About four years after we first became acquainted with the Moncktons, the fair, gentle child, then nearly fourteen, became ill; growing thin, pale, and weak, till his mother and Richard, in great alarm, besought old Monckton to let him have medical advice. The request produced a storm of passionate reproaches. "The boy," he said, "was well enough. He ate as much as was good for him. Did they think people could not live without gormandizing as they did? Did they imagine he should throw away his little means upon doctors, who were all a set of cheats? He should do nothing of the kind!" And poor Ernest was left to pine and wither, till Richard in despair sought out a physician, and telling him their story, besought him to come and see his brother, promising to repay the advice he asked by his future toil.
Dr. N—— was a kind-hearted, benevolent man. He at once complied with the youth's entreaty, and called at an hour when the old man was absent at the farm. He found his patient worse than the brother's report had led him to believe. The illness was decline, caused probably by want of sufficiently nourishing food at a period of rapid growth, and increased by the overworking of a mind that was ever craving after knowledge. He prescribed such remedies as he judged best; but informed the mother, at the same time, that strengthening food was of the first importance, and would be the best means to effect a cure. Alas! how was it to be obtained? The heart of the miser was impenetrable to their remonstrances and entreaties—what was life in his eyes compared with gold? When they found that no human sympathy could be expected from the father, the mother and brother determined to use their own exertions to obey the behest of the physician. Early and late the former worked at her needle, the good doctor finding her as much employment as he could; while Richard, abandoning the study of his art, painted valentines, card-racks, and fancy articles for the stationers, and sought eagerly for every opportunity of winning a few shillings, to be spent in ministering to the comfort of the beloved sufferer. But it was all too late: Ernest sank slowly, but surely.
There were intervals when life, like the flicker of an expiring lamp, appeared successfully struggling with death; but these occasional brightenings were always succeeded by a more entire prostration and languor. The personal beauty, for which Ernest had always been remarkable, grew almost superhuman during his illness, and Richard could not resist stealing a little time from his busy labors to paint his brother's portrait. In the execution of this task of love, however, many hindrances occurred; and before it was more than a sketch, the dear original had passed away from them in one of those quiet sleeps which in such cases, are the usual harbingers of death. The painting was removed to Richard's chamber, and in the first agony of his grief, forgotten; but when Ernest had been committed to the grave, and life had assumed its usual monotony—more gloomy now than ever—he remembered his attempt, and resolved on finishing the likeness from memory. An easy task! for nightly, in his slumbers, he saw the fair, sweet face of his young brother. The second morning after he had resumed his pencil, he was startled at finding that the painting appeared to be in a more advanced state than he had left it the night before, but he fancied imagination must be juggling him, and that he really had done more than he remembered. The following day, however, the same phenomenon startled him, and he mentioned the circumstance to his mother. She was superstitious, and nervous from sorrow and regret; and she at once adopted the fanciful notion that there was something supernatural in the matter; suggesting the possibility of their dear Ernest's gentle spirit having thus endeavored to show them, that in another world he still thought of them and loved them. Richard combated the idea by every argument his reason offered him; but as he was convinced of the fact, and could give no satisfactory explanation of it, he was at last persuaded by her earnest entreaties to leave the picture untouched for two or three days, and see what consequences would follow. The painting progressed! daily, or rather nightly, it advanced toward completion. Every morning a stronger likeness of the dead smiled on them from the canvas, and a more skillful hand than the young painter's appeared to be engaged on the work. It was a marvel past their simple comprehension; but the mother, confirmed in her first belief, resolved to watch, and try if it might be permitted to her living eyes to gaze upon the child whom the grave had shut from her sight. With this hope she concealed herself, without Richard's knowledge, in a large closet in his bed-room—placing the door ajar that she might see all that passed in the chamber. Her watch was of no long duration; suddenly her sleeping son rose from his couch, lighted his candle, approached his easel, and began to work at the portrait! Much amazed and half angry at the deception she believed he had practiced on her, Mrs. Monckton issued from her hiding-place, and spoke to him. He made her no answer; she stood before him—he saw her not; he was fast asleep! It was indeed a spirit's painting; for love had in this instance burst the bands of matter, and the somnambulist had achieved a work of art that surpassed all the efforts of his waking hours.
