Ernest Linwood Part 40

Again a thunder-gust swept over his countenance. I ought to have kept it, I ought to have antic.i.p.ated a moment like this, but my judgment was obscure by fear.

"You destroyed it!"

"Yes; and well might I dread a disclosure which has brought on a scene so humbling to us both. Let it not continue; you have heard from me nothing but plain and holy truth; I have nothing to say in my defence.

Had I acted differently, you yourself would despise and condemn me."

"Had you come to me as you ought to have done, asking my counsel and a.s.sistance, I would have met the wretch who sought to beguile you; I would have detected the imposter, if you indeed believed the tale; I would have saved you from the shame of a public exposure, and myself the misery, the tortures of this hour."

"Did he not threaten your life and his own? Did he not appeal to me in the most solemn and awful manner not to betray him?"

"You might have known the man who urged you to deceive your husband to be a villain."

"Alas! alas! I know him to be a villain; and yet he is my father."

"He is not your father! I know he is not. I would swear it before a court of justice. I would swear it before the chancery of the skies!"

"Would to heaven that your words were true. Would to heaven my being were not derived from such a polluted source. But I know too well that he _is_ my father; and that he has entailed on me everlasting sorrow.

You admit, that if he is an impostor, I was myself deceived. You recall your fearful accusation."

"My G.o.d!" he exclaimed, clasping his hands, and looking wildly upwards, "I know not what to believe. I would give worlds, were they mine, for the sweet confidence forever lost! The cloud was pa.s.sing away from my soul. Suns.h.i.+ne, hope, love, joy, were there. I was wrapped in the dreams of Elysium! Why have you so cruelly awakened me? If you had deceived me once, why not go on; deny the accusation; fool, dupe me,--do any thing but convince me that where I have so blindly wors.h.i.+pped, I have been so treacherously betrayed."

I pitied him,--from the bottom of my soul I pitied him, his countenance expressed such exceeding bitter anguish. I saw that pa.s.sion obscured his reason; that while under its dominion he was incapable of perceiving the truth. I remembered the warning accents of his mother: "You have no right to complain." I remembered her Christian injunction, "to endure all;" and my own promise, with G.o.d's help, to do it. All at once, it seemed as if my guardian angel stood before me, with a countenance of celestial sweetness shaded by sorrow; and I trembled as I gazed. I had bowed my shoulder to the cross; but as soon as the burden galled and oppressed me, I had hurled it from me, exclaiming, "it was greater than I could bear." I _had_ deceived, though not betrayed him. I _had_ put myself in the power of a villain, and exposed myself to the tongue of slander. I had expected, dreaded his anger; and was it not partly just?

As these thoughts darted through my mind with the swiftness and power of lightning, love returned in all its living warmth, and anguish in proportion to the wound it had received. I was borne down irresistibly by the weight of my emotions. My knees bent under me. I bowed my face on the sofa; and tears, hot and fast as tropic rain, gushed from my eyes. I wept for him even more than myself,--wept for the "dark-spotted flower"

twined with the roses of love.

I heard him walking the room with troubled steps; and every step sounded as mournful to me as the earth-fall on the coffin-lid. Their echo was scarcely audible on the soft, yielding carpet; yet they seemed loud and heavy to my excited ear. Then I heard him approach the sofa, and stop, close to the spot where I knelt. My heart almost ceased beating; when he suddenly knelt at my side, and put his arms around me.

"Gabriella!" said he, "if I have done you wrong, may G.o.d forgive me; but I never can forgive myself."

Accents of love issuing from the grave could hardly have been more thrilling or unexpected. I turned, and leaning my head on his shoulder, I felt myself drawn closer and closer to the heart from which I believed myself for ever estranged. I entreated his forgiveness for having deceived him. I told him, for I believed it then, that the purity of the motive did not justify the act; and I promised in the most solemn manner never again, under any circ.u.mstances, to bind myself to do any thing unknown to him, or even to act spontaneously without his knowledge. In the rapture of reconciliation, I was willing to give any pledge as a security for love, without realizing that jealousy was a Shylock, exacting the fulfilment of the bond,--the pound of flesh "nearest the heart." Yes, more exacting still, for _he_ paused, when forbidden to spill the red life-drops, and dropped the murderous knife.

