MASTER ADAM WARNER GROWS A MISER, AND BEHAVES SHAMEFULLY.
For two or three days nothing disturbed the outward monotony of the
recluse's household. Apparently all had settled back as before the
advent of the young cavalier. But Sibyll's voice was not heard
singing, as of old, when she passed the stairs to her father's room.
She sat with him in his work no less frequently and regularly than
before; but her childish spirits no longer broke forth in idle talk or
petulant movements, vexing the good man from his absorption and his
toils. The little cares and anxieties, which had formerly made up so
much of Sibyll's day by forethought of provision for the morrow, were
suspended; for the money transmitted to her by Alwyn in return for the
emblazoned manuscripts was sufficient to supply their modest wants for
months to come. Adam, more and more engrossed in his labours, did not
appear to perceive the daintier plenty of his board, nor the purchase
of some small comforts unknown for years. He only said one morning,
"It is strange, girl, that as that gathers in life (and he pointed to
the model), it seems already to provide, to my fantasy, the luxuries
it will one day give to us all in truth. Methought my very bed last
night seemed wondrous easy, and the coverings were warmer, for I woke
not with the cold."
"Ah," thought the sweet daughter, smiling through moist eyes, "while
my cares can smooth thy barren path through life, why should I cark
and pine?"
Their solitude was now occasionally broken in the evenings by the
visits of Nicholas Alwyn. The young goldsmith was himself not
ignorant of the simpler mathematics; he had some talent for invention,
and took pleasure in the construction of horologes, though, properly
speaking, not a part of his trade. His excuse for his visits was the
wish to profit by Warner's mechanical knowledge; but the student was
so rapt in his own pursuits, that he gave but little instruction to
his visitor. Nevertheless Alwyn was satisfied, for he saw Sibyll. He
saw her in the most attractive phase of her character,--the loving,
patient, devoted daughter; and the view of her household virtues
affected more and more his honest English heart. But, ever awkward
and embarrassed, he gave no vent to his feelings. To Sibyll he spoke
little, and with formal constraint; and the girl, unconscious of her
conquest, was little less indifferent to his visits than her
abstracted father.
But all at once Adam woke to a sense of the change that had taken
place; all at once he caught scent of gold, for his works were brought
to a pause for want of some finer and more costly materials than the
coins in his own possession (the remnant of Marmaduke's gift) enabled
him to purchase. He had stolen out at dusk, unknown to Sibyll, and
lavished the whole upon the model; but in vain! The model in itself
was, indeed, completed; his invention had mastered the difficulty that
it had encountered. But Adam had complicated the contrivance by
adding to it experimental proofs of the agency it was intended to
exercise. It was necessary in that age, if he were to convince
others, to show more than the principle of his engine,--he must show
also something of its effects; turn a mill without wind or water, or
set in motion some mimic vehicle without other force than that the
contrivance itself supplied. And here, at every step, new obstacles
arose. It was the misfortune to science in those days, not only that
all books and mathematical instruments were enormously dear, but that
the students, still struggling into light, through the glorious
delusions of alchemy and mysticism, imagined that, even in simple
practical operations, there were peculiar virtues in virgin gold and
certain precious stones. A link in the process upon which Adam was
engaged failed him; his ingenuity was baffled, his work stood still;
and in poring again and again over the learned manuscripts--alas! now
lost--in which certain German doctors had sought to explain the
pregnant hints of Roger Bacon, he found it inculcated that the axle of
a certain wheel must be composed of a diamond. Now, in truth, it so
happened that Adam's contrivance, which (even without the appliances
which were added in illustration of the theory) was infinitely more
complicated than modern research has found necessary, did not even
require the wheel in question, much less the absent diamond; it
happened, also, that his understanding, which, though so obtuse in
common life, was in these matters astonishingly clear, could not trace
any mathematical operations by which the diamond axle would in the
least correct the difficulty that had suddenly started up; and yet the
accursed diamond began to haunt him,--the German authority was so
positive on the point, and that authority had in many respects been
accurate. Nor was this all,--the diamond was to be no vulgar diamond;
it was to be endowed, by talismanic skill, with certain properties and
virtues; it was to be for a certain number of hours exposed to the
rays of the full moon; it was to be washed in a primitive and wondrous
elixir, the making of which consumed no little of the finest gold.
