Ernest Linwood Part 53

"And you and your mother believed him," I said, with astonis.h.i.+ng calmness; "you knew not that Richard was my brother."

"Had it not been for your wounded arm," replied Edith, laying her hand gently on the scar, "we should have supposed he was under a strong delusion to believe a lie. Appearances were against you, and your condemnation was my brother's palliation, if not acquittal. My mother continued her supplications, mingled with tears and sighs that seemed to rend the life from her bosom; and I, Gabriella, do you think _I_ was silent and pa.s.sive? I, who would willingly have laid down my life for his? We prevailed,--he yielded,--he left us in the darkness of night,--the darkness of despair. It is more than two months since, and we have received no tidings of the wanderer. My mother urged him to go to New York and remain till he heard the fate of Richard. She has written to him there, again and again, but as yet has received no answer."

"And he went without one farewell look of her whom he deemed so vile,--so lost?" said I, pressing Edith's hand against my cold and sinking heart.

"No, Gabriella. His last act was to kneel by your side, and pray G.o.d to forgive you both. Twice he went to the door, then coming back he bent over you as if he would clasp you in his arms; then with a wild e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n he turned away. Never saw I such anguish in the human countenance."

"I have but one question more to ask," said I, after a long pause, whose dreariness was that which follows the falling of the clods in the grave hollow. "How did Ernest know that Richard was with me, when we left him alone in the library?"

"Dr. Harlowe accidentally alluded to your father's history before Richard, who, you recollect, was in foreign lands during the excitement it caused, and had never heard the circ.u.mstances. As soon as he heard the name of St. James, I saw him start, and turn to the doctor with a flushed and eager countenance. Then he drew him one side, and they conversed together some time in a low undertone; and Richard's face, red one moment and white the next, flashed with strange and s.h.i.+fting emotions. At the time when your father's name obtained such unhappy notoriety, and yours through him, in the public papers, my mother confided to Dr. Harlowe, who was greatly troubled on your account, the particulars of your mother's life. She thought it due to your mother's memory, and his steady friends.h.i.+p. I know not how much he told Richard, whose manner evidently surprised him, but we all noticed that he was greatly agitated; and then he abruptly took leave. He came immediately here, and inquired for you, asked where you were gone, and hurried away as if on an errand of life and death. Ernest, who was pa.s.sing along the winding gallery, heard him, and followed."

Another dreary pause. Then I remembered Julian, and the love-light that had illumined them both that memorable evening. Edith had not once alluded to her own clouded hopes. She seemed to have forgotten herself in her mother's griefs and mine.

"And Julian, my beloved Edith? There is a future for you, a happy one, is there not?"

"I do not expect happiness," she answered, with a sigh; "but Julian's love will gild the gloom of sorrow, and be the rainbow of my clouded days. He will return in the winter, and then perhaps he will not leave me again. I cannot quit my mother; but he can take a son's place in her desolated home. No garlands of roses will twine round my bridal hours, for they are all withered, all but the rose of Sharon, Gabriella, whose sacred bloom can never fade away. It is the only flower worth cheris.h.i.+ng,--the only one without thorns, and without blight."

Softly withdrawing her supporting arms, she suffered me to sink back on the pillow, gave me a reviving cordial, drew the curtains, and taking up a book, seemed absorbed in its contents. I closed my eyes and appeared to sleep, that she might not suppose her narration had banished repose.

I had antic.i.p.ated all she uttered; but the certainty of desolation is different to the agonies of suspense. I could have borne the separation from Ernest; but that he should believe me the false, guilty wretch I had seemed to be, inflicted pangs sharper than the vulture's beak or the arrow's barb. If he had left the country, as there was every reason to suppose he had, with this conviction, he never would return; and the loneliness and dreariness of a widowhood more sad than that which death creates, would settle down darkly and heavily on my young life.

I did not blame him for the rash deed he had wrought, for it was a madman's act. When I recalled the circ.u.mstances, I did not wonder at the frantic pa.s.sion that dyed his hand in blood; and yet I could not blame myself. Had I shrunk from a brother's embrace, I should have been either more or less than woman. I had yielded to a divine impulse, and could appeal to nature and Heaven for justification.

But I had sinned. I had broken the canons of the living G.o.d, and deserved a fearful chastis.e.m.e.nt. I had made unto myself an idol, and no pagan idolater ever wors.h.i.+pped at his unhallowed shrine with more blind devotion. I had been true to Ernest, but false to my Maker, the one great and _jealous_ G.o.d. I had lived but for one object, and that object was withdrawn, leaving all creation a blank.

