“You have been generous to my father; do not misjudge him. He would give his last groat to a starving beggar. But when his passion of scholar and inventor masters him, thou mightest think him worse than miser. It is an overnoble yearning that ofttimes makes him mean.”
“Nay,” answered Marmaduke, touched by the heavy sigh and swimming eyes with which the last words were spoken; “I have heard Nick Alwyn’s uncle, who was a learned monk, declare that he could not constrain himself to pray to be delivered from temptation, seeing that he might thereby lose an occasion for filching some notable book! For the rest,” he added, “you forget how much I owe to Master Warner’s hospitality.”
He took her hand with a frank and brotherly gallantry as he spoke; but the touch of that small, soft hand, freely and innocently resigned to him, sent a thrill to his heart—and again the face of Sibyll seemed to him wondrous fair.
There was a long silence, which Sibyll was the first to break. She turned the conversation once more upon Marmaduke’s views in life. It had been easy for a deeper observer than he was to see that, under all that young girl’s simplicity and sweetness, there lurked something of dangerous ambition. She loved to recall the court-life her childhood had known, though her youth had resigned it with apparent cheerfulness. Like many who are poor and fallen, Sibyll built herself a sad consolation out of her pride; she never forgot that she was well-born. But Marmaduke, in what was ambition, saw but interest in himself, and his heart beat more quickly as he bent his eyes upon that downcast, thoughtful, earnest countenance.
After an hour thus passed, Sibyll left the guest, and remounted to her father’s chamber. She found Adam pacing the narrow floor, and muttering to himself. He turned abruptly as she entered, and said, “Come hither, child; I took four marks from that young man, for I wanted books and instruments, and there are two left; see, take them back to him.”
“My father, he will not receive them. Fear not, thou shalt repay him some day.”
“Take them, I say, and if the young man says thee nay, why, buy thyself gauds and gear, or let us eat, and drink, and laugh. What else is life made for? Ha, ha! Laugh, child, laugh!”
There was something strangely pathetic in this outburst, this terrible mirth, born of profound dejection. Alas for this guileless, simple creature, who had clutched at gold with a huckster’s eagerness! who, forgetting the wants of his own child, had employed it upon the service of an Abstract Thought, and whom the scorn of his kind now pierced through all the folds of his close-webbed philosophy and self forgetful genius. Awful is the duel between MAN and THE AGE in which he lives! For the gain of posterity, Adam Warner had martyrized existence,—and the children pelted him as he passed the streets! Sibyll burst into tears.
“No, my father, no,” she sobbed, pushing back the money into his hands. “Let us both starve rather than you should despond. God and man will bring you justice yet.”
“Ah,” said the baffled enthusiast, “my whole mind is one sore now! I feel as if I could love man no more. Go, and leave me. Go, I say!” and the poor student, usually so mild and gall-less, stamped his foot in impotent rage. Sibyll, weeping as if her heart would break, left him.