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CHAPTER X

MEANWHILE the hours passed with the mother, sister, and brother in the most agonizing suspense. Henry, who had been drawn away into evil company by two young men who boarded in the house, was neglecting his studies, and pressing on towards speedy ruin. To drinking and association with the vicious, he now added gaming. Little did his mother dream of the perilous ways his feet were treading. On this occasion he had come in, as has been seen, with a demand for ten dollars. When he left home in the morning, it was in company with the young man named Barling. Instead of his going to the office where he was studying, or his companion to his place of business, they went to a certain public house in Chestnut Street, where they first drank at the bar.

"Shall we go up into the billiard-room?" said Barling, as they turned from the white marble counter at which they had been drinking.

"I don't care. Have you time to play a game?" replied Henry.

"Oh, yes. We're not very busy at the store to-day."

So the two young men ascended to the billiard-room, and spent a couple of hours there. Both played very well, and were pretty equally matched.

From the billiard-room, they proceeded to another part of the house, more retired, and there, at the suggestion of Barling, tried a game at cards for a small stake. Young Darlington was loser at first, but, after a time, regained his losses and made some advance on his fellow-player. Hours passed in playing and drinking; and finally, Darlington, whose good fortune did not continue, parted with every sixpence.

"Lend me a dollar," said he as the last game went against him.

The dollar was lent, and the playing renewed. Thus it went on, hour after hour, neither of the young men stopping to eat any thing, though both drank too frequently. At last, Darlington was ten dollars in debt to Barling, who, on being asked for another loan, declined any further advances. Stung by the refusal, Henry said to him, rising as he spoke—

"Do you mean by this that you are afraid I will never return the money?"

"Oh, no," replied Barling. "But I don't want to play against you any longer. Your luck is bad."

"I can beat you," said Darlington.

"You hav'n't done it to-day certainly," answered Barling.

"Will you wait here a quarter of an hour?" asked Henry.

"For what?"

"I want to pay you off and begin again. I am going for some money."

"Yes, I'll wait," replied the young man.

"Very well. I'll be back in a few minutes."

It was for this work and for this purpose that Henry Darlington came to his mother just at the moment the absence of Miriam and her purpose in leaving had been discovered. The effect of the painful news on the young man has already been described. From the time he became aware of the fact that Miriam had gone away with Burton for the purpose of becoming his wife, until ten o'clock at night, he was in an agony of suspense. As the uncle could not be found at the office where he wrote, nor at the house where he boarded, it was concluded that he had reached the boat before its departure, and gone on with the fugitives in the train to New York. Nothing was therefore left for the distressed family but to await his return.

How anxiously passed the hours! At tea time Edith only made her appearance. Henry and his mother remained in the chamber of the latter. As for the young man, he was cast down and distressed beyond measure, vexing his spirit with self-accusations that were but too well founded.

"Oh, mother!" said he, while they were alone, starting up from where he had been sitting with his face buried in his hands—"oh, mother! what evils have come through this opening of our house, for strangers to enter! Miriam, our sweet, gentle, pure-hearted Miriam, has been lured away by one of the worst of men; and!"—the young man checked himself a moment or two, and then continued—"and I have been drawn away from right paths into those that lead to sure destruction. Mother, I have been in great danger. Until Barling and Mason came into our family, I was guiltless of any act that could awaken a blush of shame upon my cheek. Oh, that I had never met them!"

"Henry! Henry! what do you mean by this?" exclaimed Mrs. Darlington, in a voice full of anguish.

"I have been standing on the brink of a precipice," replied the young man with more calmness. "But a hand has suddenly drawn me away, and I am trembling at the danger I have escaped. Oh, mother, will you not give up this mode of life? We have none of us been happy. I have never felt as if I had a home since it began. And you—what a slave have you been! and how unhappy! Can nothing be done except keeping boarders? Oh, what would I not give for the dear seclusion of a home where no stranger's foot could enter!"

"Some other mode of living must be sought, my son," replied Mrs. Darlington. "Added to all the evils attendant on the present mode, is that of a positive loss instead of a profit. Several hundred dollars have been wasted already, and daily am I going in debt."

"Then, mother, let us change at once," replied the young man. "It would be better to shrink together in a single room than to continue as we are. I will seek a clerkship in a store and earn what I can to help support the family."

"I can think of nothing now but Miriam!" said Mrs. Darlington. "Oh, if she were back again, safe from the toils that have been thrown around her, I think I would be the most thankful of mortals! Oh, my child! my child!"

