Ernest Linwood Part 30

"Delightful, charming!" she exclaimed. "Can you play '_Come, haste to the wedding_?'"

He replied by giving the inspiring air, which she accompanied in her wild, exciting manner, laughing and shaking her head with irrepressible glee. I was astonished to see my dignified tutor thus lending himself for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the evening. I should have thought as soon of Jupiter playing a dancing tune, as Mr. Regulus. But he not only played well, he seemed to enjoy it. I was prepared now, to see him on the floor dancing with Madge, though I sincerely hoped he would not permit himself to be exhibited in that manner. Madge was resolved upon this triumph, and called loudly to Edith to come and take her place at the instrument, and play the liveliest waltz in the universe for her and Mr. Regulus.

"Thank you, Miss Melville," said he, laying down his violin and resuming his usual grave and dignified manner, "I am no dancing bear."

"Come, Mr. Regulus, I have no doubt you dance as charmingly as you play.

Besides, you would not be so ungallant as to refuse a lady's request."

"Not a _lady-like_ request," he answered, with a shrewd cast of the eye under his beetling brows.

This sarcasm was received with acclamation; but Meg lifted her brow as dauntless as ever and laughed as loudly.

I began to feel weary of mirth in which I could not sympathize. Mrs.

Linwood came to me, and saying I looked pale and wan, insisted upon my retiring. To this I gladly a.s.sented. The little misunderstanding between Edith and myself weighed heavily on my spirits, and I longed to be alone.

Just as we were crossing the hall of entrance, Richard Clyde came in. He greeted me with so much feeling, such earnest, unaffected pleasure, yet a pleasure so chastened by sensibility, I realized, perhaps for the first time, the value of the heart I had rejected.

"You have been ill, Gabriella," said he, retaining for a moment the hand he had taken. "You look pale and languid. You do not know how much your friends have suffered on your account, or how grateful they feel for your convalesence."

"I did not think I was of so much consequence," I replied. "It is well to be sick now and then, so as to be able to appreciate the kindness of friends."

"You must suffer us to go now, Richard," said Mrs. Linwood moving towards the staircase; "you will find merry company in the parlor ready to entertain you. As Gabriella is no longer a prisoner, you will have future opportunities of seeing her."

"I must embrace them soon," said he, sadly. "I expect to leave this place before long,--my friends, and my country."

"You, Richard?" I exclaimed. Then I remembered the remarks I had heard on commencement day, of his being sent to Europe to complete his education. I regretted to lose the champion of my childhood, the friend of my youth, and my countenance expressed my emotion.

"I have a great deal to say to you, Gabriella," said he, in a low tone.

"May I see you to-morrow?"

"Certainly,--that is, I think, I hope so." A glance that flashed on me from the doorway arrested my stammering tongue. Ernest was standing there, observing the interview, and the dark pa.s.sion of which his mother had warned me clouded his brow. s.n.a.t.c.hing my hand from Richard, I bade him a hasty good-night, and ascended the stairs, with a prophetic heart.

Yet, while I felt the shadow on his brow stealing darkly over me, I repeated to myself,--

"The keenest pangs the wretched find, Are rapture to the dreary void, The leafless desert of the mind, The waste of feelings unemployed."

CHAPTER XXIX.

The interview with Richard Clyde the next day, was a painfully agitating one. I had no conception till then, how closely and strongly love and hope had twined their fibres round him; or how hard would be the task of rending them from him. Why could I not appreciate the value of his frank, n.o.ble, and confiding nature? It may be because we had been children together, and that familiarity was unfavorable to the growth of love in one of my poetic nature. I _must_ look up. The cloud crowned cliff did not appall my high-reaching eye.

"I shall not see you again, Gabriella," said he, as he wrung my hand in parting. "I shall not see you again before my departure,--I would not for worlds renew the anguish of this moment. I do not reproach you,--you have never deceived me. My own hopes have been building a bridge of flowers over a dark abyss. But, by the Heaven that hears me, Gabriella, the keenest pang I now experience is not for my own loss, it is the dread I feel for you."

"Not one word more, Richard, if you love me. I have been tender of your feelings,--respect mine. There is but one thing on earth I prize more than your friendship. Let me cherish that for the sacred memory of _auld lang syne_."

"Farewell, then, Gabriella, best and only beloved! May the hand wither that ever falls too heavily on that trusting heart, should we never meet again!"

He drew me suddenly closely to him, kissed me pa.s.sionately, and was gone.

