The interview with Richard Clyde the next day, was a painfully agitating
one. I had no conception till then, how closely and strongly love and
hope had twined their fibres round him; or how hard would be the task of
rending them from him. Why could I not appreciate the value of his
frank, noble, and confiding nature? It may be because we had been
children together, and that familiarity was unfavorable to the growth of
love in one of my poetic nature. I _must_ look up. The cloud crowned
cliff did not appall my high-reaching eye.
"I shall not see you again, Gabriella," said he, as he wrung my hand in
parting. "I shall not see you again before my departure,--I would not
for worlds renew the anguish of this moment. I do not reproach you,--you
have never deceived me. My own hopes have been building a bridge of
flowers over a dark abyss. But, by the Heaven that hears me, Gabriella,
the keenest pang I now experience is not for my own loss, it is the
dread I feel for you."
"Not one word more, Richard, if you love me. I have been tender of your
feelings,--respect mine. There is but one thing on earth I prize more
than your friendship. Let me cherish that for the sacred memory of _auld
lang syne_."
"Farewell, then, Gabriella, best and only beloved! May the hand wither
that ever falls too heavily on that trusting heart, should we never meet
again!"
He drew me suddenly closely to him, kissed me passionately, and was
gone.
"Had you confided in me fully," said Mrs. Linwood, in speaking to me
afterwards of Richard, "I should never have advised a correspondence
which must have strengthened his attachment. Having the highest opinion
of his principles and disposition, and believing you regarded him with
modest affection, I urged this intercourse as a binding link between
you. You must have perceived my wishes on this subject."
"If I have erred, it was from mistaken delicacy. I thought I had no
right to betray an unreturned affection. It was not from a want of
confidence in you."
"If you could have loved Richard, it would have been well for you, my
dear Gabriella; but I know the heart admits of no coercion, and least of
all a heart like yours. I no longer warn, for it is in vain; but I would
counsel and instruct. If you _do_ become the wife of my son, you will
assume a responsibility as sacred as it is deep. Not alone for your
happiness do I tremble, O Gabriella,--I fear,--I dread, for him."
"Oh! Mrs. Linwood, when I love him so exclusively, so devotedly; when I
feel that I must love him forever--"
"It is the very exclusiveness and strength of your devotion that I fear.
You will love him too well for your _own_ peace,--too well for _his_
good. Far better is a rational, steadfast attachment, that neither rises
above the worth of the object, nor sinks below it, than the two great
extremes, idolatry and indifference. The first is a violation of the
commands of God,--the last, of the rights of man. Remember, my child,
that it is not by the exhibition of idolatrous affection, that a wife
secures a husband's happiness. It is by patient _continuance_ in
well-doing, that she works out the salvation of her wedded peace. Sit
down by me, Gabriella; draw up your work-table; for one can listen best
when their hands are busy. I have a great deal that I wish to say, and I
cannot talk as well with your eyes bent so earnestly on me."
I obeyed her without trepidation. I felt the need of her guiding
counsels, and resolved to lay them up in my heart, and make them the
rule and guide of my life.
"When a young girl marries a man whom she has been taught to believe
perfection," continued Mrs. Linwood, "and after marriage discovers her
golden idol to be an image of wood and clay, she may be permitted to sit
down and weep a while over her vanished dreams. But when she _knows_ the
imperfections of him she loves; when she _knows_ they are of a nature to
try, as with seven-fold heat, the strength and purity of her affection;
when with this conviction she breathes her wedded vows, she has no right
to upbraid him. She has walked with open eyes into the furnace, and she
must not shrink from the flames. She must fold over her woman's heart
the wings of an angel. She must look up to God, and be silent."
"When innocent of blame, surely she should defend herself from
accusation," cried I.
"Certainly,--in the spirit of gentleness and Christian love. But she
must not murmur; she must not complain. But it is not the accusation
that admits of defence, the arrow that flies at noonday, that is most to
be feared. It is the cold, inscrutable glance, the chilled and altered
manner, the suspicion that walketh in darkness,--it is these that try
the strength of woman's love, and gnaw with slow but certain tooth the
cable-chain that holds the anchor of her fidelity. These are the evil
spirits which prayer and fasting alone can cast out. They may fly before
the uplifted eye and bended knee, but never before the flash of anger or
the word of recrimination."
