"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 embarra.s.sment."
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 Ellis, as soon as the rest had withdrawn, "you are old enough to do something to help on.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 a.s.sociations; 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed, 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 cla.s.ses, and soon became much interested in the work. From that time she a.s.sociated herself in the school with Edith and Miriam.