 | CHAPTER XI. Elinor Wyllys, or, The young folk of Longbridge |  |
11. CHAPTER XI.
“ `Whence this delay?—Along the crowded street
A funeral comes, and with unusual pomp.' ”
Rogers.
It is a common remark, that important events seldom
occur singly; and they seem indeed often to follow each
other with startling rapidity, like the sharpest flashes of
lightning and the loudest peals of thunder from the dark
clouds of a summer shower. On arriving in New York,
suddenly and dangerously ill, during the previous night, the
consequence of a stroke of the sun; having exposed himself
imprudently, by crossing the bay to Staten-Island for a dinner-party,
in an open boat, when the thermometer stood at 95° in
the shade. He was believed in imminent danger, and was
too ill to recognize his wife when she arrived. Miss Wyllys
and Elinor remained in town, at the urgent request of Jane,
who was in great distress; while Mr. Wyllys returned home
with Mrs. Stanley and Mary Van Alstyne.
After twenty-four hours of high delirium, the physicians
succeeded in subduing the worst symptoms; but the attack
took the character of a bilious fever, and the patient's recovery
was thought very doubtful from the first. Poor Jane
sat listlessly in the sick-room, looking on and weeping, unheeded
by her husband, who would allow no one but his
mother to come near him, not even his wife or his sistcrs;
he would not, indeed, permit his mother to leave his sight for
a moment, his eyes following every movement of her's with
the feverish restlessness of disease, and the helpless dependence
of a child. Jane mourned and wept; Adeline had at
least the merit of activity, and made herself useful as an
assistant nurse, in preparing whatever was needed by her
brother. These two young women, who had been so often
together in brilliant scenes of gaiety, were now, for the first
time, united under a roof of sorrow and suffering.
“That lovely young creature is a perfect picture of helpless
grief!” thought one of the physicians, as he looked at Jane.
For a week, Tallman Taylor continued in the same state.
Occasionally, as he talked with the wild incoherency of
delirium, he uttered sentences painful to hear, as they recalled
deeds of folly and vice; words passed his lips which
were distressing to all present, but which sunk deep into the
heart of the sick man's mother. At length he fell into a
stupor, and after lingering for a day or two in that state, he
expired, without having fully recovered his consciousness for
rich merchant lay on his bier; a career of selfish enjoyment
and guilty folly was suddenly closed by the grave.
Miss Agnes's heart sunk within her as she stood, silent,
beside the coffin of Jane's husband, remembering how lately
she had seen the young man, full of life and vigour, thoughtlessly
devoting the best energies of body and soul to culpable
self-indulgence. It is melancholy indeed, to record such a
close to such a life; and yet it is an event repeated in the
gay world with every year that passes. It is to be feared
there were companions of Tallman Taylor's, pursuing the
same course of wicked folly, which had been so suddenly
interrupted before their eyes, who yet never gave one serious
thought to the subject: if they paused, it was only for a
moment, while they followed their friend to the grave; from
thence hurrying again to the same ungrateful, reckless
abuse of life, and its highest blessings.
Jane was doubly afflicted at this moment; her baby
sickened soon after its return to town, and died only a few
days after her husband; the young father and his infant boy
were laid in the same grave.
Jane herself was ill for a time, and when she partially
recovered, was very anxious to accompany Miss Agnes and
Elinor to Wyllys-Roof — a spot where she had passed so
many peaceful hours, that she longed again to seek shelter
there. She had loved her husband, as far as it was in her
nature to love; but her attachments were never very strong
or very tender, and Tallman Taylor's neglect and unkindness
during the past year, had in some measure chilled her
first feelings for him. She now, however, looked upon herself
as the most afflicted of human beings; the death of her
baby had indeed touched the keenest chord in her bosom—
she wept over it bitterly.
