“Ha! sir,” cried Candituft, “it is saddening to a man who tries hard to love his species—to be compelled to hear such things. Malice! Envy! The cant of wicked poverty—nothing more. Because a man is rich, he must have no emotions; because his pocket is crammed, his heart must have a hole in it.”
“Humph!” said Basil doubtfully.—“Well, I’m—yes, I’m satisfied.”
And the hero, Cesar Candituft, glanced at his diamond, and said to himself—“So am I.”
CHAPTER XIV.
Mr. Jericho was fully conscious of the malice of rumour. He well knew that he appeared before the world in a supernatural, perhaps, in a demoniacal light. The timidity, the tremors of Mrs. Jericho and her daughters, convinced him that they saw in husband and father, a man of most mysterious attributes. Monica, with all her strength of mind, turned pale at the smallest courtesy of her parent; and Agatha, suddenly meeting him on the staircase, squealed and ran away as from a fiend. “Mamma, dear mamma,” she exclaimed in a moment of anxious tenderness, “I’m sure Mr. Jericho’s sold; every body says so—sold. If you love me, tell me now—does your night-light burn blue?” And though Mrs. Jericho very majestically rebuked the giddiness of her daughter, the wife in the deep, silent night—the shrunken Jericho fast asleep, screwed up in himself as you would twist a bank-note—the wife would feel the solemnity of her whereabout. “Should the buyer come!” she thought while abed—and if folks could be arraigned for their thoughts, what goodly company would throng the bar!—“should the buyer come, I trust he’ll know his own side.”
Yet Jericho, from the first hour of his change, never felt so strong in himself; so insolently vigorous in mind and body. It was clear he should live for ever: he had been made immortal by money (not so uncommon a creed this). Death was to be awed like the human vulgar, and to pay respect to wealth. The principle of property was to flourish everlastingly in him, Solomon Jericho! True it was, he continued to shrink—to waste. Nevertheless, he could not wholly disappear: he must have body, no matter for its tenuity. But that he was elevated beyond the anatomical accidents of common humanity, was plain from the ball that had passed through his heart, and he alive, without the loss of one drop of blood. To be sure the hole—for he had stood between two mirrors and seen through himself—the hole had an ugly look, but who was to know it? A secret to be easily kept, with proper caution, even from the wife of his bosom.
Therefore, Jericho despised the innuendoes, the hints that buzzed up and down the world—no more valued them than a cloud of summer gnats. And wherefore? He knew the way to confound and kill them. In the might and immortality of his money, he would bring back homage, flattery, devotion. He looked upon the world and its millions, as his palace—his subjects. He felt himself the elect of wealth—the chosen one designed to develope to the human race the enduring rule of cash. From such moment, there was to him nothing high, nothing great, nothing beautiful in humanity,—and for this reason, Jericho believed he could purchase it. In his moneyed eye, man in his noblest striving, woman in her holiest devotion, was ticketted and bore a price. Truth and virtue at the highest and best, were things for market: and Jericho scorned them,—because, when he would, he could destroy either commodity, by huckstering for it.
Jericho strong, stern in his power, had cast about him the most magnificent presents. He had sought occasion to bestow gifts of worth and beauty upon the merest acquaintance; in all cases, contriving that the donation should harmonise with the taste—melodiously accord with the wish of the gifted. Jewels, pictures, horses had Jericho—with more than imperial bounty—bestowed upon all sides. A week only after the duel, and Jericho had more than trebled the number of his friends and champions. The Hole in the Heart, in the eye of Jericho’s world had gradually closed; and the heart was nobler, better, truer, kindlier than ever.
Mrs. Jericho was soon sweetly comforted by the enthusiasm of crowds of dear friends for her magnificent husband. She ought, indeed, to be a happy woman, possessing such a man. Whereupon, Mrs. Jericho, with the slightest touch of remorse for past ingenuous thoughts, owned he was the best of creatures. And then she wondered how it was, that any man with so large a soul, should have so little substance. It really seemed as if all Jericho’s flesh went to make heart!