The Linwoods Read online

  “Ah, there is a terrible storm gathering! Those who have grown up together, lovingly interlacing their tender branches, must be torn asunder—some swept away by the current, others dispersed by the winds.”

  “Dear Isabella,—The world seems turned upside down since I began this letter—war (war, what an appalling sound) has begun—blood has been spilt, and our dear, dear Eliot—but I must tell you first how it all was. Eliot and Jasper were out shooting some miles from Cambridge, when, on coming to the road, they perceived an unusual commotion—old men and young, and even boys, all armed, in wagons, on horseback, and on foot, were coming from all points, and all hurrying onward in one direction. On inquiring into the hurly-burly, they were told that Colonel Smith had marched to Concord to destroy the military stores there; and that our people were gathering from all quarters to oppose his return. Eliot immediately joined them, Jasper did not; but, dear Isabella, I that know you so well, know, whatever others may think, that tories may be true and noble. There was a fight at Lexington. Our brave men had the best of it. Eliot was the first to bring us the news. With a severe wound in his arm, he came ten miles that we need not be alarmed by any reports, knowing, as he told mother, that she was no Spartan mother, to be indifferent whether her son came home with his shield or on his shield.

  41“Jasper has not been to Westbrook since the battle. My mind has been in such a state of alarm since, I cannot return to my ordinary pursuits. I was reading history with the children, and the English poets with mother, but I am quite broken up.

  “I do not think this horrid war should separate those who have been friends; thank God, my dear Isabella, we of womankind are exempts—not called upon to take sides—our mission is to heal wounds, not to make them; to keep alive and tend with vestal fidelity the fires of charity and love. My kindest remembrance to Herbert. I hope he has renounced his whiggism; for if it must come to that, he had better fight on the wrong side (ignorantly) than break the third commandment. Write soon, dear Isabella, and let me know if this hurly-burly extends to New-York—dear, quiet New-York! In war and in peace, in all the chances and changes of this mortal life, your own

  Bessie Lee.”

  Miss Linwood to Bessie Lee.

  “Exempts! my little spirit of peace—your vocation it may be, my pretty dove, to sit on your perch with an olive-branch in your bill, but not mine. Oh for the glorious days of the Clorindas, when a woman might put down her womanish thoughts, and with helmet and lance in rest do battle with the bravest! Why was the loyal spirit of my race my exclusive patrimony? Can his blood, who at his own cost raised a troop of horse for our martyr king, flow in Herbert’s veins? or his who followed the fortunes of the unhappy James? Is my father’s son a renegado—a rebel? Yes, Bessie—my blood burns in my cheeks while I write it. Herbert, the only male scion of the Linwoods—my brother—our pride—our hope has declared himself of the rebel party—‘Ichabod, Ichabod, the glory is departed, is written on our door-posts.’

  “But to come down from my heroics; we are in a desperate condition—such a scene as I have just passed through! Judge 42Ellis was dining with us, Jasper Meredith was spoken of. ‘In the name of Heaven, Ellis,’ said my father, ‘why do you suffer your nephew to remain among the rebel crew in that infected region?’

  “‘I do not find,’ replied the judge, glancing at Herbert, ‘that any region is free from infection.’

  “‘True, true,’ said my father; ‘but the air of the Yankee states is saturated with it. I would not let an infant breathe it, lest rebellion should break out when he came to man’s estate.’ I am sorry to say it, dear Bessie; but my father traces Herbert’s delinquency to his sojourn at Westbrook. I saw a tempest was brewing, and thinking to make for a quiet harbour, I put in my oar, and repeated the story you told me in your last letter of our non-combatant, Mr. Jasper. The judge was charmed. ‘Ah, he’s a prudent fellow!’ he said; ‘he’ll not commit himself!’

