I did not become insensible, but I was dead to surrounding objects, dead
to the present, dead to the future. The past, the terrible, the
inexorable past, was upon me, trampling me, grinding me with iron heel,
into the dust of the grave. I could not move, for its nightmare weight
crushed me. I could not see, for its blackness shrouded me; nor hear,
for its shrieks deafened me. Had I remained long in that awful
condition, I should have become a maniac.
"Gabriella!" said a voice, which at any other moment would have wakened
a thrill of rapture, "Gabriella, speak,--look up. Why do you do this?
Why will you not speak? Do you not hear me?"
I did try to speak, but my tongue seemed frozen. I did try to lift my
head, but in vain.
Ernest Linwood, for it was he, knelt down by me, and putting his arms
round me, raised me from the ground, without any volition of my own. I
know not what state I was in. I was perfectly conscious; but had no more
power over the movement of a muscle than if I were dead. My eyes were
closed, and my head drooped on his breast, as he raised me, bowed by its
own weight. I was in a kind of conscious catalepsy. He was alarmed,
terrified. As he afterwards told me, he really believed me dead, and
clasping me to him with an energy of which he was not aware, adjured me
in the most tender and passionate manner to speak and tell him that I
lived.
"Gabriella, my flower-girl, my darling!" he cried, pressing my cheek
with those pure, despairing kisses with which love hallows death. Had I
indeed passed the boundaries of life, for my spirit alone was conscious
of caresses, whose remembrance thrilled through my being.
The reaction was instantaneous. The chilled blood grew warm and rushed
through every vein with wild rapidity. Then I became physically
conscious, and glowing with confusion I raised myself from my reclining
position, and attempted to look up into the face of Ernest. But I could
not do it. Contending emotions deprived me of the power of self-command.
"This is madness, Gabriella! This is suicide!" he exclaimed, lifting me
from the grave, and still supporting me with his arm. "Why do you come
here to nurse a grief so far beyond the limits of reason and religion?
Why do you give your friends such exquisite pain, yourself such
unnecessary misery?"
"Do not reproach me," I cried. "You know not what cause I have for
anguish and despair."
"Despair, Gabriella! You cannot know the meaning of that word. Despair
belongs to guilt, and even that is not hopeless. And why do you come to
this lone place of graves to weep, as if human sympathy were denied to
your sorrows? Is not my mother kind,--is not Edith tender and
affectionate? Am not I worthy to be trusted, as a friend,--a
protector,--a redresser; and if need be, an avenger of wrongs?"
"My own wrongs I might reveal; but those of the dead are sacred," I
answered, stooping down and gathering up the manuscript, which was half
concealed in the long, damp grass. "But do not think me ungrateful. What
I owe to your mother and Edith words can never tell. In every prayer I
breathe to heaven I shall call down blessings on their head. And you
too,--you have been more than kind. I never can forget it."
"If it be not too presumptuous, I will unite your name with theirs, and
pray that God may bless you, now and ever more."
"This will never do," said he, drawing me forcibly from the mournful
place. "You _must_ confide in my mother, Gabriella. A dark secret is a
plague spot in the heart. Confide in my mother. It is due to her
maternal love and guardianship. And beware of believing that any thing
independent _of yourself_ can alienate her affections. Can you walk? If
it were not for leaving you alone, I would go and return with the
carriage."
"Oh, yes; I am quite well and strong again."
"Then lean on me, Gabriella. Shrink not from an arm which would gladly
protect you from every danger and every wrong. Let us hasten, lest I
utter words which I would not for worlds associate with a scene so cold
and sad. Not where the shadow of death falls--no--not here."
He hurried me through the gate, and then paused.
"Rest here a moment," said he, "and recover your composure. We may meet
with those who would wonder to see you thus, with your hair wildly
flowing, your scarf loose and disordered."
"Thank you," I exclaimed, my thoughts coming to the surface, and resting
there with shame. I had forgotten that my bonnet was in my hand, that my
comb had fallen, leaving my hair loose and dishevelled. Gathering up its
length, and twisting it in thick folds around my head, I confined it
with my bonnet, and smoothing my thin scarf, I took his arm in silence,
and walked on through the purple gloom of twilight that deepened before
us. Slight shivers ran through my frame. The dampness of the grave-yard
clung to me, and the night dews were beginning to fall.