Adeline thought more seriously at the time of her brother's
death than she had ever done before; and even Emma
Taylor's spirits were sobered for a moment. Mr. Taylor,
less than many parents would have done; he was not so
much overwhelmed by grief, but what he could order a very
handsome funeral, and project an expensive marble monument—a
fashionable tomb-stone of Italian marble. He was
soon able to resume all his usual pursuits, and even the
tenor of his thoughts seemed little changed, for his mind was
as much occupied as usual with Wall-Street affairs, carrying
out old plans, or laying new schemes of profit. He had
now been a rich man for several years, yet he was in fact
less happy than when he began his career, and had everything
to look forward to. Still he continued the pursuits of
business, for without the exciting fears and hopes of loss and
gain, life would have appeared a monotonous scene to him;
leisure could only prove a burthen, for it would be merely
idleness, since he had no tastes to make it either pleasant or
useful. His schemes of late had not been so brilliantly successful
as at the commencement of his course of speculation;
fortune seemed coquetting with her old favourite; he had
recently made several investments which had proved but
indifferent in their results. Not that he had met with serious
losses; on the contrary, he was still a gainer at the game of
speculation; but the amount was very trifling. He had
rapidly advanced to a certain distance on the road to wealth,
but it now seemed as if he could not pass that point; the
brilliant dreams in which he had indulged were only half-realized.
There seemed no good way of accounting for this
pause in his career, but such was the fact; he was just as
shrewd and calculating, just as enterprising now as he had
been ten years before, but certainly he was not so successful.
On commencing an examination of his son's affairs, he
found that Tallman Taylor's extravagance and folly had left
his widow and child worse than penniless, for he had died
heavily in debt. Returning one afternoon from Wall-Street,
Mr. Taylor talked over this matter with his wife. Of all
who most deeply felt his death; she was heart-stricken, and
shed bitter tears over the young man.
“There is nothing left, Hester, for the child or her mother,”
said the merchant, sitting down in a rocking-chair in his
wife's room. “All gone; all wasted; five times the capital
I had to begin with. I have just made an investment, of
which I shall give the profits to Tallman's lady; four lots
that were offered to me last week; if that turns out well, I
shall go on, and it may perhaps make up a pretty property
for the child, in time.'
“Oh, husband, don't talk to me about such things now; I
can't think of anything but my poor boy's death!'
“It was an unexpected calamity, Hester,” said the father,
with one natural look of sorrow; “but we cannot always
escape trouble in this world.”
“I feel as if we had not done our duty by him!” said the
poor mother.
“Why not?—he was very handsomely set up in business,”
remonstrated Mr. Taylor.
“I was not thinking of money,” replied his wife, shaking
her head. “But it seems as if we only took him away from
my brother's, in the country, just to throw him in the way
of temptation as he was growing up, and let him run wild,
and do everything he took a fancy to.”
“We did no more than other parents, in taking him home
with us, to give him a better education than he could have
got at your brother's.”
“Husband, husband!—it is but a poor education that don't
teach a child to do what is right! I feel as if we had never
taught him what we ought to. I did not know he had got
so many bad ways until lately; and now that I do know it,
my heart is broken!”
“Tallman was not so bad as you make him out. He was
no worse than a dozen other young gentlemen I could name
at this very minute.”
“Oh, I would give everything we are worth to bring him
back!—but it is too late—too late!”
“No use in talking now, Hester.”
“We ought to have taken more pains with him. He
didn't know the danger he was in, and we did, or we ought
to have known it. Taking a young man of a sudden, from
a quiet, minister's family in the country, like my brother's,
and giving him all the money he wanted, and turning him
out into temptation.—Oh, it's dreadful!”
“All the pains in the world, Hester, won't help a young
man, unless he chooses himself. What could I do, or you
either? Didn't we send him to school and to college?—didn't
we give him an opportunity of beginning life with a fine
property, and married to one of the handsomest girls in the
country, daughter of one of the best families, too? What
more can you do for a young man? He must do the rest
himself; you can't expect to keep him tied to your apronstring
all his life.”
