Ernest Linwood Part 59

Truth, and truth alone, is safe and omnipotent: "The eternal days of G.o.d are hers." Man may weave, but she will undeceive; man may arrange, but G.o.d will dispose.

CHAPTER LVII.

I told my father the history of my youth and womanhood, of my marriage and widowhood, with feelings similar to those with which I poured out my soul into the compa.s.sionate bosom of my Heavenly Father. He listened, pitied, wept over, and then consoled me.

"He must prove himself worthy of so sacred a trust," said he, clasping me to his bosom with all a father's tenderness, and all a mother's love, "before I ever commit it to his keeping. Never again, with my consent, shall you be given back to his arms, till 'the seed of the woman has bruised the serpent's head.'"

"I will never leave you again, dear father, under any circ.u.mstances, whatever they may be. Rest a.s.sured, that come weal, come woe, we will never be separated. Not even for a husband's unclouded confidence, would I forsake a father's sacred, new-found love."

"We must wait, and hope, and trust, my beloved daughter. Every thing will work together for the good of those that love G.o.d. I believe that now, fully, reverentially. Sooner or later all the ways of Providence will be justified to man, and made clear as the noonday sun."

He looked up to heaven, and his fine countenance beamed with holy resignation and Christian faith. Oh! how I loved this dear, excellent, n.o.ble father! Every hour, nay, every moment I might say, my filial love and reverence increased. My feelings were so new, so overpowering, I could not a.n.a.lyze them. They were sweet as the strains of Edith's harp, yet grand as the roaring of ocean's swelling waves. The bliss of confidence, the rapture of repose, the sublimity of veneration, the tenderness of love, all blended like the dyes of the rainbow, and spanned with an arch of peace the retreating clouds of my soul.

"When shall we go to Grandison Place?" he asked. "I long to pour a father's grat.i.tude into the ear of your benefactress. I long to visit the grave of my Rosalie."

"To-morrow, to-day,--now, dear father, whenever you speak the word; provided we are not separated, I do not mind how soon."

He smiled at my eagerness.

"Not quite so much haste, my daughter. I cannot leave to Richard the sole task of ministering to the soul of my unhappy brother. His conscience is quickened, his feeling softened, and it may be that the day of grace is begun. His frame is weak and worn, his blood feverish, and drop by drop is slowly drying in his veins. I never saw any one so fearfully altered. Truly is it said, that 'the wages of sin is death.'

Oh! if after herding with the swine and feeding on the husks of earth, he comes a repentant prodigal to his father's home, it matters not how soon he pa.s.ses from that living tomb."

My father's words were prophetic. The prisoner's wasted frame was consuming slowly, almost imperceptibly, like steel when rust corrodes it. Richard and my father were with him every day, and gathered round him every comfort which the law permitted, to soften the horrors of imprisonment. Not in vain were their labors of love. G.o.d blessed them.

The rock was blasted. The waters gushed forth. Like the thief on the cross, he turned his dying glance on his Saviour, and acknowledged him to be the Son of G.o.d. But it was long before the fiery serpents of remorse were deadened by the sight of the brazen reptile, glittering with supernatural radiance on the uplifted eye of faith. The struggle was fearful and agonizing, but the victory triumphant.

Had he needed me, I would have gone to him, and I often pleaded earnestly with my father to take me with him; but he said he did not wish me to be exposed to such harrowing scenes, and that Richard combined the tenderness of a daughter with the devotion of a son. Poor Richard! his pale cheeks and heavy eyes bore witness to the protracted sufferings of his father, but he bore up bravely, sustained by the hope of his soul's emanc.i.p.ation from the bondage of sin.

The prisoner must have had an iron const.i.tution. The wings of his spirit flapped with such violence against its skeleton bars, the vulture-beak of remorse dipping all the time into the quivering, bleeding heart, it is astonis.h.i.+ng how long it resisted even after flesh and blood seemed wasted away. Day after day he lingered; but as his soul gradually unsheathed itself, clearer views of G.o.d and eternity played upon its surface, till it flashed and burned, like a sword in the sunbeams of heaven.

At length he died, with the hand of his son clasped in his, the bible of Theresa laid against his heart, and his brother kneeling in prayer by his bedside. Death came softly, gently, like an angel of release, and left the seal of peace on that brow, indented in life by the thunder-scars of sin and crime.

After the first shock, Richard could not help feeling his father's death an unspeakable blessing, accompanied by such circ.u.mstances. In the grave his transgressions would be forgotten, or remembered only to forgive. He must now rise, shake off the sackcloth and ashes from his spirit, and put on the beautiful garments of true manhood. The friends, who had taken such an interest in his education, must not be disappointed in the career they had marked out. Arrangements had been made for him to study his profession with one of the most eminent lawyers of Boston, and he was anxious to commence immediately, that he might find in mental excitement an antidote to morbid sensibility and harrowing memory.

