Discipline

by Mary Brunton

'I see no advantage in being married,' said I, rousing myself from a reverie into which I had fallen after the third reading of my letter. 'Mr Maitland can advise me as well as any husband could; and in ten or a dozen years hence, I might make myself very useful to him too. I might manage his household, and amuse him; and there could be nothing absurd in that after we were both so old.'

'Not quite old enough for that sort of life, I am afraid,' said Miss Mortimer, smiling. 'If, indeed, Mr Maitland were to marry, the woman of his choice would probably be an invaluable protector to you.'

'Oh he won't marry. I am sure he will not; and I wonder, Miss Mortimer, what makes you so anxious to dispose of all your favourites? For my part, I hate to hear of people being married.'

I thought there was meaning in Miss Mortimer's half suppressed smile; but she did not raise her eyes, and only answered good humouredly, that, 'indeed, all her matrimonial plans for the last twenty years had been for others.'

Some expressions of curiosity on my part now drew from Miss Mortimer a narrative of her uneventful life; which, as it is connected with the little I knew of Mr Maitland's, and with the story of my mother's early days, I shall give in my own words:—

Miss Mortimer and my mother were hereditary friends. Their fathers fought side by side,—their mothers became widows together.—Together the surviving parents retired to quiet neglect, and mutually devoted themselves to the duties which still remained for them. Those which fell to the lot of Mrs Warburton were the more difficult; for, while a moderate patrimony placed the only child of her friend above dependence, it was her task to reconcile to poverty and toil the high spirit of a youth of genius; and to arm, for the rude encounters of the world, a being to whom gentleness made them terrible, to whom beauty increased their danger.

The splendid progress of young Warburton's education had been the boast of his teachers,—the delight of his parents,—the pride, the only pride of his sister's heart. But his father's death blasted the fair prospect. The widow's pittance could not afford to her son the means of instruction; and from the pursuit of knowledge,—the pleasures of success,—and the hopes of distinction,—poor Warburton unwillingly turned to earn, by the toil of the day, the support which was to fit him for the toil of the morrow. Disgusted and desponding, he yet refrained from aggravating by complaint the sorrows of his mother and his sister. To Miss Mortimer, the companion of his childhood, he mourned his disappointed ambition, and was heard with sympathy; he deplored the failure of hopes more interesting, and won something more than pity.

In the counting-house, which was the scene of his cheerless labour, he found, however, a friend; and Maitland, though nearly seven years younger than he, gained first his respect, and then his affection.

Maitland, while thus in age a boy, was a tall, vigorous, hardy mountaineer. His nerves had been braced by toilsome exercise and inclement skies; his strong mind had gained power under a discipline which allowed no other rest than change of employment. He had left his native land, and renounced his paternal home, in compliance with the will of his parents, and the caprice of his uncle, who, upon these conditions, offered him the reversion of a splendid affluence. His country he remembered with the virtuous partiality which so strongly distinguishes, and so well becomes, her children. Of his paternal home he seldom spoke. Silent and shy, he escaped the smile of vulgar scorn, which would have avenged the confession that the bribes of fortune poorly repaid the endearments of brethren and friends; that all the charms of spectacle and song could not please like the rude verse which first taught him the legends of a gallant ancestry; that all the treasures of art he would have gladly exchanged for permission to bend once more from the precipice which no foot but his had ever dared to climb, or linger once more in the valley whose freshness had rewarded his first infant adventure. Curiosity is feeble in the busy and the gay. No one asked, no one heard the story of Maitland's youth; and Warburton alone knew the full cost of a sacrifice too great and too painful to be made a theme with strangers. Maitland the elder, retaining his national prejudice in favour of a liberal education, permitted his nephew to pursue and enlarge his studies under the inspection of a man of sense and learning; designing to send him at a proper age to the university. Meanwhile he required him to spend a few hours daily in attendance upon his future profession.

In Maitland, young as he was, Warburton found a companion who could task his mind to its full strength. In classical acquirements, Maitland was already little inferior to his friend; and, if he had less imagination, he had more acuteness and sagacity. Enduring in quiet scorn the derision which his provincial accent excited in the sharers of his humbler lessons, he was pleased to find in Warburton manners more congenial with his own habits. The young scholars had subjects of mutual interest in which the others could not sympathise. The few hours which Maitland spent daily in the counting-house, alone broke the dull monotony of Warburton's labour; and Warburton alone listened with the enthusiasm which unlocks the heart, to Maitland's descriptions of his native scenes, of torrents roaring from the precipice, and woods dishevelled by the storm. They became friends, and Warburton confided his lost hopes, and bewailed the untimely close of his attainments. The hardier mind of Maitland suggested a remedy for the evil. He advised his friend to earn by severer toil, and to save by stricter parsimony, a fund which might in time afford the advantage of a college life. From that hour he himself gave the example of the toil and the parsimony which he recommended. He abridged his rest, he renounced his recreations for the drudgery of translating for a bookseller. The allowance which he had been accustomed to spend, he hoarded with a miser's care. He was invited to share the pleasures of his companions, and resolutely refused. He listened to hints of his penurious temper, and deigned no other answer than a smile. But, when he was better known, few were so unprincipled as to find in him the subject of a jest, and fewer still so daring as to betray their scorn; for Maitland possessed, even then, qualities which ensure command,—integrity which no bribe could warp,—decision which feared no difficulty,—penetration which admitted of no disguise. After two years of silent perseverance, he presented to his friend the fruits of his self-denial, and was more than recompensed when Warburton accompanied him to Oxford.