8. CHAPTER VIII.
A receipt to regain the lost affections of a wife, which hath
never been known to fail in the most desperate cases
The captain was made large amends for the unpleasant minutes which
he passed in the conversation of his wife (and which were as few as he
could contrive to make them), by the pleasant meditations he enjoyed
when alone.
These meditations were entirely employed on Mr. Allworthy's fortune;
for, first, he exercised much thought in calculating, as well as he
could, the exact value of the whole: which calculations he often saw
occasion to alter in his own favour: and, secondly and chiefly, he
pleased himself with intended alterations in the house and gardens,
and in projecting many other schemes, as well for the improvement of
the estate as of the grandeur of the place: for this purpose he
applied himself to the studies of architecture and gardening, and read
over many books on both these subjects; for these sciences, indeed,
employed his whole time, and formed his only amusement. He at last
completed a most excellent plan: and very sorry we are, that it is not
in our power to present it to our reader, since even the luxury of the
present age, I believe, would hardly match it. It had, indeed, in a
superlative degree, the two principal ingredients which serve to
recommend all great and noble designs of this nature; for it
required an immoderate expense to execute, and a vast length of time
to bring it to any sort of perfection. The former of these, the
immense wealth of which the captain supposed Mr. Allworthy
possessed, and which he thought himself sure of inheriting, promised
very effectually to supply; and the latter, the soundness of his own
constitution, and his time of life, which was only what is called
middle-age, removed all apprehension of his not living to accomplish.
Nothing was wanting to enable him to enter upon the immediate
execution of this plan, but the death of Mr. Allworthy; in calculating
which he had employed much of his own algebra, besides purchasing
every book extant that treats of the value of lives, reversions, etc.
From all which he satisfied himself, that as he had every day a chance
of this happening, so had he more than an even chance of its happening
within a few years.
But while the captain was one day busied in deep contemplations of
this kind, one of the most unlucky as well as unseasonable accidents
happened to him. The utmost malice of Fortune could, indeed, have
contrived nothing so cruel, so mal-a-propos, so absolutely destructive
to all his schemes. In short, not to keep the reader in long suspense,
just at the very instant when his heart was exulting in meditations on
the happiness which would accrue to him by Mr. Allworthy's death, he
himself- died of an apoplexy.
This unfortunately befel the captain as he was taking his evening
walk by himself, so that nobody was present to lend him any
assistance, if indeed, any assistance could have preserved him. He
took, therefore, measure of that proportion of soil which was now
become adequate to all his future purposes, and he lay dead on the
ground, a great (though not a living) example of the truth of that
observation of Horace:
Tu secanda marmora
Locas sub ipsum funus; et sepulchri
Immemor, struis domos.
Which sentiment I shall thus give to the English reader: "You
provide the noblest materials for building, when a pickaxe and a spade
are only necessary: and build houses of five hundred by a hundred
feet, forgetting that of six by two."