This diamond was to be to the machine what the soul is to the body,--a
glorious, all-pervading, mysterious principle of activity and life.
Such were the dreams that obscured the cradle of infant science! And
Adam, with all his reasoning powers, big lore in the hard truths of
mathematics, was but one of the giant children of the dawn. The
magnificent phrases and solemn promises of the mystic Germans got firm
hold of his fancy. Night and day, waking or sleeping, the diamond,
basking in the silence of the full moon, sparkled before his eyes.
Meanwhile all was at a stand. In the very last steps of his discovery
he was arrested. Then suddenly looking round for vulgar moneys to
purchase the precious gem, and the materials for the soluble elixir,
he saw that MONEY had been at work around him,--that he had been
sleeping softly and faring sumptuously. He was seized with a divine
rage. How had Sibyll dared to secrete from him this hoard; how
presumed to waste upon the base body what might have so profited the
eternal mind? In his relentless ardour, in his sublime devotion and
loyalty to his abstract idea, there was a devouring cruelty, of which
this meek and gentle scholar was wholly unconscious. The grim iron
model, like a Moloch, ate up all things,--health, life, love; and its
jaws now opened for his child. He rose from his bed,--it was
daybreak,--he threw on his dressing-robe, he strode into his
daughter's room; the gray twilight came through the comfortless,
curtainless casement, deep sunk into the wall. Adam did not pause to
notice that the poor child, though she had provoked his anger by
refitting his dismal chamber, had spent nothing in giving a less
rugged frown to her own.
The scanty worm-worn furniture, the wretched pallet, the poor attire
folded decently beside,--nothing save that inexpressible purity and
cleanliness which, in the lowliest hovel, a pure and maiden mind
gathers round it; nothing to distinguish the room of her whose
childhood had passed in courts from the but of the meanest daughter of
drudgery and toil! No,--he who had lavished the fortunes of his
father and big child into the grave of his idea--no--he saw nothing of
this self-forgetful penury--the diamond danced before him! He
approached the bed; and oh! the contrast of that dreary room and
peasant pallet to the delicate, pure, enchanting loveliness of the
sleeping inmate. The scanty covering left partially exposed the snow-
white neck and rounded shoulder; the face was pillowed upon the arm,
in an infantine grace; the face was slightly flushed, and the fresh
red lips parted into a smile,--for in her sleep the virgin dreamed,--a
happy dream! It was a sight to have touched a father's heart, to have
stopped his footstep, and hushed his breath into prayer. And call not
Adam hard--unnatural--that he was not then, as men far more harsh than
he--for the father at that moment was not in his breast, the human man
was gone--he himself, like his model, was a machine of iron!--his life
was his one idea!
"Wake, child, wake!" he said, in a loud but hollow voice. "Where is
the gold thou hast hidden from me? Wake! confess!"
Roused from her gracious dreams thus savagely, Sibyll started, and saw
the eager, darkened face of her father. Its expression was peculiar
and undefinable, for it was not threatening, angry, stern; there was a
vacancy in the eyes, a strain in the features, and yet a wild, intense
animation lighting and pervading all,--it was as the face of one
walking in his sleep, and, at the first confusion of waking, Sibyll
thought indeed that such was her father's state. But the impatience
with which he shook the arm he grasped, and repeated, as he opened
convulsively his other hand, "The gold, Sibyll, the gold! Why didst
thou hide it from me?" speedily convinced her that her father's mind
was under the influence of the prevailing malady that made all its
weakness and all its strength.
"My poor father!" she said pityingly, "wilt thou not leave thyself the
means whereby to keep strength and health for thine high hopes? Ah,
Father, thy Sibyll only hoarded her poor gains for thee!"
"The gold!" said Adam, mechanically, but in a softer voice,--"all--all
thou hast! How didst thou get it,--how?"
"By the labours of these hands. Ah, do not frown on me!"
