“She had such a nature,
You would have thought some fairy, ’ware o’ th’ hour,
When out of heaven came a young soul, predestined
For a King’s heir, to make a conqueror of him
Had, by some strange and wondrous art, diverted
The new-born spirit from its proper course,
And hid it in the form of a poor maiden;
Leaving the princely weakling in his cradle,
Shorn of the fate that waited him: the other
Chafing at its caged limits all its days----”
OLD PLAY.
A SELF-WILLED, proud, ambitious woman, with a strong, clear, bold
intellect, a passionate temper, and vehement feelings, Martha Muir had
been born. So much education as she had, tended all to reduce her to
the due humility of poverty and womanhood, but surrounded always by
placid natures, who never fully comprehended the stormy spirit with
which they had to deal, Martha, dwelling alone, and hiding in her
own heart the secret aspirations which no one round her could have
understood, remained as proud, as self-willed, and as ambitious as she
had been born.
For hers were not the hopes and fancies common, as people say, to
youthful women. Advantages of appearance she had never possessed,
and the children who were growing up at her feet absorbed all the
passionate affections of their grave sister; but Martha’s hopes were
visions of unmitigated ambition, eager to work out for itself a future
worthy of its own bold spirit--for it was not of windfalls, or happy
chances, or of fortune to be bestowed on her by another, but of that
ladder “to which the climber upward turns his face,” that the solitary
woman dreamed.
To raise them--these children--to that indefinite rank and honour
which exists in the fancy of the young who are poor--to win for them
exemption from those carking cares amid which her own youth, a strong
plant, had grown green and flourished. Such hopes were strong in the
heart of the passionate girl when people round her thought her only a
child; and when darker necessities came--when following many little
pilgrims, the father and the mother went away, leaving her the head of
the sadly diminished family, her strong desire, intensified by great
grief, possessed her like a fiery tormenting spirit. She was then a
woman of only twenty years, while Harry was but thirteen; and Martha
prayed in an agony for means--only means, to let her strong energies
forth and labour for her children: but the means never came--how could
they? and all she could do in her passion of ambitious love was to
toil day and night for their bread.
No one of all her friends knew how to deal with Martha--so that her
impatient soul knew no discipline except the inevitable restraints of
poverty, and these, if they humble the pride, are but spurs to the
eager fancy, burning to escape from their power. Through all the years
of romance the wish and hope to do somewhat, had filled Martha’s mind
with visions; but then came those slow, gradual, steady years, wherein
the light of common day began to blot out the radiant mists of the
morning, and as her hopes fell one by one, and one by one the months
lengthened, filled with the tedious labour which gave such scope for
thought, bitterness came in like deep waters into the fierce heart,
which rendered all its strength to that might of disappointment, and
wrestled with itself like a caged eagle. To find that after aspiring
to do all, one can do nothing--that soaring in fancy into the broad
firmament, in the body one must condescend to all the meanest and
smallest cares of daily life--to dream of unknown heights to be
attained, and to find instead that by the slow toil of every long
uninteresting day one must labour for daily bread--it is not wonderful
that the awaking was bitter; and all the more, because in both the
dream and the awaking she was uncomprehended and alone.
They all lay dead these hopes of her strange solitary youth--but as
they died others rose. This boy, in whom the young beautiful life rose
with a grace which she knew it never had in herself--what might he not
do? and so she set herself to train him. The old lore that is in all
hearts, of the brave and of the great, the histories of Scripture,
which live for ever; all that God has recorded for us of his servants’
stout lives, and much that men have written in lesser records. The
lonely young woman, feeling herself grave and old among her neighbours,
poured all her vehement heart into the glowing intelligence of the boy.
She began to think it well that those chimeras of her own had fallen
like withered leaves to enrich the soil--and in him should be the
glorious spring.
How was it now? The deep red flush which sometimes burned on Martha’s
cheek, the anger which only one of so dear regard could awaken,
and sadder still, the utter heaviness with which her heart sank in
the rebound, proclaimed the end of her second harvest. The first
time she had sowed in proud wilfulness--it was meet she should reap
disappointment; but the second seed-time had been in hope more
Christianlike, and with strong crying for the sunshine and the dew--the
wonderful sunshine and dew of high heaven, which had never fallen upon
her seed.
It seemed that her fate had been born with her. The proud and
passionate temper to be thwarted and crossed at every turn--the
vehement ambitious mind, to be disgraced and humbled--and with those
arrows in her heart, she was now fighting with herself a greater fight
than she had ever hazarded before, subduing herself to herself, and
to the Higher One, who thus painfully had brought back the rebel soul
to His allegiance. It was hard to subdue the old passion--the old
pride--but she had begun to sanctify her contest now, when it had come
to the bitterest.
No other trial could have been so hard to her as this; it struck at
her very life. Misfortunes against which she could struggle would have
been happy discipline to Martha, but to look on helplessly while these
elements of ruin were developing in the life of her brother; to stand
by and see him fall lower and lower into the poor and petty sins which
she despised--to watch the slow coming of disgrace and wretchedness
which she could not lift a finger to avert--who can wonder that the
proud spirit was chafed into passions of fierce anger sometimes,
and sometimes into very despair; but Martha never spoke of what she
suffered--she only said “Poor Harry!”
“Shall I read my uncle’s letter now?” asked Rose, when Cuthbert was
gone.
“Surely,” said Harry, whom some slight incident had restored to perfect
good-humour. “Surely, Rosie, let us hear what the old man says.”
