I was often with them; I became almost an inmate of the house, subsequent to the events which I have just related—the father’s legal adviser, the daughter’s best friend. Mr. Cornelius did not weary of the empty bustle and noise of fashion with which his daughter’s youth and brilliant position at once surrounded her; he seemed pleased with it, and often spoke of it as the proud homage which intellect, and nice honor, and high titles, and all the virtues, and all the prejudices of men, pay to wealth—and so, indeed, it was. With the daughter, these enjoyments soon palled. She had learned of sorrow from her birth, and had happily received from her mother a head too strong for turning; when, therefore, novelty wore away, and satiety began to usurp its place, she gradually withdrew from the press of company, and gave to her father those hours which others had before possessed. Although change had come over every thing else, Mr. Cornelius forbid its entrance into the one room reserved for himself; the room in which he had received his daughter, with the little table and the two chairs standing in the centre, and its naked walls and bare door, which were to him as old acquaintances, and where, alone, he now felt fully at home. There they would often sit together in the deep hours of the night, and while she played with his white locks, and watched the beatings of his heart, to find it tuned to a music widely different from her own, and listened to his never-ending promises, and never-ending hopes of a wealth which was to make his only one, his jewel, a match which princes might envy, she became painfully conscious of her father’s worldliness and debasing servitude to the hard earth. She saw that he lay prone, chained, bound down with clamps of iron, of silver, and of gold, and never raised his eyes to the upper light, or questioned of the day when he should be called to give an account of his stewardship. Then she would weep, and kiss her father, and talk of her mother who had passed away, and of another life, and hope that they might all meet in that better world; and the miser would stroke down her glossy hair with his trembling hands, and press her forehead to his lips, and call her a foolish girl, who troubled herself about matters with which she had nothing to do; and bade her go and dream of the glory to which he had raised her, and count her suitors, and be brave.
“More, more,” was the miser’s unceasing cry; “all, all—I want all,” was the prayer which he put up, not to the Giver of all Good, but to his own will, which habit had enslaved, until use made servitude a happiness. And he worked on, ever gaining, ever adding, abstemious, pinching, self-denying, liberal only to his daughter, whom he could never see too richly clad, too sumptuously served—a costly toy to be stared at and admired. “She is my diamond,” he would say, “which I have chosen to plant in a rich setting.”
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SECTION XII.
But the daughter grew, day by day, more thoughtful, denied herself more frequently to her followers, and was more and more often to be found sitting with her father, alone, at the little table, winning him from his labor. Mr. Cornelius was too much engrossed with the world, with money-getting, to observe the beginning and progress of the change in his daughter’s manner, amusements, and way of life; and he soon learned to work on, with his child at his side, half unconscious of her presence, and yet alive to the pleasurable feeling that there was something near him which he much loved. I was not so blind. As month after month rolled away, I saw the shadow of a great melancholy creep slowly over her face, and deepen, and deepen, until it had imparted that exquisite softness to her beauty which is the surest symptom of decay. We see it in the flower; time gives it to all the works of man; and genius shows it, as the flame trembles, flickers, leaps upward, and goes out. The heart was sick; the spirit grew toward heaven. I had occasion, one evening, to be with Mr. Cornelius until a late hour, conversing about some matters in the courts which he had entrusted to my care; we had talked much, and the last watch was drawing to a close, when the door quietly opened, and his daughter entered, holding in one hand a light stool, and in the other a book. “The gentleman will excuse us for a moment,” she said, addressing her father; then turning to me, she received me with her usual cordiality. “I have adopted a practice, of late, of reading a chapter to my father before retiring,” she continued; “and you can remain, if you please, and join us in our devotions—surely, such worship can harm no one.” And sitting down at her father’s knees, she laid the holy volume in his lap, opened it, and read; while he bent over her until his silver locks mingled with the jetty tresses of her hair, and listened to her teaching—it was time, old, worn-out time, called to eternity by a sweet messenger from God. “There, that will do, my child; put up the book,” said Mr. Cornelius, as his daughter’s voice, losing its firmness, grew uncertain, and tears fell pattering upon the story she repeated: “certainly, certainly, it is not for me, in my old age, to learn of one so young.” It was a simple tale, a touching parable, told by Christ; so appropriate as to require from me no further designation. “Why, what spirit has come over you of late—always weeping!” said the old man, kissing the moisture from her eyelids. “What do you want? All that I have is yours. Now go—and see that you show a merry face in the morning.” The daughter rose, and bid us good-night.
“Do you not think Anne has lost a little of her color—grown slightly pale, Mr. Didimus?”
I made known the fears which I had long entertained, and to which each day added a confirmation.
“My daughter’s sick! sick at heart! Nonsense! What has she to be sick about? Are not my coffers open to her hand? What power of this earth is greater than her gold? Sick!—And yet, now I do remember, that for the past month, or more, no music has come into me, as it was wont, from her crowded rooms; no sounds of merriment, of joy, of the frivolity of fools, grating upon the ear of night; no cringing, no bowing low with doffed hat, and giving of God’s health, as I pass in and out at my own door. Look to it: you are my daughter’s best friend; question her; inquire out the secret sorrow which preys upon her mind—surely, money is a medicine for all the ills of life. She requires a change of place; these stuffed marts about us breed foul air; let her travel. Or, perhaps, she has again listened to the idle whispers of love, and conceals from me her weakness. Tell her, that although I would have her live with me during the short remainder of my life, yet she shall marry where she may choose; to give me a long line of heirs, rich, rich, through two centuries. Sick! why I was never sick!” And the miser bent over the little table, and returned to his calculations.
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