Читать книгу Ernest Linwood; or, The Inner Life of the Author - Caroline Lee Hentz - Страница 13

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I said, death laid its hand gently on one so gentle and so lovely. Week after week she lingered, almost imperceptibly fading, passing away like a soft rolling cloud that melts into the sky. The pestilence had stayed its ravages. The terror, the thick gloom had passed by.

If I looked abroad at sunset, I could see the windows of the village mansions, crimsoned and glowing with the last flames of day; but no light was reflected on our darkened home. It was all in shadow. And at night, when the windows of Grandison Place were all illuminated, glittering off by itself like a great lantern, the traveller could scarcely have caught the glimmering ray of the little lamp dimly burning in our curtained room.

Do you think I was resigned? That because I was dumb, I lay like a lamb before the stroke of the shearer? I will tell you how resigned, how submissive I was. I have read of the tortures of the Inquisition. I have read of one who was chained on his back to the dungeon floor, without the power to move one muscle—hand and foot, body and limb bound. As he lay thus prone, looking up, ever upwards, he saw a circular knife, slowly descending, swinging like a pendulum, swinging nearer and nearer; and he knew that every breath he drew it came nearer and nearer, and that he must feel anon the cold, sharp edge. Yet he lay still, immovable, frozen, waiting, with his glazed eyes fixed on the terrible weapon. Such was my resignation—my submission.

Friends gathered around the desolate; but they could not avert the descending stroke. Mrs. Linwood came, with her angelic looking daughter, and their presence lighted up, momentarily, our saddened dwelling, as if they had been messengers from heaven—they were so kind, so sympathizing, so unobtrusive. When Edith first crossed our threshold, she did indeed look like one of those ministering spirits, sent to watch over those who shall be heirs of salvation. She seemed to float forward, light and airy as the down wafted by the summer gale. Her crutches, the ends of which were wrapped with something soft and velvety, so as to muffle their sound, rather added than detracted from the interest and grace of her appearance, so gracefully they sustained her fair, white-robed form, just lifting it above the earth.

A little while before, I should have shrunk with nervous diffidence from the approach of guests like these. I should have contrasted painfully the splendor of their position with the lowliness of our own—but now, what were wealth or rank or earthly distinctions to me?

I was sitting by my mother's bed, fanning her slumbers, as they entered. Mrs. Linwood walked noiselessly forward, took the fan gently from my hand, and motioned me to resign my seat to her. I did so mechanically, for it seemed she had a right to be there. Then Edith took me by the hand and looked in my face with an expression of such sweet, unaffected sympathy, I turned aside to hide the quick-gushing tears. Not a word was uttered, yet I knew they came to soothe and comfort.

When my mother opened her eyes and saw the face of a stranger bending over her, she started and trembled; but there was something in the mild, Christian countenance of Mrs. Linwood that disarmed her fears, and inspired confidence. The pride which had hitherto repelled the advances of friendship, was all chastened and subdued. Death, the great leveller, had entered the house, and the mountains of human distinction flowed down at his presence.

"I am come to nurse you," said Mrs. Linwood, taking my mother's pale, emaciated hand and pressing it in both her own. "Do not look upon me as a stranger, but as a friend—a sister. You will let me stay, will you not?"

She seemed soliciting a favor, not conferring one.

"Thank you—bless you!" answered my mother, her large dark eyes fixed with thrilling intensity on her face. Then she added, in a lower voice, glancing towards me, "she will not be left friendless, then. You will remember her when I am gone."

"Kindly, tenderly, even with a mother's care," replied Mrs. Linwood, tears suffusing her mild eyes, and testifying the sincerity of her words.

My mother laid Mrs. Linwood's hand on her heart, whose languid beating scarcely stirred the linen that covered it; then looking up to heaven, her lips moved in silent prayer. A smile, faint but beautiful, passed over her features, and left its sweetness on her face. From that hour to the death-hour Mrs. Linwood did minister to her, as a loving sister would have done. Edith often accompanied her mother and tried to comfort me, but I was then inaccessible to comfort, as I was deaf to hope. When she stayed away, I missed the soft floating of her airy figure, the pitying glance of her heavenly blue eye; but when she came, I said to myself,

"Her mother is not dying. How can she sympathize with me? She is the favorite of Him who is crushing me beneath the iron hand of His wrath."

