Now during the first day of Markham’s visit to his parents no progress had been made in the matter of business, for as yet the answers of the creditors had not been received. The elder Markham had sent off by the same post the letter to his son, and those which were destined for his creditors. That which had been sent to his son was first answered, as we have stated.

On the morning, therefore, after the young man’s arrival, the coming of the postman was anxiously looked for by all three. The father, indeed, seemed more and more dejected; and ever and anon, instead of taking notice of his wife and son, he muttered to himself, “They won’t accept a composition; I am sure they won’t; it was foolish of me to expect it.”

This was at the breakfast-table; and when either his wife or son urged him to partake of the morning meal, he coldly said, “It is not mine, it belongs to my creditors.” That was very true; but it was distressing to his family to hear such language; and that not merely because it was true, but because it indicated a bitterness of soul in him who used it.

No answer was made; for neither mother nor son had steadiness enough to trust themselves to speak to one who was under the influence of such distressful feelings. They sat at the breakfast-table beyond their usual time, and the postman brought no letters. The elder Markham looked wildly and distractedly, and he said, “Pray give me the letters; let me know the worst. I can very well bear it.” But when they told him that no letters were arrived, he smiled incredulously, and replied, “It is very kind and considerate of you, that you will break the matter to me gradually.”

“Indeed, my dear,” replied Mrs. Markham, “there are no letters this morning.”

“Then they have detained the letters in the shop,” said Mr. Markham; “I will go and fetch them.”

He rose for the purpose, but he presently returned; and just as he was at the door of the apartment, he hastily came back again, and resuming his seat, he covered his face with his hands, and said, in a melancholy under tone, “Oh! I can never show my face there again.”

The poor man’s distress now increased to a degree that rendered it almost as painful to witness as to bear. It is indeed hardly to be imagined to what excess it might have proceeded, had it not been for an interruption of a peculiar and unexpected nature. This was the appearance of the principal creditor, whose high opinion of Mr. Markham’s integrity would not permit him to satisfy himself with a mere letter of reply to the communication which he had received from the embarrassed tradesman.

There was ushered into the apartment where the family was sitting a very tall thin man, in a long single-breasted drab coat of the finest cloth that was ever woven, and wearing a hat which in its shape and expression so sympathised with the wearer’s look, that the hat and the head seemed made for each other. The visitor stalked directly and undeviatingly up to the elder Markham, took hold of the poor man’s hand, squeezed it very hard, and shook it very violently; and after performing this ceremony in total silence, and with most unperturbable steadiness of look, he then spoke with a shrill nasal twang, at the very top of his voice; “Neighbour Markham, I am sorry to see thee.”

This unusually loud noise and strange-sounding voice was quite a relief to the party, who had that morning held intercourse with each other only in low murmurings and subdued and sorrowful tones. To such a greeting, on such an occasion, Mr. Markham felt it difficult to reply. He only shook his head, and said, “I am sorry to see you, sir.”

Thereupon the man in drab, who had taken a seat by the side of poor Mr. Markham, and had crossed his extended legs and clasped his long fingers, leaving only his thumbs at liberty to move, screwed up his lips as tight as a miser’s purse, and, as if economical of words, uttered through the nose a sound which no vowels or consonants in any European alphabet are competent to express, either severally or conjointly. As it oftentimes occurs that words are used when no meaning is conveyed, so does it on the other hand sometimes happen that much meaning is conveyed when no words are uttered. Thus it was on the occasion to which we now allude. Mr. Markham was familiar with the above-named unwriteable sound; and he knew that it indicated in the mind of him, through whose nose it passed, a feeling of compassion and a promise of kindness.

Turning to Mrs. Markham, the visitor said, “Mary Markham, this is thy son, probably.” On this, Horatio Markham took occasion to speak to the creditor, and began by saying,

“I am very much concerned, sir, for the unpleasant situation in which my father is now placed; but I believe we shall be able to surmount the difficulty, if not immediately, at least in a very short time.”