“I write this to let you know that I am quite well,” read Rose,
“though a little troubled with the rheumatism in my right arm,
which always comes on about the turn of the year, as you will all
mind; and I am very sorry to hear of Harry’s accident; but there is
less matter for lamentation, it being gotten in a good way, as I
have no doubt Martha will mind. The town crier, Sandy Proudfoot,
broke his leg at Hogmanay, and it’s never mended yet; but I cannot
see what better the daidling body had to expect, it being a thing
well known, that when the accident was gotten, he was as he should
not have been, which is a great comfort in respect of Harry. I hope
all the rest of you are well and doing well, and desire to see some
of you at Ayr as soon as ever it can be made convenient. If Violet
is inclined to be delicate, send her out to me for a change. The
guard of the coach would take good care of her, and I will pay her
passage myself. I hope she is minding her lessons and learning to
help the rest with the opening, and that Rose is eident, as the
cottar says, and minds her duty duly, and that Harry is steady
and ’grees with his wife. As for Martha, seeing she knows what
is right, better than I can tell her, I have nothing to say, but
that I hope she keeps up to the mark, which she knows, and has her
own judgment in her favour--of which, if she is sure, I know she
will be feared for no other in the world. And so I remain, my dear
bairns, your affectionate uncle--ALEXANDER MUIR.”
“What do you say, Agnes,” said Harry, “do we agree?”
The little wife smiled. “When you behave yourself, Harry,” she said,
laying her child in the cradle.
“If we could manage it,” said Martha, “when Harry is able to walk,
Agnes, I think you should go down together to see my uncle. You have
never been in Ayr.”
Agnes looked up brightly. “And I should like so well to go; and it
would do Harry so much good. But then, Martha, how can we afford it?”
Harry winced visibly. Some debts of his own, recklessly and foolishly
incurred, had made the long-projected journey to Ayr impracticable a
year ago; the fifteen pounds could do so little more than provide for
the bare wants of the quarter; and yet again there were other debts
waiting for the next payment of salary. Poor Harry!
“I have been thinking,” said Martha, quietly; “I see how we can manage,
Agnes; we shall only work the more busily, Rose and I, while you are
away, and Harry will be the better of it. I see how we can do it. It
will do Harry good to see my uncle and the little quiet house again.”
Harry felt that there was meaning in her voice. To dwell again under
the humble roof where all her hopes for his young life had risen; where
she had nursed and tended the dawning mind within him, and laboured to
lift his eyes, and teach him to look upward bravely, like a young eagle
to the sun. Alas, poor Harry! For this revival of the unstained hopes
of youth, Martha was willing to toil all the harder at her tedious
unceasing toil; and he felt, almost for the first time, how hopeless
these hopes were. How different were his expectations and hers.
“It is a shame,” he said, abruptly, “for a rich man like Buchanan to
keep us down so. We require a little relaxation, a little ease, as well
as them; and I should like to know how it is possible we can get it on
sixty pounds a year?”
“Peter McGillivray has only fourteen shillings a week,” said Rose.
“And what then?”
“He keeps a family on it, Harry; at least his wife does; but then she
is very thrifty.”
“Thrifty! nonsense. Is not Agnes thrifty too? You are a foolish girl,
Rose,” said her brother; “you think a few shillings is a great fortune.
There now, a pound or two would take us comfortably down to my uncle’s;
but how can we spare that, off the pittance they give me.”
Yet Harry remembered that his own private expenses--the little debts
of which his wife and sister knew nothing--amounted to more than that
needful pound or two, and the remembrance brought a flush to his face
and made him angry.
“There is a meanness attends this mercantile wealth,” he exclaimed
hastily; “a want of thought and consideration of others. What are we
clerks but the stuff these masters of ours are made of? and yet how
they keep us down.”
“They were themselves kept down, and overcame it,” said Martha.
“Well, it is not a very noble art, the art of making money,” said
Harry, with assumed carelessness. “Dick Buchanan and the rest of them
are shallow fellows in spite of it all. And their father--he has made a
fortune--but the honest man is no genius.”
“But it _is_ a noble art to refuse to be kept down,” said the ambitious
Martha, with a kindling of her eye. “I am ashamed to think that Mr.
Buchanan or any other ordinary person, _can_ keep down my brother;
and he cannot, Harry. You have less perhaps than you ought to have
now, but win more; that is your refuge. And don’t let us throw the
responsibility on other people. We have only to answer for ourselves.”
“Well, Martha,” said Harry, looking up, “we have not much of the mammon
of unrighteousness to answer for. I will tell my uncle you have grown
charitable; that is, if it be at all possible to get to Ayr.”
“What do you think, Martha?” said Agnes, with some solicitude in her
face.
“You must go; that is all,” said Martha.
The little wife was by no means self-opinionated. She had a great
reverence for, and faith in, the decrees of Martha, and knew that what
her grave sister resolved would be accomplished “some way,” so she
returned pleasantly to the cradle.
“And _I_ don’t want to go, Martha,” whispered little Violet, desiring
to have her sacrifice appreciated. “My uncle will give the money to
Agnes, and I will stay at home and help you to open.”
“But you would like to go, Lettie?” said Rose.
“No; I would rather stay at home with Martha and you. I think, Martha,”
whispered Violet again, “that it will be fine to be our lane just for a
wee while--when Agnes is with Harry.”
In the elder mind there was a response to the child’s thought--To
know that Harry was safe, with the good uncle, and the anxious little
wife to guard him, while yet they themselves were left a little while
alone, freed from their constant anxiety, to rest and take breath for
the future which remained, with all its unknown cares, before them.
There was something in the thought which gave Martha relief, and yet
oppressed her with a heavier sadness; but Agnes was already gay in
anticipation, and eagerly discussing what she should take of her
little wardrobe, and how many frocks for baby Harry--for Agnes was
still only a girl, and the unusual pleasure filled her with wholesome
natural delight--a good and happy contagion which soon spread itself in
softened degrees over all the rest.