Ernest Linwood; or, The Inner Life of the Author. Caroline Lee Hentz
Gone was the unnatural excitement which had sustained her the last nine days; severed the silver cord so long dimmed by secret tears.
Thank heaven! I was not doomed to see her tortured by pain, or raving in delirious agony—to see those exquisite features distorted by frenzy—or to hear that low, sweet voice untuned, the key-note of reason lost.
Thank heaven! even death laid its hand gently on one so gentle and so lovely.
CHAPTER X.
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