The morning of Margaret's departure, when Mr. Regulus was standing with
gloves and hat in hand waiting her readiness, it happened that I was
alone in the parlor with him a few moments.
"You will have a pleasant journey," said I. "You will find Margaret an
entertaining companion."
"O yes!" he answered, with a slight shrug of the shoulders, "but I fear
she will excite too much remark by her wild antics. I do not like to be
noticed by strangers."
"She will accommodate herself to your wishes, I know she will. You have
great influence over her."
"Me! oh no!" he cried, with equal surprise and simplicity.
"Yes, indeed you have. Talk to her rationally, as if you had confidence
in her good-sense, Mr. Regulus, and you will really find some golden
wheat buried in the chaff. Talk to her feelingly, as if you appealed to
her sensibility, and you may discover springs where you believe no
waters flow."
"It is like telling me to search for spring flowers, when the ground is
all covered with snow,--to look at the moon shining, when the night is
as dark as ebony. But I am thinking of you, Gabriella, more than of her.
I rejoice to find you the same artless child of nature that sat at my
feet years ago in the green-wood shade. But beautiful as is your palace
home, I long to see you again in our lovely valley among the birds and
the flowers. I long to see you on the green lawn of Grandison Place."
"I do feel more at home at Grandison Place," I answered. "I would give
more for the velvet lawn, the dear old elm, the oaken avenue, than for
all the magnificence of this princely mansion."
"But you are happy here, my child?"
"I have realized the brightest dreams of youth."
"God be praised!--and you have forgiven my past folly,--you think of me
as preceptor, elder brother, friend."
"My dear master!" I exclaimed, and tears, such as glisten in the eyes of
childhood, gathered in mine. I _was_ a child again, in my mother's
presence, and the shade-trees of the gray cottage seemed rustling around
me.
The entrance of Margaret interrupted the conversation. She never
appeared to better advantage than in her closely fitting riding dress,
which displayed the symmetry of her round and elastic figure. I looked
at her with interest, for I had seen those saucy, brilliant eyes
suffused with tears, and those red, merry lips quivering with womanly
sensibility. I hoped good things of Margaret, and though I could not
regret her departure, I thought leniently of her faults, and resolved to
forget them.
"Just like Margaret," said I, gathering up the beautiful drapery, on
which she had trodden as she left the room, and rent from the shaft that
confined its folds. She stopped not to see the mischief she had done,
for she was so accustomed to hear a crash and dash behind her, it is not
probable she even noticed it.
"Thank God!" exclaimed Ernest, before the echo of their departing
footsteps had died on the ear. "Thank God! we are once more alone."
* * * * *
Mr. Harland had visited us but seldom since the words of passion which
might have been followed by a scene of strife, but for woman's
restraining presence, had fallen from the lips of Ernest. One evening,
he called and asked a private interview with Ernest, and they
immediately passed into the library. I saw that his countenance was
disturbed, and vague apprehensions filled my mind. I could hear their
voices in earnest, excited tones; and though I knew there was no
revelation to be made which Ernest had not already heard from me, I felt
a conviction amounting to certainty, that this mysterious interview had
some connection with my unhappy father, and boded evil to me. Mr.
Harland did not probably remain more than an hour, but every moment
seemed an hour, drawn out by suspense and apprehension. He reëntered the
parlor with Ernest, but left immediately; while Ernest walked silently
back and forth, as he always did when agitated,--his brows contracted
with stern, intense thought. He was excessively pale, and though his
eyes did not emit the lightning glance of passion, they flashed and
burned like heated metal.
I dared not ask him the cause of his emotion, I could only watch him
with quick-drawn breath, and lips sealed with dread. Suddenly he put his
hand in his bosom, and snatching thence the fatal casket I had left in
my father's crime-stained hands, he hurled it to the floor, and trampled
it under his feet.
"Behold," he cried, with inexpressible bitterness and grief, "my
mother's gift, her sacred bridal gift,--desecrated, polluted,
lost,--worse than lost! I will not upbraid you. I would spare you the
pang I myself endure,--but think of the agonies in which a spirit like
mine must writhe, to know that _your_ name, that the name of my _wife_
is blazoned to the world, associated with that of a vile forger, an
abandoned villain, whose crimes are even now blackening the newspapers,
and glutting the greedy appetite of slander! O rash, misguided girl!
what demon tempted you to such fatal imprudence?"
I sat immovable, frozen, my eyes fixed upon the carpet, my hands as cold
as ice, and my lips, as they touched each other, chill as icicles. In
moments of sudden anguish I never lost consciousness, as many do, but
while my physical powers were crushed, my mind seemed to acquire
preternatural sensibility. I suffered as we do in dreams, intensely,
exquisitely, when every nerve is unsheathed, and the spirit naked to the
dagger's stroke. He stopped as he uttered this impassioned adjuration,
and his countenance changed instantaneously as he gazed on mine.
"Cruel, cruel that I am!" he cried, sitting down by me, and wrapping his
arms around me; "I did not know what I was saying. I meant to be gentle
and forbearing, but strong passion rushed over me like a whirlwind.
