“Then,” said Mrs. Markland, in a firm voice, “we will go hence. I place nothing against the happiness of my husband. If the sight of our old home is to trouble him daily, we will put mountains between, if necessary.”
Markland turned toward his wife. She had never looked more beautiful in his eye.
“Is self-negation to be all on her part?” The thought, flashing through his mind, changed the current of his feelings, and gave him truer perceptions.
“No, Agnes,” he said, while a faint smile played around his lips, “we will not put mountains between us and this neighbourhood. Pride is a poor counsellor, and they who take heed to her words, sow the seeds of repentance. In reverse of fortune, we stand not alone. Thousands have walked this rugged road before us; and shall we falter, and look weakly back?”
“Not so, Edward!” returned his wife, with enthusiasm; “we will neither falter nor look back. Our good and evil are often made by contrasts. We shall not find the way rugged, unless we compare it too closely with other ways our feet have trodden, and sigh vainly over the past, instead of accepting the good that is awarded us in the present. Let us first make the ‘rough paths of peevish nature even,’ and the way will be smooth to our feet.”
“You will never be happy in this neighbourhood, Edward,” said his sister, sharply; for she saw that the pride her words had awakened was dying out.
“If he is not happy here, change of place will work no difference.” Mrs. Markland spoke earnestly.
“Why not?” was the quick interrogation of Grace.
“Because happiness is rarely, if ever, produced by a change of external relations. We must have within us the elements of happiness; and then the heart’s sunshine will lie across our threshold, whether it be of palace or cottage.”
“Truer words were never spoken,” said Mr. Markland, “and I feel their better meaning. No, Agnes, we will not go out from this pleasant neighbourhood, nor from among those we have proved to be friends. If Woodbine Lodge ever looks upon me rebukingly, I will try to acknowledge the justice of the rebuke. I will accept Mr. Willet’s kind offer to-morrow. But what have you to say, Fanny?” Mr. Markland now turned to his daughter, who had not ventured a word on the subject, though she had listened with apparent interest to the conference. “Shall we take Mr. Walker’s cottage?”
“Your judgment must decide that, father,” was answered.
“But have you no choice in the case, Fanny? We can remove into the city, or go into some other neighbourhood.”
“I will be as happy here as anywhere. Do as seems best, father.”
A silence, made in a measure oppressive by Fanny’s apparent indifference to all change, followed. Before other words were spoke, Aunt Grace withdrew in a manner that showed a mind disturbed. The conference in regard to the cottage was again resumed, and ended in the cheerful conclusion that it would afford them the pleasantest home, in their changed circumstances, of any that it was possible for them to procure.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
PREPARATION was at once made for the proposed removal. Mr. Walker went back to the city, and the new owner of the cottage, Mr. Willet, set carpenters and painters at work to make certain additions which he thought needful to secure the comfort of his tenants, and to put every thing in the most thorough repair. Even against the remonstrance of Mr. Markland, who saw that his generous-minded neighbour was providing for his family a house worth almost double the rent that was to be paid, he carried out all his projected improvements.
“You will embarrass me with a sense of obligation,” said Mr. Markland, in seeking to turn him from a certain purpose regarding the cottage.
“Do not say so,” answered Mr. Willet; “I am only offering inducements for you to remain with us. If obligation should rest anywhere, it will be on our side. I make these improvements because the house is now my own property, and would be defective, to my mind, without them. Pray, don’t let your thoughts dwell on these things.”
Thus he strove to dissipate the feeling of obligation that began to rest on the mind of his unfortunate neighbour, while he carried out his purpose. In due time, under the assignment which had been made, Woodbine Lodge and a large part of the elegant and costly furniture contained in the mansion, were sold, and the ownership passed into other hands. With a meagre remnant of their household goods, the family retired to a humbler house. Some pitied, and stood at a distance; some felt a selfish pleasure in their fall; and some, who had courted them in their days of prosperity, were among the foremost to speak evil against them. But there were a few, and they the choicest spirits of the neighbourhood, who only drew nearer to these their friends in misfortune. Among them was Mr. Allison, one of those wise old men whose minds grow not dim with advancing years. He had passed through many trying vicissitudes, had suffered, and come up from the ordeal purer than when the fire laid hold upon the dross of nature.
A wise monitor had he been in Markland’s brighter days, and now he drew near as a comforter. There is strength in true words kindly spoken. How often was this proved by Mr. and Mrs. Markland, as their venerable friend unlocked for them treasures of wisdom!
The little parlour at “Lawn Cottage,” the name of their new home, soon became the scene of frequent reunions among choice spirits, whose aspirations went higher and deeper than the external and visible. In closing around Mr. Markland, they seemed to shut him out, as it were, from the old world in which he had hoped, and suffered, and struggled so vainly; and to open before his purer vision a world of higher beauty. In this world were riches for the toiler, and honour for the noble—riches and honour far more to be desired than the gems and gold of earth or its empty tributes of praise.
A few months of this new life wrought a wonderful change in Markland. All the better elements of his nature were quickened into activity. Useful daily employment tranquillized his spirits; and not unfrequently he found himself repeating the words of Longfellow—
“Something attempted, something done, Had earned a night’s repose.”
So entirely was every thing of earthly fortune wrecked, and so changed were all his relations to the business world, that hope had yet no power to awaken his mind to ambition. For the present, therefore, he was content to receive the reward of daily toil, and to be thankful that he was yet able to supply the real wants of his family. A cheerful tone of feeling gradually succeeded the state of deep depression from which he had suffered. His spirit, which had walked in darkness, began to perceive that light was breaking in through the hitherto impenetrable gloom, and as it fell upon the path he was treading, a flower was seen here and there, while the roughness his imagination had pictured became not visible.