What could Henry say to comfort his mother? Nothing. And he remained silent.

Long after this, Mrs. Darlington, with Henry and Edith, were sitting together in painful suspense. No word had been spoken by either for the space of nearly an hour. The clock struck ten.

"I would give worlds to see my dear, dear child!" murmured Mrs. Darlington.

Just then a carriage drove up to the door and stopped. Henry sprang down stairs; but neither Edith nor her mother could move from where they sat. As the former opened the street door, Miriam stood with her uncle on the threshold. Henry looked at her earnestly and tenderly for an instant, and then, staggering back, leaned against the wall for support.

"Where is your mother?" asked Mr. Ellis.

"In her own room," said Henry, in a voice scarcely audible.

Miriam sprang up the stairs with the fleetness of an antelope, and, in a few moments, was sobbing on her mother's bosom.

"Miriam! Miriam!" said Mrs. Darlington, in a thrilling voice, "do you return the same as when you left?"

"Yes, thank God!" came from the maiden's lips.

"Thank God! thank God!" responded the mother, wildly. "Oh, my child, what a fearful misery you have escaped!"

In a few minutes, the mother and sisters were joined by Henry.

"Where is your uncle?" asked Mrs. Darlington.

"He has gone away; but says that he will see you to-morrow."

Over the remainder of that evening we will here draw a veil.

CHAPTER XI

ON the next morning, only Mrs. Darlington met her boarders at the breakfast-table, when she announced to them that she had concluded to close her present business, and seek some new mode of sustaining her family; at the same time, desiring each one to find another home as early as possible.

At the close of the third day after this, Mrs. Darlington sat down to her evening meal with only her children gathered at the table. A subdued and tranquil spirit pervaded each bosom, even though a dark veil was drawn against the future. To a long and troubled excitement there had succeeded a calm. It was good to be once more alone, and they felt this. "Through what a scene of trial, disorder, and suffering have we passed!" said Edith. "It seems as if I had just awakened from a dream."

"And such a dream!" sighed Miriam.

"Would that it were but a dream!" said Mrs. Darlington. "But, alas! the wrecks that are around us too surely testify the presence of a devastating storm."

"The storm has passed away, mother," said Edith; "and we will look for calmer and brighter skies."

"No bright skies for us, I fear, my children," returned the mother, with a deeper tinge of sadness in her voice.

"They are bright this hour to what they were a few days since," said Edith, "and I am sure they will grow brighter. I feel much encouraged. Where the heart is willing, the way is sure to open. Both Miriam and I are willing to do all in our power, and I am sure we can do much. We have ability to teach others; and the exercise of that ability will bring a sure reward. I like Uncle Hiram's suggestion very much."

"But the humiliation of soliciting scholars," said the mother.

"To do right is not humiliating," quickly replied Edith.

"It is easy to say this, my child; but can you go to Mrs. Lionel, for instance, with whose family we were so intimate, and solicit her to send Emma and Cordelia to the school you propose to open, without a smarting sense of humiliation? I am sure you cannot."

Edith communed with her own thoughts for some moments, and then answered—

"If I gave way to false pride, mother, this might be so; but I must overcome what is false and evil. This is as necessary for my happiness as the external good we seek—nay, far more so. Too many who have moved in the circle where we have been moving for years strangely enough connect an idea of degradation with the office of teaching children. But is there on the earth a higher or more important use than instructing the mind and training the heart of young immortals? It has been beautifully and truly said, that 'Earth is the nursery of Heaven.' The teacher, then, is a worker in God's own garden. Is it not so, mother?"

"You think wisely, my child. God grant that your true thoughts may sustain you in the trials to come!" replied Mrs. Darlington.

The door-bell rang as the family were rising from the tea-table. The visitor was Mr. Ellis. He had come to advise with and assist the distressed mother and her children; and his words were listened to with far more deference than was the case a year before. Nine or ten months' experience in keeping a boarding-house had corrected many of the false views of Mrs. Darlington, and she was now prepared to make an effort for her family in a different spirit from that exhibited in the beginning. The plan proposed by her brother—a matter-of-fact kind of person—was the taking of a house at a more moderate rent, and opening a school for young children. Many objections and doubts were urged; but he overruled them all, and obtained, in the end, the cordial consent of every member of the family. During the argument which preceded the final decision of the matter, Mrs. Darlington said—

"Suppose the girls should not be able to get scholars?"

