Ernest Linwood; or, The Inner Life of the Author. Caroline Lee Hentz
melodious. It was the genuine offspring of a young imagination, urged by the "strong necessity" of giving utterance to its bright idealities, the sighings of a heart looking beyond its lowly and lonely destiny. Ah! Mr. Regulus, you were cruel then.
Methinks I see him—hear him now, weighing in the iron scales of criticism every springing, winged idea, cutting and slashing the words till it seemed to me they dropped blood—then glancing from me to the living rows of benches with such a cold, sarcastic smile.
"What a barbarous, unfeeling monster!" perhaps I hear some one exclaim.
No, he was not. He could be very kind and indulgent. He had been kind and generous to me. He gave me my tuition, and had taken unwearied pains with my lessons. He could forgive great offences, but had no toleration for little follies. He really thought it a sinful waste of time to write poetry in school. He had given me a subject for composition, a useful, practical one, but not at all to my taste, and I had ventured to disregard it. I had jumped over the rock, and climbed up to the flowers that grew above it. He was a thorough mathematician, a celebrated grammarian, a renowned geographer and linguist, but I then thought he had no more ear for poetry or music, no more eye for painting—the painting of God, or man—than the stalled ox, or the Greenland seal. I did him injustice, and he was unjust to me. I had not intended to slight or scorn the selection he had made, but I could not write upon it—I could not help my thoughts flowing into rhyme.
Can the stream help gliding and rippling through its flowery margins? Can the bird help singing and warbling upward into the deep blue sky, sending down a silver shower of melody as it flies?
Perhaps some may think I am swelling small things into great; but incidents and actions are to be judged by their results, by their influence in the formation of character, and the hues they reflect on futurity. Had I received encouragement instead of rebuke, praise instead of ridicule—had he taken me by the hand and spoken some such kindly words as these:—
"This is very well for a little girl like you. Lift up that downcast face, nor blush and tremble, as if detected in a guilty act. You must not spend too much time in the reveries of imagination, for this is a working-day world, my child. Even the birds have to build their nests, and the coral insect is a mighty laborer. The gift of song is sweet, and may be made an instrument of the Creator's glory. The first notes of the lark are feeble, compared to his heaven-high strains. The fainter dawn precedes the risen day."
Oh! had he addressed me in indulgent words as these, who knows but that, like burning Sappho, I might have sang as well as loved? Who knows but that the golden gates of the Eden of immortality might have opened to admit the wandering Peri to her long-lost home? I might have been the priestess of a shrine of Delphic celebrity, and the world have offered burning incense at my altar. I might have won the laurel crown, and found, perchance, thorns hidden under its triumphant leaves. I might—but it matters not. The divine spark is undying, and though circumstances may smother the flame it enkindles, it glows in the bosom with unquenchable fire.
I remember very well what the master said, instead of the imagined words I have written.
"Poetry, is it?—or something you meant to be called by that name? Nonsense, child—folly—moon-beam hallucination! Child! do you know that this is an unpardonable waste of time? Do you remember that opportunities of improvement are given you to enable you hereafter to secure an honorable independence? This accounts for your reveries over the blackboard, your indifference to mathematics, that grand and glorious science! Poetry! ha, ha! I began to think you did not understand the use of capitals—ha, ha!"
Did you ever imagine how a tender loaf of bread must feel when cut into slices by the sharpened knife? How the young bark feels when the iron wedge is driven through it with cleaving force? I think I can, by the experience of that hour. I stood with quivering lip, burning cheek, and panting breast—my eyes riveted on the paper which he flourished in his left hand, pointing at it with the forefinger of his right.
"He shall not go on,"—said I to myself, exasperation giving me boldness—"he shall not read what I have written of my mother. I will die sooner. He may insult my poverty but hers shall be sacred, and her sorrows too."
I sprang forward, forgetting every thing in the fear of hearing her name associated with derision, and attempted to get possession of the manuscript. A fly might as well attempt to wring the trunk of the elephant.
"Really, little poetess, you are getting bold. I should like to see you try that again. You had better keep quiet."
A resolute glance of the keen, black eye, resolute, yet twinkling with secret merriment, and he was about to commence another stanza.
I jumped up with the leap of the panther. I could not loosen his strong grasp, but I tore the paper from round his fingers, ran down the steps through the rows of desks and benches, without looking to the right or left, and flew without bonnet or covering out into the broad sunlight and open air.
"Come back, this moment!"
The thundering voice of the master rolled after me, like a heavy stone, threatening to crush me as it rolled. I bounded on before it with constantly accelerating speed.
"Go back—never!"
I said this to myself. I repeated it aloud to the breeze that came coolly and soothingly through the green boughs, to fan the burning cheeks of the fugitive. At length the dread of pursuit subsiding, I slackened my steps, and cast a furtive glance behind me. The cupola of the academy gleamed white through the oak trees that surrounded it, and above them the glittering vane, fashioned in the form of a giant pen, seemed writing on the azure page of heaven.
My home—the little cottage in the woods, was one mile distant. There was a by-path, a foot-path, as it was called, which cut the woods in a diagonal line, and which had been trodden hard and smooth by the feet of the children. Even at mid-day there was twilight in that solitary path, and when the shadows deepened and lengthened on the plain, they concentrated into gloominess there. The moment I turned into that path, I was supreme. It was mine. The public road, the thoroughfare leading through the heart of the town, belonged to the world. I was obliged to walk there like other people, with mincing steps, and bonnet tied primly under the chin, according to the rule and plummet line of school-girl propriety. But in my own little by-path, I could do just as I pleased. I could run with my bonnet swinging in my hand, and my hair floating like the wild vine of the woods. I could throw myself down on the grass at the foot of the great trees, and looking up into the deep, distant sky, indulge my own wondrous imaginings.
I did so now. I cast myself panting on the turf, and turning my face downward instead of upward, clasped my hands over it, and the hot tears gushed in scalding streams through my fingers, till the pillow of earth was all wet as with a shower.
Oh, they did me good, those fast-gushing tears! There was comfort, there was luxury in them. Bless God for tears! How they cool the dry and sultry heart! How they refresh the fainting virtues! How they revive the dying affections!
The image of my pale sweet, gentle mother rose softly through the falling drops. A rainbow seemed to crown her with its seven-fold beams.
Dear mother!—would she will me to go back where the giant pen dipped its glittering nib into the deep blue ether?
CHAPTER II.
"Get up, Gabriella—you must not lie here on the damp ground. Get up—it is almost night. What will your mother say? what will she think has become of you?"
I started up, bewildered and alarmed, passing my hands dreamily over my swollen eyelids. Heavy shadows hung over the woods. Night was indeed approaching. I had fallen into a deep sleep, and knew it not.
It was Richard Clyde who awakened me. His schoolmaster called him Dick, but I thought it sounded vulgar, and he was always Richard to me. A boy of fifteen, the hardest student in the academy, and, next