Ernest Linwood Part 44

CHAPTER XLII.

Once more at Grandison Place! Once more on the breezy height which commanded the loveliest valley creation ever formed! Light, bloom, joy came back to eye, cheek, and heart, as I hailed again the scene where the day-spring of love dawned on my life.

"G.o.d made the country."

Yes! I felt this truth in every bounding vein. "G.o.d made the country,"--with its rich sweep of verdant plains, its blue winding streams, shedding freshness and murmuring music through the smiling fields; its silver dews, its golden sunsets, and all its luxuriance and greenness and bloom. The black shadow of the _Tombs_ did not darken this Eden of my youth.

Mrs. Linwood and Edith--I was with them once more. Mrs. Linwood, in her soft twilight robe of silver grey; and Edith, with her wealth of golden locks, and eye of heaven's own azure.

"You must not leave us again," said Mrs. Linwood, as she clasped us both in her maternal arms. "There are but few of us, and we should not be separated. Absence is the shadow of death, and falls coldly on the heart."

She glanced towards Edith, whose beautiful face was paler and thinner than it was wont to be. She had pined for the brother of whom I had robbed her; for the world offered her nothing to fill the void left in the depths of her loving heart. We were all happier together. We cannot give ourselves up to the dominion of an exclusive pa.s.sion, whatever it may be, without an outrage to nature, which sooner or later revenges the wrong inflicted. With all my romantic love for Ernest, I had often sighed for the companions.h.i.+p of one of my own s.e.x; and now, restored to Edith, whom I had always regarded a little lower than the angels, I felt that if love was more rapturous than friends.h.i.+p, it was not more divine.

They knew that I had suffered. They had sympathized with me, pitied me,--(if Mrs. Linwood blamed me for imprudence, she never expressed it); and I felt that they loved me better for having pa.s.sed under the cloud.

There was no allusion made to the awful events which were present in the minds of all, on our first reunion. If Mrs. Linwood noticed, that after the glow of excitement faded from my cheek it was paler than it was wont to be, she did not tell me so, but her kiss was more tender, her glance more kind. There was something in her mild, expressive eyes, that I translated thus:--

"Thank G.o.d that another hand than Ernest's has stolen the rose from thy cheek of youth. Better, far better to be humbled by a father's crimes, than blighted by a husband's jealousy."

This evening reminded me so much of the first I ever pa.s.sed with Ernest.

He asked Edith for the music of her harp; and I sat in the recess of the window, in the shadow of the curtains, through whose transparent drapery the moonbeams stole in and kissed my brow. Ernest came and sat down beside me, and my hand was clasped in his. As the sweet strains floated round us, they seemed to mingle with the moonlight, and my spirit was borne up on waves of brightness and melody. Always before, when listening to Edith's angelic voice, I had wished for the same enchanting power. I had felt that thus I could sing, I could play, had art developed the gifts of nature, only with deeper pa.s.sion and sensibility; but now I listened without conscious desire,--pa.s.sive, happy, willing to receive, without desiring to impart. I felt like the pilgrim who, after a sultry day of weariness, pauses by a cool spring, and, laying himself down beneath its gus.h.i.+ng, suffers the stream to flow over him,--till, penetrated by their freshness, his soul seems a fountain of living waters. Oh! the divine rapture of repose, after restlessness and conflict! I had pa.s.sed the breakers. Henceforth my life would be calm and placid as the beams that illumined the night.

And now I am tempted to lay down the pen. I would not weary thee, friend of my lonely hours, whoever thou art, by a repet.i.tion of scenes which show how poor and weak are the strongest human resolutions, when temptations a.s.sail and pa.s.sions rise with the swell and the might of the stormy billows. But if I record weaknesses and errors, such as seldom sadden the annals of domestic life, it is that G.o.d may be glorified in the humiliation of man. It is that the light of the sun of righteousness may be seen to arise with healing in his beams, while the mists of error and the clouds of pa.s.sion are left rolling below.

Yes! We were all happy for a while, and in the midst of such pure, reviving influences, I became blooming and elastic as a mountain maid.

