"Well! I do declare! some people have the most marvellous good
fortune!" exclaimed Sir Patrick next morning turning to Marion, with a
newspaper before him. "Here is an account of Granville--Richard
Granville--being engaged in a splendid adventure. I might live for
ever, and not meet with such a thing. He has rescued Miss Howard, the
heiress, from that mad cousin who haunts her with some love-and-murder
threats, and who will positively some day assassinate her, like the
Miss Raes and Miss Shuckburghs of former times. These very good people,
like Granville, who profess to be quite above the world, are all very
fond of money. Ten to one, Granville marries Miss Howard in a month."
"So the young lady is to be murdered first, and married immediately
afterwards!" said Marion, laughing to see her brother's impetuosity.
"The heroine of that story is, after all, only my old school companion,
Caroline Smythe. She has been persecuted by this man, she tells me,
ever since her childhood, but now he must be put in confinement for
life; and--and--as for Mr. Granville,--Patrick,--with your leave, I
have a very private and particular reason for believing he
is--previously engaged."
A brilliant blush mounted to Marion's temples, while her brother might
have almost heard her trembling; but a smile of conscious happiness
played round her mouth, while her long eyelashes drooped over her
burning cheeks when she spoke these words in an accent of pleased but
tremulous emotion; and Sir Patrick, after gazing in her countenance for
a moment with an expression of angry perplexity, suddenly started on
his feet, crumpling up the newspaper in his hand, with a fiery
exclamation of rage, saying,
"Speak again, Marion; tell me what this means. The most uncommon thing
in this world is a direct answer; but your blushes are like no other
person's, for they betray everything. Girls, from the very beginning of
time, have always found out the very last man on earth they ought to
like, and live in a state of romantic misery till they can marry him.
But it shall never be! I hate and detest Granville! He has injured me!
He has caused all my recent sufferings. He shall feel what I have felt.
I have the power now, and the will to be revenged. In his sacred
profession he dare not and cannot marry you without my consent--and
never! no never, shall he have it. Marion, you are a mere child yet!
you do not know your own value, and would let yourself go at a mere
pepper-corn rent! Granville would become a perfect beggar if he loses
our law-suit. You ought to be offered the first match in Scotland."
"So I am," replied Marion, in a low and gentle voice. "Mr. Granville
scarcely has his equal in the world."
"Pshaw! nonsense! I have other views for you! Marion, you have not an
idea of the sensation you make. My friends are all raving about you. I
never understood till now why you cared so little about any of them.
Let Agnes look to her laurels, for I am in more than one secret already
that would astonish her. Granville must be allowed to follow up his
adventure with the heiress. Never mention his name to me again. You may
depend upon it, in a month he will be ready and willing to marry Miss
Howard."
"Let your consent depend upon Richard's constancy, and then I shall be
secure," answered Marion, with a playful smile. "He shall be at liberty
to change his mind on a moment's notice; but, in the mean time,
Patrick, I have a great idea that he will continue always the same; and
be assured that I certainly shall."
"Pshaw! nonsense, Marion! You never could be satisfied with the stupid
sort of happiness to be found in a hum-drum parsonage. Give me no more
of your love-in-a-cottage ideas, when I know you have a chance of--of,
no matter who! somebody worth a dozen Mr. Granvilles, and who could buy
him up a hundred times over."
"One Mr. Granville is quite enough," replied Marion, smiling. "If he
were like the Emperor of China, cousin-german to the stars, and uncle
to the moon, I could not think more of him. Riches are only to be
valued for the use people make of them, but he is 'more bent to raise
the wretched than to rise.' Very little is essential, Patrick, 'when
humble happiness endears each scene;' and nothing more is indispensable
to me than to be so loved by one who is deserving of my love in return.
How much rather I would live with a poor man who is liberal, than with
a rich man who is avaricious; and Richard's wealth, though not great,
is furnished with wings to fly away on a thousand embassies of mercy
and liberality."
"I wish mine had wings to come, instead of to go; but say what you
will, it bores me to hear of Granville, he is so absurdly different
from everybody else."
"So much the worse for everybody else," observed Marion, with a
good-humored smile. "Is that the blackest count in your indictment?"
"And bad enough, too! I'm told there's not a garret nor a dingy
cellar-full of misery in the city, where Granville is not upon visiting
terms. He is a perfect Humane Society in himself. I daresay he will
receive a public dinner and a piece of plate from the beggars at last."
"Let me entreat, Marion," said Agnes, who had entered during the
discussion, "that you will not be running about with those Granvilles,
in search of typhus fever or small-pox. You really ought to be
fumigated every time you return from these houses, where the people are
all dying of dirt."