I stood upon the lonely strand, the cold waves beating against my feet, and the bleak winds piercing through my unsheltered heart. I stretched out my arms to the wild waste of waters, in whose billows my life-boat was whelmed, and I called, but there was none to answer. I cried for help, but none came. Then I looked up to heaven, and high above the darkness of the tempest and the gloom of the deep, one star s.h.i.+ning in solitary glory arrested my despairing gaze. I had seen it before with the eye of faith, but never beaming with such holy l.u.s.tre as now, when all other lights were withdrawn.

"Brightest and best of the sons of the morning, Dawn on my darkness, and lend me thine aid.

Star of the East, the horizon adorning, Guide where the infant Redeemer is laid."

Why, tender and pitying Saviour, do we wait for the night time of sorrow to fathom the depths of thy love and compa.s.sion? Why must every fountain of earthly joy be dried up, before we bow to taste the waters of Kedron; and every blossom of love be withered, before we follow thee to the garden of Gethsemane?

CHAPTER LI.

Though the circ.u.mstance of discovering a brother in the lover of my youth seems more like romance than reality, nothing could be more simple and natural than the explanation of the mystery. His recollection did not go back to the period recorded in my mother's ma.n.u.script, when he was brought as a lawful heir to the home in which my early infancy was sheltered. His first remembrances were a.s.sociated with a mother's sorrow and loneliness,--with an humble dwelling in one of the by-lanes of the city of New York, where she toiled with her needle for their daily bread.

"I remember," said Richard, "how I used to sit on a low stool at my mother's feet, and watch her, as she wrought in muslin the most beautiful flowers and devices, with a skill and rapidity which seemed miraculous to me. Young as I was, I used to wonder that any one could look so sad, while producing such charming figures. Once, I recollect, the needle resisted her efforts to draw it through the muslin. She threw it from her, and taking another from the needle-case met with no better success.

"'_Oh! mon Dieu!_' she cried, dropping her work in her lap and clasping her hands, 'my tears rust them.'

"'And why do you let so many fall, mother?' I asked. 'Where do they all come from?'

"'From a breaking heart,' she answered, and I never forgot her looks or her words. The breaking heart became an image in my mind, almost as distinct as the rusted steel. For a long time I was afraid to jump or bound about the room, lest the fracture in my mother's heart should be made wider, and more tears come gus.h.i.+ng through.

"But she did not always weep. She taught me to read, while she toiled with her needle, and she told me tales of the genii and of fairy-land, at twilight hour, or as she used to say, '_entre le loup et le chien_,'

in her own expressive, idiomatic language. She told me, too, stories from the Bible, before I was able to read them, of Isaac bound on the sacrificial pyre, with his father kneeling by him, ready to plunge the knife in his young heart, when the angels called to him out of heaven to stay his uplifted hand; of Joseph's wondrous history, from his coat of many colors, fatal cause of fraternal jealousy, to the royal robes and golden chain with which Pharaoh invested him; of David, the shepherd-boy, the minstrel monarch, the conqueror of Philistia's giant chief. It was thus she employed the dim hours between the setting sun and the rising stars; but the moment she lighted her lonely lamp she again plied her busy needle, though alas! too often rusted with her tears.

"Thus my early childhood pa.s.sed,--and every day my heart twined more closely round my mother's heart, and I began to form great plans of future achievements to be wrought for her. I would be a second Joseph and go to some distant land and win fame, and honors, and wealth, and send for her that I might lay them all at her feet. She would not, at first, recognize her boy in the purple and fine linen of his sumptuous attire; but I would fall on her neck, and lift up my voice and weep aloud, and then she would know her child. A mother's tears, Gabriella, nurture great aspirations in a child.

"I used to accompany her to the shop when she carried home her work. It was there she first met the gentleman whose name I bear. Their acquaintance commenced through me, to whom he seemed peculiarly attracted, and he won my admiring grat.i.tude by the gifts he lavished upon me. He came often to see my mother, and though at first she shrunk from his visits, she gradually came to welcome him as a friend and a benefactor.

