Читать книгу Ernest Linwood; or, The Inner Life of the Author - Caroline Lee Hentz - Страница 17

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Mr. Regulus still called me "child." We had quite a scene in the academy one day after the school was dismissed, and I was preparing as usual to return home.

"Will you give me a few moments' conversation, Miss Gabriella?" said he, clearing his throat with one of those hems which once sounded so awful. He looked awkward and disconcerted, while my face flushed with trepidation. Had I been guilty of any omitted duty or committed offence? Had I suffered an error on the blackboard to pass unnoticed, or allowed a mistake in grammar to be unconnected? What had I done?

I stood nervously pulling the fingers of my gloves, waiting for him to commence the conversation he had sought. Another hem!—then he moved the inkstand about a foot further from him, for he was standing close to his desk, as if to gather round him every imposing circumstance, then he took up the ruler and measured it with his eye, run his finger along the edge, as if it were of razor sharpness.

"Is he going to punish me?" thought I. "It looks ominous."

I would not assist him by one word; but maintaining a provoking silence, took up a pair of compasses and made a circle on the green cloth that covered the desk.

"Miss Gabriella," at length he said, "you must forgive me for taking the liberty of an old friend. Nothing but the most disinterested regard for your—your reputation—could induce me to mention a subject—so—so very—very peculiar."

"Good Heavens!" I exclaimed, "my reputation, Mr. Regulus?"

I felt the blood bubbling like boiling water, up into my cheek.

"I do not wish to alarm or distress you," he continued, becoming more self-possessed, as my agitation increased. "You know a young girl, left without her natural guardians, especially if she is so unfortunate as to be endowed with those charms which too often attract the shafts of envy and stir up the venom of malice,"—

"Mr. Regulus!" I interrupted, burning with impatience and indignation, "tell me what you mean. Has any one dared to slander me—and for what?"

"No one would dare to breathe aught of evil against you in my presence," said he, with great dignity; "but the covert whisper may pass from lip to lip, and the meaning glance flash from eye to eye, when your friend and protector is not near to shield you from aspersion, and vindicate your fame."

"Stop," I exclaimed; "you terrify—you destroy me!"

The room spun round like a top. Every thing looked misty and black. I caught hold of Mr. Regulus's arm to keep me from falling. Foes in ambush, glittering tomahawks, deadly scalping-knives, were less terrible than my dark imaginings.

"Bless me," cried my master, seating me in his great arm-chair and fanning me with an atlas which he caught from his desk, "I did not mean to frighten you, my child. I wanted to advise, to counsel you, to prevent misconstruction and unkind remark. My motives are pure, indeed they are; you believe they are, do you not?"

"Certainly I do," I answered, passing my hand over my eyes, to clear away the dark specks that still floated over them; "but if you have any regard for my feelings, speak at once, plainly and openly. I will be grateful for any advice prompted by kindness, and expressed without mystery."

"I only thought," said he, becoming again visibly embarrassed, "that I would suggest the propriety of your not permitting young Clyde to accompany you home so often. The extraordinary interest he took in you as a boy, renders his present attentions more liable to remark. A young girl in your situation, my child, cannot be too particular, too much on her guard. College boys are wild fellows. They are not safe companions for innocence and simplicity like yours."

"And is this all?" I asked, drawing a long breath, and feeling as if Mont Blanc had rolled from my breast.

"It is."

"And you have heard no invidious remarks?"

"Not yet, Gabriella, but—"

"My dear master," said I, rising with a joyous spring from my chair. "I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your anxious care of my good name. But I am sure Mrs. Linwood would not have sanctioned an impropriety. I have always felt towards Richard as I imagine I would towards a brother, were I so blest as to have one. He has made my lonely walks very pleasant by his lively and intelligent conversation. Still, I do not care to have him accompany me so often. I would rather that he would not. I will tell him so. I dare say you are right, Mr. Regulus; I know you are. I know so little of the world, I may offend its rules without being aware of it."

I felt so unspeakably relieved, so happy that the mountain of slander which my imagination had piled up was reduced to an anticipated molehill, that my spirits rebounded even to gaiety. I laughed at the sight of my torn glove, for I had actually pulled off the fingers by my nervous twitches.

"I thought you were going to apply the spatula. I feared you thought me guilty of writing another poem, Mr. Regulus; what else could make you look so formidable?"

