Evenings At Donaldson Manor Part 11

"Dreadful fine," was her reply to the last. "I'm sure we be much obleeged to you for the seed, and for tellin' Jim how to plant it He never had sich hay before."

"I'm glad to hear it. Where is Lucy?"

"Oh, she's off to school. Tell Miss Mary she's gittin' to be 'most as grand a reader as she be. And yet the child's willin' enough to work, for all."

As the gentlemen rode on, after this interview, Mr. Grahame said, "That last speech expressed one of the greatest difficulties against which we had to contend in our efforts to induce our neighbors to give to their children some of the advantages of education. They were afraid 'larnin'

would make them lazy.' They were of your opinion, that the thinker and the worker must remain of different cla.s.ses."

"I was much surprised to hear that woman speak of a school. I should not think the teacher could find his situation very profitable."

"He is one who has regard to a higher reward than any earthly one. He is a self-denying Christian missionary, whom I induced to settle in our neighborhood. He preaches on the Sabbath, in a little church about two miles from my house, to a congregation of about twenty adults, and twice that number of children; and during the week, he keeps a school which is well attended in the summer. Some of his earlier pupils are already showing, by their more useful and more happy lives, the importance of the schoolmaster's work in the elevation of a people."

The next dwelling they approached was very small and mean-looking. It seemed to Horace Danforth to contain only one apartment, warmed by an ill-constructed clay chimney, and lighted by one small, square window.

That window, however, was not only sashed and glazed, but shaded by a plain muslin curtain.

"Here," said Mr. Grahame, "lives one of those pupils of whom I spoke just now. He has commenced life with nothing but the plot of ground you see, and having a wife to support, he must work hard, yet already he is aiming at something more than the supply of merely physical wants; and I doubt not he will, should he live long enough, become the intelligent and wealthy father of a well-educated family."

They were approaching the house as Mr. Grahame spoke. Near it was a small field, in which a man was hoeing.

"How is your wife, Martin?" asked Mr. Grahame.

"Oh, thank you, sir, she is quite smart. She's been getting better ever since the night Miss Mary sat up with her last. We say she always brings good luck."

"And how are your potatoes?"

"How could they help but be good, sir, with such grand seed as you gave me? Tell Miss Mary, if you please, sir, that the rose-tree is growing finely, and that as soon as I can get time to put up the fence, Sally is to have the flower-garden she talked about."

"I am glad to hear it, Martin; if you are brisk you may have some flowers yet before frost. I will bring you some seeds the next time I come."

"Do you procure your seeds from the East, or is it the result of your superior cultivation, that you are able thus to supply your neighbors?"

asked Horace Danforth of Mr. Grahame, as they rode on.

"The potatoes were from my own field, raised from the seed two years ago. The gra.s.s and flower seeds were from my agent at the East. These little favors win for my daughter and myself considerable influence over our neighbors, and thus facilitate our attainment of the object for which we have pitched our tent in the wilderness, and accepted those labors which you justly regard as distasteful in themselves."

The return home of Mr. Grahame and his visitor, their dinner and afternoon engagements, offer nothing worthy of our notice. It was not till the labors of the day had been concluded, and the little party were gathered again before a cheerful fire in the parlor, that the subject of the morning's conversation was resumed. As Mary entered from the supper-room, bringing with her a little basket of needle-work, Horace Danforth asked if he might not now hope to receive the promised sketch.

"I will give it you with pleasure when I have had my evening song from Mary," said Mr. Grahame.

Opening the piano for his young hostess, Horace Danforth stood beside her as she sang, but he forgot to turn the leaves of the music before her as he listened once again to a rich and cultivated voice, accompanied by a fine instrument, touched by a skilful hand. As the sweet and well-remembered strains fell on his ear, he closed his eyes and gave the reins to fancy. The loved and lost gathered around him, and it was with a strange, dream-like feeling that, as the sweet sound ceased, and Mary arose from the piano, he opened his eyes and looked upon the rough walls and simple furniture of his present abode.

