Ernest Linwood Part 22

"Oh! I would make it populous. I would draw worshippers from the four points of the earth,--and yet it would be a greater triumph to subdue one proud, hitherto impregnable heart."

Her eyes flashed like gunpowder as she uttered this, _sotto voce_ it is true, but still loud enough to be heard half across the room.

"Goodby," she suddenly exclaimed, "they are beckoning me; I must go; try to like me, precious creature; I shall be quite miserable if you do not."

Then pa.s.sing her arm round me, an arm firm, polished, and white as ivory, she gave me a loud, emphatic kiss, laughed, and left me almost as much confused as if one of the other s.e.x had taken the same liberty.

"Is she," thought I, "a young man in disguise?"

CHAPTER XXII.

What am I writing?

Sometimes I throw down the pen, saying to myself, "it is all folly, all verbiage. There is a history within worth perusing, but I cannot bring it forth to light. I turn over page after page with the fingers of thought. I see characters glowing or darkened with pa.s.sion,--lines alternately bright and shadowy, distinct and obscure, and it seems an easy thing to make a transcript of these for the outward world."

Easy! it requires the recording angel's pen to register the history of the human heart. "The thoughts that breathe, the thoughts that burn,"

how can they be expressed? The mere act of clothing them in words makes them grow cold and dull. The molten gold, the fused iron hardens and chills in the forming mould.

Easy! "Oh yes," the critic says, "it is an easy thing to write; only follow nature, and you cannot err." But nature is as broad as the universe, as high as the heavens, and as deep as the seas. It is but a small portion we can condense even on hundreds of pages of foolscap paper. If that portion be of love, the cold philosopher turns away in disdain and talks of romantic maids and moonstruck boys, as if the subject were fit alone for them. And yet love is the great motive principle of nature, the burning sun of the social system. Blot it out, and every other feeling and pa.s.sion would sink in the darkness of eternal night. Byron's awful dream would be realized,--darkness would indeed be the universe. They who praise a writer for omitting love from the page which purports to be a record of life, would praise G.o.d for creating a world, over whose sunless realms no warmth or light was diffused, (if such a creation were possible,)--a world without flowers or music, without hope or joy.

But as the sun is only an emanation from the first great fountain of light and glory, so love is but an effluence from the eternal source of love divine.

"Bright effluence of bright essence increate." And woe to her, who, forgetting this heavenly union, bathes her heart in the earthly stream, without seeking the living spring whence it flows; who worships the fire-ray that falls upon the altar, without giving glory to him from whom it descended. The stream will become a stagnant pool, exhaling pestilence and death; the fire-ray will kindle a devouring flame, destroying the altar, with the gift and the heart a _burning bush_, that will blaze forever without consuming.

Whither am I wandering?

Imagine me now, in a very different scene to the president's illuminated drawing-room. Instead of the wild buzzing of mingling voices, I hear the mournful sighing of the breeze through the weeping grave trees; and ever and anon there comes a soft, stealing sound through the long, swaying gra.s.s, like the tread of invisible feet. I am alone with my mother's spirit. The ma.n.u.script, that is to reveal the mystery of my parentage, is in my hand. The hour is come, when without violating the commands of the dead, I may claim it as my own, and remove the hermetic seal which death has stamped. Where else could I read it? My own room, once so serenely quiet, was no longer a sanctuary,--for Margaret Melville dashed through the house, swinging open the doors as abruptly as a March wind, and her laugh filled every nook and corner of the capacious mansion. How could I unseal the sacred history of my mother's sorrows within the sound of that loud, echoing ha, ha?

I could not; so I stole away to a spot, where sacred silence has set up its everlasting throne. The sun had not yet gone down, but the shadows of the willows lengthened on the gra.s.s. I sat at the foot of the grave leaning against a marble slab, and unsealed, with cold and trembling hands, my mother's _heart_, for so that ma.n.u.script seemed to me.

At first I could not see the lines, for my tears rained down so fast they threatened to obliterate the delicate characters; but after repeated efforts I acquired composure enough to read the following brief and thrilling history. It was the opening of the sixth seal of my life.

The stars of hope fell, as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs when she is shaken by a mighty wind, and the heaven of my happiness departed as a scroll when it is rolled together, and the mountains and islands of human trust were moved out of their places.

MY MOTHER'S HISTORY.

"Gabriella, before your eyes shall rest on these pages, mine will be closed in the slumbers of death. Let not your heart be troubled, my only beloved, at the record of wrongs which no longer corrode; of sorrows which are all past away. 'In my Father's house are many mansions,' and one of them is prepared for me. It is my Saviour's promise, and I believe it as firmly as if I saw the golden streets of the New Jerusalem, where that heavenly mansion is built.

"Weep not, then, my child, my orphan darling, over a past which cannot be recalled; let not its shadow rest too darkly upon you,--if there is joy in the present, be grateful; if there is hope in the future, rejoice.