"Are you cold, Gabriella?" he asked, folding my light mantle more
closely round me. "You are not sufficiently protected from the dewy air.
You are weary and chill. You do not lean on me. You do not confide in
me."
"In whom should I confide, then? Without father, brother, or protector,
in whom should I confide, if ungrateful and untrusting I turn from you?"
As I said this, I suffered my arm to rest more firmly on his, for my
steps were indeed weary, and we were now ascending the hill. My heart
was deeply touched by his kindness, and the involuntary ejaculations he
uttered, the involuntary caresses he bestowed, when he believed me
perfectly unconscious, were treasured sacredly there. We were now by the
large elm-tree that shaded the way-side, beneath whose boughs I had so
often paused to gaze on the valley below. Without speaking, he led me to
this resting-place, and we both looked back, as wayfarers are wont to do
when they stop in an ascending path.
Calmly the shadows rested on the landscape, softly yet darkly they
rolled down the slope of the neighboring hills and the distant
mountains. In thin curlings, the gray smoke floated upwards and lay
slumberously among the fleecy clouds. Here and there a mansion, lifted
above the rest, shed from its glowing windows the reflection of
departing day. Bright on the dusky gold of the west the evening-star
shone and throbbed, like a pure love-thought in the heart of night; and,
dimly glimmering above the horizon, the giant pen seemed writing the
Mene Tekel of my clouded destiny on the palace walls of heaven.
As we thus stood, lifted above the valley, involved in shadows, silent
and alone, I could hear the beating of my heart, louder and louder in
the breathing stillness.
"Gabriella!" said Ernest, in a low voice, and that _master-chord_ which
no hand but his had touched, thrilled at the sound. "If the spot on
which we stand were a desert island, and the valley stretching around us
the wide waste of ocean, and we the only beings in the solitude of
nature, with your hand thus clasped in mine, and my heart thus throbbing
near, with a love so strong, so deep, it would be to you in place of the
whole world beside,--tell me, could you be happy?"
"I could," was the low, irresistible answer; and my soul, like an
illuminated temple, flashed with inward light. I covered my eyes to keep
in the dazzling rays. I forgot the sad history of wrongs and disgrace
which I had just been perusing;--I forgot that such words had breathed
into my mother's ear, and that she believed them. I only remembered that
Ernest Linwood loved me, and _that_ love surrounded me with a luminous
atmosphere, in which joy and hope fluttered their heavenly wings.
How slight a thing will change the current of thought! I caught a
glimpse of the granite walls of Grandison Place, and darkened by the
shades, they seemed to frown upon me with their high turret and lofty
colonnade, so ancestral and imposing. Then I remembered Mrs. Linwood and
Edith,--then I remembered my mother, my _father_, and all the light went
out in my heart.
"I had forgotten,--oh, how much I had forgotten," I cried, endeavoring
to release myself from the arm that only tightened its hold. "Your
mother never would forgive my presumption if she thought,--if she knew."
"My mother loves you; but even if she did not, I am free to act, free to
choose, as every man should be. I love and _revere_ my mother, but there
is a passion stronger than filial love and reverence, which goes on
conquering and to conquer. She will not, she cannot oppose me."
"But Edith, dear Edith, who loves you so devotedly! She will hate me if
I dare to supplant her."
"A sister never can be supplanted,--and least of all such a sister as
Edith, Gabriella. If you do not feel that love so expands, so enlarges
the heart, that it makes room for all the angels in heaven, you could
not share my island home."
"If you knew all,--if I could tell you all," I cried,--and again I felt
the barbed anguish that prostrated me at the grave,--"and you _shall_
know,--your generous love demands this confidence. When your mother has
read the history of my parentage, I will place it in your hands; though
my mother's character is as exalted and spotless as your own, there is a
cloud over my name that will for ever rest upon it. Knowing _that_, you
cannot, you will not wish to unite your noble, brilliant destiny with
mine. This hour will be remembered as a dream, a bright, but fleeting
dream."
