第137章

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, the father, no doubt felt the loss of his eldest son, though far 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 Tallman Taylor's surviving friends, his mother was the one 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 Mt. 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!"