"What a solemn view you give me of married life!" I exclaimed, while the
work dropped from my hands. "What fearful responsibilities you place
before me,--I tremble, I dare not meet them."
"It is not too late,--the irrevocable vow is not yet breathed,--the path
is not yet entered. If the mere description of duties makes you turn
pale with dread, what will the reality be? I do not seek to terrify, but
to convince. I received you as a precious charge from a dying mother,
and I vowed over her grave to love, protect, and cherish you, as my own
daughter. I saw the peculiar dangers to which you were liable from your
ardent genius and exquisite sensibility, and I suffered you to pass
through a discipline which my wealth made unnecessary, and which you
have nobly borne. I did not wish my son to love you, not because you
were the child of obscurity, but because I had constituted myself the
guardian of your happiness, and I feared it would be endangered by a
union with him. How dear is your happiness to me,--how holy I deem the
charge I have assumed,--you may know by my telling you this. Never
mother idolized a son as I do Ernest. He is precious as my heart's best
blood,--he is the one idol that comes between me and my God. My love is
more intense for the anxiety I feel on his account. If I could have
prevented his loving;--but how could I, in the constant presence of an
object so formed to inspire all the romance of love? I knew the serpent
slept in the bottom of the fountain, and when the waters were stirred it
would wake and uncoil. Gabriella!" she added, turning towards me, taking
both hands in hers, and looking me in the face with her clear, eloquent,
dark gray eyes, "you may be the angel commissioned by Providence to work
out the earthly salvation of my son, to walk with him through the fiery
furnace, to guard him in the lion's den, which his own passions may
create. If to the love that hopeth all, the faith that believeth all,
you add the charity that _endureth_ all, miracles may follow an
influence so exalted, and, I say it with reverence, so divine."
It is impossible to give but a faint idea of the power of Mrs. Linwood's
language and manner. There was no vehemence, no gesticulation. Her eye
did not flash or sparkle; it burned with a steady, penetrating light.
Her voice did not rise in tone, but it gave utterance to her words in a
full, deep stream of thought, inexhaustible and clear. I have heard it
said that she talked "like a book," and so she did,--like the book of
heavenly wisdom. Her sentiments were "apples of gold in pictures of
silver," and worthy to be enshrined in a diamond casket.
As I listened, I caught a portion of her sublime spirit, and felt equal
to the duties which I had a short time before recoiled from
contemplating.
"I am very young and inexperienced," I answered, "and too apt to be
governed by the impulses of the present moment. I dare not promise what
I may be too weak to perform; but dearest madam, all that a feeble girl,
strengthened and inspired by love, and leaning humbly on an Almighty
arm, can do, I pledge myself to do. In looking forward to the future, I
have thought almost exclusively of being ever near the one beloved
object, living in the sunshine of his smile, and drinking in the music
of his voice. Life seemed an elysian dream, from which care and sorrow
must be for ever banished. You have roused me to nobler views, and given
existence a nobler aim. I blush for my selfishness. I will henceforth
think less of being happy myself, than of making others happy; less of
_happiness_ than _duty_; and every sacrifice that principle requires
shall be made light, as well as holy, by love."
"Only cherish such feelings, my child," said Mrs. Linwood, warmly
embracing me, "and you will be the daughter of my choice, as well as my
adoption. My blessing, and the blessing of approving God, will be yours.
The woman, who limits her ambition to the triumphs of beauty and the
influence of personal fascination, receives the retribution of her folly
and her sin in the coldness and alienation of her husband, and the
indifference, if not the contempt of the world. She, whose highest aim
is intellectual power, will make her home like the eyrie of the eagle,
lofty, but bleak. While she, whose affections alone are the foundation
of her happiness, will find that the nest of the dove, though pleasant
and downy in the sunshine, will furnish no shelter from the fierce
storms and tempestuous winds of life."
"Oh, Mrs. Linwood! Is domestic happiness a houseless wanderer? Has it no
home on earth?"
