Richard had visited the Tombs, but had not seen his father. The sight,
the air, the ponderous gloom of the awful prison-house, was as much as
he had fortitude to bear; and though he had at first thought preferred
meeting him in the shadows of night, he recoiled from its additional
horrors.
Poor fellow! I felt heart-sick for him. On one side the memory of his
mother's wrongs,--on the other, his father's sufferings and disgrace. I
knew by my own bitter experience the conflict he was enduring.
"After we have once met," he said, "the bitterest pang will be over."
When he returned, I was shocked at the suffering his countenance
expressed. I sat down by him in silence, and took his hand in mine, for
I saw that his heart was full.
"I cannot take you _there_, Gabriella," were the first words he uttered.
"If my nerves are all unstrung, how will yours sustain the shock? He
told me not to bring you, that your presence would only aggravate his
sufferings."
"Did I not come to share your duties, Richard? and will it not be easier
to go hand in hand, though we do tread a thorny path? I have heard of
women who devote their whole lives to visiting the dungeons of the
doomed, and pouring oil and balm into the wounds of penitence and
remorse; women who know nothing of the prisoner, but that he is a sinful
and suffering son of Adam,--angels of compassion, following with lowly
hearts the footsteps of their divine Master. O my brother, think me not
so weak and selfish. I will convince you that I have fortitude, though
you believe it not. Dr. Harlowe thinks I have a great deal. But,
Richard, is it too painful to speak of the interview you so much
dreaded? Does _he_ look more wretched than you feared?"
"Look, Gabriella! Oh, he is a wreck, a melancholy wreck of a once noble
man. Worn, haggard, gloomy, and despairing, he is the very
personification of a sin-blasted being, a lost, ruined spirit. I had
prepared myself for something mournful and degraded, but not for such a
sight as this. O what an awful thing it is to give oneself up to the
dominion of evil, till one seems to live, and move, and have their being
in it! How awful to be consumed by slow, baleful fires, till nothing but
smouldering ashes and smoking cinders are left! My God! Gabriella, I
never realized before what _accursed_ meant."
He started up, and walked up and down the room, just as Ernest used to
do, unable to control the vehemence of his emotions.
"Father!" he exclaimed, "how I could have loved, revered, adored my
father, had he been what my youthful heart has so panted to embrace. I
loved my mother,--Heaven knows I did; but there always seemed majesty as
well as beauty in the name of father, and I longed to reverence, as well
as to love. Mr. Clyde was a good man, and I honored him; he was my
benefactor, and I was grateful to him,--but he wanted the intellectual
grandeur, to which my soul longed to pay homage. I was always forming an
image in my own mind of what a father should be,--pure, upright, and
commanding,--a being to whom I could look up as to an earthly divinity,
who could satisfy the wants of my venerating nature."
"It is thus I have done," I cried, struck by the peculiar sympathy of
our feelings. "In the dreams of my childhood, a vague but glorious form
reigned with the sovereignty of a king and the sanctity of a
high-priest, and imagination offered daily incense at its throne. Never,
till I read my mother's history, was the illusion dispelled. But how did
he welcome you, Richard? Surely he was glad and proud to find a son in
you."
"He is no longer capable of pride or joy. He is burnt out, as it were.
But he did at last show some emotion, when made to believe that I was
the son of Therésa." His hand trembled, and his hard, sunken eye
momentarily softened. "Did you come here to mock and upbraid me?" he
cried, concealing his sensibility under a kind of fierce sullenness.
"What wrong have I done you? I deserted you, it is true, but I saved you
from the influence of my accursed example, which might have dragged you
to the burning jaws of hell. Go, and leave me to my doom. Leave me in
the living grave my own unhallowed hands have dug. I want no sympathy,
no companionship,--and least of all, yours. Every time I look on you, I
feel as if coals of fire were eating in my heart."
"Remorse, Richard," I exclaimed, "remorse! Oh! he feels. Our
ministrations will not be in vain. Did you tell him that I was with you,
that I came to comfort and to do him good?"
"I did; but he bade me tell you, that if he wanted comfort, it could not
come through you,--that he would far rather his tortures were increased
than diminished, that he might, he said, become inured to sufferings,
which would continue as long as Almighty vengeance could inflict and
immortality endure. My dear sister, I ought not to repeat such things,
but the words ring in my ears like a funeral knell."
"Let us not speak of him any more at present," he added, reseating
himself at my side, and he took my hand and pressed it on his throbbing
temples. "There is sweetness in a sister's sympathy, balm in her gentle
touch."
Mrs. Brahan, who had considerately left us alone, soon entered, saying
it was luncheon time, and that a glass of wine would do us all good. Mr.
Brahan followed her, whose intelligent and animated conversation drew
our minds from the subjects that engrossed our thoughts. It was well for
me that I had an opportunity of becoming so intimately acquainted with a
married pair like Mr. and Mrs. Brahan. It convinced me that the most
perfect confidence was compatible with the fondest love, and that the
purest happiness earth is capable of imparting, is found in the union of
two constant, trusting hearts.
