THE INHERITANCE OF A GOOD NAME.
By LOUISA MENZIES.
CHAPTER I.
hat this world is only a very small part of the universe, and that the life of man upon this globe is but a very small part of that eternity to which he is heir, is indicated by a thousand circumstances in the life of every day, and by none more strikingly than by the failures, the disappointments, the total eclipses which sweep from our sight into the undiscovered country many a soul resplendent in promise, leaving no record of them but in the faithful memories of the few who knew and loved them.
“He whom God loveth, dieth early,” said the thoughtful heathen, and it must be confessed that we are all disposed to hang garlands on our tombstones and to make heroes of our dead. Flaws of temper and other foibles which marred the perfection of those who were most familiar to us while they were tossed to and fro on the billows of this troublesome world, are forgotten for ever when the lines of care and thought are smoothed from the brow on which Death has laid his finger.
No young soldier left the Crimea with greater distinction or greater promise than Michael Fenner, the son of a house which traced back its ancestors to the reign of Elizabeth, and to which honour and piety had always been dearer than riches. He had entered the army with the true chivalrous desire to fight for the right, to help the weak, and confound the tyrant, and, a Christian in heart and soul, he had maintained the simplicity and purity of his life alike in the battlefield, in weary marches, and in seasons of sickness and depression.
Self-denying, gracious, and cheery, he was welcome as the sun in springtime, and many a groan was stifled and many a muttered curse was turned into a blessing at the sight of his kindly blue eyes, at the sound of his brotherly voice, so that no one grumbled when he was gazetted captain in his eight and twentieth year.
Captain Michael Fenner in active service, and with the modest fortune which he had inherited from his parents, thought it no indiscretion to marry the lady of his love, Margaret Echlin, the daughter of the Rector of Oldborough, a village in Warwickshire, which his family had lived in for many years, and people called her a lucky woman; for what distinction was impossible to a man who had already done so much and done it so well? Nor was the promise of happiness altogether belied. Eight years of happy wedded life followed the happy marriage; two healthy children, Mark and Eveline, brightened their home; and as those were years of peace, Michael was seldom long absent from his family.
The Fenners were not rich; but as they neither of them desired riches, and both had the happy knack of enjoying what they had without pining for what they had not, they took their lives as the gift of the Good Father, and so all was good to them.