"Ah! Gabriella, let bygones be bygones. I was very harsh, very disagreeable then. I wonder you have ever forgiven me; I have never forgiven myself. I know not how it is, but it seems to me that a softening change has come over me. I feel more tenderly towards the young beings committed to my care, more indulgence for the weaknesses and errors of my kind. I did not mind, then, trampling on a flower, if it sprung up in my path; now I would stoop down and inhale its fragrance, and bless my Maker for shedding beauty and sweetness to gladden my way. The perception of the beautiful grows and strengthens in me. The love of nature, a new-born flower, blooms in my heart, and diffuses a sweet balminess unknown before. Even poetry, my child—do not laugh at me—has begun to unfold its mystic beauties to my imagination. I was reading the other evening that charming paraphrase of the nineteenth Psalm: 'The spacious firmament on high,' and I was exceedingly struck with its melodious rhythm; and when I looked up afterwards to the starry heavens, to the moon walking in her brightness, to the blue and boundless ether, they seemed to bend over me in love, to come nearer than they had ever done before. I could hear the whisper of that divine voice, which is heard in the rustling of the forest trees, the gurgling of the winding stream, and the rush of the mountain cataract; and every day," he added, with solemnity, "I love man more, because God has made him my brother."

He paused, and his countenance glowed with the fervor of his feelings. With an involuntary expression of reverence and tenderness, I held out my hand and exclaimed—

"My dear master—"

"You forgive me, then," taking my hand in both his, and burying it in his large palms; "you do not think me officious and overbearing?"

"O no, sir, I have nothing to forgive, but much to be grateful for; thank you, I must go, for I have a long walk to take—alone."

With an emphasis on the last word I bade him adieu, ran down the steps, and went on musing so deeply on my singular interview with Mr. Regulus, that I attempted to walk through a tree by the way-side. A merry laugh rang close to my ear, and Richard Clyde sprang over the fence right before me.

"It should have opened and imprisoned you, as a truant dryad," said he. "Of what are you thinking, Gabriella, that you forget the impenetrability of matter, the opacity of bark and the incapability of flesh and blood to cleave asunder the ligneous fibres which oppose it, as the sonorous Johnson would have observed on a similar occasion."

"I was thinking of you, Richard," I answered with resolute frankness.

"Of me!" he exclaimed, while his eyes sparkled with animated pleasure. "Oh, walk through all the trees of Grandison Place, if you will honor me with one passing thought."

"You know you have always been like a brother to me, Richard."

"I don't know exactly how a brother feels. You have taken my fraternal regard for granted, but I am sure I have never professed any."

"Pardon me, if I have believed actions more expressive than words. I shall never commit a similar error."

With deeply wounded and indignant feelings, I walked rapidly on, without deigning to look at one so heartless and capricious. Mr. Regulus was right. He was not a proper companion. I would never allow him to walk with me again.

"Are you not familiar enough with my light, mocking way, Gabriella?" he cried, keeping pace with my accelerated steps. "Do not you know me well enough to understand when I am serious and when jesting? I have never professed fraternal regard, because I know a brother cannot feel half the—the interest for you that I do. I thought you knew it—I dare not say more—I cannot say less."

"No, no, do not say any more," said I, shrinking with indefinable dread; "I do not want any professions. I meant not to call them forth. If I alluded to you as a brother, it was because I wished to speak to you with the frankness of a sister. It is better that you should not walk with me from school—it is not proper—people will make remarks."

"Well, let them make them—who cares?"

"I care, a great deal. I will not be the subject of village gossip."

"Who put this idea in your head, Gabriella? I know it did not originate there. You are too artless, too unsuspicious. Oh! I know," he added, with a heightened color and a raised tone, "you have been kept after school; you have had a lecture on propriety; you cannot deny it."

"I neither deny nor affirm any thing. It makes no difference who suggested it. My own judgment tells me it is right."

"The old fellow is jealous," said he with a laugh of derision, "but he cannot control my movements. The road is wide enough for us both, and the world is wider still."

"How can you say any thing so absurd and ridiculous?" I exclaimed; and vexed as I was, I could not help laughing at his preposterous suggestion.

"Because I know it is the truth. But I really thought you above the fear of village gossip, Gabriella. Why, it is more idle than the passing wind, lighter than the down of the gossamer. I thought you had a noble independence of character, incapable of being moved by a whiff of breath, a puff of empty air."

"I trust I have sufficient independence to do what is right and sufficient prudence to avoid, if possible, the imputation of wrong," I replied, with grave earnestness.

"Oh! upright judge!—oh! excellent young sage!" exclaimed Richard, with mock reverence. "Wisdom becometh thee so well, I shall be tempted to quarrel hereafter with thy smiles. But seriously, Gabriella, I crave permission to walk courteously home with you this evening, for it is the last of my vacation. To-morrow I leave you, and it will be months before we meet again."

