Chapter 9

WHEN Mr. Ellis left the house of his sister, he called a carriage that happened to be going by, and reached the wharf at Walnut street in time to spring on board of the steamboat just as the plank was drawn in at the gangway. He then passed along the boat until he came to the ladies' cabin, which he entered. Almost the first persons he saw were Burton and his niece. The eyes of Miriam rested upon him at the same moment, and she drew her veil quickly, hoping that she was not recognised. Hiram Ellis did not hesitate a moment, but, walking up to where Miriam sat, stooped to her ear, and said, in a low, anxious voice--

"Miriam, are you married yet?"

Miriam did not reply.

"Speak, child. Are you married?"

"No," came in a half audible murmur.

"Thank God! thank God!" fell in low accents from the lips of Mr. Ellis.

"Who are you, sir?" now spoke up Burton, whom surprise had till now kept silent. There was a fiery gleam in his eyes.

"The uncle of this dear girl, and one who knows you well," was answered, in a stern voice. "Knows you to be unworthy to touch even the hem of her garment."

A dark scowl lowered upon the face of Burton. But Mr. Ellis returned his looks of anger glance for glance. Miriam was in terror at this unexpected scene, and trembled like an aspen. Instinctively she shrank towards her uncle.

Two or three persons, who sat near, were attracted by the excitement visible in the manner of all three, although they heard nothing that was said. Burton saw that they were observed, and, bending towards Mr. Ellis, said--

"This, sir, is no place for a scene. A hundred eyes will soon be upon us."

"More than one pair of which," replied Mr. Ellis, promptly, "will recognise in you a noted gambler, who has at least one wife living, if no more."

As if stung by a serpent, Burton started to his feet and retired from the cabin.

"Oh, uncle! can what you say of this man be true?" asked Miriam, with a blanching face.

"Too true, my dear child! too true! He is one of the worst of men. Thank God that you have escaped the snare of the fowler!"

"Yes, thank God! thank God!" came trembling from the lips of the maiden.

Mr. Ellis then drew his niece to a part of the cabin where they could converse without being overheard by other passengers on board of the boat. To his inquiry into the reasons for so rash an act, Miriam gave her uncle an undisguised account of her mother's distressed condition, and touchingly portrayed the anguish of mind which had accompanied her reluctant assent to the offer of Burton.

"And all this great sacrifice was on your mother's account?" said Mr. Ellis.

"All! all! He agreed to settle upon her the sum of two thousand dollars a year, if I would become his wife. This would have made the family comfortable."

"And you most wretched. Better, a thousand times better, have gone down to your grave, Miriam, than become the wife of that man. But for the providential circumstance of my seeing you in the carriage with him, all would have been lost. Surely, you could not have felt for him the least affection."

"Oh, uncle! you can never know what a fearful trial I have passed through. Affection! It was, instead, an intense repugnance. But, for my mother's sake, I was prepared to make any sacrifice consistent with honour."

"Of all others, my dear child," said Mr. Ellis, with much feeling, "a sacrifice of this kind is the worst. It is full of evil consequences that cannot be enumerated, and scarcely imagined. You had no affection for this man, and yet, in the sight of Heaven, you were going solemnly to vow that you would love and cherish him through life!"

A shudder ran through the frame of Miriam, which being perceived by Mr. Ellis, he said--

"Well may you shudder, as you stand looking down the awful abyss into which you were about plunging. You can see no bottom, and you would have found none. There is no condition in this life, Miriam, so intensely wretched as that of a pure-minded, true-hearted woman united to a man whom she not only cannot love, but from whom every instinct of her better nature turns with disgust. And this would have been your condition. Ah me! in what a fearful evil was this error of your mother, in opening a boarding-house, about involving her child! I begged her not to do so. I tried to show her the folly of such a step. But she would not hear me. And now she is in great trouble?"

"Oh yes, uncle. All the money she had when she began is spent; and what she now receives from boarders but little more than half pays expenses."

"I knew it would be so. But my word was not regarded. Your mother is no more fitted to keep a boarding-house than a child ten years old. It takes a woman who has been raised in a different school, who has different habits, and a different character."

"But what can we do, uncle?" said Miriam.

"What are you willing to do?"

"I am willing to do any thing that is right for me to do."

"All employment, Miriam, are honourable so far as they are useful," said Mr. Ellis, seriously, "though false pride tries to make us think differently. And, strangely enough, this false pride drives too many, in the choice of employments, to the hardest, least honourable, and least profitable. Hundreds of women resort to keeping boarders as a means of supporting their families when they might do it more easily, with less exposure and greater certainty, in teaching, if qualified, fine needle-work, or even in the keeping of a store for the sale of fancy and useful articles. But pursuits of the latter kind they reject as too far below them, and, in vainly attempting to keep up a certain appearance, exhaust what little means they have. A breaking up of the family, and a separation of its members, follow the error in too many cases."

Miriam listened to this in silence. Her uncle paused.

"What can I do to aid my mother?" the young girl asked.

"Could you not give music lessons?"

"I am too young, I fear, for that. Too little skilled in the principles of music," replied Miriam.

"If competent, would you object to teach?"

"Oh, no. Most gladly would I enter upon the task, did it promise even a small return. How happy would it make me if I could lighten, by my own labour, the burdens that press so heavily upon our mother!"

"And Edith. How does she feel on this subject?"

"As I do. Willing for any thing; ready for any change from our present condition."

"Take courage, then, my dear child, take courage," said the uncle, in a cheerful voice. "There is light ahead."

"Oh, how distressed my mother will be when she finds I am gone!" sighed Miriam, after a brief silence, in which her thoughts reverted to the fact of her absence from home. "When can we get back again?"

"Not before ten o'clock to-night. We must go on as far as Bristol, and then return by the evening line from New York."

Another deep sigh heaved the troubled bosom of Miriam, as she uttered, in a low voice, speaking to herself--

"My poor mother! Her heart will be broken!"