Ernest Linwood Part 7

"_Her_ mother is not dying. How can she sympathize with me? She is the favorite of Him who is crus.h.i.+ng me beneath the iron hand of His wrath."

Thus impious were my thoughts, but no one read them on my pale, drooping brow. Mrs. Linwood praised my filial devotion, my fort.i.tude and heroism.

Dr. Harlowe had told her how I had braved the terrors of midnight solitude through the lonely woods, to bring him to a servant's bedside.

Richard Clyde had interested her in my behalf. She told me I had many friends for one so young and so retiring. Oh! she little knew how coldly fell the words of praise on the dull ear of despair. I smiled at the thought of needing kindness and protection when _she_ was gone. As if it were possible for me to survive my mother!

Had she not herself told me that grief did not kill? But I believed her not.

Do you ask if I felt no curiosity then, about the mystery of my parentage? I had been looking forward to the time when I should be deemed old enough to know my mother's history of which my imagination had woven such a web of mystery and romance,--when I should hear something of that father whose memory was curtained by such an impenetrable veil. But now it mattered not. Had I known that the blood of kings was in my veins, it would not have wakened one throb of ambition, kindled one ray of joy. I cared not for my lineage or kindred.

I would not have disturbed the serenity that seemed settling on my mother's departing spirit, by one question relative to her past life, for the wealth of the Indies.

She gave to Mrs. Linwood a ma.n.u.script which she had written while I was at school, and which was to have been committed to Peggy's care;--for surely Peggy, the strong, the robust, unwearied Peggy, would survive her, the frail, delicate, and stricken one!

She told me this the night before she died, when at her own request I was left alone with her. I knew it was for the last time, but I had been looking forward steadily to this hour,--looking as I said before, as the iron-bound prisoner to the revolving knife, and like him I was outwardly calm. I knelt beside her and looked on her shadowy form, her white, transparent skin, her dark, still l.u.s.trous, though sunken eyes, till it seemed that her spirit, almost disembodied, mingled mysteriously with mine, in earnest of a divine communion.

"I thank G.o.d, my Gabriella," she said, laying her hand blessingly on my bowed head, "that you submit to His holy will, in a spirit of childlike submission. I thank Him for raising up such a friend as Mrs. Linwood, when friend and comforter seemed taken from us. Love her, confide in her, be grateful to her, my child. Be grateful to G.o.d for sending her to soothe my dying hours with promises of protection and love for you, my darling, my child, my poor orphan Gabriella."

"Oh mother," I cried, "I do not submit,--I cannot,--I cannot! Dreadful thoughts are in my heart--oh, my mother, G.o.d is very terrible. Leave me not alone to meet his awful judgments. Put your arms round me, my mother, and let me lie close to your bosom, I will not hurt you, I will lie so gently there. Death cannot separate us, when we cling so close together. Leave me not alone in the world, so cold, so dark, so dreary,--oh, leave me not alone!" Thus I clung to her, in the abandonment of despair, while words rushed unhidden from my lips.

"Oh, my Gabriella, my child, my poor smitten lamb!" she cried, and I felt her heart fluttering against mine like a dying bird. "Sorrow has bereft you of reason,--you know not what you say. Gabriella, it is an awful thing to resist the Almighty G.o.d. Submission is the heritage of dust and ashes. _I_ have been proud and rebellious, smarting under a sense of unmerited chastis.e.m.e.nt and wrong. Because man was false, I thought G.o.d unjust,--but now, on this dying bed, the illusion of pa.s.sion is dispelled, and I see Him as He is, longsuffering, compa.s.sionate, and indulgent, in all his loving-kindness and tender mercy, strong to deliver and mighty to save. I feel that I have needed all the discipline of sorrow through which I have pa.s.sed, to bring my proud and troubled soul, a sin-sick, life weary wanderer, to my Father's footstool. What matters now, my Gabriella, that I have trod a th.o.r.n.y path, if it lead to heaven at last? How short the journey,--how long the rest! Oh, beloved child, bow to the hand that smites thee, for the stubborn will _must_ be broken. Wait not, like me, till it be ground into dust."

She paused breathless and exhausted, but I answered not. Low sobs came gaspingly from my bosom, on which a mountain of ice seemed freezing.

"If we could die together," she continued, with increasing solemnity, "if I could bear you in these feeble arms to the mercy-seat of G.o.d, and know you were safe from temptation, and sorrow, and sin, the bitterness of death would be pa.s.sed. It is a fearful thing to live, my child, far more fearful than to die,--but life is the trial of faith, and death the victory."