  “‘Not commit himself!’ exclaimed my father; ‘by Jupiter, if he belonged to me, he should commit himself. I would rather he should jump the wrong way than sit squat like a toad under a hedge, till he was sure which side it was most prudent to jump.’ You see, Bessie, my father’s words implied something like a commendation of Herbert. I ventured to look up—their eyes met—I saw a beam of pleasure flashing from them, and passing like an electric spark from one heart to another. Oh, why should this unholy quarrel tear asunder such true hearts!

  “The judge’s pride was touched—he is a mean wretch. ‘Ah, my dear sir,’ he said, ‘it is very well for you, who can do it with impunity, to disregard prudential considerations; for instance, you remain true to the king, the royal power is maintained, and your property is protected. Your son—I suppose a case—your son joins the rebels, the country is revolutionized, and your property is secured as the reward of Mr. Herbert’s patriotism.’

  “My father hardly heard him out. ‘Now, by the Lord that made me!’ he exclaimed, setting down the decanter with a force that broke it in a thousand pieces, ‘I would die of starvation before I would taste a crumb of bread that was the reward of rebellion.’

  43“It was a frightful moment; but my father’s passion, you know, is like a whirlwind; one gust, and it is over; and mamma is like those short-stemmed flowers that lie on the earth; no wind moves her. So, though the judge was almost as much disconcerted as the decanter, it seemed all to have blown over, while mamma, as in case of any ordinary accident, was directing Jupe to remove the fragments, change the cloth, etc. But alas! the evil genius of our house triumphed; for even a bottle of our oldest Madeira, which is usually to my father like oil to the waves, failed to preserve tranquility. The glasses were filled, and my father, according to his usual custom, gave ‘the king—God bless him.’

  “Now you must know, though he would not confess he made any sacrifice to prudence, he has for some weeks omitted to drink wine at all, on some pretext or other, such as he had a headache, or he had dined out the day before, or expected to the day after; and thus Herbert has escaped the test. But now the toast was given, and Herbert’s glass remained untouched, while he sat, not biting, but literally devouring his nails. I saw the judge cast a sinister look at him, and then a glance at my father. The storm was gathering on my father’s brow. ‘Herbert, my son,’ said mamma, ‘you will be too late for your appointment.’ Herbert moved his chair to rise, when my father called out, ‘Stop, sir—no slinking away under your mother’s shield—hear me—no man who refuses to drink that toast at my table shall eat of my bread or drink of my wine.’

  “‘Then God forgive me—for I never will drink it—so help me Heaven!’

  “Herbert left the room by one door—my father by another—mamma stayed calmly talking to that fixture of a judge, and I ran to my room, where, as soon as I had got through with a comfortable fit of crying, I sat down to write you (who are on the enemy’s side) an account of the matter. What will come of it, Heaven only knows!

  44“But, my dear little gentle Bessie, I never think of you as having any thing to do with these turbulent matters; you are in the midst of fiery rebel spirits, but you are too pure, too good to enter into their counsels, and far too just for any self-originating prejudices, such as this horrible one that pervades the country, and fires New-England against the legitimate rights of the mother country over her wayward, ungrateful child. Don’t trouble your head about these squabbles, but cling to Master Hale, your poetry, and history: by-the-way, I laughed heartily that you, who have done duty—reading so virtuously all your life, should now come to the conclusion ‘that history is dry.’ I met with a note in Herodotus, the most picturesque of historians, the other day that charmed me. The writer of the note says there is no mention whatever of Cyrus in the Persian history. If history then is mere fiction, why may we not read romances of our own choosing? My instincts have not misguided me, after all.

  “So, Miss Bessie, Jasper Meredith is in high favour with you, and the friend of your nonpareil brother. Jasper cou
ld always be irresistible when he chose, and he seems to have been ‘i’ the vein’ at Westbrook. With all our impressions (are they prejudices, Bessie?) against your Yankee land, we thought him excessively improved by his residence among you. Indeed, I think if he were never to get another letter from his worldly icicle mother, to live away from his time-serving uncle, and never receive another importation of London coxcombries, he would be what nature intended him—a paragon.

