A Love Story Part 37

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 sc.u.m 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 hards.h.i.+ps;--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 Metaxa 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 hards.h.i.+ps 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 dest.i.tution, 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 grat.i.tude, 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 sh.o.r.e below the priest's cottage. The one was laid cold and motionless--the other wished that _he_ also were so.

Immediately on Delme'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 grat.i.tude to an Englishman.

These circ.u.mstances 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 Delme, as long as he had it in his power to befriend him, Sir Henry Delme 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 const.i.tutional 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, Delme had seen George under such trying circ.u.mstances--had entered so fully into his feelings and sufferings--that this abrupt termination to his brother's sorrows, appeared to Sir Henry Delme, 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 Delme 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 bra.s.s, and bearing the simple initials of the bygone dead.

Even Delme, 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 bore him; and no long train of mourners followed his remains to their last home.

But there was something in the quiet of the spot, that seemed to Delme in harmony with his history; and to promise, that a sorrowless world had already opened, on one who had loved so truly, and felt so deeply in this.

Sir Henry returned to the inn, and darkened his chamber.

He had not the heart to prosecute his journey, nor to leave the spot, which held what was to him so dear.

Carl Obers attempted to combat his despondency; but observing how useless were his arguments, wisely allowed his grief to take its course.

There was one point, in which Delme was decidedly wrong.

He could not bring himself, to communicate their loss to his sister.

Carl pressed this duty frequently on him, but was always met by the same reply.

"No! no! how can I inflict such a pang?"

It is possible the intelligence might have been very long in reaching England, had it not been for a providential circ.u.mstance, that occurred shortly after George's funeral.