And Ernest,--with what deep self-abas.e.m.e.nt he acknowledged the errors into which blind pa.s.sion had led him. With what anguish he reflected on the disgraceful charge he had brought against me. Yes; even with tears, he owned his injustice and madness, and begged me to forget and forgive.

"What have I done?" he cried, when, after our pa.s.sionate emotions having subsided, we sat hand in hand, still pale and trembling, but subdued and grateful, like two mariners escaped from wreck, watching the billows roaring back from the sh.o.r.e. "What have I done, that this curse should be entailed upon me? In these paroxysms of madness, I am no more master of myself than the maniac who hurls his desperate hand in the face of Omnipotence. Reason has no power,--love no influence. Dark clouds rush across my mind, shutting out the light of truth. My heart freezes, as in a wintry storm. O, Gabriella! you can have no conception of what I suffer, while I writhe in the tempter's grasp. It is said G.o.d never allows man to be tempted beyond his powers of resistance. I dare not question the word of the Most High, but in the hour of temptation I feel like an infant contending with the Philistine giant. But, oh! the joy, the rapture when the paroxysm is past,--when light dawns on the darkness, when warmth comes meltingly over the ice and snow, when reason resumes its sway, and love its empire,--oh! my beloved! it is life renewed--it is a resurrection from the dead,--it is Paradise regained in the heart."

Those who have floated along on a smooth, tranquil tide, clear of the breakers and whirlpools and rocks, or whose bark has lain on stagnant waters, on which a green and murky shade is beginning to gather, with no breeze to fan them or to curl the dull and lifeless pool, will accuse me of exaggeration, and say such scenes never occurred in the actual experience of wedded life; that I am writing a romance, instead of a reality.

I answer them, that I am drawing the sketch as faithfully as the artist, who transfers the living form to the canvas; that as it is scarcely possible to exaggerate the dying agonies of the malefactor transfixed by the dagger, and writhing in protracted tortures, that the painter may immortalize himself by the death-throes on which he is gazing; so the agonies of him,

"Who doubts, yet does, suspects, yet fondly loves,"

cannot be described in colors too deep and strong. Prometheus bound to the rock, with the beak of the vulture in his bleeding breast, suffering daily renewing pangs, his wounds healed only to be torn open afresh, is an emblem of the victim of that vulture pa.s.sion, which the word of G.o.d declares to be cruel and insatiable as the grave.

No; my pen is too weak to describe either the terrors of the storm or the halcyon peace, the heavenly joy that succeeded. I yielded to the exquisite bliss of reconciliation, without daring to give one glance to the future. I had chosen my destiny. I had said, "Let me be loved,--I ask no more!"

I was loved, even to the madness of idolatry. My prayer was granted.

Then let me "lay my hand upon my mouth, and my mouth in the dust." I had rather be the stormy petrel, whose wings dip into ocean's foaming brine, than the swallow nestling under the barn-eaves of the farmer, or in the chimney of the country homestead,--

"Better to stand the lightning's shock, Than moulder piecemeal on the rock."

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

It was fortunate for me that Margaret was absent during this exciting scene. When she returned, she was too much occupied with relating the pleasures she had enjoyed to think of what might have occurred in her absence.

"I am dying with impatience," she cried, "perfectly consuming with curiosity. Here is a letter from my mother, in which she says a gentleman, a particular friend of mine, is coming to the city, and that she has requested him to take charge of me back to Boston. She does not mention his name, and I have not the most remote idea who he is. She says she is very happy that her wild girl should be escorted by a person of so much dignity and worth. Dignity! I expect he is one of the ex-presidents or wise statesmen, whom Mrs. Linwood has recommended to my patronage. I have a great admiration for great men, large, tall men, men whose heads you can distinguish in a crowd and see in a distant procession. They look as if they could protect one in the day of trouble."

"Do _you_ ever think of such a day, Margaret?"

