My father! the man whom my mother had loved. The remembrance of this love, so long-enduring, so much forgiving, hung like a glory round him.
It was the halo of a saint encircling the brow of the malefactor.
"Will they not suppose the jewels were stolen?" I asked, with the calmness of desperation. "Surely the world cannot know they were given by me; and though it is painful to be a.s.sociated with so dark a transaction, I see not, dear Ernest, why my reputation should be clouded by this?"
"Alas! Gabriella,--you were seen by more than one walking with him in the park. You were seen entering the jeweller"s shop, and afterwards meeting him in Broadway. Even in the act of giving your shawl to the poor shivering woman, you were watched. You believed yourself unremarked; but the blind man might as well think himself unseen walking in the blaze of noonday, because his own eyes are bound by the fillet of darkness, as _you_ expect to pa.s.s unnoticed through a gaping throng. Mr.
Harland told me of these things, that I might be prepared to repel the arrows of slander which would inevitably be aimed at the bosom of my wife."
"But you told him that it was my father. That it was to save him from destruction I gave them. Oh Ernest, you told him all!"
"I have no right to reveal your secret, Gabriella. If he be indeed your father, let eternal secrecy veil his name. Would you indeed consent that the world should know that it was your father who had committed so dark a crime? Would you, Gabriella?"
"I would far rather be covered with ignominy as a daughter, than disgrace as a wife," I answered, while burning blushes dyed my cheeks at the possibility of the last. "The first will not reflect shame or humiliation on you. You have raised me generously, magnanimously, to your own position; and though the world may say that you yielded to weakness in loving me,--a poor and simple girl.--Nay, nay; I recall my words, Ernest; I will not wrong myself, because clouds and darkness gather round me. You did not _stoop_, or lower yourself, by wedding me.
Love made us equal. My proud, aspiring love, looked up; yours bent to meet its worship,--and both united, as the waves of ocean unite, in fulness, depth, and strength,--and, like them, have found their level.
Let the world know that I am the daughter of St. James; that, moved by his prayers and intimidated by his threats, I met him and attempted to save him from ruin. They may say that I was rash and imprudent; but they dare not call me guilty. There is a voice in every heart which is not palsied, or deadened, or dumb, that will plead in my defence. The child who endeavors to shield a father from destruction, however low and steeped in sin he may be, cannot be condemned. If I am, I care not; but oh, Ernest, as your wife, let me not suffer reproach,--for your sake, my husband, far more than mine."
As thus I pleaded with all the eloquence and earnestness of my nature, with my hands clasped in his, their firm, close, yet gentle fold grew firmer, closer still; and the cloud pa.s.sing away from his countenance, it became luminous as I gazed.
"You are right,--you are true," said he, "my dear, my n.o.ble Gabriella.
Every shadow of a doubt vanishes before the testimony of your unselfish heart. Why did I not see this subject in the same clear, just light?
Because my eyes are too often blinded by the mists of pa.s.sion. Yes! you have pointed out the only way of extrication. The story of your mother"s wrongs will not necessarily be exposed; and if it is, the sacred aegis of your filial love will guard it from desecration. We shall not remain here long. Spring will soon return; and in the sweet quietude of rural life, we will forget the tumultuous scenes of this modern Babel. You will not wish to return?"
"No! never, never. That unhappy man! what will be his doom?"
"Probably life-long imprisonment. Had I known who the offender was, I would have prayed the winds and waves to bear him to Icelandic seas, rather than have had his crime published to the world. It is, however, the retribution of heaven; and we must submit."
"It seems so strange," said I, "to think of him alive, whose existence so long seemed to me a blank. When I was a child, I used to indulge in wild dreams about my unknown parent. I pictured him as one of the G.o.ds of mythology, veiling his divinity in flesh for the love of the fairest of the daughters of men. The mystery that wrapped his name was, to my imagination, like the cloud mantling the noonday sun. With such views of my lineage, which, though they became subdued as I grew older, were still exaggerated and romantic,--think of the awful plunge into the disgraceful truth. It seems to me that I should have died on my mother"s grave, had not your arms of love raised me,--had you not breathed into my ear words that called me back from the cold grasp of death itself. In the brightness of the future I forgot the gloom of the past. Oh! had I supposed that he lived,--that he would come to bring on me public shame and sorrow, and through me, on you, my husband, I never would have exposed you to the sufferings of this night."
