Ernest Linwood Part 46

"Make her take a ride on horseback every morning and evening," continued Dr. Harlowe, with perfect coolness, without taking any notice of the interruption. "Best exercise in the world. Fine rides for equestrians through the green woods around here. If that does not set her right, carry her to the roaring Falls of Niagara, or the snowy hills of New Hampshire, or the Catskill Mountains, or the Blue Ridge. I cannot let the flower of the village droop and fade."

As he finished the sentence, the merry tones of his voice became grave and subdued. He spoke as one having the authority of science and experience, as well as the privilege of affection. I looked down to hide the moisture that glistened in my eyes.

"How would you like to travel as the doctor has suggested, Gabriella?"

asked Ernest, who seemed much moved by the doctor's remarks. "You know I would go to"--

"Nova Zembla, if she wished it," interrupted the doctor, "but that is too far and too cold. Begin with a shorter journey. I wish I could accompany you, but I cannot plead as an excuse my wife's delicacy of const.i.tution. Her health is as uniform as her temper; and even if life and death were at stake, she would not leave her housekeeping in other hands. Neither would she close her doors and turn her locks, lest moth and rust should corrupt, and thieves break in and steal. But pardon me.

I have given you no opportunity to answer your husband's question."

"I shall only feel too happy to avail myself of his unnecessary fears with regard to my health," I answered. "It will be a charming way of pa.s.sing the summer, if Mrs. Linwood and Edith will consent."

Dr. Harlowe accompanied us home, and nothing was talked of but the intended journey. The solicitude of Ernest was painfully roused, and he seemed ready to move heaven and earth to facilitate our departure.

"I am sorry to close Grandison Place in the summer season," said Mrs.

Linwood; "it looks so inhospitable. Besides, I have many friends who antic.i.p.ate pa.s.sing the sultry season here."

"Let them travel with you, if they wish," said the doctor bluntly. "That is no reason why you should stay at home."

"Poor Madge!" cried Edith, who was delighted with the arrangement the doctor had suggested. "She will be so disappointed."

"Let her come," said Dr. Harlowe. "I will take charge of the wild-cat, and if I find her too mighty for me, I will get Mr. Regulus to a.s.sist me in keeping her in order. Let her come, by all means."

"Supposing we write and ask her to accompany us," said Mrs. Linwood.

"Her exuberant spirits will be subdued by the exercise of travelling, and she may prove a most exhilarating companion."

"What, four ladies to one gentleman!" exclaimed Edith. "Poor Ernest!

when he will have thoughts and eyes but for one!"

"I would sooner travel with the Falls of Niagara, or the boiling springs of Geyser," cried Ernest, with an instinctive shudder. "We should have to take a carpenter, a glazier, an upholsterer, and a seamstress, to repair the ruins she would strew in our path."

"If Richard Clyde were about to return a little earlier in the season,"

said the doctor, looking at Edith, "he would be a delightful acquisition to your party. He would divide with your brother the heavy responsibility of being the guardian of so many household treasures."

"Let us start as early as possible," exclaimed Ernest. The name of Richard Clyde was to his impatient, jealous spirit, as is the rowel to the fiery steed.

"And what will become of all our beautiful flowers, and our rich, ripening fruit?" I asked. "Must they waste their sweetness and value on the unappreciating air?"

"I think we must make Dr. Harlowe and Mr. Regulus the guardians and partic.i.p.ators of both," said Mrs. Linwood.

"Give him the flowers, and leave the fruit to me," cried Dr. Harlowe, emphatically.

"That the sick, the poor, and the afflicted may be benefited by the act," replied Mrs. Linwood. "Let it be so, Doctor,--and may many a blessing which has once been mine, reward your just and generous distribution of the abounding riches of Grandison Place."

I left one sacred charge with the preceptor of my childhood.

"Let not the flowers and shrubbery around my mother's grave, and the grave of Peggy, wilt and die for want of care."

"They shall not. They shall be tenderly and carefully nurtured."

"And if Margaret comes during our absence, be kind and attentive to her, for my sake, Mr. Regulus."

"I will! I will! and for her own too. The wild girl has a heart, I believe she has; a good and honest heart."

"You discovered it during your homeward journey from New York. I thought you would," said I, pleased to see a flush light up the student's olive cheek. I thought of the sensible Benedict and the wild Beatrice, and the drama of other lives pa.s.sed before the eye of imagination.

Gloomy must the walls of Grandison Place appear during the absence of its inmates,--that city set upon a hill that could not be hid, whose illuminated windows glittered on the vale below with beacon splendor, and discoursed of genial hospitality and kindly charity to the surrounding shadows. Sadly must the evening gale sigh through the n.o.ble oaks, whose branches met over the winding avenue, and lonely the elm-tree wave its hundred arms above the unoccupied seat,--that seat, beneath whose breezy shade I had first beheld the pale, impa.s.sioned, and haunting face of Ernest Linwood.

CHAPTER XLIV.

It is not my intention to describe our journey; and I fear it will indeed be an act of supererogation to attempt to give an idea of those majestic Falls, whose grandeur and whose glory have so long been the theme of the painter's pencil and the poet's lyre. Never shall I forget the moment when my spirit plunged into the roar and the foam, the thunders and the rainbows of Niagara. I paused involuntarily a hundred paces from the brink of the cataract. I was about to realize one of the magnificent dreams of my youthful imagination. I hesitated and trembled.

