Turns of Fortune by Mrs. S. C. Hall

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"I don't think," exclaimed Charles, rubbing his hands gleefully, "I
don't think, that if my dear niece were happy, I should ever have been
so happy in all my life as I am at this moment."

"I feel already," replied John, "as if a great weight were removed
from my heart; and were it not for the debt which I have contracted
to you--Ah, Charles, I little dreamt, when I looked down from the
hill over Repton, and thought my store inexhaustible, that I should
be obliged to you thus late in life. And yet I protest I hardly know
where I could have drawn in; one expense grows so out of another.
These boys have been so very extravagant; but I shall soon have the
two eldest off; they cannot keep them much longer waiting."

"Work is better than waiting; but let the lads fight their way;
they have had, I suppose, a good education; they ought to have
had professions. There is something to me awfully lazy in your
'appointments;' a young man of spirit will appoint himself; but it is
the females of a family, brought up, as yours have been, who are to
be considered. Women's position in society is changed from what it
was some years ago; it was expected that they must marry; and so they
were left, before their marriage, dependent upon fathers and brothers,
as creatures that could do nothing for themselves. Now, poor things,
I really don't know why, but girls do not marry off as they used.
They become old, and frequently--owing to the expectation of their
settling--without the provision necessary for a comfortable old age.
This is the parent of those despicable tricks and arts which women
resort to to get married, as they have no acknowledged position
independent of matrimony. Something ought to be done to prevent this.
And when the country steadies a little from the great revolution
of past years, I suppose something may be thought of by improved
teaching--and systems to enable women to assist themselves, and be
recompensed for the assistance they yield others. Now, imagine your
dear girls, those younger ones particularly, deprived of you"--

"Here is the patient upon whom I must call, _en route_" interrupted
the doctor.

The carriage drew up.

"I wish," said Charles, "you had called here on your return. I wanted
the insurance to have been your first business to-day."

"I shall not be five minutes," was the reply. The servant let down
the step, and the doctor bounded up towards the open door. In his
progress, he trod upon a bit, a mere shred, of orange-peel; it was the
mischief of a moment; he slipped, and his temple struck against the
sharp column of an iron-scraper. Within one hour, Dr. John Adams had
ceased to exist. What the mental and bodily agony of that one hour
was, you can better understand than I can describe. He was fully
conscious that he was dying--and he knew all the misery that was to
follow.

CHAPTER IV.

"Mary my dear niece," said Charles Adams, as he seated himself by her
side; "my dear, dear niece, can you fix your thoughts, and give me
your attention for half an hour, now that all is over, and the demands
of the world press upon us. I want to speak about the future. Your
mother bursts into such fits of despair that I can do nothing with
her; and your brother is so ungovernable--talks as if he could command
the bank of England, and is so full of his mother's connexions and
their influence, that I have left him to himself. Can you, my dear
Mary, restrain your feelings, and give me your attention?"

Mary Adams looked firmly in her uncle's face, and said, "I will try.
I have been thinking and planning all the morning, but I do not know
how to begin being useful. If I once began, I could go on. The sooner
we are out of this huge expensive house the better; if I could get
my mother to go with the little girls to the sea-side. Take her away
altogether from this home--take her"--

"Where?" inquired Mr. Adams; "she will not accept shelter in my
house."

"I do not know," answered his niece, relapsing into all
the helplessness of first grief; "indeed I do not know; her
brother-in-law, Sir James Ashbroke, invited her to the Pleasaunce,
but my brother objects to her going there, his uncle has behaved so
neglectfully about his appointment."

"Foolish boy!" muttered Charles; "this is no time to quarrel about
trifles. The fact is, Mary, that the sooner you are all out of this
house the better; there are one or two creditors, not for large sums
certainly, but still men who will have their money; and if we do
not quietly sell off, they will force us. The house might have been
disposed of last week by private contract, but your mother would not
hear of it, because the person who offered was a medical rival of my
poor brother."

Mary did not hear the concluding observation; her eyes wandered from
object to object in the room--the harp--the various things known from
childhood. "Any thing you and your mother wish, my dear niece,"
said her kind uncle, "shall be preserved--the family pictures--your
harp--your piano--they are all hallowed memorials, and shall be kept
sacred."