Thus impious were my thoughts, but no one read them on my pale, drooping brow. Mrs. Linwood praised my filial devotion, my fortitude and heroism. Dr. Harlowe had told her how I had braved the terrors of midnight solitude through the lonely woods, to bring him to a servant's bedside. Richard Clyde had interested her in my behalf. She told me I had many friends for one so young and so retiring. Oh! she little knew how coldly fell the words of praise on the dull ear of despair. I smiled at the thought of needing kindness and protection when she was gone. As if it were possible for me to survive my mother!

Had she not herself told me that grief did not kill? But I believed her not.

Do you ask if I felt no curiosity then, about the mystery of my parentage? I had been looking forward to the time when I should be deemed old enough to know my mother's history of which my imagination had woven such a web of mystery and romance—when I should hear something of that father whose memory was curtained by such an impenetrable veil. But now it mattered not. Had I known that the blood of kings was in my veins, it would not have wakened one throb of ambition, kindled one ray of joy. I cared not for my lineage or kindred. I would not have disturbed the serenity that seemed settling on my mother's departing spirit, by one question relative to her past life, for the wealth of the Indies.

She gave to Mrs. Linwood a manuscript which she had written while I was at school, and which was to have been committed to Peggy's care;—for surely Peggy, the strong, the robust, unwearied Peggy, would survive her, the frail, delicate, and stricken one!

She told me this the night before she died, when at her own request I was left alone with her. I knew it was for the last time, but I had been looking forward steadily to this hour—looking as I said before, as the iron-bound prisoner to the revolving knife, and like him I was outwardly calm. I knelt beside her and looked on her shadowy form, her white, transparent skin, her dark, still lustrous, though sunken eyes, till it seemed that her spirit, almost disembodied, mingled mysteriously with mine, in earnest of a divine communion.

"I thank God, my Gabriella," she said, laying her hand blessingly on my bowed head, "that you submit to His holy will, in a spirit of childlike submission. I thank Him for raising up such a friend as Mrs. Linwood, when friend and comforter seemed taken from us. Love her, confide in her, be grateful to her, my child. Be grateful to God for sending her to soothe my dying hours with promises of protection and love for you, my darling, my child, my poor orphan Gabriella."

"Oh mother," I cried, "I do not submit—I cannot—I cannot! Dreadful thoughts are in my heart—oh, my mother, God is very terrible. Leave me not alone to meet his awful judgments. Put your arms round me, my mother, and let me lie close to your bosom, I will not hurt you, I will lie so gently there. Death cannot separate us, when we cling so close together. Leave me not alone in the world, so cold, so dark, so dreary—oh, leave me not alone!" Thus I clung to her, in the abandonment of despair, while words rushed unhidden from my lips.

"Oh, my Gabriella, my child, my poor smitten lamb!" she cried, and I felt her heart fluttering against mine like a dying bird. "Sorrow has bereft you of reason—you know not what you say. Gabriella, it is an awful thing to resist the Almighty God. Submission is the heritage of dust and ashes. I have been proud and rebellious, smarting under a sense of unmerited chastisement and wrong. Because man was false, I thought God unjust—but now, on this dying bed, the illusion of passion is dispelled, and I see Him as He is, longsuffering, compassionate, and indulgent, in all his loving-kindness and tender mercy, strong to deliver and mighty to save. I feel that I have needed all the discipline of sorrow through which I have passed, to bring my proud and troubled soul, a sin-sick, life weary wanderer, to my Father's footstool. What matters now, my Gabriella, that I have trod a thorny path, if it lead to heaven at last? How short the journey—how long the rest! Oh, beloved child, bow to the hand that smites thee, for the stubborn will must be broken. Wait not, like me, till it be ground into dust."

She paused breathless and exhausted, but I answered not. Low sobs came gaspingly from my bosom, on which a mountain of ice seemed freezing.

"If we could die together," she continued, with increasing solemnity, "if I could bear you in these feeble arms to the mercy-seat of God, and know you were safe from temptation, and sorrow, and sin, the bitterness of death would be passed. It is a fearful thing to live, my child, far more fearful than to die—but life is the trial of faith, and death the victory."