And I clung to him with an entireness of confidence, a fulness of grat.i.tude that swelled my heart almost to bursting. His face, beaming with unclouded love and trust, seemed to me as the face of an angel. I cared not for obloquy or shame, since he believed me true. I remembered the words of the tender, the devoted Gertrude:--
"I have been with thee in thine hour Of glory and of bliss, Doubt not its memory"s living power To strengthen me in this."
But though my mind was buoyed up by the exaltation of my feelings, my physical powers began to droop. I inherited something of my mother"s const.i.tutional weakness; and, suddenly as the leaden weight falls when a clock has run down and the machinery ceases to play, a heavy burden of lethargy settled down upon me, and I was weak and helpless as a child.
Dull pain throbbed in my brain, as if it were girdled by a hard, tightening band.
It was several days before I left my bed, and more than a week before I quitted my chamber. The recollection of Ernest"s tender watchfulness during these days of illness, even now suffuses my eyes with tears. Had I been a dying infant he could not have hung over me with more anxious, unslumbering care. Oh! whatever were his faults, his virtues redeemed them all. Oh! the unfathomable depths of his love! I was then willing to die, so fearful was I of pa.s.sing out of this heavenly light of home joy into the coldness of doubt, the gloom of suspicion.
Ernest, with all his p.r.o.neness to exaggerate the importance of my actions, did not do so in reference to this unhappy transaction.
Paragraphs were inserted in the papers, in which the initials of my name were inserted in large capitals to attract the gazing eye. The meeting in the Park, the jewels found in the possession of the forger, the abrupt manner in which they were taken from the jeweller"s shop, even the gray shawl and green veil, were minutely described. Ernest had made enemies by the haughty reserve of his manners and the exclusiveness of his habits, and they stabbed him in secret where he was most vulnerable.
A brief sketch of the real circ.u.mstances and the causes which led to them, was published in reply. It was written with manly boldness, but guarded delicacy, and rescued my name from the fierce clutch of slander.
Then followed glowing eulogiums on the self-sacrificing daughter, the young and beautiful wife, till Ernest"s sensitive spirit must have bled over the notoriety given to her, whom he considered as sacred as the priestess of some holy temple, and whose name was scarcely to be mentioned but in prayer.
The only comment he made on them was,--
"My mother and Edith will see these."
"I will write and tell them all," I answered; "it will be too painful to you."
"We will both write," he said; and we did.
"You blame yourself too much," cried he, when he perused my letter.
"You speak too kindly, too leniently of me," said I, after reading his; "yet I am glad and grateful. Your mother will judge me from the facts, and nothing that you or I can say will warp or influence her judgment.
She understands so clearly the motives of action,--she reads so closely your character and mine, I feel that her decision will be as righteous as the decree of eternal justice. Oh that I were with her now, for my soul looks to her as an ark of safety. Like the poor weary dove, it longs to repose its drooping wings and fold them in trembling joy on her sheltering breast."
I will not speak of the trial, the condemnation, or the agony I felt, when I learned that my father was doomed to expiate his crime by solitary confinement for ten long years. Could Ernest have averted this fate from him, for my sake he would have done it; but the majesty of the law was supreme, and no individual effort could change its just decree.
My affections were not wounded, for I never could recall his image without personal repugnance, but my mother"s remembrance was a.s.sociated with him;--I remembered her dying injunctions,--her prophetic dream. I thought of the heaven which he had forfeited, the G.o.d whose commandments he had broken, the Saviour whose mercy he had scorned. I wanted to go to him,--to minister to him in his lonely cell,--to try to rouse him to a sense of his transgressions,--to lead him to the G.o.d he had forsaken, the Redeemer he had rejected, the heaven from which my mother seemed stretching her spirit arms to woo him to her embrace.
"My mother dreamed that I drew him from a black abyss," said I to Ernest; "she dreamed that I was the guardian angel of his soul. Let me go to him,--let me fulfil my mission. I shudder when I look around me in these palace walls, and think that a parent groans in yonder dismal tombs."
"_I_ will go," replied Ernest; "I will tell him your filial wish, and if I find you can do him good, I will accompany you there."
