What am I writing?
Sometimes I throw down the pen, saying to myself, "it is all folly, all
verbiage. There is a history within worth perusing, but I cannot bring
it forth to light. I turn over page after page with the fingers of
thought. I see characters glowing or darkened with passion,--lines
alternately bright and shadowy, distinct and obscure, and it seems an
easy thing to make a transcript of these for the outward world."
Easy! it requires the recording angel's pen to register the history of
the human heart. "The thoughts that breathe, the thoughts that burn,"
how can they be expressed? The mere act of clothing them in words makes
them grow cold and dull. The molten gold, the fused iron hardens and
chills in the forming mould.
Easy! "Oh yes," the critic says, "it is an easy thing to write; only
follow nature, and you cannot err." But nature is as broad as the
universe, as high as the heavens, and as deep as the seas. It is but a
small portion we can condense even on hundreds of pages of foolscap
paper. If that portion be of love, the cold philosopher turns away in
disdain and talks of romantic maids and moonstruck boys, as if the
subject were fit alone for them. And yet love is the great motive
principle of nature, the burning sun of the social system. Blot it out,
and every other feeling and passion would sink in the darkness of
eternal night. Byron's awful dream would be realized,--darkness would
indeed be the universe. They who praise a writer for omitting love from
the page which purports to be a record of life, would praise God for
creating a world, over whose sunless realms no warmth or light was
diffused, (if such a creation were possible,)--a world without flowers
or music, without hope or joy.
But as the sun is only an emanation from the first great fountain of
light and glory, so love is but an effluence from the eternal source of
love divine.
"Bright effluence of bright essence increate." And woe to her, who,
forgetting this heavenly union, bathes her heart in the earthly stream,
without seeking the living spring whence it flows; who worships the
fire-ray that falls upon the altar, without giving glory to him from
whom it descended. The stream will become a stagnant pool, exhaling
pestilence and death; the fire-ray will kindle a devouring flame,
destroying the altar, with the gift and the heart a _burning bush_, that
will blaze forever without consuming.
Whither am I wandering?
Imagine me now, in a very different scene to the president's illuminated
drawing-room. Instead of the wild buzzing of mingling voices, I hear the
mournful sighing of the breeze through the weeping grave trees; and ever
and anon there comes a soft, stealing sound through the long, swaying
grass, like the tread of invisible feet. I am alone with my mother's
spirit. The manuscript, that is to reveal the mystery of my parentage,
is in my hand. The hour is come, when without violating the commands of
the dead, I may claim it as my own, and remove the hermetic seal which
death has stamped. Where else could I read it? My own room, once so
serenely quiet, was no longer a sanctuary,--for Margaret Melville dashed
through the house, swinging open the doors as abruptly as a March wind,
and her laugh filled every nook and corner of the capacious mansion. How
could I unseal the sacred history of my mother's sorrows within the
sound of that loud, echoing ha, ha?
I could not; so I stole away to a spot, where sacred silence has set up
its everlasting throne. The sun had not yet gone down, but the shadows
of the willows lengthened on the grass. I sat at the foot of the grave
leaning against a marble slab, and unsealed, with cold and trembling
hands, my mother's _heart_, for so that manuscript seemed to me.
At first I could not see the lines, for my tears rained down so fast
they threatened to obliterate the delicate characters; but after
repeated efforts I acquired composure enough to read the following brief
and thrilling history. It was the opening of the sixth seal of my life.
The stars of hope fell, as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs when she
is shaken by a mighty wind, and the heaven of my happiness departed as a
scroll when it is rolled together, and the mountains and islands of
human trust were moved out of their places.
MY MOTHER'S HISTORY.
"Gabriella, before your eyes shall rest on these pages, mine will be
closed in the slumbers of death. Let not your heart be troubled, my only
beloved, at the record of wrongs which no longer corrode; of sorrows
which are all past away. 'In my Father's house are many mansions,' and
one of them is prepared for me. It is my Saviour's promise, and I
believe it as firmly as if I saw the golden streets of the New
Jerusalem, where that heavenly mansion is built.
"Weep not, then, my child, my orphan darling, over a past which cannot
be recalled; let not its shadow rest too darkly upon you,--if there is
joy in the present, be grateful; if there is hope in the future,
rejoice.
"You have often asked me to tell you where I lived when I was a little
child; whether my home was a gray cottage like ours, in the woods; and
whether I had a mother whom I loved as dearly as you loved me. I have
told you that my first feeble life-wail mingled with her dying groan,
and you wondered how one could live without a mother's love.