“Do thee, indeed?” said the Quaker; and without making more reply, or vouchsafing to the young gentleman any farther attention, he directed himself again to the elder Markham, and said to him, “Thy son is a promising young man.”

“I have reason, Mr. Wiggins, to be very well pleased with my son; he is indeed a blessing to us.”

“Neighbour Markham, my name is Wiggins; but my name is not Mister. But let us proceed to business; for to that intent I came hither.”

Thereupon the creditor thrust his long arm into a deep side-pocket, and extracted therefrom a long black letter-case, and from that letter-case he drew out the letter which he had received from Mr. Markham.

“Neighbour,” said the Quaker, “thee might be disposed to think that I had forgotten thee, seeing that thy letter did not receive an immediate answer: but I was willing to see thy other creditors to know how they stood inclined towards thee. So yesterday we had a meeting.”

“A meeting of my creditors!” exclaimed Mr. Markham, with great emphasis of grief; “Oh God! that I should ever come to this!”

“Thee will come to something worse, neighbour Markham, if thee don’t leave off taking the name of the Lord in vain,” replied Mr. Wiggins; “but thee is impatient; thee will not listen. I tell thee that there has been a meeting of thy creditors, and they are sorry for thy misfortunes, and they are disposed to assist thee. They respect thy integrity; but they would not have thee take the name of the Lord in vain. It is a sad thing, neighbour, to want money; but it is worse to want patience: thee will never get rich by putting thyself in a passion. But thy creditors will not trouble thee at present. They besought me to tell thee that they would wait thy own time.”

At this information Mr. Markham shook his head mournfully. There are those who when in trouble are exceeding sceptical as to good tidings, and are slow to believe what pretends to promise them good. Poor Mr. Markham was of that description. He hardly liked to have the pathos of his deep sorrow interrupted or interfered with. But his son Horatio was a man of more words and somewhat less formality. He readily expressed his thanks to the principal creditor, but at the same time added,

“I trust, sir, there will be no necessity for any long forbearance; had my father stated all the particulars to me before he wrote to his creditors, I believe there would not have been found any occasion for the step which he has now taken. I will be answerable—”

Here Mr. Wiggins interrupted the young barrister. “Young man, be not in too great haste to part with thy money; thee has not been in possession of it long enough to know its weight.” Then turning to the elder Markham, he said, “Neighbour Markham, thee shall go on with thy business, and if thee needs any supply, thy credit is good with me yet. Let thy son keep that which he has earned. Farewell.”

Not a word that could be said, nor any entreaties whatever were effectual to detain the strange Mr. Wiggins a moment after he had said farewell. It seemed to him a matter of conscience to depart as soon as he had uttered the word which indicated the intention of going.

The spirits of the elder Markham were not cheered by that visit which was designed to remove an oppressive weight of sorrow from his mind. The very consideration that there had been any thing like a necessity for proposing a composition weighed very deeply upon him, and produced serious illness.

Markham, whose intention it had been to make a short visit to his native place, now found himself powerfully and indeed irresistibly detained. It was not indeed absolutely necessary for him to be in town at this time; and had even his professional occupations urged his attendance, it is more than probable that their importunity would have been disregarded: for it is not likely that his father’s commercial perplexities should have commanded his sympathies more strongly than an actual sickness.