Mary burst into tears. "I do not," she said, "shrink from considering
those instruments the means of my support; but although I know the
necessity for so considering, I feel I cannot tell what at quitting
the home of my childhood; people are all kind; you, my dear uncle,
from whom we expected so little, the kindest of all; but I see, even
in these early days of a first sorrow, indications of falling off. My
aunt's husband has really behaved very badly about the appointment of
my eldest brother; and as to the cadetship for the second--we had such
a brief dry letter from our Indian friend--so many first on the list,
and the necessity for waiting, that I do not know how it will end."

"I wish, my dear, you could prevail on your mother, and sister, and
all, to come to Repton," said Mr. Adams. "If your mother dislikes
being in my house, I would find her a cottage near us; I will do all
I can. My wife joins me in the determination to think that we have six
additional children to look to. We differ from you in our habits; but
our hearts and affections are no less true to you all. My Mary and you
will be as sisters."

His niece could bear no more kindness. She had been far more bitterly
disappointed than she had confessed even to her uncle; and yet the
very bitterness of the disappointment had been the first thing that
had driven her father's dying wail from her ears--that cry repeated
so often and so bitterly in the brief moments left after his
accident--"My children! My children!" He had not sufficient faith
to commit them to God's mercy; he knew he had not been a faithful
steward; and he could not bring himself from the depths of his
spiritual blindness to call upon the Fountain that is never dried up
to those who would humbly and earnestly partake of its living waters.

It was all a scene as of another world to the young, beautiful,
petted, and feted girl; it had made her forget the disappointment
of her love, at least for a time. While her brothers dared the
thunder-cloud that burst above their heads, her mother and sisters
wept beneath its influence. Mary had looked forth, and if she did
not hope, she thought, and tried to pray; now, she fell weeping upon
her uncle's shoulder; when she could speak, she said, "Forgive me;
in a little time I shall be able to conquer this; at present, I am
overwhelmed; I feel as if knowledge and sorrow came together; I seem
to have read more of human nature within the last three days than in
all my past life."

"It all depends, Mary, upon the person you meet," said Mr. Adams, "as
upon the book you read; if you choose a foolish book or a bad book,
you can expect nothing but vice or foolishness; if you choose a
foolish companion, surely you cannot expect kindness or strength." The
kind-hearted man repeated to her all he had before said. "I cannot,"
he added, "be guilty of injustice to my children; but I can merge all
my own luxuries into the one of being a father to the fatherless."

But to all the plans of Charles Adams, objections were raised by his
eldest nephew and his mother; the youth could not brook the control
of a simple straight-minded country man, whose only claim to be
considered a gentleman, in his opinion, arose from his connexion
with "his family." He was also indignant with his maternal uncle for
his broken promise, and these feelings were strengthened by his
mother's folly. Two opportunities for disposing of the house and its
magnificent furniture were missed; and when Mrs. Adams complained to
her nearest and most influential connexions that her brother-in-law
refused to make her any allowance unless she consented to live at
Repton--expecting that they would be loud in their indignation at his
hardness--they advised her by all means to do what he wished, as he
was really the only person she had to depend upon. Others were lavish
of their sympathy, but sympathy wears out quickly; others invited her
to spend a month with them at their country-seat, for change of air;
one hinted how valuable Miss Adams' exquisite musical talent would
be _now_. Mary coloured, and said, "Yes," with the dignity of proper
feeling; but her mother asked the lady what she meant, and a little
scene followed, which caused the lady to visit all the families in
town of her acquaintance, for the purpose of expressing her sympathy
with "those poor dear Adamses, who were so proud, poor things, that
really there was nothing hut starvation and the workhouse before
them!" Another of those well-meaning persons--strong-minded and
kind-hearted, but without a particle of delicacy--came to poor Mary,
with all _prestige_ of conferring a favour.