"We have been married seventeen years," said Mrs. Brahan, in a glow of
grateful affection, "and I have never seen a cloud of distrust on my
husband's brow. We have had cares,--as who has not,--but they have only
made us more dear to each, other, by calling forth mutual tenderness and
sympathy. Ours was not one of those romantic attachments which partake
of the wildness of insanity, but a serene, steady flame, that burns
brighter and brighter as life rolls on."
She spoke out of the abundance of her heart, without meaning to contrast
her own bright lot with mine, but I could not help envying her this
unclouded sunshine of love. I tried to rejoice with her, without sighing
for my own darker destiny; but there is an alloy of selfishness in the
purest gold of our natures. At least, there is in mine.
There was another happy pair,--Mr. Regulus and his wild Madge. A letter
from her, forwarded by Mrs. Linwood soon after our arrival in New York,
breathed, in her own characteristic language, the most perfect felicity,
mingled with heart-felt sympathy and affection. Their bridal hours were
saddened by my misfortunes; and they were compelled to leave me when I
was unconscious of their departure. Margaret was delighted with every
thing around and about her,--the place, the people, and most of all her
husband; though, in imitation of the Swedish wife, she called him her
bear, her buffalo, and mastadon. The exuberant energies of her
character, that had been rioting in all their native wildness, had now a
noble framework to grasp round, and would in time form a beautiful
domestic bower, beneath whose shade all household joys and graces would
bloom and multiply.
I have anticipated the reception of this letter, but I feared I might
forget to mention it. It is delightful to see a fine character gradually
wrought out of seemingly rough and unpromising elements. It is beautiful
to witness the triumph of pure, disinterested affection in the heart of
woman. It is sweet to know that the angel of wedded love scatters
thornless flowers in some happy homes,--that there are some thresholds
not sprinkled by blood, but guarded by confidence, which the _destroying
demon_ of the household is not permitted to pass over.
I do not like to turn back to myself, lest they who follow me should
find the path too shadowy and thorny. But is it not said that they who
go forth weeping, bearing precious seed, shall come again rejoicing,
bending under the weight of golden sheaves?
I wrote to Ernest for the first time, for we had never been parted
before. Again and again I commenced, and threw down the pen in despair.
My heart seemed locked, closed as with Bastile bars. What words of mine
could pierce through the cloud of infamy in which his remembrance
wrapped me? He would not believe my strange, improbable tale. He would
cast it from him as a device of the evil spirit, and brand me with a
deeper curse. No! if he was so willing to cast me off, to leave me so
coldly and cruelly, without one farewell line, one wish to know whether
I were living or dead, let him be. Why should I intrude my vindication
on him, when he cared not to hear it? He had no right to believe me
guilty. Had a winged spirit from another sphere come and told me that
_he_ was false, I would have spurned the accusation, and clung to him
more closely and more confidingly.
"But you knew his infirmity," whispered accusing conscience, "even
before you loved him; and have you not seen him writhing at your feet in
agonies of remorse, for the indulgence of passions more torturing to
himself than to you! It is you who have driven him from country and
home, innocently, it is true, but he is not less a wanderer and an
exile. Write and tell him the simple, holy truth, then folding your
hands meekly over your heart, leave the result to the disposal of the
God of futurity."
Then words came like water rushing through breaking ice. They came
without effort or volition, and I knew not what they were till I saw
them looking at me from the paper, like my own image reflected in a
glass. Had I been writing a page for the book of God's remembrance, it
could not have been more nakedly true. I do believe there is inspiration
now given to the spirit in the extremity of its need, and that we often
speak and write as if moved by the Holy Ghost, and language comes to us
in a Pentecostal shower, burning with heaven's fire, and tongues of
flame are put in our mouth, and our spirits move as with the wings of a
mighty wind.
I recollect the closing sentence of the letter. I knew it contained my
fate; and yet I felt that I had not the power to change it.
"Come back to your country, your mother, and Edith. I do not bid you
come back to me, for it seems that the distance that separates us is too
immeasurable to be overcome. I remember telling you, when the midnight
moon was shining upon us in the solitude of our chamber, that I saw as
in a vision a frightful abyss opening between us, and I stood on one icy
brink and you on the other, and I saw you receding further and further
from me, and my arms vainly sought to reach over the cold chasm, and my
own voice came back to me in mournful echoes. That vision is realized.
Our hearts can never again meet till that gulf is closed, and confidence
firm as a rock makes a bridge for our souls.
"I have loved you as man never should be loved, and that love can never
pass away. But from the deathlike trance in which you left me, my spirit
has risen with holier views of life and its duties. An union, so
desolated by storms of passion as ours has been, must be sinful and
unhallowed in the sight of God. It has been severed by the hand of
violence, and never, with my consent, will be renewed, unless we can
make a new covenant, to which the bow of heaven's peace shall be an
everlasting sign; till passion shall be exalted by esteem, love
sustained by confidence, and religion pure and undefiled be the
sovereign principle of our lives."