"And now," she added, "before my spirit wings its upward flight, receive my dying injunction. If you live to years of womanhood, and your heart awakens to love—as, alas, for woman's destiny it will—then read my life and sad experience, and be warned by my example. Mrs. Linwood is intrusted with the manuscript, blotted with your mother's tears. Oh, Gabriella, by all your love and reverence for the memory of the dead—by the scarlet dye that can be made white as wool—by your own hope in a Saviour's mercy, forgive the living—if living he indeed be!"

Her eyes closed as she uttered these words, and a purplish gloom gathered beneath her eyes. The doctor came in and administered ether, which partially revived her. I have never been able to inhale it since, without feeling sick and faint, and recalling the deadly odor of that chamber of mourning.

About daybreak, I heard Dr. Harlowe say in the lowest whisper to Mrs. Linwood that she could not live more than one hour. He turned the hour-glass as he spoke. She had collected all the energies of life in that parting interview—nothing remained but a faint, fluttering, quick-drawn breath.

I sat looking at the hour-glass, counting every gliding sand, till each little, almost invisible particle, instead of dropping into the crystal receptacle, seemed to fall on my naked heart like the mountain rock. O my God! there are only two or three sands left, and my mother's life hangs on the last sinking grain. Some one rises with noiseless steps to turn the glass.

With a shriek that might have arrested the departing spirit, I sprang forward and fell senseless on the floor.

I remember nothing that passed during the day. I was told afterwards, that when I recovered from the fainting fit, the doctor, apprehensive of spasms, gave me a powerful anodyne to quiet my tortured nerves. When I became conscious of what was passing around me, the moon was shining on the bed where I lay, and the shadow of the softly rustling leaves quivering on the counterpane. I was alone, but I heard low, murmuring voices in the next room, and there was a light there more dim and earthly than the pale splendor that enveloped me. I leaned forward on my elbow and looked beyond the open door. The plain white curtains of the bed were looped up on each side, and the festoons swayed heavily in the night air, which made the flame of the lamp dim and wavering. A form reclined on the bed, but the face was all covered, though it was a midsummer's night. As I looked, I remembered all, and I rose and glided through the moonlight to the spot where my mother slept. Sustained by unnatural excitement, I seemed borne on air, and as much separated from the body as the spirit so lately divorced from that unbreathing clay; it was the effect of the opiate I had taken, but the pale watchers in the death-chamber shuddered at my unearthly appearance.

"Let there be no light here but light from heaven," said I, extinguishing the fitful lamp-flame; and the room was immediately illuminated with a white, ghostly lustre. Then kneeling by the bed, I folded back the linen sheet, gazed with folded hands, and dry, dilated eyes on the mystery of death. The moon, "that sun of the sleepless," that star of the mourner, shone full on her brow, and I smiled to see how divinely fair, how placid, how angelic she looked. Her dark, shining hair, the long dark lashes that pencilled her white cheek, alone prevented her from seeming a statue of the purest marble, fashioned after some Grecian model. Beauty and youth had come back to her reposing features, and peace and rapture too. A smile, such as no living lips ever wore, lingered round her mouth and softened its mute expression. She was happy. God had given his beloved rest. She was happy. It was not death on which I was gazing; it was life—the dawn of immortal, of eternal life. Angels were watching around her. I did not see them, but I felt the shadow of their snow-white wings. I felt them fanning my brow and softly lifting the locks that fell darkly against the sheet, so chilly white. Others might have thought it the wind sighing through the leafy lattice-work; but the presence of angels was real to me—and who can say they were not hovering there?

That scene is past, but its remembrance is undying. The little cottage is inhabited by strangers. The grass grows rank near the brink of the fountain, and the mossy stone once moistened by my tears has rolled down and choked its gushing. My mother sleeps by the side of the faithful Peggy, beneath a willow that weeps over a broken shaft—fitting monument for a broken heart.

I will not dwell on the desolation of orphanage. It cannot be described. My Maker only knows the bitterness of my grief for days, weeks, even months. But time gradually warms the cold clay over the grave of love; then the grass springs up, and the flowers bloom, and the waste places of life become beautiful with hope, and the wilderness blossoms like the rose.

But oh, my mother! my gentle, longsuffering mother! thou hast never been forgotten. By day and by night, in sunshine and shadow, in joy and in sorrow, thou art with me, a holy spirit, a hallowed memory, a chastening influence, that passeth not away.