A New Aristocracy

Mr. Murchison was dead. The villagers announced the fact to each other with bated breath as they gazed with reverent awe at the crape on the door.

“Poor man,” they sighed, vaguely sympathetic; “it’s well enough with him now, but there’s the children.”

“Ay, there’s the children,” more than one responded feelingly.

Mr. Murchison had been the rector of the small parish of Barnley, distant perhaps a hundred miles from the city of C——, the great commercial center of the West, and having attended faithfully to his duties for a series of years, had been stricken at last with the dread pangs of consumption. Two years of painful waiting had passed away, and now the release had come. Devout, patient, and faithful, who could doubt that it was well with him?

“God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,” tremblingly spoke the clergyman who had been summoned to conduct the burial service. “Surely He will so influence the hearts of His people that these bereft ones, these fatherless and motherless children, shall not suffer from contact with the cold and bitter side of life.”

Comforting words truly; words that fell, as rain falls on parched fields, upon the benumbed senses of those who wept for their dead; words that touched the hearts of the little band of parishioners, and made each one wonder for the time being what he could do for them; words that resulted in offerings of flowers and fruit for one week and—so soon do good impulses die—in comment and unsought advice for another.

It was a well-known fact that aside from his library and household belongings Mr. Murchison had left nothing. A student and a biblist of rare discernment, he was happiest when deep in abstruse research, and many a dollar of his meagre salary had gone for volumes whose undoubted antiquity might help him to the completion of some vexed problem. Sometimes, looking up from his treatise or his sermon, he would glance at Margaret, his eldest daughter and careful housekeeper for the last five lonely years of his life, and think painfully of the time, the dread sometime, that was sure to leave his darlings unprotected. He wished, good man, that he might have money; not that he coveted the dross of earth, but that it might be the Lord’s will to shield his loved ones from contact with bleak and bitter poverty. Many a prayer was rounded with that earnest supplication, to which he supplemented, always in complete resignation, “Thy will, not mine, be done.” But he never saw the earthly realization of his hopes. He always grew poorer; his clothing just a trifle shabbier, the table a little plainer, and Margaret daily more and more put to her wit’s ends in the difficult problem of making something out of nothing. But who shall say the faith of a life-time met with no recompense? Who can declare, with certainty, the blinded eyes saw not afterward with clearer vision that he had left each of his darlings God’s highest riches, a brave human intelligence?

Margaret Murchison, the eldest of the three children, was too strongly built, physically and mentally, to be beautiful. It is indisputably true that where nature puts strength she also puts hard lines, and every feature of Margaret’s face bespoke the positive nature; quick to comprehend and fearless to execute. Yet hers was by no means a masculine or an ugly face. Though strongly marked, there was still an indefinable attraction in the warm depths of her blue eyes and the smile of her mobile and sympathetic mouth. She was, withal, strangely wholesome to look upon; one of those rare beings, as it came afterward to be said of her, whose faces rest you as calm waters and green fields rest eyes that are blinded with the dust and turmoil of the city’s streets. In figure she was tall, with that breadth of shoulder and hip which indicates endurance, free and graceful in her movements, apt in her utterances, and unusually keen in her intuitions. At the time of her father’s death she was twenty-four years of age, thoughtful even beyond her years. Hers had been a hard school. Poverty prematurely sharpens wits and generates ambition, and ever since her earliest recollection she had witnessed the daily pinchings and privations of stern necessity. Questioning often with wondering eyes and grave thought, she had early learned to strive against this oppressor of her household; but the best of effort had only kept the lean wolf of hunger from the door. The father, wedded to abstruse speculation and erudite research, had not that talent for money-getting which is expected of the “working parsons” of country villages; and though the mother had been possessed of uncommon tact, meagreness in every detail of Margaret’s physical growth had always confronted her. Not so intellectually, however. The bond of sympathy between parents and children had always been strong, and in the communion of thought the barren home life was lifted into realms of peace and plenty. Nobody remembered how Margaret learned to read. The faculty seemed to come with her growth, like her teeth, and almost as soon as she had mastered the rudiments of reading, her father delighted to feed the grave little head with as much of the mental pabulum upon which he feasted as the infantile brain could digest. Her capacity proved something like that of the sponge, growing receptive in proportion as it was fed, and when at eighteen she was vouchsafed a year of school life at a church institution, she astonished both faculty and pupils by disclosing such an odd mixture of knowledge as no other pupil had ever brought to the school. Latin and Greek were far more familiar to her than fractions, and the geography of the Holy Land an open page beside the study of her own state and its form of government. Her aptitude for language was wonderful, and her ability for philosophical reasoning much beyond her years. She achieved marvels of learning in the one short year, only at its expiration to be called away by the sad announcement of her mother’s mortal sickness. She reached home in time to comfort the anxious heart with the promise to keep always a home for the loved ones left behind. For five years she had faithfully fulfilled this promise, and now death had come again to take her last and only support. In the moment of her bereavement she did not realize how largely she had been not only self-dependent, but had been the mainstay of the little household. Love makes even the strongest natures yield to its silken leading-strings, and the tie between father and daughter had been no common one. But it was she who had been the prop that upheld the fabric of his life in these weary later years. It was on her brave heart he had leaned more and more; but she had no thought of what she had given. She had received, ah! who shall count the memories and pledges that loyal love has in its keeping?