"My dear young lady, it is the commonest thing in the world--very
painful but very common; the families of professional men are
frequently left without provision. Such a pity!--because, if they
cannot save, they can insure. We _all_ can do _that_, but they do
_not_ do it, and consequently everywhere the families of professional
men are found in distress; so, as I said, it is common; and I wanted
you to suggest to your mother, that, if she would not feel hurt at it,
the thing being so common--dear Dr. Adams having been so popular, so
very popular--that while every one is talking about him and you all,
a very handsome subscription could be got up. I would begin it with
a sum large enough to invite still larger. I had a great regard for
him--I had indeed."

Mary felt her heart sink and rise, and her throat swell, so that
she could not speak. She had brought herself to the determination of
employing her talents for her own support, but she was not prepared
to come with her family before the world as paupers. "We have no claim
upon the public," she said at last. "I am sure you mean us kindly, but
we have no claim. My dear father forwarded no public work--no public
object; he gave his advice, and received his payment. If we are not
provided for, it is no public fault. Besides, my father's children are
able and willing to support themselves. I am sure you mean us kindly,
but we have no claim upon public sympathy, and an appeal to it would
crush us to the earth. I am very glad you did not speak first to my
mother. My uncle Charles would not suffer it, even suppose she wished
it."

This friend also departed to excite new speculations as to the
pride and poverty of "poor dear Dr. Adams's family." In the world,
however--the busy busy London world--it is idle to expect any thing
to create even a nine days' wonder. When the house and furniture were
at last offered for sale, the feeling was somewhat revived; and Mary,
whose beauty, exquisite as it was, had so unobtrusive a character as
never to have created a foe, was remembered with tears by many: even
the father of her old lover, when he was congratulated by one more
worldly-minded than himself on the escape of his son in not marrying
a portionless girl, reproved the unfeeling speaker with a wish that he
only hoped his son might have as good a wife as Mary Adams would have
been.

CHAPTER V.

The bills were taken down, the house purified from the
auction-mob--every thing changed; a new name occupied the doctor's
place in the "Court Guide"--and in three months the family seemed
as completely forgotten amongst those of whom they once formed a
prominent part, as if they had never existed. When one sphere of life
closes against a family, they find room in another. Many kind-hearted
persons in Mrs. Adams's first circle would have been rejoiced to be
of service to her and hers, but they were exactly the people upon whom
she had no claim. Of a high but poor family, her relatives had little
power. What family so situated ever had any influence beyond what
they absolutely needed for themselves? With an ill grace she at
last acceded to the kind offer made by Mr. Charles Adams, and took
possession of the cottage he fixed upon, until something could be done
for his brother's children. In a fit of proud despair the eldest son
enlisted into a regiment of dragoons; the second was fortunate enough
to obtain a cadetship through a stranger's interference; and his
uncle thought it might be possible to get the youngest forward in
his father's profession. The expense of the necessary arrangements
was severely felt by the prudent and careful country gentleman. The
younger girls were too delicate for even the common occupations of
daily life; and Mary, instead of receiving the welcome she had been
led to expect from her aunt and cousins, felt that every hour she
spent at the Grange was an intrusion.

The sudden death of Dr. Adams had postponed the intended wedding of
Charles Adams's eldest daughter; and although her mother agreed that
it was their duty to forward the orphan children, she certainly felt,
as most affectionate mothers whose hearts are not very much enlarged
would feel, that much of their own savings--much of the produce of
her husband's hard labour--labour during a series of years when
her sister-in-law and her children were enjoying all the luxuries
of life--would now be expended for their support; this to an
all-sacrificing mother, despite _her sense of the duty of kindness_,
was hard to bear. As long as they were not on the spot, she theorised
continually, and derived much satisfaction from the sympathising
observations of her neighbours, and was proud, _very_ proud, of
the praise bestowed upon her husband's benevolence; but when her
sister-in-law's expensive habits were in daily array before her (the
cottage being close to the Grange,) when she knew, to use her own
expression, "that she never put her hand to a single thing;" that she
could not live without port wine, when she herself never drank even
gooseberry, except on Sundays; never ironed a collar, never dusted
the chimney-piece, or ate a shoulder of mutton--roast one day, cold
the next, and hashed the third. While each day brought some fresh
illustration of her thoughtlessness to the eyes of the wife of the
wealthy tiller of the soil, the widow of the physician thought herself
in the daily practice of the most rigid self-denial. "I am sure,"
was her constant observation to her all-patient daughter--"I am sure
I never thought it would come to this. I had not an idea of going
through so much. I wonder your uncle and his wife can permit me to
live in the way I do--they ought to consider how I was brought up."
It was in vain Mary represented that they were existing upon charity;
that they ought to be most grateful for what they received, coming as
it did from those who, in their days of prosperity, professed nothing,
while those who professed all things had done nothing. Mary would so
reason, and then retire to her own chamber to weep alone over things
more hard to bear.

