My mother laid Mrs. Linwood's hand on her heart, whose languid beating scarcely stirred the linen that covered it; then looking up to heaven, her lips moved in silent prayer. A smile, faint but beautiful, passed over her features, and left its sweetness on her face. From that hour to the death-hour Mrs. Linwood did minister to her, as a loving sister would have done. Edith often accompanied her mother and tried to comfort me, but I was then inaccessible to comfort, as I was deaf to hope. When she stayed away, I missed the soft floating of her airy figure, the pitying glance of her heavenly blue eye; but when she came, I said to myself,
"Her mother is not dying. How can she sympathize with me? She is the favorite of Him who is crushing me beneath the iron hand of His wrath."
Thus impious were my thoughts, but no one read them on my pale, drooping brow. Mrs. Linwood praised my filial devotion, my fortitude and heroism. Dr. Harlowe had told her how I had braved the terrors of midnight solitude through the lonely woods, to bring him to a servant's bedside. Richard Clyde had interested her in my behalf. She told me I had many friends for one so young and so retiring. Oh! she little knew how coldly fell the words of praise on the dull ear of despair. I smiled at the thought of needing kindness and protection when she was gone. As if it were possible for me to survive my mother!
Had she not herself told me that grief did not kill? But I believed her not.
Do you ask if I felt no curiosity then, about the mystery of my parentage? I had been looking forward to the time when I should be deemed old enough to know my mother's history of which my imagination had woven such a web of mystery and romance,—when I should hear something of that father whose memory was curtained by such an impenetrable veil. But now it mattered not. Had I known that the blood of kings was in my veins, it would not have wakened one throb of ambition, kindled one ray of joy. I cared not for my lineage or kindred. I would not have disturbed the serenity that seemed settling on my mother's departing spirit, by one question relative to her past life, for the wealth of the Indies.
She gave to Mrs. Linwood a manuscript which she had written while I was at school, and which was to have been committed to Peggy's care;—for surely Peggy, the strong, the robust, unwearied Peggy, would survive her, the frail, delicate, and stricken one!
She told me this the night before she died, when at her own request I was left alone with her. I knew it was for the last time, but I had been looking forward steadily to this hour,—looking as I said before, as the iron-bound prisoner to the revolving knife, and like him I was outwardly calm. I knelt beside her and looked on her shadowy form, her white, transparent skin, her dark, still lustrous, though sunken eyes, till it seemed that her spirit, almost disembodied, mingled mysteriously with mine, in earnest of a divine communion.
"I thank God, my Gabriella," she said, laying her hand blessingly on my bowed head, "that you submit to His holy will, in a spirit of childlike submission. I thank Him for raising up such a friend as Mrs. Linwood, when friend and comforter seemed taken from us. Love her, confide in her, be grateful to her, my child. Be grateful to God for sending her to soothe my dying hours with promises of protection and love for you, my darling, my child, my poor orphan Gabriella."
"Oh mother," I cried, "I do not submit,—I cannot,—I cannot! Dreadful thoughts are in my heart—oh, my mother, God is very terrible. Leave me not alone to meet his awful judgments. Put your arms round me, my mother, and let me lie close to your bosom, I will not hurt you, I will lie so gently there. Death cannot separate us, when we cling so close together. Leave me not alone in the world, so cold, so dark, so dreary,—oh, leave me not alone!" Thus I clung to her, in the abandonment of despair, while words rushed unhidden from my lips.
"Oh, my Gabriella, my child, my poor smitten lamb!" she cried, and I felt her heart fluttering against mine like a dying bird. "Sorrow has bereft you of reason,—you know not what you say. Gabriella, it is an awful thing to resist the Almighty God. Submission is the heritage of dust and ashes. I have been proud and rebellious, smarting under a sense of unmerited chastisement and wrong. Because man was false, I thought God unjust,—but now, on this dying bed, the illusion of passion is dispelled, and I see Him as He is, longsuffering, compassionate, and indulgent, in all his loving-kindness and tender mercy, strong to deliver and mighty to save. I feel that I have needed all the discipline of sorrow through which I have passed, to bring my proud and troubled soul, a sin-sick, life weary wanderer, to my Father's footstool. What matters now, my Gabriella, that I have trod a thorny path, if it lead to heaven at last? How short the journey,—how long the rest! Oh, beloved child, bow to the hand that smites thee, for the stubborn will must be broken. Wait not, like me, till it be ground into dust."