"Yes, Henry!" replied Marion, seeing her sister unable yet to speak; "we shall now endeavor to get up our spirits!"
"That may be easy for those who have any spirits to get up!" added Agnes, in a tone of peevish melancholy. "But if Marion chooses to look through a Claude-Loraine glass, and declare that the whole earth and sky are couleur de rose, must I wipe my eyes with my elbow, and say the same? All I can do is, if possible, to forget myself to stone. You were always a light-hearted being, Henry! Would it make you serious to be told of one like me whose heart is turned to ashes! The world is a Castle of Desolation now, with not a tie that binds me to the earth—not one!" added she bitterly, while her eyes were purposely averted from the reproachful kindness of Marion's expression.
"Agnes," interrupted Henry, in his kindest manner, "you wasted much good advice on me formerly, but now it is my turn. As an old French lady once judiciously remarked, 'Il n'y a pas de plus grande folie, que d'etre malheureux.' For Marion's sake and your own, do not treasure up grief as if it were gold! When one plan of happiness fails, we should always change horses, and drive on with another! It is a fatal mistake to throw up the game of life, if our favorite hope fails! Try pleasure now, on some new pattern! We should look on both sides of existence, and keep hold of it with the best handle!"
"I will! I will!" exclaimed Agnes, flinging back the long entangled ringlets from her pallid face, and forcing a wild, haggard smile into her distorted features. "Does that please you, Henry? Do I look sufficiently happy? Why are you so disconcerted? Let us all be cheerful again! Shall I sing to you, or how shall we be merriest?"
"Surely, Agnes, as we cannot mend the past, or direct the future, you might make some of the present. Remember the old proverb, 'There is a silver lining to every cloud,'" continued Henry, assuming a tone of animation. "You might find a thousand occupations which become an excellent substitute for what people call happiness. Try geology, or book-making, or worsted work! But, Agnes," added he, more seriously, "above all, take the strong staff of religion, rather than the feeble reed of earthly hope, which has pierced you, as it will pierce all who trust in it. Why are we placed on earth? Not to contrive a plan of life for ourselves, but to learn from above what is the real meaning of happiness—its surest source—its brightest fountain! Behind the machinery of all human events, God is at work for our real good, and every misfortune may be transformed into a blessing, if we receive it as a Fatherly correction, and take the good it is intended to do us."
With absent, listless indifference, Agnes took leave of Henry when he was about to depart; but Marion's eye glistened with emotion, as she wished him good-night, entreating that he would return soon and often.
"Trust me for that, Marion! It can never become a mere duty to visit here," replied Henry, hastily dashing away a tear. "This room is my home, more than any other on earth. Every chair and every table is endeared to me, and how much more the living inhabitants. Even that old geranium, all run to wood, and covered with dust, is consecrated by a thousand old recollections. Adieu!"
CHAPTER XLV.
After Henry left the room, Agnes, having inveighed with more than her usual bitterness against all persons, good or bad, and all events, past, present, or to come, retired to bed, leaving Marion to muse with saddened feelings on the untoward turn which her sister's mind was likely to take for the future, which rendered her every day a more uncongenial companion, as now Agnes had come to the final conclusion that she was herself the victim of unmerited and unmitigated misfortune.
About ten o'clock, Marion lighted her candle to retire, and was slowly leaving the room, when she became startled by suddenly hearing, immediately below her window, in the street, a noise of scuffling and shouting, mingled with vehement cries for help, and dreadful oaths, till at length a wild and horrid shriek arose, which thrilled to her very heart. Having hastily summoned Martin, who hurried to the door, she paused some moments in an agony of alarm, and then rushing to the window, threw it open, and gazed out, being so close to the combatants that she could almost have touched them. Two men were engaged, apparently, in desperate conflict, while Marion's eyes became fixed on them with the fascination of fear. She could not scream—she could not move: she seemed to have lost all power of motion, while watching the whole scene with harrowing interest, yet with the vague indistinctness of a dream. It seemed as if some frightful night-mare were upon her, and as if she were chained to the spot, yet there was a frightful reality in all that followed. It was a fierce and deadly struggle, carried on with the energetic strength of despair. Again and again, in a hoarse, deep voice, the fearful cry arose on the night air, of "Murder!" mingled with agonizing cries for help. Marion clung to the window for support, and shivered from head to foot; while she still heard the loud trampling of feet, the fierce tones of defiance, threatening, groans of suppressed anguish, and then a loud, delirious shriek of agony, followed by a sharp, gasping cry, when one of the combatants fell suddenly to the ground, as if a hundred daggers had pierced him.