"I might have spared you and myself this foolish scene, then," said I, deeply mortified at its result. "I have incurred your ridicule, perhaps your contempt, in vain. We might have parted friends, at least."

"No, by heavens! Gabriella, not friends; we must be something more, or less than friends. I did not think to say this now, but I can hold it back no longer. And why should I? 'All my faults perchance thou knowest.' As was the boy, as is the youth, so most likely will be the man. No! if you love me, Gabriella—if I may look forward to the day when I shall be to you friend, brother, guardian, lover, all in one—I shall have such a motive for excellence, such a spring to ambition, that I will show the world the pattern of a man, such as they never saw before."

"I wish you had not said this," I answered, averting from his bright and earnest eye my confused and troubled glance. "We should be so much happier as friends. We are so young, too. It will be time enough years hence to talk of such things."

"Too young to love! We are in the very spring-time of our life—the season of blossoms and fragrance, music and love—oh, daughter of poetry! is it you who utter such a thought? Would you wait for the sultry summer, the dry autumn, to cultivate the morning flower of Paradise?"

"I did not dream you had so much hidden romance," said I, smiling at his metaphorical language, and endeavoring to turn the conversation in a new channel. "I thought you mocked at sentiment and poetic raptures."

"Love works miracles, Gabriella. You do not answer. You evade the subject on which all my life's future depends. Is there no chord in your heart that vibrates in harmony with mine? Are there no memories associated with the oak trees of the wood, the mossy stone at the fountain, the sacred rose of the grave, propitious to my early and ever-growing love?"

He spoke with a depth of feeling of which I had never thought him possessed. Sincerity and truth dignified every look and tone. Yes! there were undying memories, now wakened in all their strength, of the youthful champion of my injured rights, the sympathizing companion of my darkest hours; the friend, who stood by me when other friends were unknown. There was many a responsive chord that thrilled at his voice, and there was another note, a sweet triumphant note never struck before. The new-born consciousness of woman's power, the joy of being beloved, the regal sense of newly acquired dominion swelled in my bosom and flashed from my eye. But the master-chord was silent. I knew, I felt even then, that there was a golden string, down in the very depths of my heart, too deep for his hand to touch.

I felt grieved and glad. Grieved that I could not give a full response to his generous offering—glad that I had capacities of loving, he, with all his excellences, could never fill. I tried to tell him what I felt, to express friendship, gratitude, and esteem; but he would not hear me—he would not let me go on.

"No, no; say nothing now," said he impetuously. "I have been premature. You do not know your own heart. You do love me—you will love me. You must not, you shall not deny me the privilege of hope. I will maintain the vantage ground on which I stand—first friend, first lover, and even Ernest Linwood cannot drive me from it."

"Ernest Linwood!" I exclaimed, startled and indignant. "You know he can never be any thing to me. You know my immeasurable obligations to his mother. His name shall be sacred from levity."

"It is. He is the last person whom I would lightly name. He has brilliant talents and a splendid position; but woe to the woman who places her happiness in his keeping. He confides in no one—so the world describes him—is jealous and suspicious even in friendship;—what would he be in love?"

"I know not. I care not—only for his mother's and Edith's sake. Again I say, he is nothing to me. Richard, you trouble me very much by your strange way of talking. You have no idea how you have made my head ache. Please speak of common subjects, for I would not meet Mrs. Linwood so troubled, so agitated, for any consideration. See how beautiful the sunlight falls is the lawn! How graceful that white cloud floats down the golden west! As Wilson says:—

'Even in its very motion there is rest.'"

"Yes! the sunlight is very beautiful, and the cloud is very graceful, and you are beautiful and graceful in your dawning coquetry, the more so because you know it not. Well—obedience to-day, reward to-morrow, Gabriella. That was one of my old copies at the academy."

"I remember another, which was a favorite of Mr. Regulus—

'To-morrow never yet

On any human being rose and set.'"

A few more light repartees, and we were at Mrs. Linwood's gate.

"You will not come in?" said I, half asserting, half interrogating.

"To be sure I will. Edith promised me some of her angelic harp music. I come like Saul to have the evil spirit of discontent subdued by its divine influence."

Richard was a favorite of Mrs. Linwood. Whether it was that by a woman's intuition she discovered the state of feeling existing between us, or whether it was his approaching departure, she was especially kind to him this evening; she expressed a more than usual interest in his future prospects.