"What do I care for the past?" he exclaimed, detaining me as I
endeavored to move on. "Talk not of a clouded name. Will not mine absorb
it? What shaft of malice can pierce you, with my arm as a defence, and
my bosom as a shield? Gabriella, it is you that I love, not the dead and
buried past. You are the representative of all present joy and hope. I
ask for nothing but your love,--your exclusive, boundless love,--a love
that will be ready to sacrifice every thing but innocence and integrity
for me,--that will cling to me in woe as in weal, in shame as in honor,
in death as in life. Such is the love I give; and such I ask in return.
Is it mine? Tell me not of opposing barriers; only tell me what your
heart this moment dictates; forgetful of the past, regardless of the
future? Is this love mine?"
"It is," I answered, looking up through fast-falling tears. "Why will
you wring this confession from me, when you only know it too well?"
"One question more, Gabriella, for your truth-telling lips to answer. Is
this love only given in _return_? Did it not spring spontaneously forth
from the warmth and purity of your own heart, without waiting the avowal
of mine? Gratitude is not love. It is _stone_, not bread, to a spirit as
exacting as mine."
Again the truth was forced from me by his unconquerable will,--a will
that opened the secret valves of thought, and rolled away the rock from
the fountain of feeling. Even then I felt the despotism as well as the
strength of his love.
I cannot, I dare not, repeat all that he uttered. It would be deemed too
extravagant, too high-wrought. And so it was. Let woman tremble rather
than exult, when she is the object of a passion so intense. The devotion
of her whole being cannot satisfy its inordinate demands. Though the
flame of the sacrifice ascend to heaven, it still cries, "Bring gifts to
the altar,--bring the wine of the banquet,--the incense of the
temple,--the fuel of the hearth-stone. Bring all, and still I crave.
Give all, I ask for more."
Not then was this warning suggested. To be wildly, passionately loved,
was my heart's secret prayer. Life itself would be a willing sacrifice
to this devotion. Suspicion that stood sentinel at the door of Faith,
Distrust that threw its shadow over the sunshine of truth, and Jealousy,
doubting, yet adoring still, would be welcomed as household guests, if
the attendants of this impassioned love. Such was the dream of my
girlhood.
When we entered the lawn, lights began to glimmer in the house. I
trembled at the idea of meeting Mrs. Linwood, or the Amazonian Meg.
There was a side door through which I might pass unobserved, and by this
ingress I sought my chamber and locked the door. A lamp was burning on
the table. Had I lingered abroad so late? Had the absence of Ernest been
observed?
I sat down on the side of the bed, threw off my bonnet and scarf, shook
my hair over my shoulders, and pushed it back with both hands from my
throbbing temples. I wanted room. Such crowding thoughts, such
overflowing emotions, could not be compressed in those four walls. I
rose and walked the room back and forth, without fear of being
over-heard, on the soft carpet of velvet roses. What revelations had
been made known to me since I had quitted that room! How low I had been
degraded,--how royally exalted! A child unentitled to her father's
name!--a maiden, endowed with a princely heart! I walked as one in a
dream, doubting my own identity. But one master thought governed every
other.
"He loves me!" I repeated to myself. "Ernest Linwood loves me! Whatever
be the future, that present bliss is mine. I have tasted woman's
highest, holiest joy,--the joy of loving and being beloved. Sorrow and
trial may be mine; but this remembrance will remain, a blessed light
through the darkness of time,--'a star on eternity's ocean.'"
As I passed and repassed the double mirror, my reflected figure seemed
an apparition gliding by my side, I paused and stood before one of them,
and I thought of the time when, first awakened to the consciousness of
personal influence, I gazed on my own image. Some writer has said, "that
every woman is beautiful when she loves." There certainly is a light,
coming up from the enkindled heart, bright as the solar ray, yet pure
and soft as moonlight, which throws an illusion over the plainest
features and makes them for the moment charming. I saw the flower-girl
of the library in the mirror, and then I knew that the artist had
intended her as the idealization of Love's image.
And then I remembered the morning when we sat together in the library,
and he took the roses from my basket and scattered the leaves at my
feet.