Rank and Talent; A Novel, Vol. 3 (of 3)

by William Pitt Scargill

When Markham opened the letter, he was still more grieved and surprised to find that its brief and hastily-written contents announced his father’s failure. It had been the young man’s opinion and full persuasion, that his father had been for a shopkeeper rather an opulent man. In such towns as he dwelt in, though the gentry look down with contempt upon shopkeepers, yet there are among shopkeepers an almost infinite variety of gradations and degrees of dignity and rank. Mr. Markham the elder was one of the principal shopkeepers, and he held his head considerably above many of the tradespeople in his own town; and his intimacy was rather with professional than with trading people. But, unfortunately, in order to keep up his rank in society, he had lived somewhat too expensively; and by the untoward introduction of an underselling, semi-roguish draper into the town, Mr. Markham’s business fell off most pitiably, and he was compelled to propose to his creditors the horrors of a composition. We say here, and in this instance, the horrors of a composition, inasmuch as to such a man as Mr. Markham there was something in it most truly distressing and painful. We have indeed heard that there are those who by means of such arrangements grow wealthy, and unblushingly rise in the world; these, we apprehend, can never become part of the Corinthian capital of society, they may be rather described as of the Composite order.

This calamity, which had so unexpectedly befallen the elder Markham, afflicted him most deeply; and he communicated the information to his son in language so desponding, and with such broken-heartedness, that the young man was quite overwhelmed with the information. Breaking through every other engagement, he hastened down to the country to condole with his father on the calamity which had overtaken him; and not without some faint hope that there might be a possibility of averting the blow.

The letter simply stated that a composition had been proposed. Markham the younger, therefore, thought that it might perhaps be within the compass of his power to obviate the necessity of bringing that negotiation to a conclusion. He made therefore as rapid and at the same time as accurate a calculation as he could of the means which were in his power, and forthwith hastened to the scene of perplexity and difficulty.

As he entered the abode of his infancy, he saw, or fancied he saw, a melancholy change. The furniture of the apartment looked as if it had been neglected. The whole house appeared gloomy and still; but worst of all, when his poor father came into the room and took his son by the hand, there was a hardness in the pressure, but no cordiality. Markham thought that his father’s hand felt cold, and he saw that his dress lacked its usual neatness, while the countenance was pale, and the voice was tremulous, and the eye looked downwards. The young man would fain have made the meeting cheerful, but his sympathy with his father’s sorrow was stronger than the father’s sympathy with the young man’s buoyant spirits and hopeful thoughts. Markham caught the contagion of his father’s sorrow; and after some vain attempts to put a cheerful aspect on the matter, he ventured to say:

“But is there no remedy to be suggested? It is not much that is in my power at this very moment; but I do trust that I might shortly be able to command all that may be wanted.”

The father averted his face to conceal the tears which he could not suppress; and he extended his hand towards his son. The young man took the offered hand, pressed it, and was for some minutes silent. With difficulty the elder Markham replied:

“No, no, my dear boy, I will not hear a word about involving you in my troubles. You are beginning life, I am finishing my course. It is one comfort to me that I shall not leave you destitute: and perhaps when I am gone, you will not neglect your poor mother. It is kind of you to come down to see us in our troubles: my portion in them will be but short; and when I am gone, I hope and trust you will continue attentive to your dear mother. You owe much to her care, and I am sure you will not forget her. Poor thing! she will see you presently, but her spirits are very much agitated. She knows you are come. It is a great blessing to us, my dear boy, that you have succeeded so well in the world.”

To this and much more did Markham the younger lend a painful and reluctant attention; but he was too much distressed to trust his voice to interrupt the desultory talk of his afflicted father. It was indeed very afflictive to him that, at the very time when he was, by means of an honorable and diligent application to the duties of his profession, rising in the world both in wealth and reputation, there should come suddenly and unexpectedly upon him this drawback to his success; for he could not for a moment admit the idea of enjoying his prosperity while his father should be living under the unpleasant consciousness that his debts were but partially discharged. After a little more conversation, and when the first uneasiness of their painful meeting had been somewhat abated, the young man very earnestly, but respectfully, desired to be informed concerning the particulars of his father’s embarrassments, and the amount of the claims upon him. This inquiry, so humiliating to a parent and to a man of such feelings as the elder Markham, was managed by the young barrister with so exquisitely delicate address, that instead of grieving and irritating, it rather soothed and composed the father’s mind. There was also a happy and pleasing consciousness that there had been, on his own part, no impropriety or inaccuracy of conduct; the misfortune was simply and purely a misfortune, arising from events over which he had no control. Perhaps it would be rather too severe, and savour somewhat of moral pedantry, should we say that Mr. Markham the elder ought to have been sooner aware of his changing circumstances, and ought to have curtailed his expenses as his means diminished; and that he ought to have known very fully and very exactly all the probabilities and possibilities of mercantile fluctuation. But even supposing him to have had some little suspicion and some faint consciousness that all was not right, it would have been a piece of magnanimity seldom witnessed in the commercial world, had he resolutely and boldly abridged very essentially his usual expenditure; and perhaps that very abridgment would have been the means of hastening the dreaded calamity. Generally speaking, we may say that the calamity in which the elder Markham was involved was not from his own imprudence.

To expose and regularly set forth the whole state of his affairs was not the work of a moment. This business, therefore, was postponed till the following day. In the mean time Markham’s mother made her appearance, wearing a much more composed aspect than the young gentleman had expected, judging from the language which his father had used. Mrs. Markham has little to do in our history; but the mother of an amiable, well-conducted, and intelligent young man is almost always an object of respect. The direction and moral habits of the youthful mind depend much on the practical wisdom of a mother. She does not indeed create the mind, but she gives its energies their first impulse. For when the infant first wakes to consciousness, and commences its converse with the world, the first ray of knowledge, and the earliest of its discriminations, beam from a mother’s eye; and the emotions of its little heart receive their modulation from the melody of a mother’s voice. And is there not an undefinable, but powerfully apprehensible difference between the voice of inanity, selfishness, and grossness, and the voice of intelligence, generosity, and purity? Is there not also as great a difference between an eye which indicates mind, and one which is but a cold glassy inlet of uninterpreted light? We have before professed not to philosophise, and we restrain ourselves from farther digression here. But when there stands beside the path of our narrative a character so truly respectable as that of Mrs. Markham, we cannot resist the inclination to notice and eulogise it. Much talk has been made of the dignity of females in the higher walks of life, and many fine and interesting specimens have been handed up to the world of rustic purity and simplicity; but the character of Markham’s mother belongs not to either of these classes. Hers was a moral, natural, essential dignity: it was not stateliness and pomp, for in her situation these would have been ridiculous, and of consequence undignified. Nature often gives to individuals in every rank of life a species of inalienable nobility, and sometimes denies even to some in the highest walks that nobility of character, by which alone the artificial nobility of civilised society can be properly upheld in its dignity.

All this our readers know as well as we do; and we have not mentioned it by way of instruction or discovery, but simply to let them understand the character of Markham’s mind as having been in its earliest developments under the guidance of a mother of this description, and as having received no ordinary portion of the same spirit. The meeting of the mother and the son was not quite so painful as had been the meeting of the father and the son; for the agitation which Mr. Markham had attributed to her had been more in his own feelings than in hers.