Читать книгу Ernest Linwood; or, The Inner Life of the Author - Caroline Lee Hentz - Страница 6

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If I thought any language of mine could do justice to her character, I would try to describe my mother. Were I to speak of her, my voice would choke at the mention of her name. As I write, a mist gathers over my eyes. Grief for the loss of such a being is immortal, as the love of which it is born.

I have said that we were poor—but ours was not abject poverty, hereditary poverty—though I had never known affluence, or even that sufficiency which casts out the fear of want. I knew that my mother was the child of wealth, and that she had been nurtured in elegance and splendor. I inherited from her the most fastidious tastes, without the means of gratifying them. I felt that I had a right to be wealthy, and that misfortune alone had made my mother poor, had made her an alien from her kindred and the scenes of her nativity. I felt a strange pride in this conviction. Indeed there was a singular union of pride and diffidence in my character, that kept me aloof from my young companions, and closed up the avenues to the social joys of childhood.

My mother thought a school life would counteract the influence of her own solitary habits and example. She did not wish me to be a hermit child, and for this reason accepted the offer Mr. Regulus made through the minister to become a pupil in the academy. She might have sent me to the free schools in the neighborhood, but she did not wish me to form associations incompatible with the refinement she had so carefully cultivated in me. She might have continued to teach me at home, for she was mistress of every accomplishment, but she thought the discipline of an institution like this would give tone and firmness to my poetic and dreaming mind. She wanted me to become practical—she wanted to see the bark growing and hardening over the exposed and delicate fibres. She anticipated for me the cold winds and beating rains of an adverse destiny. I knew she did, though she had never told me so in words. I read it in the anxious, wistful, prophetic expression of her soft, deep black eyes, whenever they rested on me. Those beautiful, mysterious eyes!

There was a mystery about her that gave power to her excellence and beauty. Through the twilight shades of her sorrowful loneliness, I could trace only the dim outline of her past life. I was fatherless—and annihilation, as well as death, seemed the doom of him who had given me being. I was forbidden to mention his name. No similitude of his features, no token of his existence, cherished by love and hallowed by reverence, invested him with the immortality of memory. It was as if he had never been.

Thus mantled in mystery, his image assumed a sublimity and grandeur in my imagination, dark and oppressive as night. I would sit and ponder over his mystic attributes, till he seemed like those gods of mythology, who, veiling their divinity in clouds, came down and wooed the daughters of men. A being so lovely and good as my mother would never have loved a common mortal. Perhaps he was some royal exile, who had found her in his wanderings a beauteous flower, but dared not transplant her to the garden of kings.

My mother little thought, when I sat in my simple calico dress, my school-book open on my knees, conning my daily lessons, or seeming so to do, what wild, absurd ideas were revelling in my brain. She little thought how high the "aspiring blood" of mine mounted in that lowly, woodland cottage.

I told her the history of my humiliation, passion, and flight—of Richard Clyde's brave defence and undaunted resolution—of my sorrow on his account—of my shame and indignation on my own.

"My poor Gabriella!"

"You are not angry with me, my mother?"

"Angry! No, my child, it was a hard trial—very hard for one so young. I did not think Mr. Regulus capable of so much unkindness. He has cancelled this day a debt of gratitude."

"My poor Gabriella," she again repeated, laying her delicate hand gently on my head. "I fear you have a great deal to contend with in this rough world. The flowers of poesy are sweet, but poverty is a barren soil, my child. The dew that moistens it, is tears."

I felt a tear on my hand as she spoke. Child as I was, I thought that tear more holy and precious than the dew of heaven. Flowers nurtured by such moisture must be sweet.

"I will never write any more," I exclaimed, with desperate resolution. "I will never more expose myself to ridicule and contempt."

"Write as you have hitherto done, for my gratification and your own. Your simple strains have beguiled my lonely hours. But had I known your purpose, I would have warned you of the consequences. The child who attempts to soar above its companions is sure to be dragged down by the hand of envy. Your teacher saw in your effusion an unpardonable effort to rise above himself—to diverge from the beaten track. You may have indulged too much in the dreams of imagination. You may have neglected your duties as a pupil. Lay your hand on your heart and ask it to reply."

She spoke so calmly, so soothingly, so rationally, the fever of imagination subsided. I saw the triumph of reason and principle in her own self-control—for, when I was describing the scene, her mild eye flashed, and her pale cheek colored with an unwonted depth of hue. She had to struggle with her own emotions, that she might subdue mine.

"May I ask him to pardon Richard Clyde, mother?"

"The act would become your gratitude, but I fear it would avail nothing. If he has required submission of him, he will hardly accept yours as a substitute."

"Must I ask him to forgive me? Must I return?"

I hung breathlessly on her reply.

"Wait till morning, my daughter. We shall both feel differently then. I would not have you yield to the dictates of passion, neither would I have you forfeit your self-respect. I must not rashly counsel."

"I would not let her go back at all," exclaimed a firm, decided voice. "They ain't fit to hold the water to wash her hands."

"Peggy," said my mother, rebukingly, "you forget yourself."

"I always try to do that," she replied, while she placed on the table my customary supper of bread and milk.

"Yes, indeed you do," answered my mother, gratefully—"kind and faithful friend. But humility becometh my child better than pride."

Peggy looked hard at my mother, with a mixture of reverence, pity, and admiration in her clear, honest eye, then taking a coarse towel, she rubbed a large silver spoon, till it shone brighter and brighter, and laid it by the side of my bowl. She had first spread a white napkin under it, to give my simple repast an appearance of neatness and gentility. The bowl itself was white, with a wreath of roses round the rim, both inside and out. Those rosy garlands had been for years the delight of my eyes. I always hailed the appearance of the glowing leaves, when the milky fluid sunk below them, with a fresh appreciation of their beauty. They gave an added relish to the Arcadian meal. They fed my love of the beautiful and the pure. That large, bright silver spoon—I was never weary of admiring that also. It was massive—it was grand—and whispered a tale of former grandeur. Indeed, though the furniture of our cottage was of the simplest, plainest kind, there were many things indicative of an earlier state of luxury and elegance. My mother always used a golden thimble—she had a toilet case inlaid with pearl, and many little articles appropriate only to wealth, and which wealth only purchases. These were never displayed, but I had seen them, and made them the corner-stones of many an airy castle.