How fresh imagination keeps the heart—how young! What a glorious gift it is when rightly used and governed! Hear Charlotte Bronté's testimony, as recorded by her biographer: "They are all gone," she says, "the sisters I so loved, and I have only my imagination left to comfort me. But for this solace I should despair or perish." The words are not exact—the book is not beside me, but such is their substance. He who lists can seek them for himself in the pages of that wondrous spell woven by Mrs. Gaskell—that tragic and strange biography which once in a season of deep despondency did more to reconcile me to my own condition, through my pity and admiration for another, than all the condolences that came so freely from lip and pen. Every fabric that love had erected crumbled about her or turned to Dead-Sea ashes on her lip. See what a world of passion those French letters and themes of hers betray!
The brand of suffering and suffocating sorrow is on every one of them, plain to the eye of the initiated alone, they who have gazed on the wonders of the inner temple—the holy of holies—and gone forth reverently to dream of the revelation evermore in silence.
But, above every ruin of hope, or pride, or affection, like an imperial banner flung from "the outer wall," her imagination waved and triumphed. "The clouds of glory" she trailed after her were dyed in spheres unapproachable by death, or shame, or disappointment, and the gift described in the Arabian story as conferred by the genii's salve when he touched therewith the eyes of the traveler and caused him to see all the wonders of the earth, its gems, its gold, its gleaming chrysolites, its inward fires, unobscured by the interposition of dust and clay, which veiled them from all the rest of humanity, may stand as a type of her ideality.
CHAPTER VIII.
The six weeks which had been allotted to me as the term of my captivity were accomplished, and still Mr. Basil Bainrothe came not—wrote not. I had seen the month of August glide away, its progress marked only by the changing fruits and flowers of the season, and the more fervent light that pierced through the Venetian blinds when turned heavenward, for it was through these alone that the light of day was permitted to visit my chamber.
Where, then, was the place of my captivity situated? In the environs of a great city, possibly, for the wind often blew, laden with fragrance as from choice rather than extensive gardens, through my casement, and the shadow of a tall tree impending over the skylight of the bath-room was, when windy, cast so distinctly on its panes as to convince me of the neighborhood of an English elm, the foliage of which tree I knew like an alphabet.
And then, those fairy, Sabbath chimes! Were such musical bells duplicated in adjacent cities? or was I, indeed, near our old, beloved church, in which memory so distinctly revealed our ancient, velvet-lined pew, my father's bowed head, and the venerable pastor rising white-robed and saintly in his pulpit to bid all the earth keep silent before the Lord! Conjecture was rife! Thus August passed away.
My birthday had gone by, and the equinox was upon us, with its rapid changes of sun and storm, when one of these tempests, accompanied by hail of unusual size, shattered to fragments the skylight of the bath-room. This hail-storm was succeeded by a deluge of rain, which flooded not only the adjacent closet, but the chamber I occupied, among other evils completely submerging the superb Wilton carpet, concerning the safety of which Mrs. Clayton felt immense responsibility.