It is painful to observe what bitterness will creep into the heart
and manner of really kind girls where a lover is in the case, or even
where a common-place dangling sort of flirtation is going forward;
this depreciating ill nature, one of the other, is not confined by any
means to the fair sex. Young men pick each other to pieces with even
more fierceness, but less ingenuity; they deal in a cut-and-hack sort
of sarcasm, and do not hesitate to use terms and insinuations of the
harshest kind, when a lady is in the case. Mary (to distinguish her
from her high-bred cousin, she was generally called Mary Charles) was
certainly disappointed when her wedding was postponed in consequence
of her uncle's death; but a much more painful feeling followed, when
she saw the admiration her lover, Edwin Lechmere, bestowed upon her
beautiful cousin. Mary Charles was herself a beauty--fair, open-eyed,
warm-hearted--_the_ beauty of Repton; but though feature by feature,
inch by inch, she was as handsome as Mary, yet in her cousin was the
grace and spirit given only by good society; the manners elevated by a
higher mind, and toned down by sorrow; a gentle softness, which a keen
observer of human nature told me once no woman ever possessed unless
she had deeply loved, and suffered from disappointed affection;
in short, she was far more refined, far more fascinating, than her
country cousin: besides, she was unfortunate, and that at once gave
her a hold upon the sympathies of the young curate: it did no more:
but Mary Charles did not understand these nice distinctions, and
nothing could exceed the change of manner she evinced when her cousin
and her betrothed were together.

Mary thought her cousin rude and petulant; but the true cause of the
change never occurred to her. Accustomed to the high-toned courtesy
of well-bred men, which is so little practised in the middle class of
English society, it never suggested itself, that placing her chair,
or opening the door for her to go out, or rising courteously when she
came into a room, was more than, as a lady, she had a right to expect;
in truth, she did not notice it at all; but she did notice and feel
deeply her cousin's alternate coldness and snappishness of manner. "I
would not," thought Mary, "have behaved so to her if she had been left
desolate; but in a little time, when my mother is more content, I will
leave Repton, and become independent by my talents." Never did she
think of the power delegated to her by, the Almighty without feeling
herself raised--ay, higher than she had ever been in the days of her
splendour--in the scale of moral usefulness; as every one must feel
whose mind is rightly framed. She had not yet known what it was to
have her abilities trampled on or insulted; she had never experienced
the bitterness consequent upon having the acquirements--which in the
days of her prosperity commanded silence and admiration--sneered at
or openly ridiculed.--She had yet to learn that the Solons, the
law-givers of English society, lavish their attentions and praise upon
those who learn, not upon those who teach.

Mary had not been six months fatherless, when she was astonished,
first by a letter, and then by a visit, from her former lover; he came
to renew his engagement, and to wed her even then if she would have
him; but Mary's high principle was stronger than he imagined. "No,"
she said, "you are not independent of your father, and whatever I
feel, I have no right to draw _you_ down into poverty. You may fancy
now that you could bear it; but a time would come--if not to you,
to me--when the utter selfishness of such conduct would goad me to
a death of early misery." The young man appealed to her uncle,
who thought her feelings overstrained, but respected her for it
nevertheless; and in the warmth of his admiration, he communicated the
circumstance to his wife and daughter.