"This is your last year in college," I heard her say to him. "In a few months you will feel the dignity and responsibility of manhood. You will come out from the seclusion of college life into the wide, wide world, and of its myriad paths, so intricate, yet so trodden, you must choose one. You are looking forward now, eagerly, impatiently, but then you will pause and tremble. I pity the young man when he first girds himself for the real duties of life. The change from thought to action, from dreams to realities, from hope to fruition or disappointment, is so sudden, so great, he requires the wisdom which is only bought by experience, the strength gained only by exercise. But it is well," she added, with great expression, "it is well as it is. If youth could command the experience of age, it would lose the enthusiasm and zeal necessary for the conception of great designs; it would lose the brightness, the energy of hope, and nothing would be attempted, because every thing would be thought in vain. I did not mean to give you an essay," she said, smiling at her own earnestness, "but a young friend on the threshold of manhood is deeply interesting to me. I feel constrained to give him my best counsels, my fervent prayers."

"Thank you, dear Madam, a thousand times," he answered his countenance lighted up with grateful pleasure; "you do not know what inspiration there is in the conviction that we are cared for by the pure and the good. Selfish as we are, there are few of us who strive to excel for ourselves alone. We must feel that there are some hearts, who bear us in remembrance, who will exult in our successes, and be made happier by our virtues."

He forgot himself, and though he addressed Mrs. Linwood, his eye sought mine, while uttering the closing words. I was foolish enough to blush at his glance, and still more at the placid, intelligent smile of Mrs. Linwood. It seemed to say,

"I understand it all; it is all right, just as it should be. There is no danger of Richard's being forgotten."

I was provoked by her smile, his glance, and my own foolish blush. As for him, he really did seem inspired. He talked of the profession he had chosen as the noblest and the best, a profession which had commanded the most exalted talents and most magnificent geniuses in the world. He was not holy enough for the ministry; he had too great reverence and regard for human life to be a physician; but he believed nature had created him for a lawyer, for that much abused, yet glorious being, an honest lawyer.

I suppose I must have been nervous, in consequence of the exciting scenes through which I had passed, but there was something in his florid eloquence, animated gestures, and evident desire to make a grand impression, that strangely affected my risibles; I had always thought him so natural before. I tried to keep from laughing; I compressed my lips, and turning my head, looked steadily from the window, but a sudden stammering, then a pause, showed that my unconquerable rudeness was observed. I was sobered at once, but dared not look round, lest I should meet Mrs. Linwood's reproving glance. He soon after asked Edith for a parting song, and while listening to her sweet voice, as it mingled with the breezy strains of the harp, my excited spirit recovered its equilibrium. I thought with regret and pain, of the levity, so unwonted in me, which had wounded a heart so frank and true, and found as much difficulty in keeping back my tears, as a moment before I had done my laughter.

As soon as Edith had finished her song, he rose to take leave. He came to me last, to the little recess in the window where I stood, and extended his hand as he had done to Mrs. Linwood and Edith. He looked hurt rather than angry, disappointed rather than sad.

"Forgive me," said I, in a low voice; "I value your friendship too much to lose it without an effort."

The tears were in my eyes; I could not help it. I was sorry, for they expressed far more than I meant to convey. I knew it at once by the altered, beaming expression of his countenance.

"Give me smiles or tears, dear Gabriella," he answered, in the same undertone; "only do not forget me, only think of me as I wish to be remembered."

He pressed my hand warmly, energetically, while uttering these words; then, without giving me time to reply, bowed again to Mrs. Linwood and left the room.

"A very fine, promising young man," said Mrs. Linwood, with emphasis.

"A most intelligent, agreeable companion," added the gentle Edith, looking smilingly at me, as if expecting me to say something.

"Very," responded I, in a constrained manner.

"Is that all?" she asked, laying her soft, white hand on my shoulders, and looking archly in my face; "is that all, Gabriella?"

"Indeed, you are mistaken," said I, hastily; "he is nothing more—and yet I am wrong to say that—he has been—he is like a brother to me, Edith, and never will be any thing more."

"Oh, these brother friends!" she exclaimed, with a burst of musical laughter, "how very near they seem! But wait, Gabriella, till you see my brother—he is one to boast of."

"Edith!" said her mother. Edith turned her blue eyes from me to her mother, with a look of innocent surprise. The tone seemed intended to check her—yet what had she said?

"You should not raise expectations in Gabriella which will not be realized," observed Mrs. Linwood, in that quiet tone of hers which had so much power. "Ernest, however dear he may be to us as a son and brother, has peculiar traits which sometimes repel the admiration of strangers. His impenetrable reserve chills the warmth of enthusiasm, while the fitfulness of his morals produces constant inquietude. He was born under a clouded star, and the horoscope of his destiny is darkened by its influence."

"I love him better for his lights and shadows," said Edith, "he keeps one always thinking of him."

"When would this shadowy, flashing being appear, who kept one always thinking of him?"