"I was born in that rugged fortress, whose embattled walls are washed by
the majestic Bay of Chesapeake. My father held a captain's commission in
the army, and was stationed for many years at this magnificent,
insulated bulwark. My father, at the time of my mother's death, was a
young and gallant officer, and I was his only child. It is not strange
that he should marry again; for the grief of man seldom survives the
allotted period of mourning, and it was natural that he should select a
gay and brilliant woman, for the second choice is generally a striking
contrast to the first. My mother, I am told, was one of those gentle,
dove-like, pensive beings, who nestled in her husband's heart, and knew
no world beyond. My step-mother loved the world and its pleasures better
than husband, children, and home. She had children of her own, who were
more the objects of her pride than her love. Every day, they were
dressed for exhibition, petted and caressed, and then sent back to the
nursery, where they could not interfere with the pleasures of their
fashionable mamma. Could I expect those tender cares which the yearning
heart of childhood craves, as its daily sustenance? She was not harsh or
despotic, but careless and indifferent. She did not care for me; and
provided I kept out of her way, she was willing I should amuse myself in
the best manner I pleased. My father was kind and caressing, when he had
leisure to indulge his parental sensibilities; but he could not
sympathize in my childish joys and sorrows, for I dared not confide them
to him. He was a man, and, moreover, there was something in the gilded
pomp of his martial dress, that inspired too much awe for childish
familiarity. I used to gaze at him, when he appeared on military parade,
as if he were one of the demi-gods of the ancient world. He had an erect
and warlike bearing, a proud, firm step, and his gold epaulette with its
glittering tassels flashing in the sunbeams, his crimson sash
contrasting so splendidly with the military blue, his shining sword and
waving plume,--all impressed me with a grandeur that was overpowering.
It dazzled my eye, but did not warm my young heart.
"As I grew older, I exhibited a remarkable love of reading, and as no
one took the trouble to direct my tastes, I seized every book which came
within my reach and devoured it, with the avidity of a hungry and
unoccupied mind. My father was a gentleman of pure and elegant taste,
and had he dreamed that I was exposed, without guardianship, to
dangerous influences, he would have shielded and warned me. But he
believed the care of children under twelve years of age devolved on
their mother, and he was always engrossed with the duties of a
profession which he passionately loved, or the society of his brother
officers, usually so fascinating and convivial.
"I used to take my book, which was generally some wild, impassioned
romance, and wandering to the ramparts, seat myself by the shining
pyramids of cannon-balls; and while the blue waves of the Chesapeake
rolled in murmuring music by, or, lashed by the ocean wind, heaved in
foaming billows, roaring against the walls, I yielded myself to the
wizard spell of genius and passion. The officers as they passed would
try to break the enchantment by gay and sportive words, but all in vain.
I have sat there, drenched by the salt sea-spray, and knew it not. I was
called the little bookworm, the prodigy, the _dream-girl_, a name you
have inherited, my darling Gabriella; and my father seemed proud of the
reputation I had established. But while my imagination was
preternaturally developed, my heart was slumbering, and my soul
unconscious of life's great aim.
"Thus unguarded by precept, unguided by example, I was sent from home to
a boarding-school, where I acquired the usual education and
accomplishments obtained at fashionable female seminaries. During my
absence from home, my two step-sisters, who were thought too young to
accompany me, and my infant step-brother, died in the space of one week,
smitten by that destroying angel of childhood, the scarlet fever.
"I had been at school two years when I made my first visit home. My
step-mother was then in the weeds of mourning, and of course excluded
herself in a measure from gay society; but I marvelled that sorrow had
not impaired the bloom of her cheek, or quenched the sparkle of her
cold, bright eye. Her heart was not buried in the grave of her
children,--it belonged to the world, to which she panted to return.
"But my father mourned. There was a shadow on his manly brow, which I
had never seen before. I was, now, his only child, the representative of
his once beloved Rosalie, and the pure, fond love of his early years
revived again in me. I look back upon those two months, when I basked in
the sunshine of parental tenderness for the first, the _only_ time, as a
portion of my life most dear and holy. I sighed when I thought of the
years when we had been comparatively so far apart, and my heart grew to
his with tender adhesiveness and growing love. The affections, which my
worldly step-mother had chilled and repressed, and which the death of
his other children had blighted, were now all mine, renovated and
warmed.
"Oh, Gabriella! very precious is a father's love. It is an emblem of the
love of God for the dependent beings he has created; so kind, so
protecting, so strong, and yet so tender! Would to God, my poor,
defrauded child, you could have known what this God-resembling love
is,--but your orphanage has been the most sad, the most dreary,--the
most unhallowed. Almighty Father of the universe, have mercy on my
child! Protect and bless her when this wasting, broken heart no longer
beats; when the frail shield of a mother's love is taken from her, and
she is left _alone_--_alone_--_alone_. Oh! my God, have pity--have pity!
Forsake her not!"
The paper was blistered with the tears of the writer. I dropped it on
the grave, unable to go on. I cast myself on the grass-covered mould,
and pressed it to my bosom, as if there was vitality in the cold clods.
"Oh, my mother!" I exclaimed, and strange and dreary sounded my voice in
that breathing stillness. "Has God heard thy prayers? Will he hear the
cries of the fatherless? Will he have pity on my forsaken youth?"
I would have given worlds to have realized that this mighty God was
near; that he indeed cared with a father's love for the orphan mourner,
committed in faith to his all-embracing arms. But I still worshipped him
as far-off, enthroned on high, in the heaven of heavens, which cannot
contain the full glory of his presence. I saw him on the burning
mountain, in the midst of thunder and lightning and smoke,--a God of
consuming fire, before whose breath earthly joys and hopes withered and
dried, like blossoms cast into the furnace.
But did not God once hide his face of love from his own begotten Son?
And shall not the _eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani_ of the forsaken heart
sometimes ascend amid the woes and trials and wrongs of life, from the
great mountain of human misery, the smoking Sinai, whose clouded summit
quakes with the footsteps of Deity?