“Oh, no; but husband, while he was young we ought to
have taken more pains to teach him not to think so much
about the ways of the world. There are other things besides
getting money and spending money, to do; it seems to me
now as if money had only helped my poor boy to his ruin!”
“Your notions are too gloomy, Mrs. Taylor. Such calamities
will happen, and we should not let them weigh us
down too much.”
“If I was to live a hundred years longer, I never could
feel as I did before our son's death. Oh, to think what a
beautiful, innocent child he was twenty years ago, this time!”
“You shouldn't let your mind run so much on him that's
gone. It's unjust to the living.”
The poor woman made no answer, but wept bitterly for
some time.
“It's my only comfort now,” she said, at length, “to think
that we have learned wisdom by what's passed. As long
as I live, day and night, I shall labour to teach our younger
so much about riches.”
“Well, I must say, Hester, if you think all poor people
are saints, I calculate you make a mistake.”
“I don't say that, husband; but it seems to me that we
have never yet thought enough of the temptations of riches,
more especially to young people, to young men—above all,
when it comes so sudden as it did to our poor boy. What
good did money ever do him?—it only brought him into
trouble!”
“Because Tallman didn't make the most of his opportunities,
that is no reason why another should not. If I had
wasted money as he did, before I could afford it, I never
should have made a fortune either. The other boys will do
better, I reckon; they will look more to business than he did,
and turn out rich men themselves.”
“It isn't the money!—it isn't the money I am thinking
of!” exclaimed the poor mother, almost in despair at her
husband's blindness to her feelings.
“What is it then you take so much to heart?”
“It's remembering that we never warned our poor child;
we put him in the way of temptation, where he only learned
to think everything of the world and its ways; we didn't
take pains enough to do our duty, as parents, by him!”
“Well, Hester, I must say you are a very unreasonable
lady!” exclaimed Mr. Taylor, who was getting impatient
under his wife's observations. “One would think it was all
my fault; do you mean to say it was wrong in me to grow
rich?”
“I am afraid it would have been better for us, and for our
children, if you hadn't made so much money,” replied the
wife. “The happiest time of our life was the first ten years
after we were married, when we had enough to be comfortable,
and we didn't care so much about show. I am sure
money hasn't made me happy; I don't believe it can make
anybody happy!”
Mr. Taylor listened in amazement; but his straightforward,
quiet wife, had been for several years gradually coming to
the opinion she had just expressed, and the death of her
eldest son had affected her deeply. The merchant, finding
that he was not very good at consolation, soon changed the
conversation; giving up the hope of lessening the mother's
grief, or of bringing her to what he considered more rational
views of the all-importance of wealth.
As soon as Jane felt equal to the exertion, she accompanied
Miss Agnes and Elinor to Wyllys-Roof. During the three
years of her married life she had never been there, having
passed most of the time either at Charleston or New Orleans.
Many changes had occurred in that short period; changes
of outward circumstances, and of secret feeling. Her last
visit to Wyllys-Roof had taken place just after her return
from France, when she was tacitly engaged to young Taylor;
at a moment when she had been more gay, more brilliantly
handsome than at any other period of her life. Now, she
returned there, a weeping, mourning widow, wretchedly
depressed in spirits, and feeble in health. She was still very
lovely, however; the elevated style of her beauty was such,
that it appeared finer under the shadow of grief, than in the
sunshine of gaiety; and it is only beauty of the very highest
order which will bear this test. Her deep mourning dress
was in harmony with her whole appearance and expression;
and it was not possible to see her at this moment, without
being struck by her exceeding loveliness. Jane was only
seen by the family, however, and one or two very intimate
friends; she remained entirely in the privacy of her own
room, where Elinor was generally at her side, endeavouring
to soothe her cousin's grief, by the gentle balm of sympathy
and affection.
| CHAPTER XI. Elinor Wyllys, or, The young folk of Longbridge | |