"I _can_ do him good,--I can pity and forgive him,--I can talk to him of my mother, and that will lead him to think of heaven. "I was sick and in prison and ye came unto me." Oh, thus our Saviour said, identifying himself with the sons of ignominy and sorrow. Go, and if you find his heart softened by repentance, pour balm and oil into the wounds that sin has made. Go, and let me follow."
CHAPTER XLI.
"And did you see him, Ernest?" I asked, with trembling eagerness.
"I did, Gabriella. I went to him as your representative, without one vindictive, bitter feeling. I proffered kindness, forgiveness, and every comfort the law would permit a condemned criminal to enjoy. They were rejected fiercely, disdainfully,--he rejected them all."
"Alas! and me, Ernest; does he refuse consolation from me?"
"He will not see you. "I ask no sympathy," he cried, in hoa.r.s.e and sullen accents. "I desire no fellowship; alone I have sinned,--alone I will suffer,--alone I will die." Weep not, my Gabriella, over this hardened wretch; I do not believe he is your father; I am more and more convinced that he is an impostor."
"But he has my mother"s miniature; he recognized me from my resemblance to it; he called me by name; he knew all the circ.u.mstances of my infantine life. I would give worlds to believe your a.s.sertion, but the curse clings to me. He _is_,--he must be my father."
"Mr. Brahan, who knew your father personally, and who is deeply interested in the disclosures recently made, has visited him also. He says there is a most extraordinary resemblance; and though seventeen years of sinful indulgence leave terrible traces on the outward man, he does not doubt his ident.i.ty. But I cannot, will not admit it. Think of him no more, Gabriella; banish him, and every thing connected with this horrible event, from your mind. In other scenes you will recover from the shock occasioned by it; and even now the tongue of rumor is busy with more recent themes. Mr. Brahan will visit him from time to time and, if possible, learn something of the mystery of his life. Whatever is learned will be communicated to me. What! weeping still, my Gabriella?"
"It is dreadful to think of sin and crime in the abstract; but when it comes before us in the person of a father!"
"No more! no more! Dismiss the subject. Let it be henceforth a dark dream, forgotten if possible; or if remembered, be it as a dispensation of Providence, to be borne in silence and submission. Strange as it may seem, all that I have suffered of humiliation and anguish in this _real_ trial, cannot be compared to the agony caused by one of my own dark imaginings."
I tried to obey the injunctions of Ernest; but though my lips were silent, it was impossible to check the current of thought, or to obliterate the dark remembrance of the past. My spirits lost their elasticity, the roses on my cheek grew pale.
Spring came, not as in the country, with the rich garniture of living green, clothing hill, valley, and lawn,--the blossoming of flowers,--the warbling of birds,--the music of waters,--and all the beauty, life, and glory of awakening nature. But the fountain played once more in the grotto, the vine-wreaths frolicked again round their graceful sh.e.l.ls, the statues looked at their pure faces in the shining mural wall.
I cared not for these. This was not my home. I saw the faces of Mrs.
Linwood and Edith in the mirror of memory. I saw the purple hills, the smiling vale, the quiet churchyard, the white, broken shaft, gleaming through the willow boughs, and the moonbeams resting in solemn glory there.
Never shall I forget my emotions when, on quitting the city, I caught a glimpse of that gloomy and stupendous granite pile which looms up in the midst of grandeur and magnificence, an awful monitor to human depravity.
Well does it become its chill, funereal name. Shadows deeper than the darkness of the grave hang within its huge Egyptian columns. Corruption more loathsome than the mouldering remains of mortality dwells in those lone and accursed cells. I gazed on the ma.s.sy walls, as they frowned on the soft blue sky, till their shadow seemed to darken the heavens. I thought of the inmate of one lonely cell; of the sighs and tears, the curses and wailings that had gone up from that abode of shame, despair, and misery; and I wondered why the Almighty did not rend the heavens and come down and bare the red right arm of vengeance over a world so blackened by sin, so stained by crime, and so given up to the dominion of the spirit of evil.
Ernest drew me back from the window of the carriage, that I might not behold this grim fortification against the powers of darkness; but it was not till we had quitted the walls of the metropolis, and inhaled a purer atmosphere, that I began to breathe more freely. The tender green of the fields, the freshness of the atmosphere, the indescribable odor of spring that embalmed the gale, awakened softer, happier thoughts. The footsteps of divine love were visible on the landscape. The voice of G.o.d was heard, breathing of mercy, through the cool green boughs.