"It is now nearly nineteen years," began Mr. Grahame, when his daughter and guest had resumed their seats near him, "since, crushed in spirit, I turned from the grave in which I had laid my chief earthly blessing, to wander 'any where, any where out of that world' which had a few weeks before been bright and joyous to me, but which I was now ready to p.r.o.nounce a desolate waste. The desire to avoid society made me turn westward, and nearly one hundred miles east of our present residence I found myself in the midst of a people without churches, without schools, rude in appearance and in manners. Absorbed in the destruction of my own selfish happiness, I might have pa.s.sed from among them without knowing that disease was adding its pangs to those inflicted by want, ignorance, and superst.i.tion, had not a mother in the agony of parting from her first-born, looking hither and thither for help, turned her eyes entreatingly upon the stranger. I had once studied medicine, though regarding the profession, as our young men too often do, merely as a means of personal aggrandizement, and having received just at the completion of my studies an accession of fortune, which removed all pecuniary necessity to exertion on my part, I had never practised it, nor indeed obtained the diploma necessary to its practice. Now, however, I endeavored to make myself master of the peculiar features of the epidemic under which the child was suffering, and with the aid of a small store of medicines which my good sister had insisted on my taking with me, and a rigid enforcement of some of the simplest rules of diet and regimen, I had the happiness of seeing the child in a few days out of danger, and of receiving the mother's rapturous thanks. That moment, gave me the first gleam of happiness I had known for months, and disposed me to listen to the entreaties of the poor creatures who came from far and near to entreat the aid of the Doctor, as they persisted in calling me, notwithstanding my repeated a.s.surances that I had no right to the t.i.tle. I spent weeks in that neighborhood, and there I was born to a new life. Till that time I had lived to myself, and when that in which I had centered my earthly joy was s.n.a.t.c.hed from me by death, I had felt that life had nothing left for me; but now I saw that while there were sentient beings in the universe to serve, and a glorious and ever blessed Father presiding over that universe and smiling on such service, life could not be divested of joy. Under the influence of such views my plans for the future were formed, nor have I ever seen reason to change or to regret them. Every where the Christian religion teaches the same precepts, but not every where is it equally easy to see the way in which those precepts may be obeyed; every where it is true, as a distinguished writer of your own land has said, 'Blessed is the man who has found his work--let him seek no other blessedness;' but not every where is it equally easy to see where our work lies. Here, in America, the part.i.tion-walls which stand elsewhere as a remnant of the old feudalism, have been broken down; every man is irresistibly pressed into contact with his neighbors--he cannot shut his eyes to their wants--he cannot stop his ears against their cries. In America, too, every man, as I have already said, must be a worker--or, if he live an idler, it must be on that which his father gained by the sweat of his brow, and he leaves his children to enslaving toil, or more enslaving dependence. Here the man of pleasure, the idler of either s.e.x, is a foreign exotic which finds no nourishment in our soil, no shelter from our inst.i.tutions--which is out of harmony with our social life, and must ever be marked by the innate vulgarity of unsustained pretension. Therefore it is comparatively easy for us to hold out the hand of love to our brethren, sinking and suffering at our very side, and to teach them that there is no natural inalienable connection between labor and coa.r.s.eness, ignorance and servility; that man, though compelled to win his bread by the sweat of his brow, may still enjoy all those graceful amenities of which woman was the type in Paradise and is the promoter here; that the light of knowledge and the divine light of faith may still cheer him in his pursuits and guide him to his rest. It seems to me that to bring out these principles fairly to the world's perception, is the mission to which America has been especially appointed--is that for which Americans should live; and to this I have accordingly devoted myself. For this I purchased my present property--for this I determined, while allowing myself and my daughter all the comforts of life, to dispense with many of those luxuries to which my fortune might have seemed to ent.i.tle us, lest I should separate myself too far from those I would aid. Here I have spent seventeen years of life, happy in my work, and happier in the conviction that it has not been in vain."

As Mr. Grahame paused, Horace Danforth turned to Mary Grahame. Her eyes were fixed upon him. They seemed to challenge his admiration for her father, in whose hand her own was clasped, as though she would thus intimate the perfect accordance of her feelings with his.

"And this, then," he said to her, "is your object?"

"It is."

"An object to which you were devoted by your father in your infancy?"

