Ernest Linwood | Page 3

Eden of immortality might have opened to admit the wandering Peri to her long-lost home? I might have been the priestess of a shrine of Delphic celebrity, and the world have offered burning incense at my altar. I might have won the laurel crown, and found, perchance, thorns hidden under its triumphant leaves. I might,--but it matters not. The divine spark is undying, and though circumstances may smother the flame it enkindles, it glows in the bosom with unquenchable fire.
I remember very well what the master said, instead of the imagined words I have written.
"Poetry, is it?--or something you meant to be called by that name? Nonsense, child--folly--moon-beam hallucination! Child! do you know that this is an unpardonable waste of time? Do you remember that opportunities of improvement are given you to enable you hereafter to secure an honorable independence? This accounts for your reveries over the blackboard, your indifference to mathematics, that grand and glorious science! Poetry! ha, ha! I began to think you did not understand the use of capitals,--ha, ha!"
Did you ever imagine how a tender loaf of bread must feel when cut into slices by the sharpened knife? How the young bark feels when the iron wedge is driven through it with cleaving force? I think I can, by the experience of that hour. I stood with quivering lip, burning cheek, and panting breast,--my eyes riveted on the paper which he flourished in his left hand, pointing at it with the forefinger of his right.
"He shall not go on,"--said I to myself, exasperation giving me boldness,--"he shall not read what I have written of my mother. I will die sooner. He may insult my poverty but hers shall be sacred, and her sorrows too."
I sprang forward, forgetting every thing in the fear of hearing her name associated with derision, and attempted to get possession of the manuscript. A fly might as well attempt to wring the trunk of the elephant.
"Really, little poetess, you are getting bold. I should like to see you try that again. You had better keep quiet."
A resolute glance of the keen, black eye, resolute, yet twinkling with secret merriment, and he was about to commence another stanza.
I jumped up with the leap of the panther. I could not loosen his strong grasp, but I tore the paper from round his fingers, ran down the steps through the rows of desks and benches, without looking to the right or left, and flew without bonnet or covering out into the broad sunlight and open air.
"Come back, this moment!"
The thundering voice of the master rolled after me, like a heavy stone, threatening to crush me as it rolled. I bounded on before it with constantly accelerating speed.
"Go back,--never!"
I said this to myself. I repeated it aloud to the breeze that came coolly and soothingly through the green boughs, to fan the burning cheeks of the fugitive. At length the dread of pursuit subsiding, I slackened my steps, and cast a furtive glance behind me. The cupola of the academy gleamed white through the oak trees that surrounded it, and above them the glittering vane, fashioned in the form of a giant pen, seemed writing on the azure page of heaven.
My home,--the little cottage in the woods, was one mile distant. There was a by-path, a foot-path, as it was called, which cut the woods in a diagonal line, and which had been trodden hard and smooth by the feet of the children. Even at mid-day there was twilight in that solitary path, and when the shadows deepened and lengthened on the plain, they concentrated into gloominess there. The moment I turned into that path, I was supreme. It was mine. The public road, the thoroughfare leading through the heart of the town, belonged to the world. I was obliged to walk there like other people, with mincing steps, and bonnet tied primly under the chin, according to the rule and plummet line of school-girl propriety. But in my own little by-path, I could do just as I pleased. I could run with my bonnet swinging in my hand, and my hair floating like the wild vine of the woods. I could throw myself down on the grass at the foot of the great trees, and looking up into the deep, distant sky, indulge my own wondrous imaginings.
I did so now. I cast myself panting on the turf, and turning my face downward instead of upward, clasped my hands over it, and the hot tears gushed in scalding streams through my fingers, till the pillow of earth was all wet as with a shower.
Oh, they did me good, those fast-gushing tears! There was comfort, there was luxury in them. Bless God for tears! How they cool the dry and sultry heart! How they refresh the fainting