"Had you confided in me fully," said Mrs. Linwood, in speaking to me afterwards of Richard, "I should never have advised a correspondence which must have strengthened his attachment. Having the highest opinion of his principles and disposition, and believing you regarded him with modest affection, I urged this intercourse as a binding link between you. You must have perceived my wishes on this subject."

"If I have erred, it was from mistaken delicacy. I thought I had no right to betray an unreturned affection. It was not from a want of confidence in you."

"If you could have loved Richard, it would have been well for you, my dear Gabriella; but I know the heart admits of no coercion, and least of all a heart like yours. I no longer warn, for it is in vain; but I would counsel and instruct. If you _do_ become the wife of my son, you will a.s.sume a responsibility as sacred as it is deep. Not alone for your happiness do I tremble, O Gabriella,--I fear,--I dread, for him."

"Oh! Mrs. Linwood, when I love him so exclusively, so devotedly; when I feel that I must love him forever--"

"It is the very exclusiveness and strength of your devotion that I fear.

You will love him too well for your _own_ peace,--too well for _his_ good. Far better is a rational, steadfast attachment, that neither rises above the worth of the object, nor sinks below it, than the two great extremes, idolatry and indifference. The first is a violation of the commands of G.o.d,--the last, of the rights of man. Remember, my child, that it is not by the exhibition of idolatrous affection, that a wife secures a husband's happiness. It is by patient _continuance_ in well-doing, that she works out the salvation of her wedded peace. Sit down by me, Gabriella; draw up your work-table; for one can listen best when their hands are busy. I have a great deal that I wish to say, and I cannot talk as well with your eyes bent so earnestly on me."

I obeyed her without trepidation. I felt the need of her guiding counsels, and resolved to lay them up in my heart, and make them the rule and guide of my life.

"When a young girl marries a man whom she has been taught to believe perfection," continued Mrs. Linwood, "and after marriage discovers her golden idol to be an image of wood and clay, she may be permitted to sit down and weep a while over her vanished dreams. But when she _knows_ the imperfections of him she loves; when she _knows_ they are of a nature to try, as with seven-fold heat, the strength and purity of her affection; when with this conviction she breathes her wedded vows, she has no right to upbraid him. She has walked with open eyes into the furnace, and she must not shrink from the flames. She must fold over her woman's heart the wings of an angel. She must look up to G.o.d, and be silent."

"When innocent of blame, surely she should defend herself from accusation," cried I.

"Certainly,--in the spirit of gentleness and Christian love. But she must not murmur; she must not complain. But it is not the accusation that admits of defence, the arrow that flies at noonday, that is most to be feared. It is the cold, inscrutable glance, the chilled and altered manner, the suspicion that walketh in darkness,--it is these that try the strength of woman's love, and gnaw with slow but certain tooth the cable-chain that holds the anchor of her fidelity. These are the evil spirits which prayer and fasting alone can cast out. They may fly before the uplifted eye and bended knee, but never before the flash of anger or the word of recrimination."

"What a solemn view you give me of married life!" I exclaimed, while the work dropped from my hands. "What fearful responsibilities you place before me,--I tremble, I dare not meet them."

"It is not too late,--the irrevocable vow is not yet breathed,--the path is not yet entered. If the mere description of duties makes you turn pale with dread, what will the reality be? I do not seek to terrify, but to convince. I received you as a precious charge from a dying mother, and I vowed over her grave to love, protect, and cherish you, as my own daughter. I saw the peculiar dangers to which you were liable from your ardent genius and exquisite sensibility, and I suffered you to pa.s.s through a discipline which my wealth made unnecessary, and which you have n.o.bly borne. I did not wish my son to love you, not because you were the child of obscurity, but because I had const.i.tuted myself the guardian of your happiness, and I feared it would be endangered by a union with him. How dear is your happiness to me,--how holy I deem the charge I have a.s.sumed,--you may know by my telling you this. Never mother idolized a son as I do Ernest. He is precious as my heart's best blood,--he is the one idol that comes between me and my G.o.d. My love is more intense for the anxiety I feel on his account. If I could have prevented his loving;--but how could I, in the constant presence of an object so formed to inspire all the romance of love? I knew the serpent slept in the bottom of the fountain, and when the waters were stirred it would wake and uncoil. Gabriella!" she added, turning towards me, taking both hands in hers, and looking me in the face with her clear, eloquent, dark gray eyes, "you may be the angel commissioned by Providence to work out the earthly salvation of my son, to walk with him through the fiery furnace, to guard him in the lion's den, which his own pa.s.sions may create. If to the love that hopeth all, the faith that believeth all, you add the charity that _endureth_ all, miracles may follow an influence so exalted, and, I say it with reverence, so divine."