"One evening, I think I was about eight or nine years old, she took me in her arms, and told me, with many tears, that Mr. Clyde, the good and kind gentleman whom I loved so much, had offered to be a father to me, and was going to take us both to a pleasant home in the country, where I could run about in the green fields, and be free as the birds of the air. She told me that perhaps my own father was living, but that he had left her so long their union was annulled by law, and that she had a right to marry another, and that she did so that I might have a father and protector. She explained this simply, so that I understood it all, and I understood too why she wished me to drop my own name and take that of her future husband. It was a.s.sociated with so much sorrow and wrong, it was painful to her ear, and Mr. Clyde wished me to adopt his own. He was a good and honorable man, and I cherish his memory with reverence and grat.i.tude. If the fissure in my mother's heart was not healed, it closed, and tears no longer dripped through.

"Our country home was pleasant and comfortable, and I revelled in the delights of nature, with all the wild pa.s.sion of a bird let loose from the imprisoning cage. I went to school,--I was in the world of action,--the energies of incipient manhood awoke and struggled in my bosom. We remained about two years in this rural residence, situated in the western part of New York, when Mr. Clyde was called to attend a dying father, who lived in this town, Gabriella, not very far from the little cottage in the woods where I first knew you. He took my mother and myself with him, for she was in feeble health, and he thought the journey would invigorate her. It did not. A child of sunny France, she languished under the bleaker New England skies. She was never able to return; and he who came to bury a father, soon laid a beloved wife by the side of the aged. My heart went down to the grave with her, and it was long before its resurrection. My step-father was completely crushed by the blow, for he loved her as such a woman deserved to be loved, and mourned as few mourn. He remained with his aged mother in the old homestead, which she refused to leave, and I was placed in the academy under the charge of Mr. Regulus, where I first knew and loved you, my own sister, my darling, beloved Gabriella."

If I had loved Richard before, how much more did I love him now, after hearing his simple and affecting history, so similar to my own. As I had never loved him otherwise than as a brother, the revelation which had caused such a terrible revulsion in his feelings was a sacred sanction to mine. His nerves still vibrated from the shock, and he could not p.r.o.nounce the word sister without a tremulousness of voice which betrayed internal agitation.

He had but little more to relate. His step-father was dead, and as there was found to be a heavy mortgage on his estate, he was left with a moderate income, sufficient to give him an education and a start in life. His expenses in Europe had been defrayed by some liberal gentlemen, who still considered themselves the guardians of his reputation and his fortunes.

It was painful to me to tell the story of our father's crimes, of which he had heard but a slight outline. When I described our interview in the Park, he knit his brows over his flas.h.i.+ng eyes, and his whole frame quivered with emotion.

"My poor sister! what a dreadful scene for you. What have you not suffered! but you shall never know another sorrow from which I can s.h.i.+eld you, another wrong from which I can defend."

"O Richard! when I think of him in his lonely dungeon, alone with remorse and horror; when I think of my mother's dying injunctions, I feel as if I must go to him, and fulfil the holy mission she bade me perform. Read her ma.n.u.script; you have a right to its contents, though they will rend your heart to peruse them; take it with you to your own room, when you go, for I cannot look on and see you read words that have been driven like burning arrows through my soul."

When I again met Richard, I could see in his bloodshot eyes what thoughts were bleeding within.

"My mother left me the same awful legacy," said he. "She left her forgiveness, if he lived; oblivion of all her wrongs, if dead. Oh! what bolt of vengeance is red enough for the wretch who could destroy the happiness of two such women as your mother and mine! All-righteous Providence, may thy retributive fires--"

"Stop! stop!" I cried, throwing my arms round him, and arresting his fearful words, "he is our father, you must not curse him. By our mothers' ashes, by their angels, now perhaps hovering over us, forbear, my brother, forbear."

"G.o.d help me," he exclaimed, his lips turning to an ashy paleness, "I did not know what I was about to say; but is it not enough to drive one mad, to think of the fountain of one's life being polluted, poisoned, and accursed?"

"One drop of the Saviour's blood can cleanse and make it pure, my brother, if he were only led to the foot of the cross."

Richard's countenance changed; a crimson flush swept over his face, and then left it colorless.

"My hand is not worthy to lead him there," he cried, "and if it were, I fear there is no mercy for so hardened, so inveterate a transgressor."

