Ernest Linwood Part 1

Ernest Linwood.

by Caroline Lee Hentz.

CHAPTER I.

With an incident of my childhood I will commence the record of my life.

It stands out in bold prominence, rugged and bleak, through the haze of memory.

I was only twelve years old. He might have spoken less harshly. He might have remembered and pitied my youth and sensitiveness, that tall, powerful, hitherto kind man,--my preceptor, and, as I believed, my friend. Listen to what he did say, in the presence of the whole school of boys, as well as girls, a.s.sembled on that day to hear the weekly exercises read, written on subjects which the master had given us the previous week.

One by one, we were called up to the platform, where he sat enthroned in all the majesty of the Olympian king-G.o.d. One by one, the ma.n.u.scripts were read by their youthful authors,--the criticisms uttered, which marked them with honor or shame,--gliding figures pa.s.sed each other, going and returning, while a hasty exchange of glances, betrayed the flash of triumph, or the gloom of disappointment.

"Gabriella Lynn!" The name sounded like thunder in my ears. I rose, trembling, blushing, feeling as if every pair of eyes in the hall were burning like redhot b.a.l.l.s on my face. I tried to move, but my feet were glued to the floor.

"Gabriella Lynn!"

The tone was louder, more commanding, and I dared not resist the mandate. The greater fear conquered the less. With a desperate effort I walked, or rather rushed, up the steps, the paper fluttering in my hand, as if blown upon by a strong wind.

"A little less haste would be more decorous, Miss."

The shadow of a pair of beetling brows rolled darkly over me. Had I stood beneath an overhanging cliff, with the ocean waves dashing at my feet, I could not have felt more awe or dread. A mist settled on my eyes.

"Read,"--cried the master, waving his ferula with a commanding gesture,--"our time is precious."

I opened my lips, but no sound issued from my paralyzed tongue. With a feeling of horror, which the intensely diffident can understand, and only they, I turned and was about to fly back to my seat, when a large, strong hand pressed its weight upon my shoulder, and arrested my flight.

"Stay where you are," exclaimed Mr. Regulus. "Have I not lectured you a hundred times on this preposterous shame-facedness of yours? Am I a Draco, with laws written in blood, a tyrant, scourging with an iron rod, that you thus shrink and tremble before me? Read, or suffer the penalty due to disobedience and waywardness."

Thus threatened, I commenced in a husky, faltering voice the reading of lines which, till that moment, I had believed glowing with the inspiration of genius. Now, how flat and commonplace they seemed! It was the first time I had ever ventured to reveal to others the talent hidden with all a miser's vigilance in my bosom casket. I had lisped in rhyme,--I had improvised in rhyme,--I had dreamed in poetry, when the moon and stars were looking down on me with benignant l.u.s.tre;--I had _thought_ poetry at the sunset hour, amid twilight shadows and midnight darkness. I had scribbled it at early morn in my own little room, at noonday recess at my solitary desk; but no human being, save my mother, knew of the young dream-girl's poetic raptures.

One of those irresistible promptings of the spirit which all have felt, and to which many have yielded, induced me at this era to break loose from my sh.e.l.l and come forth, as I imagined, a beautiful and brilliant b.u.t.terfly, soaring up above the gaze of my astonished and admiring companions. Yes; with all my diffidence I antic.i.p.ated a scene of triumph, a dramatic scene, which would terminate perhaps in a crown of laurel, or a public ovation.

Lowly self-estimation is by no means a constant accompaniment of diffidence. The consciousness of possessing great powers and deep sensibility often creates bashfulness. It is their veil and guard while maturing and strengthening. It is the flower-sheath, that folds the corolla, till prepared to encounter the sun's burning rays.

"Read!"

I did read,--one stanza. I could not go on though the scaffold were the doom of my silence.

"What foolery is this! Give it to me."

The paper was pulled from my clinging fingers. Clearing his throat with a loud and prolonged hem,--then giving a flourish of his ruler on the desk, he read, in a tone of withering derision, the warm breathings of a child's heart and soul, struggling after immortality,--the spirit and trembling utterance of long cherished, long imprisoned yearnings.

Now, when after years of reflection I look back on that never-to-be-forgotten moment, I can form a true estimate of the poem subjected to that fiery ordeal, I wonder the paper did not scorch and shrivel up like a burning scroll. It did not deserve ridicule. The thoughts were fresh and glowing, the measure correct, the versification melodious. It was the genuine offspring of a young imagination, urged by the "strong necessity" of giving utterance to its bright idealities, the sighings of a heart looking beyond its lowly and lonely destiny. Ah! Mr.

Regulus, you were cruel then.

Methinks I see him,--hear him now, weighing in the iron scales of criticism every springing, winged idea, cutting and slashing the words till it seemed to me they dropped blood,--then glancing from me to the living rows of benches with such a cold, sarcastic smile.

"What a barbarous, unfeeling monster!" perhaps I hear some one exclaim.

No, he was not. He could be very kind and indulgent. He had been kind and generous to me. He gave me my tuition, and had taken unwearied pains with my lessons. He could forgive great offences, but had no toleration for little follies. He really thought it a sinful waste of time to write poetry in school. He had given me a subject for composition, a useful, practical one, but not at all to my taste, and I had ventured to disregard it. I had jumped over the rock, and climbed up to the flowers that grew above it. He was a thorough mathematician, a celebrated grammarian, a renowned geographer and linguist, but I then thought he had no more ear for poetry or music, no more eye for painting,--the painting of G.o.d, or man,--than the stalled ox, or the Greenland seal. I did him injustice, and he was unjust to me. I had not intended to slight or scorn the selection he had made, but I could not write upon it,--I could not help my thoughts flowing into rhyme.

