendours of modern Greece; on reflection preferred the sunny views of

the Neckar, to the prospect of eating honey on Hymettus.

 

Youth, however, is the season for enterprise; and Carl, with twenty-three

comrades, was at length on his way to Trieste.

 

He had been offered the command of the little band, but had declined it,

with the sage remark, that “as they were about to fight for equality, it

was their business to preserve it amongst themselves.”

 

A slight delay in procuring a vessel, took place at Trieste. This delay

caused a defection of eight of the party.

 

The remaining students embarked in a miserable Greek brigantine, and after

encountering some storms in the Adriatic, thought themselves amply repaid,

as the purple hills of Greece rose before them.

 

On their landing, they felt disappointed.

 

No plaudits met them; no vivas rung in the air: but a Greek soldier

filched Carl’s valise, and on repairing to the commandant of the town,

they were told that no redress could be afforded them.

 

Willing to hope that the scum of the irregular troops was left behind, and

that better feeling, and stricter discipline, existed nearer the main

body; our students left on the morrow;—placed themselves under the

command of one of the noted leaders of the Revolution:—and had shortly

the satisfaction of crossing swords with the Turk.

 

For some months, the party went through extraordinary hardships;—engaged

in a series of desultory but sanguinary expeditions;—and gradually learnt

to despise the nation, in whose behalf they were zealously combating.

 

At the end of these few months, what a change in the hopes and prospects

of the little band! Some had rotted in battle field, food for vultures;

others had died of malaria in Greek hamlets, without one friend to close

their eyes, or one hand to proffer the cooling draught to quench the dying

thirst;—two were missing—had perhaps been murdered by the peasants;—and

five only remained, greatly disheartened, cursing the nation, and their

own individual folly.

 

Four of the five turned homewards.

 

Carl was left alone, but fought on.

 

Now there was a Greek, Achilles Metaxà by name, who had attached himself

to Carl’s fortunes. In person, he was the very model of an ancient hero.

He had the capacious brow, the eye of fire, and the full black beard,

descending in wavy curls to his chest.

 

The man was brave, too, for Carl and he had fought together.

 

It so happened, that they slept one night in a retired convent. Their

hardships latterly had been great, and the complaints of Achilles had been

unceasing in consequence. In the morning Carl rose, and found that his

clothes and arms had vanished, and that his friend was absent also.

 

Carl remained long enough to satisfy himself, that his friend was the

culprit; and then turned towards the sea coast, determined at all hazards

to leave Greece.

 

He succeeded in reaching Missolonghi, in the early part of 1823, shortly

after the death of Marco Botzaris—being then in a state of perfect

destitution, and his mental sufferings greatly aggravated by the

consciousness, that he had induced so many of his comrades to sacrifice

their lives and prospects in an unworthy cause.

 

At Missolonghi, where Mavrocordato reigned supreme, he was grudged the

paltry ration of a Suliote soldier, and might have died of starvation, had

it not been for the timely interposition of a stranger.

 

Moved by that stranger’s persuasion, Carl consented to form one of a

contemplated expedition against Lepanto; and, had his illustrious

benefactor lived, might have found a steady friend.

 

As it was, he waited not to hear the funeral oration, delivered by

Spiridion Tricoupi; but was on the deck of the vessel that was to bear him

homewards, and shed tears of mingled grief, admiration, and gratitude, as

thirty-seven minute guns, fired from the battery, told Greece and Carl

Obers, that they had lost Byron, their best friend.

 

Carl reached Germany, a wiser man than when he left it.

 

He found his father dead, and he came into possession of his small

patrimony; but felt greatly, as all men do who are suddenly removed from

active pursuits, the want of regular and constant employment.

 

He was glad to renew his intercourse with his old University; and found

himself greatly looked up to by the students, who were never wearied with

listening to his accounts of the Morea, and of the privations he had there

encountered.

 

We need hardly inform our readers, that Carl Obers was one of the

pedestrian students at Wallensee, and was indeed the identical narrator of

the Vienna story.

 

We left George and his brother, on the shore below the priest’s

cottage. The one was laid cold and motionless—the other wished that

he also were so.

 

Immediately on Delmé‘s falling, the young guide alarmed the

priest—brought him down to the spot—pointed to the brothers—threw

himself into the boat—and paddled swiftly across the lake, to alarm the

guests at the inn.

 

It was with feelings of deep commiseration, that Carl looked on the two

brothers. He was the only person present, whose time was comparatively his

own; he spoke English, although imperfectly; and he owed a deep debt of

gratitude to an Englishman.

 

These circumstances seemed to point him out, as the proper person to

attend to the wants of the unfortunate traveller; and Carl Obers mentally

determined, that he would not leave Delmé, as long as he had it in his

power to befriend him, Sir Henry Delmé was completely unmanned by his

bereavement. He had been little prepared for such a severe loss; although

it is more than probable, that George’s life had long been hanging on a

thread, which a single moment might snap.

 

The medical men had been singularly sanguine in his case, for it is rarely

that disease of the heart attacks one so young; but it now seemed evident,

that even had not anxiety of mind, and great constitutional irritability,

hastened the fatal result, that poor George could never have hoped to have

survived to a ripe old age.

 

There was much in his character at any time, to endear him to an only

brother. As it was, Delmé had seen George under such trying

circumstances—had entered so fully into his feelings and sufferings—that

this abrupt termination to his brother’s sorrows, appeared to Sir Henry

Delmé, to bring with it a sable pall, that enveloped in darkness his own

future life and prospects.

 

The remains of poor George were placed in a small room, communicating with

one intended for Sir Henry.

 

Here Delmé shut himself up, brooding over his loss, and permitting no one

to intrude on his privacy.

 

Carl had offered his services, which were gratefully accepted, in making

the necessary arrangements for his brother’s obsequies; and Sir Henry, in

the solitude of the dead man’s chamber, could give free scope to a flood

of bitter recollections.

 

It may be, that those silent hours of agony, when the brother looked

fixedly on that moveless face, and implored the departed spirit to breathe

its dread and awful secret, were not without their improving tendency; for

haggard and wan as was the mourner’s aspect, there was no outward sign of

quivering, even as he saw the rude coffin lowered, and as fell on his ear,

the creaking of cords, and that harsh jarring sound, to which there is

nothing parallel on earth, the heavy clods falling on the coffin lid.

 

The general arrangements had been simple; but Carl’s directions had been

given in such a sympathising spirit, that they could not be otherwise than

acceptable.

 

About the church-yard itself, there is nothing very striking. It is

formed round a small knoll, on the summit of which stands a sarcophagus

literally buried in ivy.

 

Beneath this, is the vault of the baronial family, that for centuries

swayed the destinies of the little hamlet; but which family has been

extinct for some years.

 

Round it are grouped the humbler osiered graves; over which, in lieu of

tomb stones, are placed large black iron crosses, ornamented with brass,

and bearing the simple initials of the bygone dead.

 

Even Delmé, with all his ancestral pride, felt that George “slept well.”

 

It is true no leaden coffin enclosed his relics, nor did the murky vault

of his ancestors, open with creaking hinge to receive another of the race.

No escutcheon darkened the porch whence they