Heart | Page 2

only excuse your methods of
judging by the fancy that you are far too prudent in fearing for the
future: however, if you will not admit this, let me take you on your own
ground, the present; perhaps Mr. Clements may not possess quite as
much as I could wish him, but then surely, dear Thomas, our daughter
must have more than--"
I object to seeing oaths in print; unless it must be once in a way, as a
needful point of character: probably the reader's sagacity will supply
many omissions of mine in the eloquence of Sir Thomas Dillaway and
others. But his calm spouse, nothing daunted, quietly whispered

on--"You know, Thomas, you have boasted to me that your capital is
doubling every year; penny-postage has made the stationery business
most prosperous; and if you were wealthy when the old king knighted
you as lord mayor, surely you can spare something handsome now for
an only daughter, who--"
"Ma'am!" almost barked the affectionate father, "if Maria marries
money, she shall have money, and plenty of it, good girl; but if she will
persist in wedding a beggar, she may starve, mum, starve, and all her
poverty-stricken brats too, for any pickings they shall get out of my
pocket. Ey? what? you pretend to read your Bible, mum--don't you
know we're commanded to 'give to him that hath, and to take away
from him that--'"
"For shame, Sir Thomas Dillaway!" interrupted the wife, as well she
might, for all her quietude: she was a good sort of woman, and her
better nature aroused its wrath at this vicious application of a truth so
just when applied to morals and graces, so bitterly iniquitous in the
case of this world's wealth. I wish that our ex-lord mayor's distorted
text may not be one of real and common usage. So, silencing her lord,
whose character it was to be overbearing to the meek, but cringing to
any thing like rebuke or opposition, she forthwith pushed her
advantages, adding--
"Your income is now four thousand a-year, as you have told me,
Thomas, every hour of every day, since your last lucky hit in the
government contract for blue-elephants and whitey-browns. We have
only John and Maria; and John gets enough out of his own
stock-brokering business to keep his curricle and belong to
clubs--and--alas! my fears are many for my poor dear boy--I often wish,
Thomas, that our John was not so well supplied with money: whereas,
poor Maria--"
"Tush, ma'am, you're a fool, and have no respect at all for monied men.
Jack's a rich man, mum--knows a trick or two, sticks at nothing on
'Change, shrewd fellow, and therefore, of course I don't stint him: ha!
he's a regular Witney comforter, that boy--makes money--ay, for all his
seeming extravagance, the clever little rogue knows how to keep it, too.

If you only knew, ma'am, if you only knew--but we don't blab to fools."
I dare say "fools" will hear the wise man's secret some day.
"Well, Thomas, I am sure I have no wish to pry into business
transactions; all my present hope is to help the cause of our poor dear
Maria."
"Don't call the girl 'poor,' Lady Dillaway; it's no recommendation, I can
tell you, though it may be true enough. Girls are a bad spec, unless they
marry money. If our girl does this, well; she will indeed be to me a dear
Maria, though not a poo-o-o-r one; if she doesn't, let her bide, and be an
old maid; for as to marrying this fellow Clement's, I'll cut him adrift
to-morrow."
"If you do, Sir Thomas, you will break our dear child's heart."
"Heart, ma'am! what business has my daughter with a heart?" [what,
indeed?] "I hate hearts; they were sent, I believe, purposely to make
those who are plagued with 'em poo-o-o-r. Heart, indeed! When did
heart ever gain money? ey? what? It'll give, O yes, plenty--plenty, to
charities, and churches, and orphans, and beggars, and any thing else,
by way of getting rid of gold; but as to gaining--bah! heart
indeed--pauperizing bit of muscle! save me from wearing under my
waistcoat what you're pleased to call a heart. No, mum, no; if the girl
has got a heart to break, I've done with her. Heart indeed! she either
marries money and my blessing, or marries beggary and my curse. But
I should like to know who wants her to marry at all? Let her die an old
maid."
Probably this dialogue need go no farther: in the coming chapter we
will try to be didactic. Meantime, to apostrophize ten words upon that
last heartless sentence:
"Let her die an old maid." An old maid! how many unrecorded sorrows,
how much of cruel disappointment and heart-cankering delay, how