Can the stream help gliding and rippling through its flowery margins?

Can the bird help singing and warbling upward into the deep blue sky, sending down a silver shower of melody as it flies?

Perhaps some may think I am swelling small things into great; but incidents and actions are to be judged by their results, by their influence in the formation of character, and the hues they reflect on futurity. Had I received encouragement instead of rebuke, praise instead of ridicule,--had he taken me by the hand and spoken some such kindly words as these:--

"This is very well for a little girl like you. Lift up that downcast face, nor blush and tremble, as if detected in a guilty act. You must not spend too much time in the reveries of imagination, for this is a working-day world, my child. Even the birds have to build their nests, and the coral insect is a mighty laborer. The gift of song is sweet, and may be made an instrument of the Creator's glory. The first notes of the lark are feeble, compared to his heaven-high strains. The fainter dawn precedes the risen day."

Oh! had he addressed me in indulgent words as these, who knows but that, like burning Sappho, I might have sang as well as loved? Who knows but that the golden gates of the Eden of immortality might have opened to admit the wandering Peri to her long-lost home? I might have been the priestess of a shrine of Delphic celebrity, and the world have offered burning incense at my altar. I might have won the laurel crown, and found, perchance, thorns hidden under its triumphant leaves. I might,--but it matters not. The divine spark is undying, and though circ.u.mstances may smother the flame it enkindles, it glows in the bosom with unquenchable fire.

I remember very well what the master said, instead of the imagined words I have written.

"Poetry, is it?--or something you meant to be called by that name?

Nonsense, child--folly--moon-beam hallucination! Child! do you know that this is an unpardonable waste of time? Do you remember that opportunities of improvement are given you to enable you hereafter to secure an honorable independence? This accounts for your reveries over the blackboard, your indifference to mathematics, that grand and glorious science! Poetry! ha, ha! I began to think you did not understand the use of capitals,--ha, ha!"

Did you ever imagine how a tender loaf of bread must feel when cut into slices by the sharpened knife? How the young bark feels when the iron wedge is driven through it with cleaving force? I think _I_ can, by the experience of that hour. I stood with quivering lip, burning cheek, and panting breast,--my eyes riveted on the paper which he flourished in his left hand, pointing _at_ it with the forefinger of his right.

"He shall not go on,"--said I to myself, exasperation giving me boldness,--"he shall not read what I have written of my mother. I will die sooner. He may insult _my_ poverty but hers shall be sacred, and her sorrows too."

I sprang forward, forgetting every thing in the fear of hearing _her_ name a.s.sociated with derision, and attempted to get possession of the ma.n.u.script. A fly might as well attempt to wring the trunk of the elephant.

"Really, little poetess, you are getting bold. I should like to see you try that again. You had better keep quiet."

A resolute glance of the keen, black eye, resolute, yet twinkling with secret merriment, and he was about to commence another stanza.

I jumped up with the leap of the panther. I could not loosen his strong grasp, but I tore the paper from round his fingers, ran down the steps through the rows of desks and benches, without looking to the right or left, and flew without bonnet or covering out into the broad sunlight and open air.

"Come back, this moment!"

The thundering voice of the master rolled after me, like a heavy stone, threatening to crush me as it rolled. I bounded on before it with constantly accelerating speed.

"Go back,--never!"

I said this to myself. I repeated it aloud to the breeze that came coolly and soothingly through the green boughs, to fan the burning cheeks of the fugitive. At length the dread of pursuit subsiding, I slackened my steps, and cast a furtive glance behind me. The cupola of the academy gleamed white through the oak trees that surrounded it, and above them the glittering vane, fashioned in the form of a giant pen, seemed writing on the azure page of heaven.

My home,--the little cottage in the woods, was one mile distant. There was a by-path, a foot-path, as it was called, which cut the woods in a diagonal line, and which had been trodden hard and smooth by the feet of the children. Even at mid-day there was twilight in that solitary path, and when the shadows deepened and lengthened on the plain, they concentrated into gloominess there. The moment I turned into that path, I was supreme. It was _mine_. The public road, the thoroughfare leading through the heart of the town, belonged to the world. I was obliged to walk there like other people, with mincing steps, and bonnet tied primly under the chin, according to the rule and plummet line of school-girl propriety. But in my own little by-path, I could do just as I pleased. I could run with my bonnet swinging in my hand, and my hair floating like the wild vine of the woods. I could throw myself down on the gra.s.s at the foot of the great trees, and looking up into the deep, distant sky, indulge my own wondrous imaginings.

I did so now. I cast myself panting on the turf, and turning my face downward instead of upward, clasped my hands over it, and the hot tears gushed in scalding streams through my fingers, till the pillow of earth was all wet as with a shower.

Oh, they did me good, those fast-gushing tears! There was comfort, there was luxury in them. Bless G.o.d for tears! How they cool the dry and sultry heart! How they refresh the fainting virtues! How they revive the dying affections!

The image of my pale sweet, gentle mother rose softly through the falling drops. A rainbow seemed to crown her with its seven-fold beams.

Dear mother!--would she will me to go back where the giant pen dipped its glittering nib into the deep blue ether?