"Let them see to this beforehand."

"Many may promise to send, and afterwards change their minds."

"Let them," replied the brother. "If, at the end of the first, second, and third years, you have not made your expenses, I will supply the deficiency."

"You!"

"Yes. The fact is, sister, if you will be guided in some respects by my judgment, I will stand by you, and see you safely over every difficulty. Your boarding-house experiment I did not approve. I saw from the beginning how it would end, and I wished to see the end as quickly as possible. It has come, and I am glad of it; and, still further, thankful that the disaster has not been greater. If you only had now the five or six hundred dollars wasted in a vain experiment during the past year, how much the sum might do for you! But we will not sigh over this. As just said, I will stand by you in the new experiment, and see that you do not fall again into embarrassment."

Henry was present at this interview, but remained silent during the whole time. Since the day of Miriam's departure with Burton, and safe return, a great change had taken place in the young man. He was like one starting up from sleep on the brink of a fearful precipice, and standing appalled at the danger he had escaped almost by a miracle. The way in which he had begun to walk he saw to be the way to sure destruction, and his heart shrunk with shame and trembled with dismay.

"Henry," said the uncle, after an hour's conversation with his sister and Edith, "I would like to talk with you alone."

Mrs. Darlington and her daughters left the room.

"Henry," said Mr. Ellis, as soon as the rest had withdrawn, "you are old enough to do something to help on. All the burden ought not to come on Edith and Miriam."

"Only show me what I can do, uncle, and I am ready to put my hands to the work," was Henry's prompt reply.

"It will be years before you can expect an income from your profession."

"I know, I know. That is what discourages me."

"I can get you the place of clerk in an insurance office, at a salary of five hundred dollars a year. Will you accept it?"

"Gladly!" The face of the young man brightened as if the sun had shone upon it suddenly.

"You will have several hours each day, in which to continue your law reading, and will get admitted to the bar early enough. Keep your mother and sisters for two or three years, and then they will be in a condition to sustain you until you make a practice in your profession."

But to this the mother and sisters, when it was mentioned to them, objected. They were not willing to have Henry's professional studies interrupted. That would be a great wrong to him.

"Not a great wrong, but a great good," answered Mr. Ellis. "And I will make this plain to you. Henry, as I learn from yourself, has made some dangerous associations; and some important change is needed to help him break away from them. No sphere of life is so safe for a young man as that which surrounds profitable industry pursued for an end. Temptation rarely finds its way within this sphere. Two or three years devoted to the duties of a clerk, with the end of aiding in the support of his mother and sisters, will do more to give a right direction to Henry's character—more to make success in after life certain—than any thing else possible now to be done. The office in which I can get him the situation I speak of adjoins the one to which I am attached, and I will, therefore, have him mostly under my own eye. In this new school, the ardency of his young feelings will be duly chastened, and his thoughts turned more into elements of usefulness. In a word, sister, it will give him self-dependence, and, in the end, make a man of him."

The force of all this, and more by this suggested, was not only seen, but felt, by Mrs. Darlington; and when she found her son ready to accept the offer made to him, she withdrew all opposition.

Steps preliminary to the contemplated change were immediately taken. First of all, Edith waited upon a number of their old friends, who had young children, and informed them that she was, in connection with her sister, about opening a school. Some were surprised, some pleased, and some indifferent at the announcement; but a goodly number expressed pleasure at the opportunity it afforded them of placing their younger children under the care of teachers in whose ability and character they had so much confidence. Thus was the way made plain before them.

CHAPTER XII

A FEW weeks later, and the contemplated change was made. The family removed into a moderate-sized house, at a lower rent, and prepared to test the new mode of obtaining a livelihood. A good portion of their furniture had been sold, besides three gold watches and some valuable jewelry belonging to Mrs. Darlington and her two eldest daughters, in order to make up a sum sufficient to pay off the debt contracted during the last few months of the boarding-house experiment. The real loss sustained by the widow in this experiment fell little short of a thousand dollars.

"How many scholars have you now?" asked Mrs. Darlington of Edith, two months after the school was opened, as they sat at tea one evening, each member of the family wearing a cheerful face.

"Twenty," replied Edith. "We received two new ones to-day. Mrs. Wilmot came and entered two of her children; and she said that Mrs. Armond was going to send her Florence so soon as her quarter expired in the school she is now attending."

"How much will you receive from your present number of scholars?" inquired Henry.