"Sometimes I do. I think more than you give me credit for. I can think more in one minute than you slow folks can in a week. Who can this be? I remember a description I admire very much. It is in some old poem of Scott's, I believe,--

'Bold, firm, and high, his stature tall,'

did something, looked like something, I have forgotten what. I know it was something grand, however."

"You must be thinking of Mr. Regulus," said I, laughing, as memory brought before me some of his inimitable _quackeries_. "He is the tallest gentleman I have ever seen, and though not very graceful, has a very imposing figure, especially in a crowd."

"I think Mr. Regulus one of the finest looking men I ever saw," cried Madge. "He has a head very much like Webster's, and his eyebrows are exactly like his. If he were in a conspicuous station, every one would be raving about his mountainous head and cavernous eyes and majestic figure. He is worth a dozen of _some_ people, who shall be nameless. I have no doubt he will be president of the United States, one of these days."

"I never heard you make so sensible a remark, Margaret. I thought you were amusing yourself with my respected teacher. I am glad you appreciate his uncommon merits."

Madge laughed very loud, but she actually blushed. The first symptom of womanhood I had ever seen her exhibit! It was a strange phenomenon, and I marvelled what it could mean.

To my unutterable astonishment and delight, a few evenings after, my quondam preceptor was ushered into the parlor; and strangely looked his tall, large figure in the midst of the oriental lightness and splendor through which it moved. After greeting me with the most heart-felt feeling, and Madge with a half shy, half dignified manner, he gazed around him with the simplicity and wondering admiration of a child. He was probably comparing the beautiful drapery, that seemed like the azure robe of night with its stars of glory gleaming through, with the plain green curtains that shaded the windows of the academy, the graceful and luxurious divan with the high-backed chair which was my village throne.

"Beautiful, charming!" he exclaimed, rubbing his hands slowly and gently. "You remind me of the queen of a fairy palace. I shall not dare to call you my child or little girl again. Scherezade or Fatima will seem more appropriate."

"Oh no, Mr. Regulus! I had rather hear you call me child, than any thing else in the world. It carries me back to the dear old academy, the village green, the elm trees' shade, and all the sweet memories of youth."

"One would think you had a long backward journey to take, from the saddened heights of experience," said Ernest; and there was that indescribable something in his voice and countenance, which I had learned too well to interpret, that told me he was not pleased with my remark. He did not want me to have a memory further back than my first meeting with him,--a hope with which he was not intertwined.

"You may call _me_ child, Mr. Regulus, as much as you please," cried Madge, her eyes sparkling with unusual brilliancy. "I wish I were a little school-girl again, privileged to romp as much as I pleased. When I did any thing wrong then, it was always pa.s.sed over. 'Oh! she's but a child, she will get sobered when she is grown.' Now if I laugh a little louder and longer than other people, they stare and lift up their eyes, and I have no doubt pray for me as a castaway from grace and favor."

"Margaret!" said I, reproachfully.

"There! exactly as I described. Every sportive word I utter, it is Margaret, or Madge, or Meg, in such a grave, rebuking tone!"

"Perhaps it is only when you jest on serious subjects, that you meet a kindly check," observed Mr. Regulus, with grave simplicity; "there are so many legitimate themes of mirth, so many light frameworks, round which the flowers of wit and fancy can twine, it is better to leave the majestic temple of religion, untouched by the hand of levity."

"I did not intend to speak profanely," said Margaret, hastily,--and the color visibly deepened on her cheek; "neither did I know that you were a religious character, Mr. Regulus. I thought you were a very good sort of man, and all that; but I did not think you had so much of the minister about you."

"It is a great pity, Miss Margaret, that interest in religion should be considered a minister's exclusive privilege. But I hope I have not said any thing wounding. It was far from my intention. I am a sad blunderer, however, as Gabriella knows full well."

I was charmed with my straightforward, simple, and excellent teacher. I had never seen him appear to such advantage. He had on an entirely new suit of the finest black broadcloth, that fitted him quite _a la mode_; a vest of the most dazzling whiteness; and his thick black hair had evidently been under the smoothing hands of a fas.h.i.+onable barber. His head seemed much reduced in size; while his ma.s.sy, intellectual forehead displayed a bolder sweep of outline, relieved of the shadows that obscured its phrenological beauty.