I felt something of the trepidation, the blissful tremor that agitated my whole being when Ernest asked me into the moonlight garden at Cambridge, and I thought he was going to tell me that he loved me. The emotions I was about to experience would never come again, and I knew when once past could never be antic.i.p.ated as now, with indescribable awe. I felt something as Moses did when he stood in the hollow of the rock, as the glory of the Lord was about to pa.s.s by. And surely no grander exhibition of G.o.d's glory ever burst on mortal eye, than this mighty volume of water, rushing, roaring, plunging, boiling, foaming, tossing its foam like snow into the face of heaven, throwing up rainbow after rainbow from unfathomable abysses, then sinking gradually into a sluggish calm, as if exhausted by the stupendous efforts it had made.

Clinging to the arm of Ernest, I drew nearer and nearer, till all personal fear was absorbed in a sense of overpowering magnificence. I was a part of that glorious cataract; I partic.i.p.ated in the mighty struggle; I panted with the throes of the pure, dark, tremendous element, va.s.sal at once and conqueror of man; triumphed in the gorgeous _arcs-en-ciel_ that rested like angels of the Lord above the mist and the foam and the thunders of watery strife, and reposed languidly with the subsiding waves that slept like weary warriors after the din and strife of battle, the frown of contention lingering on their brows, and the smile of disdain still curling their lips.

Oh, how poor, how weak seemed the conflict of human pa.s.sion in the presence of this sublime, this wondrous spectacle! I could not speak,--I could scarcely breathe,--I was borne down, overpowered, almost annihilated. My knees bent, my hands involuntarily clasped themselves over the arm of Ernest, and in this att.i.tude of intense adoration I looked up and whispered, "G.o.d,--eternity."

"Enthusiast!" exclaimed he; but his countenance was luminous with the light that glowed on mine. He put his arm around me, but did not attempt to raise me. Edith and her mother were near, in company with a friend who had been our fellow-traveller from New England, and who had extended his journey beyond its prescribed limits for the sake of being our companion. I looked towards Edith with tremulous interest. As she stood leaning on her crutches, her garments fluttering in the breeze, I almost expected to see her borne from us like down upon the wind, and floating on the bosom of that mighty current.

I said I did not mean to attempt a description of scenes which have baffled the genius and eloquence of man.

"Now I am content to die!" said an ancient traveller, when the colossal shadow of the Egyptian pyramids first fell on his weary frame. But what are those huge, unmoving monuments of man's ambition, compared to this grandest of creation's mysteries, whose deep and thundering voice is repeating, day after day and night after night,--"forever and ever," and whose majestic motion, rushing onward, plunging downward, never pausing, never resting, is emblematic of the sublime march of Deity, from everlasting to everlasting,--from eternity to eternity?

Shall I ever forget the moment when I stood on Termination Rock, beyond which no mortal foot has ever penetrated? I stood in a shroud of gray mist, wrapping me on every side,--above, below, around. I shuddered, as if the hollow, reverberating murmurs that filled my ears were the knell of the departed sun. That cold, gray mist; it penetrated the depths of my spirit; it drenched, drowned it, filled it with vague, ghost-like images of dread and horror. I cast one glance behind, and saw a gleam of heaven's sunny blue, one bright dazzling gleam flashing between the rugged rock and the rushing waters. It was as if the veil of the temple of nature were rent, and the glory of G.o.d shone through the fissure.

"Let us return," said I to Ernest. "I feel as if I had pa.s.sed through the valley of the shadow of death. Is it not sacrilegious to penetrate so deeply into the mysteries of nature?"

"O Gabriella!" he exclaimed, his eyes flashing through the shrouding mist like burning stars, "how I wish you felt with me! Were it possible to build a home on this shelving rock, I would willingly dwell here forever, surrounded by this veiling mist. With you thus clasped in my arms, I could be happy, in darkness and clouds, in solitude and dreariness, anywhere, everywhere,--with the conviction that you loved me, and that you looked for happiness alone to me."

"As this moment," I answered, drawing more closely to him, "I fear as if I would rather stay here and die, than return to the world and mingle in its jarring elements. I would far rather, Ernest, make my winding-sheet of those cold, unfathomable waters, than live to feel again the anguish of being doubted by you."

"That is all past, my Gabriella,--all past. My nature is renewed and purified. I feel within me new-born strength and power of resistance. By the G.o.d of yon roaring cataract--"

"No,--no, Ernest, do not promise,--I dare not hear you, we are so weak, and temptations are so strong."

"Do you distrust yourself, or me?"

"Both, Ernest. I never, never felt how poor and vain and frail we are, till I stood, as now, in the presence of the power of the Almighty."

His countenance changed instantaneously. "To what temptations do you allude?" he asked. "I can imagine none that could shake my fidelity to you. My constancy is as firm as this rock. Those rushing waves could not move it. Why do you check a vow which I dare to make in the very face of Omnipotence?"

"I doubt not your faith or constancy, most beloved Ernest; I doubt not my own. You know what I do fear,--misconstruction and suspicion. But let us not speak, let us not think of the past. Let us look forward to the future, with true and earnest spirits, praying G.o.d to help us in weakness and error. Only think, Ernest, we have that within us more mighty than that descending flood. These souls of ours will still live in immortal youth, when that whelming tide ceases to roll, when the firmament shrivels like a burning scroll. I never realized it so fully, so grandly, as now. I shall carry from this rock something I did not bring. I have received a baptism standing here, purer than fire, gentle as dew, yet deep and pervading as ocean. I cannot describe what I mean, but I feel it. Before I came, it seemed as if a great wall of adamant rose between me and heaven; now there is nothing but this veil of mist."

As we turned to leave this region of blinding spray and mysterious shadows, Ernest repeated, in his most melodious accents, a pa.s.sage from Schiller's magnificent poem of the diver.