"And which I have since adopted on my own intelligent conviction," said Mary, earnestly, losing all timidity in a glow of that generous enthusiasm which sits so gracefully on a gentle woman.

There was silence in the little circle--silence with all; with one, thought was rapidly pa.s.sing down the long vista of the past, and pointing the awakened mind to the fact that elsewhere than in America was there ignorance to be enlightened and want to be relieved--that not here only did Christianity teach that man should live not unto himself alone, and that he should love his neighbor as himself.

The thoughts and feelings aroused on that evening colored the whole future destiny of Horace Danforth. Ere another day had pa.s.sed, he had confided to his host so much of his history as proved him to be an aimless and almost unconnected wanderer on the earth, with a prospect of a fortune which, unequal to the demands of a man of fas.h.i.+on in England, would give to a _worker_ in America great influence for good or for evil--as the personal property of Sir Thomas Maitland could not, as Horace Danforth was well aware, be valued at less than 50,000 dollars.

With that rapid decision which had ever marked his movements, the young Englishman determined to purchase land in the neighborhood of Mr.

Grahame, there to rear his future hope, and to devote his life to the like n.o.ble purposes. The land was purchased, the site for the house was selected and marked out--but the house was never built--for ere that had been accomplished Horace Danforth discovered that the companions.h.i.+p of a cultivated woman was essential to his views of "Life in America," and that Mary Grahame was exactly the embodiment of that youthful vision which he had sought in vain elsewhere; for she united the delicacy and refined grace, with the intelligent mind, the active affections and energetic will, which were necessary at once to please his fancy and satisfy his heart Mary Grahame could not consent to leave her father to a lonely home, but yet she could not deny that it would be a sad home to her if deprived of the society of him whose intelligent and varied converse and manly tenderness had lately formed the chief charm of her existence. There was only one way of reconciling these conflicting claims. Horace Danforth must live with Mr. Grahame; and so he did, having first obtained that gentleman's permission to enlarge his house, and to furnish it with some of those inventions by which art has so greatly lightened domestic occupation, and which had been made familiar to him by his life abroad.

Six months had been spent in this abode--six months of an existence of joy and love, untroubled as it could be to those who were yet dwellers upon earth--six months in which the fastidious and world-wearied man learned the secret of true peace in a life devoted to useful and benevolent objects--when a most unexpected visitor arrived in the person of Sir Edward Maitland--no, not Sir Edward. He came to announce that to this t.i.tle he had no right. That he had remained himself, and suffered his cousin to remain so long in ignorance on this point, had been the result of no want of effort to arrive at the truth, still less of any lingering love of the honors forced upon him. He had never a.s.sumed the t.i.tle, nor suffered the secret of his supposed change of circ.u.mstances to be known beyond himself and the lawyer to whom his cousin Horace had revealed it. This lawyer, it may be remembered, had lately succeeded in the care of the Maitland estate to an uncle, who had been compelled by the infirmities of advancing age to retire from business. The old man was absent from England when Horace Danforth left it, and it was not till his return that full satisfaction on the subject had been obtained, as it was judged unwise by Mr. Decker to awaken public attention by investigations which his uncle's return would probably render unnecessary. When he did return, and the subject was cautiously unfolded to him, he spent many minutes in _pis.h.i.+ng_ and _pshawing_ at the folly and impetuosity of young Baronets, who, knowing nothing of the tenure on which they hold their estates, cannot at least wait till they consult wiser people before they throw them away. The entail of nearly two centuries ago had, it seems, been set aside in little more than one, by an improvident father and son, who had in fact greatly diminished the very fine property so entailed, though most of it had been since recovered by the care of their successors. The intelligence thus conveyed to him who was now once more Sir Horace Danforth Maitland, was of mingled sweet and bitter. He could not be insensible to the joy of returning to the home of his childhood and the people among whom he had grown to manhood, yet neither could he leave, without tender regrets, that in which he had first learned to love, and to live a true, a n.o.ble, and a happy life.

When Mary was first saluted as Lady Maitland by Edward, she turned a glance of inquiry upon her husband, and then upon her father, for both were present by previous arrangement; and as she read a confirmation of the fact in their smiling faces, the color faded from hers, and after a moment's vain effort to contend against her painful emotion, she burst into tears.