"Yes, my love, in the heart of the woman whose highest aim is the glory
of God,--whose next, the excellence and happiness of her husband; who
considers her talents, her affections, and her beauty as gifts from the
Almighty hand, for whose use she must one day render an account; whose
heart is a censer where holy incense is constantly ascending, perfuming
and sanctifying the atmosphere of home. Such is the woman who pleaseth
the Lord. Such, I trust, will be my beloved Gabriella."
By conversations like these, almost daily renewed, did this admirable,
high-minded, and God-fearing woman endeavor to prepare me for the
exalted position to which love had raised me. This was a happy period of
my life. The absence of Richard Clyde, though a source of regret, was a
great blessing, as it removed the most prominent object of jealousy from
Ernest's path. An occasional cloud, a sudden coldness, and an
unaccountable reserve, sometimes reminded me of the dangerous passion
whose shadow too often follows the footsteps of love. But in the
retirement of rural life, surrounded by the sweet, pure influences of
nature, the best elements of character were called into exercise.
The friends whom Mrs. Linwood gathered around her were not the idle
devotees of fashion,--the parasites of wealth; but intelligent, literary
people, whose society was a source of improvement as well as pleasure.
Sometimes, circumstances of commanding character forced her to receive
as guests those whom her judgment would never have selected, as in the
case of Madge Wildfire; but in general it was a distinction to be
invited to Grandison Place, whose elegant hospitalities were the boast
of the town to which it belonged.
The only drawback to my happiness was the pensiveness that hung like a
soft cloud over the spirits of Edith. She was still kind and
affectionate to me; but the sweet unreserve of former intercourse was
gone. I had come between her and her brother's heart. I was the shadow
on her dial of flowers, that made their bloom wither. I never walked
with Ernest alone without fearing to give her pain. I never sat with him
on the seat beneath the elm, in the starry eventide, or at moonlight's
hour, without feeling that she followed us in secret with a saddened
glance.
At first, whenever he came to me to walk with him, I would say,--
"Wait till I go for Edith."
"Very well," he would answer, "if there is nothing in your heart that
pleads for a nearer communion than that which we enjoy in the presence
of others, a dearer interchange of thought and feeling, let Edith, let
the whole world come."
"It is for her sake, not mine, I speak,--I cannot bear the soft reproach
of her loving eye!"
"A sister's affection must not be too exacting," was the reply. "All
that the fondest brother can bestow, I give to Edith; but there are
gifts she may not share,--an inner temple she cannot enter,--reserved
alone for you. Come, the flowers are wasting their fragrance, the stars
their lustre!"
How could I plead for Edith, after being silenced by such arguments? And
how could I tell her that I had interceded for her in vain? I never
imagined before that a sister's love could be _jealous_; but the same
hereditary passion which was transmitted to his bosom through a father's
blood, reigned in hers, though in a gentler form.
Every one who has studied human nature must have observed predominant
family traits, as marked as the attributes of different trees and
blossoms,--traits which, descending from parent to children,
individualize them from the great family of mankind. In some, pride
towers and spreads like the great grove tree of India, the branches
taking root and forming trunks which put forth a wealth of foliage, rank
and unhealthy. In others, obstinacy plants itself like a rock, which the
winds and waves of opinion cannot move. In a few, jealousy coils itself
with lengthening fold, which, like the serpent that wrapped itself round
Laocoon and his sons, makes parents and children its unhappy victims.
And so it is with the virtues, which, thanks be to God, who setteth the
solitary in families, are also hereditary. How often do we hear it
said,--"She is lovely, charitable, and pious,--so was her mother before
her;" "He is an upright and honorable man,--he came from a noble stock."
"That youth has a sacred love of truth,--it is his best
inheritance,--his father's word was equivalent to his bond."
If this be true, it shows the duty of parents in an awfully commanding
manner. Let them rend out the eye that gives dark and distorted views of
God and man. Let them cut off the hand that offends and the foot that
errs, rather than entail on others evils, which all eternity cannot
remedy. Better transmit to posterity the blinded eye, the maimed and
halting foot, that knows the narrow path to eternal life, than the dark
passions that desolate earth, and unfit the soul for the joys of heaven.