Our English proverbs are not frequently to our taste; for many of them want point, not a few are destitute of truth, and most of those which are correct are cold common-place truisms. There is, however, one which occurs at the present juncture, not indeed very graceful in its expression or profound in its observation, but having in its meaning and application a moral lesson which cannot be too frequently or too earnestly inculcated on the misery-loving and ever-grumbling people of this most highly-favored land. The proverb to which our allusion points is as follows, “It is an ill wind that blows nobody good.” Certainly it was not pleasant to the father of Horatio Markham to be so situated that he must be within a little of bankruptcy. Certainly it was not pleasant to the young man to find that his professional success should in its earliest stages be destined to repair the ravages which untoward circumstances had made in his father’s property. Certainly it was very painful to see that after this calamity had been partially healed, or at least palliated, his poor father had so taken to heart the unexpected affliction, as to suffer from its influences a severe bodily illness. Certainly it was mortifying to the young man who was looking upwards in society, and was in the way of what is called making his fortune, to have this sudden and unforeseen blight coming over his fair hopes. Certainly also there was something sorrowful to his soul in the consideration that at the very moment in which there seemed a probability that his attachment to Clara might be honorably avowed, he should be called away from scenes of hope and brightness and opulence, to a house of fear, of gloom, of poverty.

These circumstances gathering together round the mind of our young friend perplexed and pained him. It is very true that he was perfectly well acquainted with all the commonplaces of consolation, and he knew that there not unfrequently arises good out of evil. But what does knowledge amount to in the way of consolation? He saw no particular good end likely to be answered by all these perplexities; but he saw, or thought he saw, a great evil as the probable result of them. He had left London without giving notice to any of his friends; and the business on which he visited the country was not one which he was very desirous of advertising. He therefore very naturally thought that Clara would suppose that he was not very anxious to renew the acquaintance with her; and he also contemplated the possibility of some more rational being than Tippetson making advances more acceptably and successfully. This thought was a source of uneasiness to him, and he could not see any mode of communicating to Mr. Martindale the cause of his sudden absence from town. He had thought that a day or two would suffice, and that in that short time he should not be missed; but now he found that he was likely to be detained much longer; and should he on his return to London state that his father’s illness had delayed him in the country beyond his intention, there would still be something remarkable in the fact of his hasty and silent departure from town.

He therefore thought that this illness was most peculiarly unfortunate and calamitous, as not only being distressing to his parents, but probably productive of serious inconvenience to himself.

We have already intimated that Horatio Markham was deficient in some of those qualities that form a hero. Here we have occasion to repeat the observation. His want of heroism was manifested in several points alluded to in the present chapter. For had he been a proper hero, he would never have suffered Mr. Wiggins to grant any thing of indulgence to the embarrassed shopkeeper, but he would forthwith have paid to the utmost every farthing of the debt to him and the other creditors, had he been under the necessity for that purpose of parting with his library and every saleable article in his possession, even to his very watch. Had he been a proper hero, he would have regarded with more apathy and magnanimity a commercial failure. Had he been a proper hero, he would not have admitted the possibility that there could exist on the face of the earth any human being but himself worthy of Clara’s hand, or likely to obtain it. Had he been a proper hero, he would not have been quite so shy, as he clearly was, of the fact that his father kept a linen-draper’s shop in a country town.

We have represented Horatio Markham as a man of talent and general good judgment, but we have not described him as a paragon of all possible and impossible excellence. He was a steady, quiet, sober, clear-headed man, who understood his professional and his moral duties, who gave himself seriously to the business to which he was brought up, and who wished very naturally to rise in the world. In a very high degree he was early successful; but he was not vain of that success, nor did he think himself the greatest or the only genius in the world. In matters of intellect he was unpretending, and in matters of a moral nature pure and conscientious.

As he had proceeded he became more ambitious; and by the distinguished patronage which he enjoyed, he hoped to take ultimately a higher rank in society than at the commencement of his career he had anticipated. He had hoped that his parents, either by his own exertions or by their circumstances, might soon retire from business; but when instead of this retirement he found that there was pecuniary embarrassment which he could not easily, if at all, remove, he was severely disappointed; and when in addition to this the illness of his father detained him from town and from Clara, he feared the worst that could happen. Nor could he imagine that in this complication of unfortunate and perplexing circumstances there was any good likely to arise either to himself or to any one else. But he was wrong; for the illness of the father was the means of deciding the destiny of the son’s life.