It is impossible to give but a faint idea of the power of Mrs. Linwood's language and manner. There was no vehemence, no gesticulation. Her eye did not flash or sparkle; it burned with a steady, penetrating light.

Her voice did not rise in tone, but it gave utterance to her words in a full, deep stream of thought, inexhaustible and clear. I have heard it said that she talked "like a book," and so she did,--like the book of heavenly wisdom. Her sentiments were "apples of gold in pictures of silver," and worthy to be enshrined in a diamond casket.

As I listened, I caught a portion of her sublime spirit, and felt equal to the duties which I had a short time before recoiled from contemplating.

"I am very young and inexperienced," I answered, "and too apt to be governed by the impulses of the present moment. I dare not promise what I may be too weak to perform; but dearest madam, all that a feeble girl, strengthened and inspired by love, and leaning humbly on an Almighty arm, can do, I pledge myself to do. In looking forward to the future, I have thought almost exclusively of being ever near the one beloved object, living in the sunshine of his smile, and drinking in the music of his voice. Life seemed an elysian dream, from which care and sorrow must be for ever banished. You have roused me to n.o.bler views, and given existence a n.o.bler aim. I blush for my selfishness. I will henceforth think less of being happy myself, than of making others happy; less of _happiness_ than _duty_; and every sacrifice that principle requires shall be made light, as well as holy, by love."

"Only cherish such feelings, my child," said Mrs. Linwood, warmly embracing me, "and you will be the daughter of my choice, as well as my adoption. My blessing, and the blessing of approving G.o.d, will be yours.

The woman, who limits her ambition to the triumphs of beauty and the influence of personal fascination, receives the retribution of her folly and her sin in the coldness and alienation of her husband, and the indifference, if not the contempt of the world. She, whose highest aim is intellectual power, will make her home like the eyrie of the eagle, lofty, but bleak. While she, whose affections alone are the foundation of her happiness, will find that the nest of the dove, though pleasant and downy in the sunshine, will furnish no shelter from the fierce storms and tempestuous winds of life."

"Oh, Mrs. Linwood! Is domestic happiness a houseless wanderer? Has it no home on earth?"

"Yes, my love, in the heart of the woman whose highest aim is the glory of G.o.d,--whose next, the excellence and happiness of her husband; who considers her talents, her affections, and her beauty as gifts from the Almighty hand, for whose use she must one day render an account; whose heart is a censer where holy incense is constantly ascending, perfuming and sanctifying the atmosphere of home. Such is the woman who pleaseth the Lord. Such, I trust, will be my beloved Gabriella."

By conversations like these, almost daily renewed, did this admirable, high-minded, and G.o.d-fearing woman endeavor to prepare me for the exalted position to which love had raised me. This was a happy period of my life. The absence of Richard Clyde, though a source of regret, was a great blessing, as it removed the most prominent object of jealousy from Ernest's path. An occasional cloud, a sudden coldness, and an unaccountable reserve, sometimes reminded me of the dangerous pa.s.sion whose shadow too often follows the footsteps of love. But in the retirement of rural life, surrounded by the sweet, pure influences of nature, the best elements of character were called into exercise.

The friends whom Mrs. Linwood gathered around her were not the idle devotees of fashion,--the parasites of wealth; but intelligent, literary people, whose society was a source of improvement as well as pleasure.

Sometimes, circ.u.mstances of commanding character forced her to receive as guests those whom her judgment would never have selected, as in the case of Madge Wildfire; but in general it was a distinction to be invited to Grandison Place, whose elegant hospitalities were the boast of the town to which it belonged.

The only drawback to my happiness was the pensiveness that hung like a soft cloud over the spirits of Edith. She was still kind and affectionate to me; but the sweet unreserve of former intercourse was gone. I had come between her and her brother's heart. I was the shadow on her dial of flowers, that made their bloom wither. I never walked with Ernest alone without fearing to give her pain. I never sat with him on the seat beneath the elm, in the starry eventide, or at moonlight's hour, without feeling that she followed us in secret with a saddened glance.

At first, whenever he came to me to walk with him, I would say,--