CHAPTER I.
ROSAMONDE HEDELQUIVER TO EDITH MANNERS.
Danville, December 2, 1851.
At last, I have found a spot where, for myself, there can be no want; where I can sit and write in peace letters to you, my friend, and stories for the magazines. By the last, I shall win money, and, perhaps, laurels; although, I confess, I care little now for them—that is, for the laurels—if I can earn money. If I have genius, this may truly seem a poor aim; but, if I have genius, so have I along with it such a dread of what is heavy, and sordid, and perpetually toilsome—of extreme poverty; in short, so have I a longing for beauty, for ease, for a still home of plenty, so that sometimes I could stretch out my hands and cry, with an imploring voice—not as good Agar did, but—“Give me riches, oh! give me riches.” Yet, Heaven knows that it is not to be greatly rich that I desire; but to be so far supplied, that there need be no forebodings whenever it is seen that my parents’ steps begin already to be slow, and their eyes dull; so that there may be beautiful things in our home, and land about it which is ours, on which we may tread with independence, on which we may see the trees and the plants growing, on which God’s sunshine shall fall, and His rain, and His dews, so that we may feel him near, and know that our mother Earth is to us a good mother.
This is what I long for, when shut up in our close rooms in the city, morning, noon, and night. In the night, tears of yearning—mingled with the fear that it is never to be satisfied—go drop, drop on my pillow, until my head is ready to burst. Then I brush them away, and say—“God forgive me, his poor child, if, in my longing for what I have not, I forget the gratitude due for what I have.” Then come penitential feelings and, again weeping, I say—“Father, do with me as seemeth good in thy sight!” I would be able to say this at all seasons, working still with cheerfulness and trust in God’s ways: but He knows I cannot; that often when I would praise Him I can only pray, and beg Him to do that for me which I feel to be my great need.
But hear! I complain, I sigh. I sit here, buried in my own egotism, while the bright sunshine lies on the pure white fields, hills, and mountains, and the troops of merriest birds play with the new-fallen snow. I shall go and see them, and feed them with crumbs, as once a brown-haired boy, who now is gray-headed—my father—used to do.
Evening.
Uncle Hedelquiver said this morning, as he folded his paper, after breakfast was over—
“You had better ride this morning, Monde. Take Kate, she is hard on the bit; but all the better. I like this grappling with tough-bitted circumstances. It is exactly what you need to do. You have the name your old grandmother Hedelquiver had in her day. You can see yourself that you are like that portrait up there; and I want you to get hold of her energy—her kind of life. You have been an idle child compared with her, I fancy.”