Dr. Harlowe was the same kind, genial, warm-hearted friend. Mr. Regulus, the same--no, he was changed,--improved, softened still more than when he surprised me by his graces, in my metropolitan home. He looked several years younger, and a great deal handsomer.

Had Margaret wrought this improvement? Had she indeed supplanted me in my tutor's guileless heart? I inquired of Edith after the wild creature, whom I suspected some secret influence was beginning to tame.

"Oh! you have no idea how Madge is improved, since her visit to you,"

she answered. "She sometimes talks sensibly for five minutes at a time, and I have actually caught her singing and playing a sentimental air.

Mamma says if she were in love with a man of sense and worth, he might make of her a most invaluable character."

"Mr. Regulus, for instance!" said I.

Edith laughed most musically.

"Mr. Regulus in love! that would be a farce."

"I have seen that farce performed," said Dr. Harlowe, who happened to come in at that moment, and caught her last words. "I have seen Mr.

Regulus as much in love as--let me see," glancing at me, "as Richard Clyde."

Much as I liked Dr. Harlowe I felt angry with him for an allusion, which always called the cloud to Ernest's brow, and the blush to my cheek.

"Do tell me the object of his romantic pa.s.sion?" cried Edith, who seemed excessively amused at the idea.

"Am I telling tales out of school?" asked the doctor, looking merrily at me. "Do you not know the young enchantress, who has turned all the heads in our town, not excepting the shoemaker's apprentice and the tailor's journeyman? Poor Mr. Regulus could not escape the fascination. The old story of Beauty and the Beast,--only Beauty was inexorable this time."

"Gabriella!" exclaimed Edith, with unutterable astonishment; "he always called her his child. Who would have believed it? Why, Gabriella, how many victims have your chariot wheels of conquest rolled over?"

"I am afraid if _I_ had not been a married man, she would have added me to the number," said the doctor, with much gravity. "I am not certain that Mrs. Harlowe is not jealous, in secret, of my public devotion."

Who would believe that light words like these, carelessly uttered, and forgotten with the breath that formed them, should rankle like arrows in a breast where reason was enthroned? But it was even so. The allusion to Richard Clyde, the revelation of Mr. Regulus' romantic attachment, even the playful remarks of Dr. Harlowe relative to his wife's jealousy, were gall and wormwood, embittering the feelings of Ernest. He frowned, bit his lip, rose, and walked into the piazza. His mother's eyes followed him with that look which I had so often seen before our marriage, and which I now understood too well. I made an involuntary movement to follow him, but her glance commanded me to remain. The doctor, who was in a merry mood, continued his sportive remarks, without appearing to notice the darkened countenance and absence of Ernest. I talked and smiled too at his good-humored sallies, that he might not perceive my anxious, wounded feelings.

A little while after Mr. Regulus called, and Ernest accompanied him to the parlor door with an air of such freezing coldness, I wonder it did not congeal his warm and unsuspecting heart. And there Ernest stood with folded arms, leaning back against the wall just within the door, stern and silent, casting a dark shadow on my soul. Poor Mr. Regulus,--now he knew he had been my lover, he would scarcely permit him to be my friend.

"Oh!" thought I, blus.h.i.+ng to think how moody and strange he must seem to others,--"surely my happiness is based on sand, since the transient breath of others can shake it from its foundation. If it depended on myself, I would guard every look, word, and action, with never sleeping vigilance;--but how can I be secured against the casual sayings of others, words unmeaning as a child's, and as devoid of harm? I might as well make cables of water and walls of foam, as build up a fabric of domestic felicity without confidence as the foundation stone."

As these thoughts arose in my mind, my heart grew hard and rebellious.

The golden chain of love clanked and chafed against the bosom it attempted to imprison.

"I will not," I repeated to myself, "alienate from me, by coolness and gloom, the friends who have loved me from my orphan childhood. Let him be morose and dark, if he will; I will not follow his example. I will not be the slave of his mad caprices."

