The subject was gratifying as a study alone, even if it conferred no pleasure, and awakened no hopes.
"Do not mistake me," he exclaimed, hurrying after, "I had no purpose to impute to you any other insensibility except to that of the holy truths of religion."
She looked up and smiled archly. There was another transition from cloud to sunlight.
"What! are you so doubtful of your own ministry?"
"In your case, I am."
"Why?"
"You will force me to betake myself to studies more severe than any I have yet attempted."
She was flattered but she uttered a natural disclaimer.
"No, no! I am presumptuous. I trust you will teach me. Begin--do not hesitate--I will listen."
"To move you I must not come in the garments of methodism. That faith will never be yours."
"What faith shall it be?"
"That of Catholicism. I must come armed with authority. I must carry the sword and keys of St. Peter. I must be sustained by all the pomps of that church of pomps and triumphs. My divine mission must speak through signs and symbols, through stately stole, pontifical ornaments, the tiara of religious state on the day of its most solemn ceremonial; and with these I must bring the word of power, born equally of intellect and soul, and my utterance must be in the language of divinest poesy!"
"Ah! you mistake! That last will be enough. Speak to me in poesy--let me hear that--and you will subdue me, I believe, to any faith that you teach. For I can not but believe the faith that is endowed with the faculty of poetic utterance."
"In truth it is a divine utterance--perhaps the only divine utterance.
Would I had it for your sake."
"Oh! you must have it. I fancy I see it in some things that you have said. You read poetry, I am sure--I am sure you love it."
"I do! I know not anything that I love half so well."
"Then you write it?" she asked eagerly.
"No! the gift has been denied me."
She looked at him with eyes of regret.
"How unfortunate," she said.
"Doubly so, as the deficiency seems to disappoint you."
She did not seem to heed the flattery of this remark, nor did she appear to note the expression of face with which it was accompanied. Her feelings took the ascendency. She spoke out her uncommissioned thoughts and fancies musingly, as if without the knowledge of her will.
"I fancy that I could kneel down and worship the poet, and feel no shame, no humility. It is the only voice that enchants me--that leads me out from myself; that carries me where it pleases and finds for me companions in the solitude; songs in the storm; affections in the barren desert! Even here, it brings me friends and fellowships. How voiceless would be all these woods to me had it no voice speaking to, and in, my soul. Hoping nothing, and performing nothing here, it is my only consolation. It reconciles me to this wretched spot. It makes endurance tolerable. If it were not for this companionship--if I heard not this voice in my sorrows, soothing my desolation, I could freely die!--die here, beside this rock, without making a struggle to go forward, even to reach the stream that flows quietly beyond!"
She had stopped in her progress while this stream of enthusiasm poured from her lips. Her action was suited to her utterance. Unaccustomed to restraint--nay, accustomed only to pour herself forth to woods, and trees, and waters, she was scarcely conscious of the presence of any other companion, yet she looked even while she spoke, in the eyes of Stevens. He gazed on her with glances of unconcealed admiration. The unsophisticated nature which led her to express that enthusiasm which a state of conventional existence prompts us, through fear of ridicule, industriously to conceal, struck him with the sense of a new pleasure.
The novelty alone had its charm; but there were other sources of delight. The natural grace and dignity of the enthusiastic girl, adapting to such words the appropriate action, gave to her beauty, which was now in its first bloom, all the glow which is derived from intellectual inspiration. Her whole person spoke. All was vital, spiritual, expressive, animated; and when the last word lingered on her lips, Stevens could scarcely repress the impulse which prompted him to clasp her in his embrace.
"Margaret!" he exclaimed--"Miss Cooper!--you are yourself a poet!"
"No, no!" she murmured, rather than spoke;--"would I were!--a dreamer only--a self-deluded dreamer."
"You can not deceive me!" he continued, "I see it in your eyes, your action; I hear it in your words. I can not be deceived. You are a poet--you will, and must be one!"
"And if I were!" she said mournfully, "of what avail would it be here?
What heart in this wilderness would be touched by song of mine? Whose ear could I soothe in this cold and sterile hamlet? Where would be the temple--who the worshippers--even were the priestess all that her vanity would believe, or her prayers and toils might make her? No, no! I am no poet; and if I were, better that the flame should go out--vanish altogether in the smoke of its own delusions--than burn with a feeble light, unseen, untrimmed, unhonored--perhaps, beheld with the scornful eye of vulgar and unappreciating ignorance!"
"Such is not your destiny, Margaret Cooper," replied Stevens, using the freedom of address, perhaps unconsciously, which the familiarity of country life is sometimes found to tolerate. "Such is not your destiny, Margaret. The flame will not go out--it will be loved and worshipped!"
"Ah! never! what is here to justify such a hope--such a dream?"
"Nothing HERE; but it was not of Charlemont I spoke. The destiny which has endowed you with genius will not leave it to be extinguished here.
There will come a worshipper, Margaret. There will come one, equally capable to honor the priestess and to conduct her to befitting altars.
This is not your home, though it may have been your place of trial and novitiate. Here, without the restraint of cold, oppressive, social forms, your genius has ripened--your enthusiasm has been kindled into proper glow--your heart, and mind, and imagination, have kept equal pace to an equal maturity! Perhaps this was fortunate. Had you grown up in more polished and worldly circles, you would have been compelled to subdue the feelings and fancies which now make your ordinary language the language of a muse."
"Oh! speak not so, I implore you. I am afraid you mock me."
"No! on my soul, I do not. I think all that I say. More than that, I feel it, Margaret. Trust to me--confide in me--make me your friend!
Believe me, I am not altogether what I seem."
An arch smile once more possessed her eyes.
"Ah! I could guess that! But sit you here. Here is a flower--a beautiful, small flower, with a dark blue eye. See it--how humbly it hides amid the gra.s.s. It is the last flower if the season. I know not its name. I am no botanist; but it is beautiful without a name, and it is the last flower of the season. Sit down on this rock, and I will sing you Moore"s beautiful song, ""Tis the last of its kindred.""
"Nay, sing me something of your own, Margaret."
"No, no! Don"t speak of me, and mine, in the same breath with Moore.
You will make me repent of having seen you. Sit down and be content with Moore, or go without your song altogether."
He obeyed her, and the romantic and enthusiastic girl, seating herself upon a fragment of rock beside the path, sang the delicate and sweet verses of the Irish poet, with a natural felicity of execution, which amply compensated for the absence of those Italian arts, which so frequently elevate the music at the expense of the sentiment. Stevens looked and listened, and half forgot himself in the breathlessness of his attention--his eye fastened with a gaze of absolute devotion on her features, until, having finished her song, she detected the expression of his face, and started, with blushing cheeks, to her feet.
"Oh! sweet!" he murmured as he offered to take her hand, but she darted forward, and following her, he found himself a few moments after, standing by her side, and looking down upon one of the loveliest lakes that ever slept in the embrace of jealous hills.
CHAPTER XV.
A CATASTROPHE.
"You disparage these scenes," said Stevens, after several moments had been given to the survey of that before him, "and yet you have drawn your inspiration from them--the fresh food which stimulates poetry and strengthens enthusiasm. Here you learned to be contemplative; and here, in solitude, was your genius nursed. Do not be ungrateful, Margaret--you owe to these very scenes all that you are, and all that you may become."