"You have often asked me to tell you where I lived when I was a little child; whether my home was a gray cottage like ours, in the woods; and whether I had a mother whom I loved as dearly as you loved me. I have told you that my first feeble life-wail mingled with her dying groan, and you wondered how one could live without a mother's love.

"I was born in that rugged fortress, whose embattled walls are washed by the majestic Bay of Chesapeake. My father held a captain's commission in the army, and was stationed for many years at this magnificent, insulated bulwark. My father, at the time of my mother's death, was a young and gallant officer, and I was his only child. It is not strange that he should marry again; for the grief of man seldom survives the allotted period of mourning, and it was natural that he should select a gay and brilliant woman, for the second choice is generally a striking contrast to the first. My mother, I am told, was one of those gentle, dove-like, pensive beings, who nestled in her husband's heart, and knew no world beyond. My step-mother loved the world and its pleasures better than husband, children, and home. She had children of her own, who were more the objects of her pride than her love. Every day, they were dressed for exhibition, petted and caressed, and then sent back to the nursery, where they could not interfere with the pleasures of their fashionable mamma. Could I expect those tender cares which the yearning heart of childhood craves, as its daily sustenance? She was not harsh or despotic, but careless and indifferent. She did not care for me; and provided I kept out of her way, she was willing I should amuse myself in the best manner I pleased. My father was kind and caressing, when he had leisure to indulge his parental sensibilities; but he could not sympathize in my childish joys and sorrows, for I dared not confide them to him. He was a man, and, moreover, there was something in the gilded pomp of his martial dress, that inspired too much awe for childish familiarity. I used to gaze at him, when he appeared on military parade, as if he were one of the demi-G.o.ds of the ancient world. He had an erect and warlike bearing, a proud, firm step, and his gold epaulette with its glittering ta.s.sels flashing in the sunbeams, his crimson sash contrasting so splendidly with the military blue, his shining sword and waving plume,--all impressed me with a grandeur that was overpowering.

It dazzled my eye, but did not warm my young heart.

"As I grew older, I exhibited a remarkable love of reading, and as no one took the trouble to direct my tastes, I seized every book which came within my reach and devoured it, with the avidity of a hungry and unoccupied mind. My father was a gentleman of pure and elegant taste, and had he dreamed that I was exposed, without guardianship, to dangerous influences, he would have shielded and warned me. But he believed the care of children under twelve years of age devolved on their mother, and he was always engrossed with the duties of a profession which he pa.s.sionately loved, or the society of his brother officers, usually so fascinating and convivial.

"I used to take my book, which was generally some wild, impa.s.sioned romance, and wandering to the ramparts, seat myself by the shining pyramids of cannon-b.a.l.l.s; and while the blue waves of the Chesapeake rolled in murmuring music by, or, lashed by the ocean wind, heaved in foaming billows, roaring against the walls, I yielded myself to the wizard spell of genius and pa.s.sion. The officers as they pa.s.sed would try to break the enchantment by gay and sportive words, but all in vain.

I have sat there, drenched by the salt sea-spray, and knew it not. I was called the little bookworm, the prodigy, the _dream-girl_, a name you have inherited, my darling Gabriella; and my father seemed proud of the reputation I had established. But while my imagination was preternaturally developed, my heart was slumbering, and my soul unconscious of life's great aim.

"Thus unguarded by precept, unguided by example, I was sent from home to a boarding-school, where I acquired the usual education and accomplishments obtained at fashionable female seminaries. During my absence from home, my two step-sisters, who were thought too young to accompany me, and my infant step-brother, died in the s.p.a.ce of one week, smitten by that destroying angel of childhood, the scarlet fever.

"I had been at school two years when I made my first visit home. My step-mother was then in the weeds of mourning, and of course excluded herself in a measure from gay society; but I marvelled that sorrow had not impaired the bloom of her cheek, or quenched the sparkle of her cold, bright eye. Her heart was not buried in the grave of her children,--it belonged to the world, to which she panted to return.

"But my father mourned. There was a shadow on his manly brow, which I had never seen before. I was, now, his only child, the representative of his once beloved Rosalie, and the pure, fond love of his early years revived again in me. I look back upon those two months, when I basked in the sunshine of parental tenderness for the first, the _only_ time, as a portion of my life most dear and holy. I sighed when I thought of the years when we had been comparatively so far apart, and my heart grew to his with tender adhesiveness and growing love. The affections, which my worldly step-mother had chilled and repressed, and which the death of his other children had blighted, were now all mine, renovated and warmed.

"Oh, Gabriella! very precious is a father's love. It is an emblem of the love of G.o.d for the dependent beings he has created; so kind, so protecting, so strong, and yet so tender! Would to G.o.d, my poor, defrauded child, you could have known what this G.o.d-resembling love is,--but your orphanage has been the most sad, the most dreary,--the most unhallowed. Almighty Father of the universe, have mercy on my child! Protect and bless her when this wasting, broken heart no longer beats; when the frail shield of a mother's love is taken from her, and she is left _alone_--_alone_--_alone_. Oh! my G.o.d, have pity--have pity!