"And now," she added, "before my spirit wings its upward flight, receive my dying injunction. If you live to years of womanhood, and your heart awakens to love,--as, alas, for woman's destiny it will,--then read my life and sad experience, and be warned by my example. Mrs. Linwood is intrusted with the ma.n.u.script, blotted with your mother's tears. Oh, Gabriella, by all your love and reverence for the memory of the dead,--by the scarlet dye that can be made white as wool,--by your own hope in a Saviour's mercy, forgive the living,--if living _he_ indeed be!"

Her eyes closed as she uttered these words, and a purplish gloom gathered beneath her eyes. The doctor came in and administered ether, which partially revived her. I have never been able to inhale it since, without feeling sick and faint, and recalling the deadly odor of that chamber of mourning.

About daybreak, I heard Dr. Harlowe say in the lowest whisper to Mrs.

Linwood that _she_ could not live more than one hour. He turned the hour-gla.s.s as he spoke. She had collected all the energies of life in that parting interview,--nothing remained but a faint, fluttering, quick-drawn breath.

I sat looking at the hour-gla.s.s, counting every gliding sand, till each little, almost invisible particle, instead of dropping into the crystal receptacle, seemed to fall on my naked heart like the mountain rock. O my G.o.d! there are only two or three sands left, and my mother's life hangs on the last sinking grain. Some one rises with noiseless steps to turn the gla.s.s.

With a shriek that might have arrested the departing spirit, I sprang forward and fell senseless on the floor.

I remember nothing that pa.s.sed during the day. I was told afterwards, that when I recovered from the fainting fit, the doctor, apprehensive of spasms, gave me a powerful anodyne to quiet my tortured nerves. When I became conscious of what was pa.s.sing around me, the moon was s.h.i.+ning on the bed where I lay, and the shadow of the softly rustling leaves quivering on the counterpane. I was alone, but I heard low, murmuring voices in the next room, and there was a light there more dim and earthly than the pale splendor that enveloped me. I leaned forward on my elbow and looked beyond the open door. The plain white curtains of the bed were looped up on each side, and the festoons swayed heavily in the night air, which made the flame of the lamp dim and wavering. A form reclined on the bed, but the face was _all covered_, though it was a midsummer's night. As I looked, I remembered all, and I rose and glided through the moonlight to the spot where my mother slept. Sustained by unnatural excitement, I seemed borne on air, and as much separated from the body as the spirit so lately divorced from that unbreathing clay; it was the effect of the opiate I had taken, but the pale watchers in the death-chamber shuddered at my unearthly appearance.

"Let there be no light here but light from heaven," said I, extinguis.h.i.+ng the fitful lamp-flame; and the room was immediately illuminated with a white, ghostly l.u.s.tre. Then kneeling by the bed, I folded back the linen sheet, gazed with folded hands, and dry, dilated eyes on the mystery of death. The moon, "that sun of the sleepless,"

that star of the mourner, shone full on her brow, and I smiled to see how divinely fair, how placid, how angelic she looked. Her dark, s.h.i.+ning hair, the long dark lashes that pencilled her white cheek, alone prevented her from seeming a statue of the purest marble, fas.h.i.+oned after some Grecian model. Beauty and youth had come back to her reposing features, and peace and rapture too. A smile, such as no living lips ever wore, lingered round her mouth and softened its mute expression.

She was happy. G.o.d had given his beloved rest. She was happy. It was not death on which I was gazing; it was life,--the dawn of immortal, of eternal life. Angels were watching around her. I did not see them, but I felt the shadow of their snow-white wings. I felt them fanning my brow and softly lifting the locks that fell darkly against the sheet, so chilly white. Others might have thought it the wind sighing through the leafy lattice-work; but the presence of angels was real to me,--and who can say they were not hovering there?

That scene is past, but its remembrance is undying. The little cottage is inhabited by strangers. The gra.s.s grows rank near the brink of the fountain, and the mossy stone once moistened by my tears has rolled down and choked its gus.h.i.+ng. My mother sleeps by the side of the faithful Peggy, beneath a willow that weeps over a broken shaft,--fitting monument for a broken heart.

I will not dwell on the desolation of orphanage. It cannot be described.

