Ernest Linwood; or, The Inner Life of the Author

by Caroline Lee Hentz

I did not see my father for hours after his return. He retired to his chamber, and did not join the family circle till the evening lamps were lighted. He looked excessively pale, even wan, and his countenance showed how much he had suffered. Edith was singing when he came in, and he made a motion for her to continue; for it was evident he did not wish to converse. I sat down by him without speaking; and putting his arm round me, he drew me closely to his side. The plaintive melody of Edith's voice harmonized with the melancholy tone of his feelings, and seemed to shed on his soul a balmy and delicious softness. His spirit was with my mother in the dreams of the past, rather than the hopes of the future; and the memory of its joys lived again in music's heavenly breath.

It is a blessed thing to be remembered in death as my mother was. Her image was enshrined in her husband's heart, in the bloom and freshness of unfaded youth, as he had last beheld her,—and such it would ever remain. He had not seen the mournful process of fading and decay. To him, she was the bride of immortality; and his love partook of her own freshness and youth and bloom. Genius is La fontaine de jouvence, in whose bright, deep waters the spirit bathes and renews its morning prime. It is the well-spring of the heart,—the Castaly of the soul. St. James had lived amid forms of ideal beauty, till his spirit was imbued with their loveliness as with the fragrance of flowers, and he breathed an atmosphere pure as the world's first spring. He was young, though past the meridian of life. There was but one mark of age upon his interesting and noble person, and that was the snowy shade that softened his raven hair,—foam of the waves of time, showing they had been lashed by the storms, or driven against breakers and reefs of destiny.

The first time I took him into the library, he stopped before the picture of Ernest. I did not tell him whose it was. He gazed upon it long and earnestly.

"What a countenance!" he exclaimed. "I can see the lights and shades of feeling flashing and darkening over it. It has the troubled splendor of a tropic night, when clouds and moonbeams are struggling. Is it a portrait, or an ideal picture?"

"It is Ernest,—it is my husband," I answered; and it seemed to me as if all the ocean surges that rolled between us were pressing their cold weight on my heart.

"My poor girl! my beloved Gabriella! All your history is written there."

I threw myself in his arms, and wept. Had I seen Ernest dead at my feet, I could not have felt more bitter grief. I had never indulged it so unrestrainedly before in his presence, for I had always thought more of him than myself; and in trying to cheer him, I had found cheerfulness. Now I remembered only Ernest's idolatrous love, and his sorrows and sufferings, forgetting my own wrongs; and I felt there would always be an aching void which even a father's and brother's tenderness (for brother I still called Richard) could never fill.

"Oh, my father," I cried, "bear with my weakness,—bear with me a little while. There is comfort in weeping on a father's bosom, even for a loss like mine. I shall never see him again. He is dead, or if living, is dead to me. You cannot blame me, father. You see there a faint semblance of what he is,—splendid, fascinating, and haunting, though at times so dark and fearful. No words of mine can give an idea of the depth, the strength, the madness of his love. It has been the blessing and the bane, the joy and the terror, the angel and the demon of my life. I know it was sinful in its wild excess, and mine was sinful, too, in its blind idolatry, and I know the blessing of God could not hallow such a union. But how can I help feeling the dearth, the coldness, the weariness following such passionate emotions? How can I help feeling at times, that the sun of my existence is set, and a long, dark night before me?"

He did not answer,—he only pressed me convulsively to his heart, and I felt one hot tear, and then another and another falling on my brow.

Oh! it is cruel to wring tears from the strong heart of man; cruel, above all, to wring them from a father's heart,—that heart whose own sorrows had lately bled afresh. Every drop fell heavy and burning as molten lead on my conscience. I had been yielding to a selfish burst of grief, thoughtless of the agony I was inflicting.