My noon hours at Dr. Harlowe's, were pleasant episodes in my daily life. Mrs. Harlowe was an excellent woman. She was called by the villagers "a most superior woman,"—and so she was, if admirable housekeeping and devotion to her husband's interests entitled her to the praise. She was always busy; but the doctor, though he had a wide sweep of practice in the surrounding country, always seemed at leisure. There was something so cheerful, so encouraging about him, despondency fled from his presence and gave place to hope.
I love to recall this era of my life. If I have known deeper happiness, more exalted raptures, they were dearly purchased by the sacrifice of the peace, the salubrity of mind I then enjoyed. I had a little room of my own there, where I was as much at home as I was at Mrs. Linwood's. There was a place for my bonnet and parasol, a shelf for my books, a low rocking-chair placed at the pleasantest window for me; and, knowing Mrs. Harlowe's methodical habits, I was always careful to leave every thing, as I found it, in Quaker-like order. This was the smallest return I could make for her hospitality, and she appreciated it far beyond its merits. The good doctor, with all his virtues, tried the patience of his wife sometimes beyond its limits, by his excessive carelessness. He would forget to hang his hat in the hall, and toss it on the bright, polished mahogany table. He would forget to use the scraper by the steps, or the mat by the door, and leave tracks on the clean floor or nice carpet. These little things really worried her; I could see they did. She never said any thing; but she would get up, take up the hat, brush the table with her handkerchief, and hang the hat in its right place, or send the house-girl with the broom after his disfiguring tracks.
"Pardon me, my dear," he would say with imperturbable good-nature,—"really, I am too forgetful. I must have a self-regulating machine attached to my movements,—a portable duster and hat-catcher. But, the blessed freedom of home. It constitutes half its joy. Dear me! I would not exchange the privilege of doing as I please for the emperorship of the celestial realms."
But, pleasant as were my noon rests, my homeward walks were pleasanter still. The dream-girl, after being awake for long hours to the practical duties of life, loved to ramble alone, till she felt herself involved in the soft haziness of thought, which was to the soul what the blue mistiness was to the distant hills. I could wander then alone to the churchyard, and yield myself unmolested to the sacred influences of memory. Do you remember my asking Richard Clyde to plant a white rose by my mother's grave? He had done so, soon after her burial, and now, when rather more than a year had passed, it was putting forth fair buds and blossoms, and breathing of renovation over the ruins of life. I never saw this rose-tree without blessing the hand which planted it; and I loved to sit on the waving grass and listen to the soft summer wind stealing through it, rustling among the dry blades and whispering with the green ones.
There was one sentence that fell from my mother's dying lips which ever came to me in the sighs of the gale, fraught with mournful mystery. "Because man was false, I dared to think God was unjust." And had she not adjured me by every precious and every solemn consideration, "to forgive the living, if living he indeed was?"
I knew these words referred to my father; and what a history of wrong and sorrow was left for my imagination to fill up! Living!—my father living! Oh! there is no grave so deep as that dug by the hand of neglect or desertion! He had been dead to my mother,—he had been dead to me. I shuddered at the thought of breathing the same vital element. He who had broken a mother's heart must be a fiend, worthy of eternal abhorrence.
"If you live to years of womanhood," said my expiring mother, "and your heart awakens to love, as alas for woman's destiny it will, then read my life's sad experience, and be warned by my example."
Sad prophetess! Death has consecrated thy prediction, but it is yet unfulfilled. When will womanhood commence, on whose horizon the morning star of love is to rise in clouded lustre?
Surely I am invested with a woman's dignity, in that great arm-chair, behind the green-covered desk. I feel very much like a blown rose, surrounded by the rose-bud garland of childhood. Yet Dr. Harlowe calls me "little girl," and Mr. Regulus "my child," when the pupils are not by; then it is "Miss Gabriella." They forget that I am sixteen, and that I have grown taller and more womanly in the last year; but the awakening heart has not yet throbbed at its dawning destiny, the day-star of love has not risen on its slumbers.