My Maker only knows the bitterness of my grief for days, weeks, even months. But time gradually warms the cold clay over the grave of love; then the gra.s.s springs up, and the flowers bloom, and the waste places of life become beautiful with hope, and the wilderness blossoms like the rose.

But oh, my mother! my gentle, longsuffering mother! thou hast never been forgotten. By day and by night, in suns.h.i.+ne and shadow, in joy and in sorrow, thou art with me, a holy spirit, a hallowed memory, a chastening influence, that pa.s.seth not away.

CHAPTER XI.

What a change, from the little gray cottage in the woods to the pillared walls of Grandison Place.

This ancestral looking mansion was situated on the brow of a long, winding hill, which commanded a view of the loveliest valley in the world. A bold, sweeping outline of distant hills, here and there swelling into mountains, and crowned with a deeper, mistier blue, divided the rich green of the earth from the azure of the heavens. Far as the eye could reach, it beheld the wildest luxuriance of nature refined and subdued by the hand of cultivation and taste. Man had reverenced the grandeur of the Creator, and made the ploughshare turn aside from the n.o.ble shade-tree, and left the streams rejoicing in their margins of verdure; and far off, far away beneath the shadow of the misty blue hills,--of a paler, more leaden hue,--the waters of the great sea seemed ready to roll down on the vale, that lay smiling before it.

Built of native granite, with high ma.s.sive walls and low turreted roof, Grandison Place rose above the surrounding buildings in castellated majesty. It stood in the centre of a s.p.a.cious lawn, zoned by a girdle of oaks, beneath whose dense shade the dew sparkled even at noonday. Within this zone was a hedge of cedar, so smooth, with twigs so thickly interwoven, that the gossamer thought it a framework, on which to stretch its transparent web in the morning sun. Near the house the lawn was margined with beds of the rarest and most beautiful flowers, queen roses, and all the fragrant populace of the floral world. But the grandest and most beautiful feature of all was a magnificent elm-tree, standing right in the centre of the green inclosure, toweling upward, sweeping downward, spreading on either side its lordly branches, "from storms a shelter and from heat a shade."

I never saw so n.o.ble a tree. I loved it,--I reverenced it. I a.s.sociated with it the idea of strength and protection. Had I seen the woodman's axe touch its bark, I should have felt as if blood would stream from its venerable trunk. A circular bench with a back formed of boughs woven in checker-work surrounded it, and at twilight the soft sofas in the drawing-room were left vacant for this rustic seat.

Edith loved it, and when she sat there with her crutches leaning against the rough back, whose gray tint subdued the bright l.u.s.tre of her golden hair, I would throw myself on the gra.s.s at her feet and gaze upon her, as the embodiment of human loveliness.

One would suppose that I felt awkward and strange in the midst of such unaccustomed magnificence; but it was not so. It seemed natural and right for me to be there. I trod the soft, rich, velvety carpeting with a step as unembarra.s.sed as when I traversed the gra.s.sy lawn. I was as much at home among the splendors of art as the beauties of nature,--both seemed my birthright.

I felt the deepest, most unbounded grat.i.tude for my benefactress; but there was nothing abject in it. I knew that giving did not impoverish her; that the food I ate was not as much to her as the crumbs that fell from my mother's table; that the room I occupied was but one in a suite of elegant apartments; yet this did not diminish my sense of obligation.

It lightened it, however, of its oppressive weight.

My room was next to Edith's. The only difference in the furniture was in the color of the hangings. The curtains and bed drapery of mine were pink, hers blue. Both opened into an upper piazza, whose lofty pillars were wreathed with flowering vines, and crowned with Corinthian capitals. Surely my love for the beautiful ought to have been satisfied; and so it was,--but it was long, long before my heart opened to receive its influence. The clods that covered my mother's ashes laid too heavily upon it.

Mrs. Linwood had a great deal of company from the city, which was but a short journey from Grandison Place. As they were mostly transient guests, I saw but little of them. My extreme youth, and deep mourning dress, were sufficient reasons for withdrawing from the family circle when strangers enlarged it. Edith was three years older than myself, and was of course expected to a.s.sist her mother in the honors of hospitality. She loved society, moreover, and entered into its innocent pleasures with the delight of a young, genial nature. It was difficult to think of her as a young lady, she was so extremely juvenile in her appearance; and her lameness, by giving her an air of childish dependence, added to the illusion caused by her fair, cl.u.s.tering ringlets and infantine rosiness of complexion. She wanted to bring me forward;--she coaxed, caressed, and playfully threatened, nor desisted till her mother said, with grave tenderness--

"The heart cannot be forced, Edith; Gabriella is but a child, and should be allowed the freedom of a child. The restraints of social life, once a.s.sumed, are not easily thrown aside. Let her do just as she pleases."

