“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 en treaties, 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 grand father, 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.