Erema

Erema

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Title: Erema My Father's Sin
Author: R. D. Blackmore
Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7112] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on March 11,
2003]
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Produced by Don Lainson

EREMA; OR, MY FATHER'S SIN
by
R. D. BLACKMORE

1877

CHAPTER I
A LOST LANDMARK
"The sins of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth
generation of them that hate me."
These are the words that have followed me always. This is the curse
which has fallen on my life.
If I had not known my father, if I had not loved him, if I had not closed
his eyes in desert silence deeper than the silence of the grave, even if I
could have buried and bewailed him duly, the common business of this
world and the universal carelessness might have led me down the
general track that leads to nothing.
Until my father fell and died I never dreamed that he could die. I knew
that his mind was quite made up to see me safe in my new home, and
then himself to start again for still remoter solitudes. And when his
mind was thus made up, who had ever known him fail of it?
If ever a resolute man there was, that very man was my father. And he

showed it now, in this the last and fatal act of his fatal life. "Captain,
here I leave you all," he shouted to the leader of our wagon train, at a
place where a dark, narrow gorge departed from the moilsome
mountain track. "My reasons are my own; let no man trouble himself
about them. All my baggage I leave with you. I have paid my share of
the venture, and shall claim it at Sacramento. My little girl and I will
take this short-cut through the mountains."
"General!" answered the leader of our train, standing up on his board in
amazement. "Forgive and forget, Sir; forgive and forget. What is a hot
word spoken hotly? If not for your own sake, at least come back for the
sake of your young daughter."
"A fair haven to you!" replied my father. He offered me his hand, and
we were out of sight of all that wearisome, drearisome,
uncompanionable company with whom, for eight long weeks at least,
we had been dragging our rough way. I had known in a moment that it
must be so, for my father never argued. Argument, to his mind, was a
very nice amusement for the weak. My spirits rose as he swung his
bear-skin bag upon his shoulder, and the last sound of the laboring
caravan groaned in the distance, and the fresh air and the freedom of
the mountains moved around us. It was the 29th of May--Oak-apple
Day in England--and to my silly youth this vast extent of snowy
mountains was a nice place for a cool excursion.
Moreover, from day to day I had been in most wretched anxiety, so
long as we remained with people who could not allow for us. My father,
by his calm reserve and dignity and largeness, had always, among
European people, kept himself secluded; but now in this rough life, so
pent in trackless tracts, and pressed together by perpetual peril, every
body's manners had been growing free and easy. Every man had been
compelled to tell, as truly as he could, the story of his life thus far, to
amuse his fellow-creatures-- every man, I mean, of course, except my
own poor father. Some told their stories every evening, until we were
quite tired--although they were never the same twice over; but my
father could never be coaxed