"No," whispered _the angel over my right shoulder_, "but you will be the forbearing, gentle wife, who promised to _endure all_, knowing his infirmity, before you breathed your wedded vows. You are loved beyond the sober reality of common life. Your prayer is granted. You dare not murmur. You have held out your cup for the red wine. There is fire in its glow. You cannot turn it into water now. There is no divine wanderer on earth to reverse the miracle of Cana. 'Peace' is woman's watchword, and heaven's holiest, latest legacy."

As I listened to the angel's whisper, the voices of those around me entered not my ear. I was as far away from them as if pillowed on the clouds, whose silver edges crinkled round the moon.

As soon as our guests had departed, Ernest went up to Edith, and putting his arm round her, drew her to the harp.

"Sing for me, Edith, for my spirit is dark and troubled. You alone have power to soothe it. You are the David of the haunted Saul."

She looked up in his face suddenly, and leaned her head on his shoulder.

Perhaps at that moment she felt the joy of being to him all that she had been, before he had known and loved me. He had appealed to her, in the hour of darkness. He had pa.s.sed me by, as though I were not there. He sat down close to her as she played, so close that her fair ringlets swept against his cheek; and as she sang, she turned towards him with such a loving smile,--such a sweet, happy expression,--just as she used to wear! I always loved to hear Edith sing; but now my spirit did not harmonize with the strains. Again a stinging sense of injustice quickened the pulsations of my heart. Again I asked myself, "What had I done, that he should look coldly on me, pa.s.s me with averted eye, and seek consolation from another?"

I could not sit still and listen, for I was left _alone_. I rose and stole from the room,--stole out into the dewy night, under the heavy, drooping shade-boughs, and sat down wearily, leaning my head against the hard, rough bark. Never had I seen a more enchanting night. A thin mist rose from the bosom of the valley and hovered like a veil of silvery gauze over its rich depth of verdure. It floated round the edge of the horizon, subduing its outline of dazzling blue, and rolled off among the hills in soft, yet darkening convolutions. And high above me, serene and holy, the moon leaned over a ledge of slate-colored clouds, whose margin was plated with her beams, and looked pensively and solemnly on the pale and sad young face uplifted to her own. The stilly dews slept at my feet. They hung tremulously on the branches over my head, and sparkled on the spring blossoms that gave forth their inmost perfume to the atmosphere of night. Every thing was so calm, so peaceful, so intensely lovely,--and yet there was something deadly and chilling mingled with the celestial beauty of the scene. The lace clung in damp folds to my bosom. The hair fell heavy with moisture against my temples.

I heard a step softly crus.h.i.+ng the gra.s.s near me. I did not look up, for I thought it was the step of Ernest; but my pulse throbbed with a quickened motion.

"Gabriella, my child, you must not sit here in this chill damp evening air."

It was Mrs. Linwood, who took me by the hand and drew me from the seat.

It was not Ernest. He had not missed me. He had not feared for me the chill dews of night.

"I do not feel cold," I answered, with a slight shudder.

"Come in," she repeated, leading me to the house with gentle force.

"Not there," I said, shrinking from the open door of the parlor, through which I could see Ernest, with his head leaning on both hands, while his elbows rested on the back of Edith's chair. She was still singing, and the notes of her voice, sweet as they were, like the odor of the night-flowers, had something languis.h.i.+ng and oppressive. I hurried by, and ascended the stairs. Mrs. Linwood followed me to the door of my apartment, then taking me by both hands, she looked me full in the face, with a mildly reproachful glance.

"O, Gabriella! if your spirit sink thus early, if you cannot bear the burden you have a.s.sumed, in the bright morning hour of love, how will you be able to support it in the sultry noon of life, or in the weariness of its declining day? You are very young,--you have a long pilgrimage before you. If you droop now, where will be the strength to sustain in a later, darker hour?"

"I shall not meet it," I answered, trying in vain to repress the rising sob. "I do not wish a long life, unless it be happier than it now promises to be."

"What! so young, and so hopeless! Where is the strength and vitality of your love? The fervor and steadfastness of your faith? My child, you have borne nothing yet, and you promised to hope all and endure all. Be strong, be patient, be hopeful, and you shall yet reap your reward."

"Alas! my mother, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."