The story of the sleep-painting got abroad, and reached the ears of a gentleman of large fortune, who resided in the neighborhood. He called on the young artist; was pleased with his manners; and proposed engaging him as traveling companion to his own son, a youth about to visit Italy with his tutor; proffering a salary that would enable him to cultivate his genius for painting in the land of its birth, and of its perfect maturity. The offer was eagerly and thankfully accepted, and old Monckton made no opposition to his son's wish: he was only too thankful to be relieved from the burden of supporting him. Indeed the miser was somewhat changed since Ernest's death; not that he expressed in words any remorse for having preferred his gold to the life of his fair young son; but from that time he never touched the organ—the spirit of music appeared to have died with Ernest; and he often visibly shrank from meeting the silent reproach of Richard's eyes. The neighbors also shunned him; they had loved poor Ernest, and the conduct of his father toward him—the fact of his refusing to pay the physician who had attended him, "because he never sent for him"—and the mean, pauper-like funeral which he had grudgingly bestowed on the dead—revolted and disgusted them. A mean funeral was one of the offenses the people of K—— never forgave! The old man probably detected something of their feelings in their manners, for he gradually gave up his ordinary work about the village—that is, the keeping in repair such cottages as belonged to him—and remained much within doors. This change of habits and want of exercise told fatally on three score and ten, and probably hastened his death, which took place two years after his son's. He died without a will, but left very considerable property. It was supposed he died intestate, either because he grudged the expense of making a will, or because he could not endure the thought of parting from the gold which had had the worship and service of his life. Richard, on his return, repaired the old farm-house, and restored it to something like comfort. He proved liberal, but not (as is frequently the case in such instances) lavish. The only piece of extravagance of which he was ever accused—and it was the village stone-mason who blamed him for that—being the procuring an elegant marble monument from Italy, the work of a first-rate sculptor, to place over the grave of his beloved brother. The figures on it were—an admirable likeness of Ernest, taken from the somnambulist's picture, and two angelic beings in the act of presenting the risen spirit with the palms and crown of victory gained over sorrow, suffering, and death. The inscription on the tomb had an awful and touching meaning to those who knew the story of the brother's life; and we know not how we can better conclude our sketches of the insane folly of gold-worship, than by finishing them with those solemn words—"Lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven."
MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.[13]
CHAPTER VII.
LEONARD had been about six weeks with his uncle, and those weeks were well spent. Mr. Richard had taken him to his counting-house, and initiated him into the business and the mysteries of double entry; and, in return, for the young man's readiness and zeal in matters which the acute trader instinctively felt were not exactly to his tastes, Richard engaged the best master the town afforded to read with his nephew in the evening. This gentleman was the head-usher of a large school—who had his hours to himself after eight o'clock—and was pleased to vary the dull routine of enforced lessons by instructions to a pupil who took delightedly—even to the Latin grammar. Leonard made rapid strides, and learned more in those six weeks than many a cleverish boy does in twice as many months. These hours which Leonard devoted to study Richard usually spent from home—sometimes at the houses of his grand acquaintances in the Abbey Gardens, sometimes in the Reading-room appropriated to those aristocrats. If he staid at home, it was in company with his head-clerk, and for the purpose of checking his account-books, or looking over the names of doubtful electors.
Leonard had naturally wished to communicate his altered prospects to his old friends, that they in turn might rejoice his mother with such good tidings. But he had not been two days in the house before Richard had strictly forbidden all such correspondence.
"Look you," said he, "at present we are on an experiment—we must see if we like each other. Suppose we don't, you will only have raised expectations in your mother which must end in bitter disappointment; and suppose we do, it will be time enough to write when something definite is settled."