Heart | Page 5

surprise this, even to both of
them--an extemporary unrehearsed outburst of the heart; and Maria
discovered herself pledged before she had made direct application to
mamma about the business. However, once done, she hastened to
confide the secret to her mother's ear, earnestly requesting her to break
it to papa. With how little of success, we have learnt already.
CHAPTER III.
PATERNAL AMIABILITIES.
Maria, as we know, loved her father, for she loved every thing that
breathes; but she would not have been human had she not also feared
him. In fact, he was to her a very formidable personage, and one would
have thought any thing but an amiable one. Over Maria's gentle
kindness he could domineer as loftily as he would cringe in cowardly
humiliation to the boisterous effrontery of that unscrupulous and wily
stock-jobber, "my son Jack." With the tyranny proper to a little mind,
he would trample on the neck of a poor meek daughter's filial duty,
desiring to honour its parent by submission; and then, with consistent
meanness, would lick the dust like a slave before an undutiful only son,
who had amply redeemed all possible criminalities by successful (I did
not say honest) gambling in the funds, and otherwise.
Yes! John Dillaway was rich; and, climax to his praise, rich by his own
keen skill, independent of his father, though he condescended still to
bleed him. In this "money century," as Kohl, the graphic traveller, has
called it, riches "cover the multitude of sins;" leaving poor Maria's
charity to cover its own naked virtues, if it can. So John was the father's
darling, notwithstanding the very heartless and unbecoming conduct he
had exhibited daily for these thirty years, and the marked scorn
wherewithal he treated that pudgy city knight, his dear progenitor; but
then, let us repeat it as Sir Thomas did--Jack was rich--rich, and such a

comfort to his father; whereas Maria, poor fool, with all her cheap
unmarketable love and duty, never had earned a penny--never could,
but was born to be a drain upon him. Therefore did he scorn her, and
put aside her kindnesses, because she could not "make money."
For what end on earth should a man make money! It is reasonable to
reply, for the happiness' sake of others and himself; but, in the frequent
case of a rich and cold Sir Thomas, what can be the object in such? Not
to purchase happiness therewith himself, nor yet to distribute it to
others; a very dog in the manger, he snarls above the hay he cannot eat,
and is full of any thoughts rather than of giving: whilst, as for his own
pleasure, he manifestly will not stop a minute to enjoy a taste of
happiness, even if he finds it in his home; nay, more, if it meets him by
the way, and wishes to cling about his heart, he will be found often to
fling it off with scorn, as a reaper would the wild sweet corn-flower in
some handful of wheat he is cutting. O, Sir Thomas! is not poor Maria's
love worth more than all your rich rude Jack's sudden flush of money?
is it not a deeper, higher, purer, wiser, more abundant source of
pleasure? You have yet to learn the wealth of her affections, and his
poverty of soul.
It was not without heart-sickness, believe me, sore days and weeping
nights, that affectionate Maria saw her father growing more and more
estranged from her. True, he had never met her love so warmly that it
was not somewhat checked and chilled; true, his nature had reversed
the law of reason, by having systematically treated her with less and
less of kindness ever since the nursery; she did seem able to remember
something like affection in him while she was a prattling infant; but as
the mental daylight dawned apace, and she grew (one would fancy)
worthier of a rational creature's love, it strangely had diminished year
by year; moreover, she could scarcely look back upon one solitary
occasion, whereon her father's voice had instructed her in knowledge,
spoken to her in sympathy, or guided her footsteps to religion. Still,
habituated as she long had now become to this daily martyrdom of
heart, and sorely bruised by coarse and common worldliness as had
been every fibre of her feelings, she could not help perceiving that
things got worse and worse, as the knight grew richer and richer; and

often-times her eyes ran over bitterly for coldness and neglect. There
was, indeed, her mother to fly to; but she never had been otherwise than
a very quiet creature, who made but little show of what feeling she
possessed; and then the daughter's loving heart was affectionately
jealous of her father too.
"Why should he be so