Forgive me, Gabriella, my darling, forgive me. Let the world say what it
will, I know that you are pure and true. I care not for the money,--I
care not for the jewels,--but an unspotted name. Oh! where now are the
'liveried angels' that will guard it from pollution?"
As he folded me in his arms, and pressed his cheek to mine, as if
striving to infuse into it vital warmth, I felt the electric fluid
flowing into my benumbed system. Whatever had occurred, he had not cast
me off; and with him to sustain me, I was strong to meet the exigencies
of the moment. I looked up in his face, and he read the expression of my
soul,--I know he did, for he clasped me closer to him, and the fire of
his eyes grew dim,--dim, through glistening tears. And then he told me
all my beseeching glances sought. More than a week before, even before
that, he had learned that a forgery had been committed in his name,
involving a very large sum of money. Liberal rewards had been offered
for the discovery of the villain, and that day he had been brought to
the city. My diamonds, on whose setting Mrs. Linwood had had my name
engraven, were found in his possession. He had not spoken to me of the
forgery, not wishing to trouble me, he said, on a subject of such minor
importance. It was the publicity given to my name, in association with
his, that caused the bitterness of his anguish. And I,--I knew that my
father had robbed my husband in the vilest, most insidious manner; that
he had drawn upon himself the awful doom of a forger, a dungeon home, a
living death.
My father! the man whom my mother had loved. The remembrance of this
love, so long-enduring, so much forgiving, hung like a glory round him.
It was the halo of a saint encircling the brow of the malefactor.
"Will they not suppose the jewels were stolen?" I asked, with the
calmness of desperation. "Surely the world cannot know they were given
by me; and though it is painful to be associated with so dark a
transaction, I see not, dear Ernest, why my reputation should be clouded
by this?"
"Alas! Gabriella,--you were seen by more than one walking with him in
the park. You were seen entering the jeweller's shop, and afterwards
meeting him in Broadway. Even in the act of giving your shawl to the
poor shivering woman, you were watched. You believed yourself
unremarked; but the blind man might as well think himself unseen walking
in the blaze of noonday, because his own eyes are bound by the fillet of
darkness, as _you_ expect to pass unnoticed through a gaping throng. Mr.
Harland told me of these things, that I might be prepared to repel the
arrows of slander which would inevitably be aimed at the bosom of my
wife."
"But you told him that it was my father. That it was to save him from
destruction I gave them. Oh Ernest, you told him all!"
"I have no right to reveal your secret, Gabriella. If he be indeed your
father, let eternal secrecy veil his name. Would you indeed consent that
the world should know that it was your father who had committed so dark
a crime? Would you, Gabriella?"
"I would far rather be covered with ignominy as a daughter, than
disgrace as a wife," I answered, while burning blushes dyed my cheeks at
the possibility of the last. "The first will not reflect shame or
humiliation on you. You have raised me generously, magnanimously, to
your own position; and though the world may say that you yielded to
weakness in loving me,--a poor and simple girl.--Nay, nay; I recall my
words, Ernest; I will not wrong myself, because clouds and darkness
gather round me. You did not _stoop_, or lower yourself, by wedding me.
Love made us equal. My proud, aspiring love, looked up; yours bent to
meet its worship,--and both united, as the waves of ocean unite, in
fulness, depth, and strength,--and, like them, have found their level.
Let the world know that I am the daughter of St. James; that, moved by
his prayers and intimidated by his threats, I met him and attempted to
save him from ruin. They may say that I was rash and imprudent; but they
dare not call me guilty. There is a voice in every heart which is not
palsied, or deadened, or dumb, that will plead in my defence. The child
who endeavors to shield a father from destruction, however low and
steeped in sin he may be, cannot be condemned. If I am, I care not; but
oh, Ernest, as your wife, let me not suffer reproach,--for your sake, my
husband, far more than mine."
As thus I pleaded with all the eloquence and earnestness of my nature,
with my hands clasped in his, their firm, close, yet gentle fold grew
firmer, closer still; and the cloud passing away from his countenance,
it became luminous as I gazed.
"You are right,--you are true," said he, "my dear, my noble Gabriella.
Every shadow of a doubt vanishes before the testimony of your unselfish
heart. Why did I not see this subject in the same clear, just light?
Because my eyes are too often blinded by the mists of passion. Yes! you
have pointed out the only way of extrication. The story of your mother's
wrongs will not necessarily be exposed; and if it is, the sacred ægis of
your filial love will guard it from desecration. We shall not remain
here long. Spring will soon return; and in the sweet quietude of rural
life, we will forget the tumultuous scenes of this modern Babel. You
will not wish to return?"
"No! never, never. That unhappy man! what will be his doom?"
"Probably life-long imprisonment. Had I known who the offender was, I
would have prayed the winds and waves to bear him to Icelandic seas,
rather than have had his crime published to the world. It is, however,
the retribution of heaven; and we must submit."
