Ernest Linwood; or, The Inner Life of the Author

by Caroline Lee Hentz

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."