"I made the estimate to-day," returned Edith, "and find that the bills will come to something like a hundred and twenty-five dollars a quarter."

"Five hundred dollars a year," said Henry; "and my five hundred added to that will make a thousand. Can't we live on a thousand dollars, mother?"

"We may, by the closest economy."

"Our school will increase," remarked Edith; "and every increase will add to our income. Oh! it looks so much brighter ahead! and we have so much real comfort in the present! What a scene of trial have we passed through!"

"How I ever bore up under it is more than I can now tell," said Mrs. Darlington, with an involuntary shudder. "And the toil, and suffering, and danger through which we have come! I cannot be sufficiently thankful that we are safe from the dreadful ordeal, and with so few marks of the fire upon us."

A silence followed this, in which two hearts, at least, were humbled, yet thankful, in their self-communion—the hearts of Henry and Miriam. Through what perilous ways had they come! How near had they been to shipwreck!

"Poor Mrs. Marion!" said Edith, breaking the silence, at length. "How often I think of her! And the thought brings a feeling of condemnation. Was it right for us to thrust her forth as we did?"

"Can she still be in?"

"Oh no, no!" spoke up Henry, interrupting his mother. "I forgot to tell you that I met her and her husband on the street to-day."

"Are you certain?"

"Oh yes."

"Did you speak to them?"

"No. They saw me, but instantly averted their faces. Mrs. Marion looked very pale, as if she had been sick."

"Poor woman! She has had heart-sickness enough," said Mrs. Darlington. "I shall never forgive myself for turning her out of the house. If I had known where she was going!"

"But we did not know that, mother," said Edith.

"We knew that she had neither friends nor a home," replied the mother. "Ah me! when our own troubles press heavily upon us, we lose our sympathy for others!"

"It was not so in this case," remarked Edith. "Deeply did we sympathize with Mrs. Marion. But we could not bear the weight without going under ourselves."

"I don't know, I don't know," said Mrs. Darlington, half to herself. "We might have kept up with her a little longer. But I am glad from my heart that her husband has come back. If he will be kind to his wife, I will forgive all his indebtedness to me."

A few weeks subsequent to this time, as Miriam sat reading the morning paper, she came upon a brief account of the arrest, in New Orleans, of a "noted gambler," as it said, named Burton, on the charge of bigamy. The paper dropped to the floor, and Miriam, with clasped hands and eyes instantly overflowing with tears, looked upward, and murmured her thanks to Heaven.

"What an escape!" fell tremblingly from her lips, as she arose and went to her room to hold communion with her own thoughts.

Three years have passed, and what has been the result of the widow's new experiment? The school prospered from the beginning. The spirit with which Edith and Miriam went to work made success certain. Parents who sent their children were so much pleased with the progress they made, that they spoke of the new school to their friends, and thus gave it a reputation, that, ere a year had elapsed, crowded the rooms of the sisters. Mrs. Darlington was a woman who had herself received a superior education. Seeing that the number of scholars increased rapidly, and made the pressure on her daughters too great, she gave a portion of her time each day to the instruction of certain classes, and soon became much interested in the work. From that time she associated herself in the school with Edith and Miriam.

Three years, as we said, have passed, and now the profits on the school are more than sufficient to meet all expenses. Henry has left his clerkship, and is a member of the bar. Of course he has little or no practice—only a few months having elapsed since his admission; but his mother and sisters are fully able to sustain him until he could sustain himself.

"How much better this is than keeping boarders!" said Edith, as she sat conversing with her mother and uncle about the prospects of the school.

"And how much more useful and honourable!" remarked Mr. Ellis. "In the one case, you fed only the body, but now you are dispensing food to the immortal mind. You are moreover independent in your own house. When the day's work is done, you come together as one family, and shut out the intruding world."

"Yes, it is better, far better," replied Mrs. Darlington. "Ah, that first mistake of mine was a sad one!"

"Yet out of it has come good," said Mr. Ellis. "That painful experience corrected many false views, and gave to all your characters a new and higher impulse. It is through disappointment, trial, and suffering, that we grow wise here; and true wisdom is worth the highest price we are ever called upon to pay for it."

Yes, it is so. Through fiery trials are we purified. At times, in our suffering, we feel as if every good thing in us was about being consumed. But this never happens. No good in our characters is ever lost in affliction or trouble; and we come out of these states of pain wiser and better than when we entered them, and more fitted and more willing to act usefully our part in the world.