"It seems so strange," said I, "to think of him alive, whose existence
so long seemed to me a blank. When I was a child, I used to indulge in
wild dreams about my unknown parent. I pictured him as one of the gods
of mythology, veiling his divinity in flesh for the love of the fairest
of the daughters of men. The mystery that wrapped his name was, to my
imagination, like the cloud mantling the noonday sun. With such views of
my lineage, which, though they became subdued as I grew older, were
still exaggerated and romantic,--think of the awful plunge into the
disgraceful truth. It seems to me that I should have died on my mother's
grave, had not your arms of love raised me,--had you not breathed into
my ear words that called me back from the cold grasp of death itself. In
the brightness of the future I forgot the gloom of the past. Oh! had I
supposed that he lived,--that he would come to bring on me public shame
and sorrow, and through me, on you, my husband, I never would have
exposed you to the sufferings of this night."
And I clung to him with an entireness of confidence, a fulness of
gratitude that swelled my heart almost to bursting. His face, beaming
with unclouded love and trust, seemed to me as the face of an angel. I
cared not for obloquy or shame, since he believed me true. I remembered
the words of the tender, the devoted Gertrude:--
"I have been with thee in thine hour
Of glory and of bliss,
Doubt not its memory's living power
To strengthen me in this."
But though my mind was buoyed up by the exaltation of my feelings, my
physical powers began to droop. I inherited something of my mother's
constitutional weakness; and, suddenly as the leaden weight falls when a
clock has run down and the machinery ceases to play, a heavy burden of
lethargy settled down upon me, and I was weak and helpless as a child.
Dull pain throbbed in my brain, as if it were girdled by a hard,
tightening band.
It was several days before I left my bed, and more than a week before I
quitted my chamber. The recollection of Ernest's tender watchfulness
during these days of illness, even now suffuses my eyes with tears. Had
I been a dying infant he could not have hung over me with more anxious,
unslumbering care. Oh! whatever were his faults, his virtues redeemed
them all. Oh! the unfathomable depths of his love! I was then willing to
die, so fearful was I of passing out of this heavenly light of home joy
into the coldness of doubt, the gloom of suspicion.
Ernest, with all his proneness to exaggerate the importance of my
actions, did not do so in reference to this unhappy transaction.
Paragraphs were inserted in the papers, in which the initials of my name
were inserted in large capitals to attract the gazing eye. The meeting
in the Park, the jewels found in the possession of the forger, the
abrupt manner in which they were taken from the jeweller's shop, even
the gray shawl and green veil, were minutely described. Ernest had made
enemies by the haughty reserve of his manners and the exclusiveness of
his habits, and they stabbed him in secret where he was most vulnerable.
A brief sketch of the real circumstances and the causes which led to
them, was published in reply. It was written with manly boldness, but
guarded delicacy, and rescued my name from the fierce clutch of slander.
Then followed glowing eulogiums on the self-sacrificing daughter, the
young and beautiful wife, till Ernest's sensitive spirit must have bled
over the notoriety given to her, whom he considered as sacred as the
priestess of some holy temple, and whose name was scarcely to be
mentioned but in prayer.
The only comment he made on them was,--
"My mother and Edith will see these."
"I will write and tell them all," I answered; "it will be too painful to
you."
"We will both write," he said; and we did.
"You blame yourself too much," cried he, when he perused my letter.
"You speak too kindly, too leniently of me," said I, after reading his;
"yet I am glad and grateful. Your mother will judge me from the facts,
and nothing that you or I can say will warp or influence her judgment.
She understands so clearly the motives of action,--she reads so closely
your character and mine, I feel that her decision will be as righteous
as the decree of eternal justice. Oh that I were with her now, for my
soul looks to her as an ark of safety. Like the poor weary dove, it
longs to repose its drooping wings and fold them in trembling joy on her
sheltering breast."
I will not speak of the trial, the condemnation, or the agony I felt,
when I learned that my father was doomed to expiate his crime by
solitary confinement for ten long years. Could Ernest have averted this
fate from him, for my sake he would have done it; but the majesty of the
law was supreme, and no individual effort could change its just decree.
My affections were not wounded, for I never could recall his image
without personal repugnance, but my mother's remembrance was associated
with him;--I remembered her dying injunctions,--her prophetic dream. I
thought of the heaven which he had forfeited, the God whose commandments
he had broken, the Saviour whose mercy he had scorned. I wanted to go to
him,--to minister to him in his lonely cell,--to try to rouse him to a
sense of his transgressions,--to lead him to the God he had forsaken,
the Redeemer he had rejected, the heaven from which my mother seemed
stretching her spirit arms to woo him to her embrace.
"My mother dreamed that I drew him from a black abyss," said I to
Ernest; "she dreamed that I was the guardian angel of his soul. Let me
go to him,--let me fulfil my mission. I shudder when I look around me in
these palace walls, and think that a parent groans in yonder dismal
tombs."
"_I_ will go," replied Ernest; "I will tell him your filial wish, and if
I find you can do him good, I will accompany you there."
"I _can_ do him good,--I can pity and forgive him,--I can talk to him of
my mother, and that will lead him to think of heaven. 'I was sick and in
prison and ye came unto me.' Oh, thus our Saviour said, identifying
himself with the sons of ignominy and sorrow. Go, and if you find his
heart softened by repentance, pour balm and oil into the wounds that sin
has made. Go, and let me follow."