  “I love your sisterly enthusiasm. As to my estimation of your brother being affected by the accidents of birth and fortune, indeed, you were not true to your friend when you intimated that. Certainly, the views you tell me he takes of my character are not particularly flattering, or even conciliating. However, I have my revenge—you paint him en beau—the portrait is too beautiful to be very like any man born and reared within the disenchanted limits of New-England. I am writing boldly, but no 45offence, dear Bessie; I do not know your brother, and I have—yes, out with it, with the exception of your precious little self—I have an antipathy to the New-Englanders—a disloyal race, and conceited, fancying themselves more knowing in all matters, high and low, especially government and religion, than the rest of the world—‘all-sufficient, self-sufficient, and insufficient.’

  “Pardon me, gentle Bessie—I am just now at fever heat, and I could not like Gabriel if he were whig and rebel. Ah, Herbert!—but I loved him before I ever heard these detestable words; and once truly loving, especially if our hearts be knit together by nature, I think the faults of the subject do not diminish our affection, though they turn it from its natural sweet uses to suffering.”

  “Dear Bessie,—A week—a stormy, miserable week has passed since I wrote the above, and it has ended in Herbert’s leaving us, and dishonouring his father’s name by taking a commission in the rebel service. Papa has of course had a horrible fit of the gout. He says he has for ever cast Herbert out of his affections. Ah! I am not skilled in metaphysics, but I know that we have no power whatever over our affections. Mamma takes it all patiently, and chiefly sorroweth for that Herbert has lost caste by joining the insurgents, whom she thinks little better than so many Jack Cades.

  “For myself, I would have poured out my blood—every drop of it, to have kept him true to his king and country; but in my secret heart I glory in him that he has honestly and boldly clung to his opinions, to his own certain and infinite loss. I have no heart to write more.

  “Yours truly,

  “Isabella Linwood.

  “P.S.—You may show the last paragraph (confidentially) to Jasper; but don’t let him know that I wished him to see it. I.L.”

  47CHAPTER IV.

  “An’ forward, though I canna see,

  I guess an’ fear.”—BURNS.

  Three years passed over without any marked change in the external condition of our young friends. Herbert Linwood endured the hardships of an American officer during that most suffering period of the war, and remained true to the cause he had adopted, without any of those opportunities of distinction which are necessary to keep alive the fire of ordinary patriotism.

  It has been seen that Eliot Lee, with most of the young men of the country (as might be expected from the insurgent and generous spirit of youth), espoused the popular side. It ought not to have been expected, that when the young country came to the muscle and vigour of manhood, it should continue to wear the leading-strings of its childhood, or remain in the bondage and apprenticeship of its youth. It has been justly said, that the seeds of our revolution and future independence were sown by the Pilgrims. The political institutions of a people may be inferred from their religion. Absolutism, as a mirror, reflects the Roman Catholic faith. Whatever varieties of names were attached to the religious sects of America, they were, with the exception of a few Papists, all Protestants—all, as Burke said of them, “agreed (if agreeing in nothing else) in the communion of the spirit of liberty—theirs was the Protestantism of the Protestant 48religion—the dissidence of dissent.” It was morally certain, that as soon as they came to man’s estate, their government would accord with this spirit of liberty; would harmonize with the independent and republican spirit of the religion of Christ, the only authority they admitted. The fires of our republic were not then kindled by a coal from the old altars of Greece and Rome, whose freest government exalted the few, and retained the many in grovelling ignorance and servitude: ours came forth invincible in the declaration of liberty to all, and equality of rights.

  Such minds as Eliot Lee’s, reasoning and religious, were not so much moved by the sudden impulses of enthusiasm as incited by the convictions of duty. His heart was devoted to his country, his thoughts absorbed in her struggle; but he quenched, or rather smothered his intense desire to go forth with her champions, and remained pursuing his legal studies, near enough to his home to perform his paramount but obscure duty to his widowed mother and her young family.