My father's wishes and my own turned to Grandison Place, and we prepared at once for our departure. I had informed Mrs. Linwood by letters of the events which I have related, and received her heart-felt congratulations. She expressed an earnest desire to see my father, but honored too much the motives that induced him to remain, to wish him to hasten. Now those motives no longer existed, I wrote to announce our coming, and soon after we bade adieu to one of the most charming abodes of goodness, hospitality, and pure domestic happiness I have ever known.

"You must write and tell me of all the changes of your changing destiny," said Mrs. Brahan, when she gave me the parting embrace; "no one can feel more deeply interested in them than myself. I feel in a measure a.s.sociated with the scenes of your life-drama, for this is the place of your nativity, and it was under this roof you were united to your n.o.ble and inestimable father. Be of good cheer. Good news will come, wafted from beyond the Indian seas, and your second bridal morn will be fairer than the first."

I thanked her with an overflowing heart. I did not, like _her_, see the day-star of hope arising over that second bridal morn, but the sweet pathetic minor tone breathed in my ear the same holy strain:--

"Brightest and best of the sons of the morning, Dawn on our darkness, and lend us thine aid; Star of the East, the horizon adorning, Guide where our infant Redeemer is laid."

CHAPTER LVIII.

I wish my father could have seen the home of my youth, when he first beheld it, in the greenness of spring or the bloom of summer; but white, cold, and dazzling was the lawn, and bleak, bare, and leafless the grand old elms and the stately brotherhood of oaks that guarded the avenue.

With pride, grat.i.tude, joy, and a thousand mingling emotions, I introduced my father into a dwelling consecrated by so many recollections of happiness and woe. The cloud was removed from my birth, the stain from my lineage. I could now exult in my parentage and glory in my father.

Julian was there, and welcomed St. James with enthusiastic pleasure, who, on his part, seemed to cherish for him even parental affection.

With joy and triumph beaming in his eyes and glowing on his cheek, Julian took the lovely Edith by the hand, and introduced her as his bride. Still occupying her usual place in her mother's home, in all her sweetness, simplicity, and spirituality, it was difficult to believe any change had come over her destiny. She had not waited for my presence, because she knew the bridal wreath woven for her would recall the blighted bloom of mine. She had no festal wedding. She could not, while her brother's fate was wrapped in uncertainty and gloom.

One Sunday evening, after Mr. Somerville had dismissed the congregation with the usual benediction, Julian led Edith to the altar, and her mother stood by her side till the solemn words were uttered that made them one. So simple and holy were the nuptial rites of the wealthy and beautiful heiress of Grandison Place.

My father spoke in exalted terms of the young artist, of his virtues and his genius, the singleness of his heart, the uprightness of his principles, and the warmth and purity of his affections. Had he, my father, needed any pa.s.sport to the favor of Mrs. Linwood, he could not have had a surer one; but her n.o.ble nature instantaneously recognized his congenial and exalted worth. He had that in his air, his countenance, and manner, that distinguished him from the sons of men, as the planets are distinguished by their clear, intense, and steadfast l.u.s.tre among the starry ranks of heaven.

I gave him the ma.n.u.script my mother had left me, and at his request pointed out the road and the diverging path that led to the spot where her grave was made. I did not ask to accompany him, for I felt his emotions were too sacred for even his daughter to witness. I mourned that the desolation of winter was added to the dreariness of death; that a pall of snow, white as her winding-sheet and cold as her clay, covered the churchyard. In summer, when the gra.s.s was of an emerald green and the willows waved their weeping branches with a gentle rustle against the cl.u.s.tering roses, whose breath perfumed and whose blossoms beautified the place of graves, it was sweet, though sad, to wander amid the ruins of life, and meditate on its departed joys.

The broken shaft, twined with a drooping wreath carved in bas-relief, which rose above my mother's ashes, and the marble stone which marked the grave of Peggy, were erected the year after their deaths. The money which rewarded my services in the academy had been thus appropriated, or rather a portion of it. The remainder had been given to the poor, as Mrs. Linwood always supplied my wardrobe, as she did Edith's, and left no want of my own to satisfy, not even a wish to indulge. I mention this here, because it occurred to my mind that I had not done Mrs. Linwood perfect justice with regard to the motives which induced her to discipline my character.

I did not see my father for hours after his return. He retired to his chamber, and did not join the family circle till the evening lamps were lighted. He looked excessively pale, even wan, and his countenance showed how much he had suffered. Edith was singing when he came in, and he made a motion for her to continue; for it was evident he did not wish to converse. I sat down by him without speaking; and putting his arm round me, he drew me closely to his side. The plaintive melody of Edith's voice harmonized with the melancholy tone of his feelings, and seemed to shed on his soul a balmy and delicious softness. His spirit was with my mother in the dreams of the past, rather than the hopes of the future; and the memory of its joys lived again in music's heavenly breath.

It is a blessed thing to be remembered in death as my mother was. Her image was enshrined in her husband's heart, in the bloom and freshness of unfaded youth, as he had last beheld her,--and such it would ever remain. He had not seen the mournful process of fading and decay. To him, she was the bride of immortality; and his love partook of her own freshness and youth and bloom. Genius is _La fontaine de jouvence_, in whose bright, deep waters the spirit bathes and renews its morning prime. It is the well-spring of the heart,--the Castaly of the soul. St.

