Ernest Linwood; or, The Inner Life of the Author. Caroline Lee Hentz
if blood would stream from its venerable trunk. A circular bench with a back formed of boughs woven in checker-work surrounded it, and at twilight the soft sofas in the drawing-room were left vacant for this rustic seat.
Edith loved it, and when she sat there with her crutches leaning against the rough back, whose gray tint subdued the bright lustre of her golden hair, I would throw myself on the grass at her feet and gaze upon her, as the embodiment of human loveliness.
One would suppose that I felt awkward and strange in the midst of such unaccustomed magnificence; but it was not so. It seemed natural and right for me to be there. I trod the soft, rich, velvety carpeting with a step as unembarrassed as when I traversed the grassy lawn. I was as much at home among the splendors of art as the beauties of nature—both seemed my birthright.
I felt the deepest, most unbounded gratitude for my benefactress; but there was nothing abject in it. I knew that giving did not impoverish her; that the food I ate was not as much to her as the crumbs that fell from my mother's table; that the room I occupied was but one in a suite of elegant apartments; yet this did not diminish my sense of obligation. It lightened it, however, of its oppressive weight.
My room was next to Edith's. The only difference in the furniture was in the color of the hangings. The curtains and bed drapery of mine were pink, hers blue. Both opened into an upper piazza, whose lofty pillars were wreathed with flowering vines, and crowned with Corinthian capitals. Surely my love for the beautiful ought to have been satisfied; and so it was—but it was long, long before my heart opened to receive its influence. The clods that covered my mother's ashes laid too heavily upon it.
Mrs. Linwood had a great deal of company from the city, which was but a short journey from Grandison Place. As they were mostly transient guests, I saw but little of them. My extreme youth, and deep mourning dress, were sufficient reasons for withdrawing from the family circle when strangers enlarged it. Edith was three years older than myself, and was of course expected to assist her mother in the honors of hospitality. She loved society, moreover, and entered into its innocent pleasures with the delight of a young, genial nature. It was difficult to think of her as a young lady, she was so extremely juvenile in her appearance; and her lameness, by giving her an air of childish dependence, added to the illusion caused by her fair, clustering ringlets and infantine rosiness of complexion. She wanted to bring me forward;—she coaxed, caressed, and playfully threatened, nor desisted till her mother said, with grave tenderness—
"The heart cannot be forced, Edith; Gabriella is but a child, and should be allowed the freedom of a child. The restraints of social life, once assumed, are not easily thrown aside. Let her do just as she pleases."
And so I did; and it pleased me to wander about the lawn; to sit and read under the great elm-tree; to make garlands of myrtle and sweet running vine flowers for Edith's beautiful hair; to walk the piazza, when moonlight silvered the columns and covered with white glory the granite walls, while the fountain of poetry down in the depths of my soul welled and trembled in the heavenly lustre.
It pleased me to sit in the library, or rather to stand and move about there, for at that time I did not like to sit anywhere but on the grass or the oaken bench. The old poets were there in rich binding, all the classics, and the choicest specimens of modern literature. There were light, airy, movable steps, so as to reach to the topmost shelves, and there I loved to poise myself, like a bird on the spray, peeping into this book and that, gathering here and there a golden grain or sweet scented flower for the garner of thought, or the bower of imagination.
There were statues in niches made to receive them—the gods and goddesses of Greece and Rome, in their cold, severe beauty, all passionless and pure, in spite of the glowing mythology that called them into existence. There were paintings, too, that became a part of my being, I took them in with such intense, gazing eyes. Indeed, the house was lined with them. I could not walk through a room without stopping to admire some work of genius, some masterpiece of art.
I over-heard Dr. Harlowe say to Mrs. Linwood, that it was a pity I were not at school, I was so very young. As if I were not at school all the time! As if those grand old books were not teachers; those breathing statues, those gorgeous paintings were not teachers; as if the noble edifice itself, with its magnificent surroundings, the billowy heave of the distant mountains, the glimpses of the sublime sea, the fair expanse of the beautiful valley, were not teachers!
Oh! they little knew what lessons I was learning. They little knew how the soul of the silent orphan girl was growing within her—how her imagination, like flowers, was nourished in stillness and secrecy by the air and the sunshine, the dew and the shower.
I had other teachers, too, in the lonely churchyard; very solemn they were, and gentle too, and I loved their voiceless instructions better than the sounding eloquence of words.
Mr. Regulus thought with Dr. Harlowe, that it was a pity I was not at school. He called to see Mrs. Linwood and asked her to use her influence to induce me to return as a pupil to the academy. She left it to my decision, but I shrunk from the thought of contact with the rude village children. I felt as if I had learned all Mr. Regulus could teach me. I was under greater masters now. Yet I was grateful for the interest he manifested in me. I had no vindictive remembrance of the poem he had so ruthlessly murdered. Innumerable acts of after kindness had obliterated the impression, or rather covered it with a growth of pleasant memories.
"Have you given up entirely the idea of being a teacher yourself?" he asked, in a low voice, "or has the kindness of friends rendered it superfluous? I do not ask from curiosity out a deep interest in your future welfare."
This was a startling question. I had not thought of the subject since I had entered my new home. Why should I think of the drudgery of life, pillowed on the downy couch of luxury and ease? I was forgetting that I was but the recipient of another's bounty—a guest, but not a child of the household.
Low as was his voice, I knew Mrs. Linwood heard and understood him, for her eyes rested on me with a peculiar expression of anxiety and interest. She did not speak, and I knew not what to utter. A burning glow rose to my cheeks, and my heart fluttered with painful apprehension. It was all a dream, then. That home of affluence was not mine—it was only the asylum of my first days of orphanage. The maternal tenderness of Mrs. Linwood was nothing more than compassion and Christian charity, and the sisterly affection of the lovely Edith but the overflowing of the milk of human kindness. These were my first, flashing thoughts; then the inherent pride of my nature rose to sustain me. I would never be a willing burden to any one. I would toil day and night, sooner than eat the bread of dependence. It would have been far better to have left me in the humble cottage where they found me, to commence my life of drudgery at once, than to have given me a taste of luxury and affluence, to heighten, by force of contrast, privation and labor.
"I will commence teaching immediately," I answered, trying in vain to speak with firmness, "if you think I am not too young, and a situation can be obtained;" "that is," I added, I fear a little proudly, "if Mrs. Linwood approve."
"It must not be thought of at present," she answered, speaking to Mr. Regulus. "Gabriella is too young yet to assume the burden of authority. Her physical powers are still undeveloped. Besides, we shall pass the winter in the metropolis. Next summer we will talk about it."
"They speak of adding a primary department to the academy," said my former master, "which will be under female superintendence. If this is done, and she would accept the situation, I think I have influence enough to secure it for her."
"We will see to that hereafter," said Mrs. Linwood; "but of one thing I am assured, if Gabriella ever wishes to assume duties so honorable and so feminine, she would think it a privilege to be under your especial guardianship, and within reach of your experience and counsel."
I tried to speak, and utter an assent to this wise and decided remark, but I could not. I felt the tears gushing into my eyes, and hastily rising, I left the room. I did not go out on the lawn, for I saw Edith's white robes under the trees, and I knew the guests of the city were with her. I ran up stairs to my own apartment, or that which was called mine, and, sitting down in an embrasure of the window, drew aside the rosy damask and gazed around me.