  Jasper Meredith’s political preferences, if not proclaimed, were easily guessed. It was obvious that his tastes were aristocratic and feudal—his sympathies with the monarch, not with the people. New-York was the headquarters of the British army, and Judge Ellis, his uncle, on the pretext of keeping his nephew out of the way of the seductions of a very gay society, advised him to pursue the study of the law in New-England, and thus for a while he avoided pledging himself. He resided in Boston or its vicinity, never far from Westbrook. He had a certain eclat in the drawing-rooms of Boston, but he was no favourite there. A professed neutrality was, if not suspicious, most offensive in the eyes of neck-or-nothing patriots. But Meredith did not escape the whisper that his neutrality was a mere mask. His accent, which was ambitiously English, was criticised, and his elaborate dress, manufactured by London artists, was particularly displeasing to the sons of the Puritans, 49who, absorbed in great objects, were then more impatient even than usual of extra sacrifices to the graces.

  The transition from Boston to Westbrook was delightful to Meredith. There was no censure of any sort, but balm for the rankling wounds of vanity; and it must be confessed that he not only appeared better, but was better at Westbrook than elsewhere: the best parts of his nature were called forth; he was (if we may desecrate a technical expression) in the exercise of grace. There is a certain moral atmosphere, as propitious to moral wellbeing as a genial temperature is to health. Vanity has a sort of thermometer, which enables the possessor to graduate and adapt himself to the dispositions, the vanities (is there any gold in nature without this alloy?) of others. Meredith, when he wished to be so, was eminently agreeable. Those always stand in a most fortunate light who vary the monotony of a village existence, and he broke like a sunbeam through the dull atmosphere that hung over Westbrook. He brought the freshest news, he studied good Mrs. Lee’s partialities and prejudices, and (without her being aware of their existence) accommodated himself to them. He supplied to Eliot what all social beings hanker after, companionship with one of his own age, pursuits, and associations. The magnet that drew him to Westbrook was never the acknowledged attraction. Meredith was not in love with Bessie Lee. She was too spiritual a creature for one of earth’s mould; but his self-love, his ruling passion, was flattered by her. He saw and enjoyed (what, alas! no one else then saw) his power over her. He saw it in the mutations of her cheek, in the kindling of her eye, in the changes of her voice. It was as if an angel had left his sphere to incense him. Meredith must be acquitted of a deliberate attempt to insnare her affections. He thought not and cared not for the future. He cared only for a present selfish gratification. A ride at twilight or a walk by moonlight with this creature, all beauty, refinement, and tenderness, 50was a poetic passage to him—to her it was fraught with life or death.

  Poor Bessie! she should have been hardened for the changing climate of this rough world; but by a fatal, but very common error, she had been cherished like a tropical bird, or an exotic plant. “She has such delicate health! she is so different from my other children!” said the mother.—“She is so gentle and s
ensitive,” said the brother. And thus, with all their sound judgment, instead of submitting her to a hardening process, it seemed an instinct with them, by every elaborate contrivance, to fence her from the ordinary trials and evils of life. Only when she was happy did they let her alone; with Meredith she seemed happy, and they were satisfied. Bessie shared this unfounded tranquillity, arising with them partly from confidence in Meredith, and partly from the belief that she was in no danger of suffering from an unrequited love; but Bessie’s arose from the most childlike ignorance of that study puzzling to the wisest and craftiest—the human heart. She was the most modest and unexacting of human creatures—her gentle spirit urged no rights—asked nothing, expected nothing beyond the present moment. The worshipper was satisfied with the presence of the idol. Her residence in New-York had impressed a conviction that a disparity of birth and condition was an impassable gulf. It was natural enough that she should have imbibed this opinion; for, being a child, the aristocratic opinions of the society she was in were expressed, unmitigated by courtesy; they sunk deep in her susceptible mind, a mind too humble to aspire above any barrier that nature or society had set up.