"When Lady Towercliffe recommended her husband's old castle in the
country to me once, for the shooting, she finished the catalogue of its
many perfections, by saying, 'and we have such very pleasant beggars!"
observed Sir Patrick, laughing. "I should certainly have been tempted
to bag a few brace of them! The Irish fellow whom you may remember
besetting my door so long in Edinburgh, without extracting a _sous_,
came up to me lately, in the coolest manner imaginable, and said, 'you
must find another beggar, Sir Patrick, for the situation here is not
worth keeping!' I gave the rascal half a sovereign for his humor, and
never saw his face again."
"It is all very well, if beggars find us out, to give a trifle, and so
get rid of their importunity," said Agnes, in her most benevolent
accent, "but the idea of setting out on a crusade to find them out, is
rather too amusing. I am immensely charitable, however, in referring
cases of distress to my friends, but benevolence is the most expensive
of all virtues to set up for."
"Better do too much than too little," replied Marion. "We must not
suppose every man in want is either a knave or a fool, and no
remembrance will last so long in our minds as the good we have done, or
left undone, for we gain the highest happiness to ourselves by
dispensing it to others. Yesterday, Mr. Granville relieved a poor man
from actual starvation, nearly ninety years old."
"Was he an orphan?" asked Sir Patrick, in a rallying tone. "What could
the old fellow be doing in the world so long! but if I might be allowed
to give an opinion, which I never do, it is, that you should avoid
those dens of infection and filth."
"There is no absurd romance in their benevolence, and Clara is never
permitted by her brother to visit anywhere, till he has personally
ascertained that there is no contagion of either the scarlet, yellow,
or typhus fever in the house," continued Marion; "but we accompanied
him last week to see a poor woman who was in a darkened room, with her
face muffled up, and yet I could not but fancy the tone of her voice
familiar to me. I was on the point of telling her so when the door
opened, and who should come in but my uncle's clerk, Mr. Howard, who
seemed so caught! One seldom can know who are charitable and kind in
this world, for I never suspected him of being a good Samaritan. He
said it must have been a mistake about my ever having heard the poor
creature's voice before, as to his certain knowledge she has been
bedridden these ten years; therefore, Clara and I gave her all we could
spare and came away. There was only one seat in the room, and nothing
else but the naked walls!"
"How very indecent!" said Sir Patrick, taking up the newspapers, "those
_pauvres honteuses_ have a sad life of it! You will positively draw
tears from my eyes!"
"Nothing will do that but a mouthful of mustard," replied Marion, with
a brilliant smile. "It would be more to the purpose if I drew a
shilling from your purse! You have no idea, Patrick, how many starving
people there are in the very houses that you see from these windows!"
"Well, really! I wish everybody had £5,000 a year," observed Agnes,
yawning. "If we could build an addition to the world it would be a
great convenience! There certainly are too many of us!"
"That is a most original and interesting remark of yours!" exclaimed
Sir Patrick, laughing. "We have certainly more cats than can kill mice.
I did hear that it was very seriously debated at the Speculative
Society lately whether the creation of the world had been on the whole
an advantage to Ireland or not! How the question was decided I forgot
to ask!"
"No doubt the existence of every living being must be an advantage, if
rightly used," observed Marion, in a gentle, diffident voice, "but if
not, then certainly it were better never to have been born."
"That is your last new importation of Granville-ism," said Agnes,
satirically. "Well, I would much rather, Marion, that you took the
typhus fever, than that you became a methodist!--Pray do not infect me
with either the one or the other."
"There is always more contagion in what is evil than in what is good,"
replied Marion. "Fevers are infectious, but health is not. Most of the
illness I have seen lately arises from bad food, or rather from no food
at all."
"It occurs to me," said Sir Patrick, throwing down his newspaper, "that
as all rivers are formed of drinkable water, it is most unlucky that
the ground is not formed of eatable bread! What a world of trouble it
would save about the corn laws!"
"But in such a case," replied Marion, laughing, "no man would work, and
the stones on the road might have to break themselves!"
"If the weather, too, were permitted to be regulated by act of
Parliament, how droll it would be to read a petition from the farmers
of Mid-Lothian against the late excessive rains, or from the hackney
coachmen against a long continuance of fine weather. How I should like
to see the summer with which any one of my tenants would be satisfied!"
"Of course it is their business to complain, or you would increase
their rents. If a farmer came to your factor in ecstacies with his
crops, and wishing a renewal of his lease, what terms would satisfy
you? We are all like buckets in a well--what raises one depresses
another, _ainsi va le monde_."