"There _is_, Richard, there _is_. Let the expiring thief bear witness to a Saviour's illimitable love. Oh! it is sinful to set bounds to G.o.d's immeasurable mercy. Let us go together, my brother. My mother's dream may yet be realized. Who knows but our weak, filial hands, may lift our unhappy father from the black abyss of sin and impenitence, Almighty G.o.d a.s.sisting us? If heavenly blessings are promised to him who turns a soul from the error of his ways, think, Richard, how divine the joy, if it be an erring parent's soul, thus reclaimed and brought home to G.o.d? Let us go, as soon as we have strength to commence the journey. I cannot remain here, where every thing reminds me of my blighted hopes and ruined happiness. It seems so like a grave, Richard."

"I wonder you do not hate. I wonder you do not curse me," exclaimed he, with sudden vehemence, "for it is my rashness that has wrought this desolation. Dearly have you purchased a most unworthy brother. Would I had never claimed you, Gabriella; never rolled down such a dark cloud on your heart and home."

"Say not so, my beloved brother. The cloud was on my heart already, and you have scarcely made it darker or more chilling. I feel as if I had been living amid the thunderstorms of tropic regions, where even in suns.h.i.+ne electric fires are flas.h.i.+ng. Before this shock came, my soul was sick and weary of the conflicts of wild and warring pa.s.sions. Oh!

you know not how often I have sighed for a brother's heart to lean upon, even when wedded joys were brightest,--how much more must I prize the blessing now! Surely never brother and sister had more to bind them to each other, than you and I, Richard. Suffering and sorrow, life's holiest sacraments, have hallowed and strengthened the ties of nature."

It was not long before we were able to ride abroad with Mrs. Linwood and Edith, and it was astonis.h.i.+ng how rapidly we advanced in restoration to health. I could perceive that we were objects of intense interest and curiosity, from the keen and eager glances that greeted us on every side; for the fearful tragedy of which I had been the heroine, had cast a shadow over the town and its surroundings. Its rumor had swept beyond the blue hills, and Grandison Place was looked upon as the theatre of a dark and b.l.o.o.d.y drama. This was all natural. Seldom is the history of every-day life marked by events as romantic and thrilling as those compressed in my brief experience of eighteen years. And of all the deep, vehement pa.s.sions, whose exhibition excites the popular mind, there is none that takes such strong hold as jealousy, the terrible hydra of the human heart.

I believe I was generally beloved, and that a deep feeling of sympathy for my misfortunes pervaded the community, for I had never been elated by prosperity; but Ernest, whose exclusiveness and reserve was deemed haughtiness, was far from being popular. Mrs. Linwood was revered by all, and blessed as the benefactress of the poor and the comforter of the afflicted; but she was lifted by fortune above the social level of the community, and few, very few were on terms of intimacy with the inmates of the Granite Castle, as Grandison Place was often called. Its ma.s.sy stone walls, its turreted roof, sweeping lawn, and elevated position, seemed emblematic of the aristocracy of its owners; and though the blessings of the lower cla.s.ses, and the respect and reverence of the higher, rested upon it, there was a mediocral one, such as is found in every community, that looked with envy on those, whose characters they could not appreciate, because they were lifted so high above their own level.

I have spoken of Dr. Harlowe and Mr. Regulus as the most valued friends of the family; but there was one whom it would be ungrateful in me to omit, and whose pure and sacred traits came forth in the dark hours through which I had just pa.s.sed, like those worlds of light which _are never seen by day_. I allude to Mr. Somerville, the pastor of the parish, and who might truly be called a man of G.o.d. The aged minister, who had presided over the church during my mother's life, had been gathered to his fathers, and his name was treasured, a golden sheaf, in the garner of memory. The successor, who had to walk in the holy footprints he had left in the valley, was obliged to take heed to his steps and to shake the dust of earth from his sandals as he went along.

In our day of suns.h.i.+ne he had stood somewhat aloof, for he felt his mission was to the poor and lowly, to the sons and daughters of want and affliction; but as soon as sickness and sorrow darkened the household, he came with lips distilling balm, and hands ready to pour oil on the bruised and wounded heart.

Methinks I see him now, as when he knelt by my bedside, after I aroused from my long and deadly trance. No outward graces adorned his person, but the beauty of holiness was on his brow, and its low, sweet music in his somewhat feeble accents. It seemed to me as if an angel were pleading for me, and my soul, emerging as it were from the cold waves of oblivion, thrilled with new-born life. Had my spirit been nearer to G.o.d during its unconscious wanderings, and brought back with it impressions of celestial glory never conceived before? I know not; but I know that a change had pa.s.sed over it, and that I felt the reality of that eternity, which had seemed before a grand and ever-receding shadow.