His eyes glistened, but not from grief; it was the pleasure of virtuous happiness in their purity of filial affection. But though he knew their sincerity, he would not listen to their petition. 'You are not yet,' said he, 'aware what your future calls may be for money. What I have yet been able to save, without this unexpected seizure, would be inadequate to your even decent maintenance, should any accident stop short its encrease. Weep not, my dear children! my health is still good, and my prospect of lengthened life seems fair. It would be, however, a temporal folly as well as a spiritual presumption, to forget the precarious tenure of human existence. My life, my dear girls, will be happier, without being shorter, for making provisions for its worldly cessation.'
'But, Sir! but my father!' cried Camilla, hanging over him, and losing in filial tenderness her personal distresses; 'if your manner of living is altered, and my dear mother returns home and sees you relinquishing any of your small, your temperate indulgencies, may it not yet more embitter her sufferings and her displeasure for the unhappy cause? For her sake then, if not for ours——'
'Do not turn away, dearest Sir!' cried Lavinia; 'what mother ever merited to have her peace the first study of her children, if it is not ours?'
'O Providence benign!' said Mr. Tyrold, folding them to his heart, 'how am I yet blessed in my children!—True and excellent daughters of my invaluable wife—this little narration is the solace I shall have to offer for the grief I must communicate.'
He would not, however, hearken to their proposition; his peace, he said, required not only immediate measures for replacing what he must borrow, but also that no chasm should have lieu in funding his usual annual sum for them. All he would accept was the same severe forbearance he should instantly practice himself, and which their mother, when restored to them, would be the first to adopt and improve. And this, till its end was answered, they would all steadily continue, and then, with cheerful self-approvance, resume their wonted comforts.
Mr. Tyrold had too frequent views of the brevity of human life to postpone, even from one sun to another, any action he deemed essential. A new general system, therefore, immediately pervaded his house. Two of the servants, with whom he best could dispense, were discharged; which hurt him more than any other privation, for he loved, and was loved by every domestic who lived with him. His table, always simple though elegant, was now reduced to plain necessaries; he parted with every horse, but one to whose long services he held himself a debtor; and whatever, throughout the whole economy of his small establishment, admitted simplifying, deducting, or abolishment, received, without delay, its requisite alteration or dismission.
These new regulations were quietly, but completely, put in practice, before he would discharge one bill for his son; to whom, nevertheless, though his conduct was strict, his feelings were still lenient. He attributed not to moral turpitude his errours nor his crimes, but to the prevalence of ill example, and to an unjustifiable and dangerous levity, which irresistibly led him to treat with mockery and trifling the most serious subjects. The punishment, however, which he had now drawn upon himself, would yet, he hoped, touch his heart.
But the debts called debts of honour, met not with similar treatment. He answered with spirited resentment demands he deemed highly flagitious, counselling those who sent them, when next they applied to an unhappy family to whose calamities they had contributed, to enquire first if its principles, as well as its fortune, made the hazards of gaming amongst its domestic responsibilities.