"Thou--the child of knightly fathers--thou labour!" said Adam, an
instinct of his former state of gentle-born and high-hearted youth
flashing from his eyes. "It was wrong in thee!"
"Dost thou not labour too?"
"Ay, but for the world. Well, the gold!"
Sibyll rose, and modestly throwing over her form the old mantle which
lay on the pallet, passed to a corner of the room, and opening a
chest, took from it the gipsire, and held it out to her father.
"If it please thee, dear and honoured sir, so be it; and Heaven
prosper it in thy hands!"
Before Adam's clutch could close on the gipsire, a rude hand was laid
on his shoulder, the gipsire was snatched from Sibyll, and the gaunt,
half-clad form of old Madge interposed between the two.
"Eh, sir!" she said, in her shrill, cracked tone, "I thought when I
heard your door open, and your step hurrying down, you were after no
good deeds. Fie, master, fie! I have clung to you when all reviled,
and when starvation within and foul words without made all my hire;
for I ever thought you a good and mild man, though little better than
stark wode. But, augh! to rob your child thus, to leave her to starve
and pine! We old folks are used to it. Look round, look round! I
remember this chamber, when ye first came to your father's hall.
Saints of heaven! There stood the brave bed all rustling with damask
of silk; on those stone walls once hung fine arras of the Flemings,--a
marriage gift to my lady from Queen Margaret, and a mighty show to
see, and good for the soul's comforts, with Bible stories wrought on
it. Eh, sir! don't you call to mind your namesake, Master Adam, in
his brave scarlet hosen, and Madam Eve, in her bonny blue kirtle and
laced courtpie? and now--now look round, I say, and see what you have
brought your child to!"
"Hush! hush! Madge, bush!" cried Sibyll, while Adam gazed in evident
perturbation and awakening shame at the intruder, turning his eyes
round the room as she spoke, and heaving from time to time short, deep
sighs.
"But I will not hush," pursued the old woman; "I will say my say, for
I love ye both, and I loved my poor mistress who is dead and gone.
Ah, sir, groan! it does you good. And now when this sweet damsel is
growing up, now when you should think of saving a marriage dower for
her (for no marriage where no pot boils), do you rend from her the
little that she has drudged to gain!--She! Oh, out on your heart! And
for what,--for what, sir? For the neighbours to set fire to your
father's house, and the little ones to--"
"Forbear, woman!" cried Adam, in a voice of thunder; "forbear!
Heavens!" And he waved his hand as he spoke, with so unexpected a
majesty that Madge was awed into sudden silence, and, darting a look
of compassion at Sibyll, she hobbled from the room. Adam stood
motionless an instant; but when he felt his child's soft arms round
his neck, when he heard her voice struggling against tears, praying
him not to heed the foolish words of the old servant,--to take--to
take all, that it would be easy to gain more,--the ice of his
philosophy melted at once; the man broke forth, and, clasping Sibyll
to his heart, and kissing her cheek, her lips, her hands, he faltered
out, "No! no! forgive me! Forgive thy cruel father! Much thought has
maddened me, I think,--it has indeed! Poor child, poor Sibyll," and
he stroked her cheek gently, and with a movement of pathetic pity--
"poor child, thou art pale, and so slight and delicate! And this
chamber--and thy loneliness--and--ah! my life hath been a curse to
thee, yet I meant to bequeath it a boon to all!
"Father, dear father, speak not thus. You break my heart. Here,
here, take the gold--or rather, for thou must not venture out to
insult again, let me purchase with it what thou needest. Tell me,
trust me--"
"No!" exclaimed Adam, with that hollow energy by which a man resolves
to impose restraint on himself; "I will not, for all that science ever
achieved,--I will not lay this shame on my soul! Spend this gold on
thyself, trim this room, buy thee raiment,--all that thou needest,--I
order, I command it! And hark thee, if thou gettest more, hide it
from me, hide it well; men's desires are foul tempters! I never knew,
in following wisdom, that I had a vice. I wake and find myself a
miser and a robber!"
And with these words he fled from the girl's chamber, gained his own,
and locked the door.