"Refuse her old lover under present circumstances," repeated her
cousin to herself as she left the room; "there must be some other
reason than that; she could not be so foolish as to reject such an
offer at such a time." Unfortunately, she saw Edwin Lechmere walking
by Mary's side, under the shadow of some trees. She watched them until
the foliage screened them from her sight, and then she shut herself
into her own room, and yielded to a long and violent burst of tears.
"It is not enough," she exclaimed, in the bitterness of her feelings,
"that the comforts of my parents' declining years should be abridged
by the overwhelming burden to their exertions--another family added
to their own; it is not enough that an uncomfortable feeling has grown
between my father and mother on this account, and that cold looks and
sharp words have come where they never came before, but my peace of
mind must be destroyed. Gladly would I have taken a smaller portion,
if I could have kept the affections which I see but too plainly
my cousin has stolen from me. And my thoughtless aunt to say, only
yesterday, that 'at all events her husband was no man's enemy but his
own.' Has not his want of prudent forethought been the ruin of his own
children? and will my parents ever recover the anxiety, the pain, the
sacrifices, brought on by one man's culpable neglect? Oh, uncle! if
you could look from your grave upon the misery you have caused!"--and
then, exhausted by her own emotion, the affectionate but jealous girl
began to question herself as to what she should do. After what she
considered mature deliberation, she made up her mind to upbraid her
cousin with treachery, and she put her design into execution that same
evening.

It was no easy matter to oblige her cousin to understand what she
meant; but at last the declaration that she had refused her old lover
because she had placed her affections upon Edwin Lechmere, whom she
was endeavouring to "entrap," was not to be mistaken; and the country
girl was altogether unprepared for the burst of indignant feeling,
mingled with much bitterness, which repelled the untruth. A strong fit
of hysterics, into which Mary Charles worked herself, was terminated
by a scene of the most painful kind, her father being upbraided by
her mother with "loving other people's children better than his own,"
while the curate himself knelt by the side of his betrothed, assuring
her of his unaltered affection. From such a scene Miss Adams hastened
with a throbbing brow and a bursting heart. She had no one to counsel
or console her; no one to whom she could apply for aid. For the first
time since she had experienced her uncle's tenderness, she felt she
had been the means of disturbing his domestic peace; the knowledge of
the burden she and hers were considered, weighed her to the earth; and
in a paroxysm of anguish she fell on her knees, exclaiming, "Oh, why
are the dependent born into the world! Father, father, why did you
leave us, whom you so loved, to such a fate!" And then she reproached
herself for having uttered a word reflecting on his memory. One of the
every-day occurrences of life--so common as to be hardly observed--is
to find really kind, good-natured people not "weary of well-doing."
"Oh, really I was worn out with so-and-so; they are so decidedly
unfortunate that it is impossible to help them," is a general excuse
for deserting those whose continuing misfortunes ought to render them
greater objects of sympathy.

Mr. Charles Adams was, as has been shown in our little narrative, a
kind-hearted man. Estranged as his brother and himself had been for
a number of years, he had done much to forward, and still more to
protect, his children. At first, this was a pleasure; but somehow his
"benevolence," and "kindness," and "generosity," had been so talked
about, so eulogised, and he had been so seriously inconvenienced
by the waywardness of his nephews, the thoughtless pride of his
sister-in-law, the helplessness of his younger nieces, as to feel
seriously oppressed by his responsibility. And now the one who
had never given him aught but pleasure, seemed, according to his
daughter's representations, to be the cause of increased sorrow, the
destroyer of his dear child's happiness. What to do he could not tell.
His daughter, wrought upon by her own jealousy, had evinced, under
its influence, so much temper she had never displayed before, that it
seemed more than likely the cherished match would be broken off. His
high-minded niece saved him any farther anxiety as far as she was
concerned. She sent for and convinced him fully and entirely of her
total freedom from the base design imputed to her. "Was it likely,"
she said, "that I should reject the man I love lest I should drag him
into poverty, and plunge at once with one I do not care for into the
abyss I dread? This is the common sense view of the case; but there
is yet another. Is it to be borne that I would seek to rob _your_
child of her happiness? The supposition is an insult too gross to be
endured. I will leave my mother to-morrow. An old school-fellow, older
and more fortunate than myself, wished me to educate her little girl.
I had one or two strong objections to living in her house; but the
desire to be independent and away has overcome them." She then, with
many tears, entreated her uncle still to protect her mother; urged how
she had been sorely tried; and communicated fears, she had reason to
believe were too well founded, that her eldest brother, feeling the
reverse more than he could bear, had deserted from his regiment.

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