"Your father has promised to spend his life with us, dearest," said Sir Horace Maitland, as he threw his arm around her and drew her to his side.

"But this dear home," sobbed Mary; "this people, for whom and with whom we have lived so happily."

"All that made this home dear, my daughter, you will take with you to another home."

"And there, too," interposed Sir Horace, "my Mary will find a people to enlighten and to bless, over whom her influence will be unbounded, and to whom she will prove an angel of consolation."

"And can you carry your American life to your English home?" she asked of her husband, smiling through her tears.

"As much of it as is independent of outward circ.u.mstances, Mary--its spirit, its aims; for they belong to a Christian life, and that I hope, by G.o.d's blessing, to live henceforth, wherever I may be."

"And what will become of all our projected improvements here?" she inquired of her father.

"I shall not leave this place myself, Mary, till I can find some one like-minded, who will take our place and do our work. To such a man I will sell the property on such terms as he can afford, or if he cannot buy, he shall farm it for me."

This last was the arrangement made with one whom Mr. Grahame had known in early life, and who had always been distinguished by true Christian uprightness and benevolence The terms offered by Mr. Grahame to this gentleman were such, that the conscientious and excellent agent became in a few years the proprietor and under his fostering care, all those plans for the intellectual and moral improvement of the neighborhood which had been so happily commenced, were matured and perfected.

It was nearly a year after the departure of his children before Mr.

Grahame was able to join them at Maitland Park. With his arrival Mary felt that her cup of joy was full. It had been with a trembling heart that she a.s.sumed the brilliant position to which Providence had conducted her; not that she feared the judgment of man: her fear had been lest in the midst of abundance she should forget the hand that fed her--lest amidst the fascinations of an intellectual and polished society, she should forget the thick darkness which covered so many immortal minds around her. But already she had cast aside this unworthy fear, unworthy of Him in whom is the Christian's strength.

The early dream of the Proprietor of Maitland Park is fulfilled. The softening and refining presence of woman diffuses a new charm over its social life, and while his Mary is to his tenantry what he himself predicted, an angel of consolation, she is to him a faithful co-worker in all that may advance the reign of peace and righteousness, of intelligence and joy, throughout the world.

CHAPTER VII.

A Sabbath in the country, with a Sabbath quiet in the air, and a cheerful sunlight beaming like the smile of Heaven on the earth--how beautiful it is! Donaldson Manor is only a short walk from the church whose white spire gleams up amidst the dark grove of pines on our left; at least, it is only a short walk in summer, when we can approach it through the flowery lanes which separate Col. Donaldson's fields from those of his next neighbor, Mr. Manly. Now, however, the walk is impracticable, and all the sleighs were yesterday morning in requisition, to transport the family and their visitors to their place of wors.h.i.+p. I was a little afraid that the merry music of the sleigh-bells and the rapid drive through the clear air might make our young people's blood dance too briskly--that they would be unable to preserve that sobriety of manner becoming those who are about professedly to engage in the wors.h.i.+p of Him who inhabiteth Eternity. I was gratified, however, to perceive that they all had good feeling or good taste enough to preserve, throughout their drive and the services which followed it, a quiet and reverent demeanor. It may seem strange to some, that I should characterize this as a possible effect of "good taste;" but in my opinion, he who does not pay the tribute at least of outward respect to this holy day, is incapable not only of that high, spiritual communion which brings man near to his Creator, but of that tender sympathy which binds him to his fellow-creatures, or even of that poetic taste which would place his soul in harmony with external nature. Let it not be thought that I would have this day of blessing to the world regarded with a cynical severity, or that the quietness and the reverence of which I speak are at all akin to sadness. Were not cheerfulness, in my opinion, a part of G.o.dliness, I should say of it as some one has said of cleanliness, that it is next to G.o.dliness. Like my favorite, Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning,

"I think we are too ready with complaint In this fair world of G.o.d's;"

and like her, I would utter to all the exhortation,

"Let us leave the shame and sin Of taking vainly, in a plaintive mood, The holy name of Grief!--holy herein, That, by the grief of One, came all our good."