And so I did; and it pleased me to wander about the lawn; to sit and read under the great elm-tree; to make garlands of myrtle and sweet running vine flowers for Edith's beautiful hair; to walk the piazza, when moonlight silvered the columns and covered with white glory the granite walls, while the fountain of poetry down in the depths of my soul welled and trembled in the heavenly l.u.s.tre.

It pleased me to sit in the library, or rather to stand and move about there, for at that time I did not like to sit anywhere but on the gra.s.s or the oaken bench. The old poets were there in rich binding, all the cla.s.sics, and the choicest specimens of modern literature. There were light, airy, movable steps, so as to reach to the topmost shelves, and there I loved to poise myself, like a bird on the spray, peeping into this book and that, gathering here and there a golden grain or sweet scented flower for the garner of thought, or the bower of imagination.

There were statues in niches made to receive them,--the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses of Greece and Rome, in their cold, severe beauty, all pa.s.sionless and pure, in spite of the glowing mythology that called them into existence. There were paintings, too, that became a part of my being, I took them in with such intense, gazing eyes. Indeed, the house was lined with them. I could not walk through a room without stopping to admire some work of genius, some masterpiece of art.

I over-heard Dr. Harlowe say to Mrs. Linwood, that it was a pity I were not at school, I was so very young. As if I were not at school all the time! As if those grand old books were not teachers; those breathing statues, those gorgeous paintings were not teachers; as if the n.o.ble edifice itself, with its magnificent surroundings, the billowy heave of the distant mountains, the glimpses of the sublime sea, the fair expanse of the beautiful valley, were not teachers!

Oh! they little knew what lessons I was learning. They little knew how the soul of the silent orphan girl was growing within her,--how her imagination, like flowers, was nourished in stillness and secrecy by the air and the suns.h.i.+ne, the dew and the shower.

I had other teachers, too, in the lonely churchyard; very solemn they were, and gentle too, and I loved their voiceless instructions better than the sounding eloquence of words.

Mr. Regulus thought with Dr. Harlowe, that it was a pity I was not at school. He called to see Mrs. Linwood and asked her to use her influence to induce me to return as a pupil to the academy. She left it to my decision, but I shrunk from the thought of contact with the rude village children. I felt as if I had learned all Mr. Regulus could teach me. I was under greater masters now. Yet I was grateful for the interest he manifested in me. I had no vindictive remembrance of the poem he had so ruthlessly murdered. Innumerable acts of after kindness had obliterated the impression, or rather covered it with a growth of pleasant memories.

"Have you given up entirely the idea of being a teacher yourself?" he asked, in a low voice, "or has the kindness of friends rendered it superfluous? I do not ask from curiosity out a deep interest in your future welfare."

This was a startling question. I had not thought of the subject since I had entered my new home. Why should I think of the drudgery of life, pillowed on the downy couch of luxury and ease? I was forgetting that I was but the recipient of another's bounty,--a guest, but not a child of the household.

Low as was his voice, I knew Mrs. Linwood heard and understood him, for her eyes rested on me with a peculiar expression of anxiety and interest. She did not speak, and I knew not what to utter. A burning glow rose to my cheeks, and my heart fluttered with painful apprehension. It was all a dream, then. That home of affluence was not mine,--it was only the asylum of my first days of orphanage. The maternal tenderness of Mrs. Linwood was nothing more than compa.s.sion and Christian charity, and the sisterly affection of the lovely Edith but the overflowing of the milk of human kindness. These were my first, flas.h.i.+ng thoughts; then the inherent pride of my nature rose to sustain me. I would never be a willing burden to any one. I would toil day and night, sooner than eat the bread of dependence. It would have been far better to have left me in the humble cottage where they found me, to commence my life of drudgery at once, than to have given me a taste of luxury and affluence, to heighten, by force of contrast, privation and labor.

"I will commence teaching immediately," I answered, trying in vain to speak with firmness, "if you think I am not too young, and a situation can be obtained;" "that is," I added, I fear a little proudly, "if Mrs.

Linwood approve."

"It must not be thought of _at present_," she answered, speaking to Mr.