Ernest Linwood; or, The Inner Life of the Author

by Caroline Lee Hentz

"'From a breaking heart,' she answered, and I never forgot her looks or her words. The breaking heart became an image in my mind, almost as distinct as the rusted steel. For a long time I was afraid to jump or bound about the room, lest the fracture in my mother's heart should be made wider, and more tears come gushing through.

"But she did not always weep. She taught me to read, while she toiled with her needle, and she told me tales of the genii and of fairy-land, at twilight hour, or as she used to say, 'entre le loup et le chien,' in her own expressive, idiomatic language. She told me, too, stories from the Bible, before I was able to read them, of Isaac bound on the sacrificial pyre, with his father kneeling by him, ready to plunge the knife in his young heart, when the angels called to him out of heaven to stay his uplifted hand; of Joseph's wondrous history, from his coat of many colors, fatal cause of fraternal jealousy, to the royal robes and golden chain with which Pharaoh invested him; of David, the shepherd-boy, the minstrel monarch, the conqueror of Philistia's giant chief. It was thus she employed the dim hours between the setting sun and the rising stars; but the moment she lighted her lonely lamp she again plied her busy needle, though alas! too often rusted with her tears.

"Thus my early childhood passed,—and every day my heart twined more closely round my mother's heart, and I began to form great plans of future achievements to be wrought for her. I would be a second Joseph and go to some distant land and win fame, and honors, and wealth, and send for her that I might lay them all at her feet. She would not, at first, recognize her boy in the purple and fine linen of his sumptuous attire; but I would fall on her neck, and lift up my voice and weep aloud, and then she would know her child. A mother's tears, Gabriella, nurture great aspirations in a child.

"I used to accompany her to the shop when she carried home her work. It was there she first met the gentleman whose name I bear. Their acquaintance commenced through me, to whom he seemed peculiarly attracted, and he won my admiring gratitude by the gifts he lavished upon me. He came often to see my mother, and though at first she shrunk from his visits, she gradually came to welcome him as a friend and a benefactor.

"One evening, I think I was about eight or nine years old, she took me in her arms, and told me, with many tears, that Mr. Clyde, the good and kind gentleman whom I loved so much, had offered to be a father to me, and was going to take us both to a pleasant home in the country, where I could run about in the green fields, and be free as the birds of the air. She told me that perhaps my own father was living, but that he had left her so long their union was annulled by law, and that she had a right to marry another, and that she did so that I might have a father and protector. She explained this simply, so that I understood it all, and I understood too why she wished me to drop my own name and take that of her future husband. It was associated with so much sorrow and wrong, it was painful to her ear, and Mr. Clyde wished me to adopt his own. He was a good and honorable man, and I cherish his memory with reverence and gratitude. If the fissure in my mother's heart was not healed, it closed, and tears no longer dripped through.

"Our country home was pleasant and comfortable, and I revelled in the delights of nature, with all the wild passion of a bird let loose from the imprisoning cage. I went to school,—I was in the world of action,—the energies of incipient manhood awoke and struggled in my bosom. We remained about two years in this rural residence, situated in the western part of New York, when Mr. Clyde was called to attend a dying father, who lived in this town, Gabriella, not very far from the little cottage in the woods where I first knew you. He took my mother and myself with him, for she was in feeble health, and he thought the journey would invigorate her. It did not. A child of sunny France, she languished under the bleaker New England skies. She was never able to return; and he who came to bury a father, soon laid a beloved wife by the side of the aged. My heart went down to the grave with her, and it was long before its resurrection. My step-father was completely crushed by the blow, for he loved her as such a woman deserved to be loved, and mourned as few mourn. He remained with his aged mother in the old homestead, which she refused to leave, and I was placed in the academy under the charge of Mr. Regulus, where I first knew and loved you, my own sister, my darling, beloved Gabriella."

If I had loved Richard before, how much more did I love him now, after hearing his simple and affecting history, so similar to my own. As I had never loved him otherwise than as a brother, the revelation which had caused such a terrible revulsion in his feelings was a sacred sanction to mine. His nerves still vibrated from the shock, and he could not pronounce the word sister without a tremulousness of voice which betrayed internal agitation.

He had but little more to relate. His step-father was dead, and as there was found to be a heavy mortgage on his estate, he was left with a moderate income, sufficient to give him an education and a start in life. His expenses in Europe had been defrayed by some liberal gentlemen, who still considered themselves the guardians of his reputation and his fortunes.

It was painful to me to tell the story of our father's crimes, of which he had heard but a slight outline. When I described our interview in the Park, he knit his brows over his flashing eyes, and his whole frame quivered with emotion.

"My poor sister! what a dreadful scene for you. What have you not suffered! but you shall never know another sorrow from which I can shield you, another wrong from which I can defend."