But the prosaic side of life confronted Margaret one morning a week after she had laid her dead away, and roused her from the apathy of grief that follows even the wildest tempest of tears.

“Not even time to mourn,” she said wearily. “Death comes; but life goes on, and it must be fed and comforted. I must work to drive the cobwebs from my brain and this strange inertia from my limbs. Something to do, some duty that must not be evaded, will heal and strengthen anew.”

These reflections had been induced by a visit Margaret had just received from one of the vestrymen of the church at Barnley, who had called with words of condolence and inquiry. He desired to know, if it was not impertinent, what course Miss Murchison had decided upon relative to her future and her family.

“I have made no decision as yet,” answered Margaret wearily; “I have been too absorbed in other things. Why do you ask, Mr. Dempster?”

“Well—ahem!—my wife and I had a talk about your—your prospects, and we thought that if—if—that is, we would like to help you, seein’ as you’re one of our pastor’s family.”

“You are very kind,” said Margaret gently.

“Well, you see,” began Mr. Dempster hurriedly, “we’ve always kind o’ liked your folks, and my wife and I was sayin’ that seein’ as you’d be pretty likely to have a hard time, we’d like to help you out a bit. Now, there’s Elsie: she’s young, you know, and real bright and smart, and we thought maybe you’d be willin’ we should take her and bring her up. She’d have a fust-rate home, you know.”

“Mr. Dempster,” said Margaret, ignoring the half-boastful tone in which the last assertion had been made, “do you think I could give away one of these children over whom I’ve watched for five years, and whom I promised never to leave as long as they needed a home? No, sir. My life has been hard, as you say; it may be harder yet; but as long as I have life and health I shall keep my promise. Besides, you forget that Elsie has not yet finished school.”

“I know; but they was a-talkin’ it over in the vestry last evenin’, and they said they didn’t see as you could afford to keep the children in school any more, as your father’s salary is, of course, discontinued. You see, it takes money for clothes and incidentals.”

“I am fully aware of that fact, but I have strong hands and a stout heart; because we are poor and cast down now, I see no reason why we should always be so. Do you, Mr. Dempster?”

“No, no, of course not,” hastily assented Mr. Dempster.

“Is it the opinion of the vestry that Elsie and Gilbert need no further education?”

“Oh, no. They was only a-sayin’, as they was talkin’ about ways and means, that if you couldn’t take care of ’em we—that’s Mr. Dodd and me—would take ’em off your hands.”

“I’ve no doubt that you meant kindly; but I intend to teach them to take care of themselves, and there is no care equal to that. The parish of Barnley has been very kind; but I assure you, sir, there is no happiness like being independent, and that, with God’s help, I mean to teach my brother and sister to be.”

“Then you mean to say you refuse our offers of help, Miss Murchison?” said Mr. Dempster, bristling a little.

“Not at all. Indeed, I shall be glad of any assistance you can give me in the way of work. You know before my father’s health failed I used to make your wife’s dresses. I’m a little out of practice now, but I think I could soon get back the old deftness.”

“Why—yes—but Mrs. Dempster sends to C—— now for her work. She says she gets better styles, and takin’ all things into consideration, it don’t cost such a dreadful sight more.”

Margaret smiled involuntarily. She knew how the Dempsters, from greatest to least, counted the cost of everything, and she knew the offer to take Elsie—dear, sunny-hearted Elsie—off her hands had not been so much a question of philanthropy as gain. Could she so have disposed her heart as to give Elsie away, the bare thought of the drudgery which would have been her portion as maid-of-all-work in that household would have been sufficient to deter her.

“Well, I must be goin’,” said Mr. Dempster as Margaret remained silent. “You know they’ve hired a new parson and he will be here this week,” he added from the doorway.