Forsake her not!"

The paper was blistered with the tears of the writer. I dropped it on the grave, unable to go on. I cast myself on the gra.s.s-covered mould, and pressed it to my bosom, as if there was vitality in the cold clods.

"Oh, my mother!" I exclaimed, and strange and dreary sounded my voice in that breathing stillness. "Has G.o.d heard thy prayers? Will he hear the cries of the fatherless? Will he have pity on my forsaken youth?"

I would have given worlds to have realized that this mighty G.o.d was near; that he indeed cared with a father's love for the orphan mourner, committed in faith to his all-embracing arms. But I still worshipped him as far-off, enthroned on high, in the heaven of heavens, which cannot contain the full glory of his presence. I saw him on the burning mountain, in the midst of thunder and lightning and smoke,--a G.o.d of consuming fire, before whose breath earthly joys and hopes withered and dried, like blossoms cast into the furnace.

But did not G.o.d once hide his face of love from his own begotten Son?

And shall not the _eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani_ of the forsaken heart sometimes ascend amid the woes and trials and wrongs of life, from the great mountain of human misery, the smoking Sinai, whose clouded summit quakes with the footsteps of Deity?

CHAPTER XXIII.

I again resumed the ma.n.u.script, trembling for the revelations which it might make.

"Never again," wrote my mother, "did I behold my n.o.ble, gallant father.

His death was sudden, as if shot down in the battle field, without one warning weakness or pain. In the green summer of his days he fell, and long did my heart vibrate from the shock. How desolate to me was the home to which I returned! The household fire was indeed extinguished.

The household G.o.d laid low. I saw at one glance that in my breast alone his memory was enshrined; that there alone was sacred incense burning.

Mrs. Lynn, (I will speak of her by her name hereafter,) though only one year had pa.s.sed since his death, was a.s.suming those light, coquettish airs which accord as little with the robes of widowhood as the hues of the rainbow or the garlands of spring.

"I saw with exquisite pain and shame, that she looked upon me as a rival of her maturer charms, and gladly yielded to my wish for retirement. She always spoke of me as 'the child,' the 'little bookworm,' impressing upon the minds of all the idea of my extreme juvenility. I _was_ young; but I had arrived to years of womanhood, and my stature equalled hers.

"I will pa.s.s on to the scene which decided my destiny. I do not wish to swell the volume of my life. Let it be brief as it is sad.

"Very near the fortress is another rocky bulwark, rising out of the waves in stern and rugged majesty, known by the peculiar name of the Rip-Raps. It is the work of man, who paved the ocean bed with rocks, and conceived the design of a lofty castle, from whose battlements the star-spangled banner should wave, and whose ma.s.sy turrets should perpetuate the honors of Carolina's most gifted son. The design was grand, but has never been completed. It has, however, finished apartments, which form a kind of summer hotel, where many statesmen often resort, that they may lay down, for a while, the burden of care, and breathe an atmosphere pure from political corruption, and cool from party zeal and strife.

"At the time of which I speak the chief magistrate of the nation sought refuge there for a short while, from the oppressive responsibilities of his exalted station, and regardless of his wish for retirement, or rather irresistibly impelled to pay honors to one whose brows were wreathed with the soldier's laurel as well as the statesman's crown, every one sought his rocky and wave-washed retreat.

"Mrs. Lynn joined a party of ladies, who, escorted by officers, went over in barges to be introduced to the gallant veteran. The martial spirit of my father throbbed high in my bosom, and I longed to behold one, whom he would have delighted to honor. Mrs. Lynn did not urge me, but there were others who supplied her deficiency, and convinced me I was not considered an intruder. Among the gentlemen who composed our party was a stranger, by the name of St. James, to whom Mrs. Lynn paid the most exclusive attention. She was still in the bloom of womanhood, and though far from being beautiful, was showy and attractive. All the embellishments of dress were called into requisition to enhance the charms of nature, and to produce the illusion of youth. She always sought the admiration of strangers, and Mr. St. James was sufficiently distinguished in appearance to render him worthy of her fascinations. I merely noticed that he had a fine person, a graceful air, and a musical voice; then casting my eyes on the sea-green waters, over which our light barge was bounding, I did not lift them again till we were near the dark gray rocks of the Rip-Raps, and I beheld on the brink of the stone steps we were to ascend, a tall and stately form, whose foam-white locks were rustling in the breeze of ocean. There he stood, like the statue of liberty, throned on a granite cliff, with waves rolling below and sunbeams resting on his brow.

"As we stepped from the barge and ascended the rugged steps, the chieftain bent his warlike figure and drew us to the platform with all the grace and gallantry of youth. As I was the youngest of the party, he received me with the most endearing familiarity. I almost thought he was going to kiss me, so close he brought his bronzed cheek to mine.

"'G.o.d bless you, my child!' said he, taking both hands in his and looking earnestly in my face. 'I knew your father well. He was a gallant officer,--a n.o.ble, honest man. Peace to his ashes! The soldier fills an honored grave.'