James had lived amid forms of ideal beauty, till his spirit was imbued with their loveliness as with the fragrance of flowers, and he breathed an atmosphere pure as the world's first spring. He was _young_, though past the meridian of life. There was but one mark of age upon his interesting and n.o.ble person, and that was the snowy shade that softened his raven hair,--foam of the waves of time, showing they had been lashed by the storms, or driven against breakers and reefs of destiny.

The first time I took him into the library, he stopped before the picture of Ernest. I did not tell him whose it was. He gazed upon it long and earnestly.

"What a countenance!" he exclaimed. "I can see the lights and shades of feeling flas.h.i.+ng and darkening over it. It has the troubled splendor of a tropic night, when clouds and moonbeams are struggling. Is it a portrait, or an ideal picture?"

"It is Ernest,--it is my husband," I answered; and it seemed to me as if all the ocean surges that rolled between us were pressing their cold weight on my heart.

"My poor girl! my beloved Gabriella! All your history is written there."

I threw myself in his arms, and wept. Had I seen Ernest dead at my feet, I could not have felt more bitter grief. I had never indulged it so unrestrainedly before in his presence, for I had always thought more of him than myself; and in trying to cheer him, I had found cheerfulness.

Now I remembered only Ernest's idolatrous love, and his sorrows and sufferings, forgetting my own wrongs; and I felt there would always be an aching void which even a father's and brother's tenderness (for brother I still called Richard) could never fill.

"Oh, my father," I cried, "bear with my weakness,--bear with me a little while. There is comfort in weeping on a father's bosom, even for a loss like mine. I shall never see him again. He is dead, or if living, is dead to me. You cannot blame me, father. You see there a faint semblance of what he is,--splendid, fascinating, and haunting, though at times so dark and fearful. No words of mine can give an idea of the depth, the strength, the madness of his love. It has been the blessing and the bane, the joy and the terror, the angel and the demon of my life. I know it was sinful in its wild excess, and mine was sinful, too, in its blind idolatry, and I know the blessing of G.o.d could not hallow such a union.

But how can I help feeling the dearth, the coldness, the weariness following such pa.s.sionate emotions? How can I help feeling at times, that the sun of my existence is set, and a long, dark night before me?"

He did not answer,--he only pressed me convulsively to his heart, and I felt one hot tear, and then another and another falling on my brow.

Oh! it is cruel to wring tears from the strong heart of man; cruel, above all, to wring them from a father's heart,--that heart whose own sorrows had lately bled afresh. Every drop fell heavy and burning as molten lead on my conscience. I had been yielding to a selfish burst of grief, thoughtless of the agony I was inflicting.

"Forgive me, father!" I cried, "forgive me! On my knees, too, I will pray my Heavenly Father to forgive the rebel who dares to murmur at his chastis.e.m.e.nts, when new and priceless blessings gladden her life. I thought I had learned submission,--and I have, father, I have kissed in love and faith the Almighty hand that laid me low. This has been a dark moment, but it is pa.s.sed."

I kissed his hand, and pressed it softly over my glistening eyes.

"Forgive you, my child!" he repeated, "for a sorrow so natural, so legitimate, and which has so much to justify it! I have wondered at your fort.i.tude and disinterested interest in others,--I have wondered at your Christian submission, your unmurmuring resignation, and I wonder still.

But you must not consider your destiny as inevitably sad and lonely. You have not had time yet to receive tidings from India. If, after the letter you have written, your husband does not return with a heart broken by penitence and remorse, and his dark and jealous pa.s.sions slain by the sword of conviction, piercing two-edged and sharp to the very marrow of his spirit, he is not worthy of thee, my spotless, precious child; and the illusion of love will pa.s.s away, showing him to be selfish, tyrannical, and cruel, a being to be shunned and pitied, but no longer loved. Do not shudder at the picture I have drawn. The soul that speaks from those eyes of thousand meanings," added he, looking at the portrait that gazed upon us with powerful and thrilling glance, "must have some grand and redeeming qualities. I trust in G.o.d that it will rise above the ashes of pa.s.sion, purified and regenerated. Then your happiness will have a new foundation, whose builder and maker is G.o.d."

"Oh! dear father!" was all I could utter. He spoke like one who had the gift of prophecy, and my spirit caught the inspiration of his words.

I have not spoken of Richard, for I had so much to say of my father, but I did not forget him. He accompanied us to Grandison Place, though he remained but a few days. I could not help feeling sad to see how the sparkling vivacity of his youth had pa.s.sed away, the diamond brightness which reminded one of rippling waters in their sunbeams. But if less brilliant, he was far more interesting. Stronger, deeper, higher qualities were developed. The wind-shaken branches of thought stretched with a broader sweep. The roots of his growing energies, wrenched by the storm, struck firmer and deeper, and the wounded bark gave forth a pure and invigorating odor.