I knew, besides, that in my long illness I must have proved a grievous burden to those whose own circumstances were straitened to the utmost limit of narrow fortune. I saw about me comforts, even luxuries, that must have cost many a privation to acquire. I felt that, in succoring me, they had imposed upon themselves the weight of many a future want. These were afflicting considerations, nor could all my ingenuity discover one resource against them. I was still too weak to walk; my limbs tottered under me as I went. Perhaps it were better it had been so, since I really believe if I had had strength sufficient for the effort, notwithstanding all the shame that might attach to my ingratitude, I should have fled from the house that moment, never to return! It was in the abandonment of grief arising from these thoughts that “Ursule” discovered me. With what tenderness did she rally my drooping spirits; how gently did she chide my faint-heartedness!
“You must rise above these things, Jasper,” said she to me. “You must learn to see that the small ills of life are difficult to be borne just because they suggest no high purpose.”
And from this she went on to tell me of the noble devotion of the missionary, the splendid enthusiasm that elevated men above every thought of peril, and taught them to court danger and confront suffering. How mean and sordid did she represent every other ambition in comparison with this! How ignoble was the soldier's heroism when placed beside the martyrdom of the priest! With consummate art she displayed before my boyish fancy all that was attractive, all that was picturesque, in the missionary's life. To glowing descriptions of scenery and savage life succeeded touching episodes of deep interest and passages of tenderest emotions, the power of the Church—whether as consoler or comforter, as healing the sick or supporting the weak-hearted—being never forgotten. If she saw that my mind dwelt with pleasure on pictures of splendor, she lingered on scenes of greatness and royal power, when priests associated with monarchs as their guides and counsellors. If, at another moment, the romance seemed to engage my attention, she narrated incidents of the most affecting kind. At these moments it was strange to mark how the cold and almost stern reserve of the cloister seemed lost in the glowing enthusiasm of the devotee. It was not the nun broken down by fasting, wasted by penance, and subdued by prayer, but the almost inspired daughter of the Church, glorying and exulting in its triumph. She gave me books to read,—lives of saints and martyrs, of devoted missionaries and pious fathers. If in some instances the sufferings they endured seemed more than mere humanity could support, the triumphant joy of their victories appeared to partake of a celestial brilliancy. Day by day, hour by hour, did she pursue the theme, till the subject, like a river fed by a thousand rills, overflowed all else in my mind, and left no room for aught but itself.
It was not difficult for her to show that the frightful condition of France at the period—its lawless confiscations, its pillage, and its bloodshed—all dated from the extinction of the Church. The task was an easy one to contrast past peace and happiness with present anarchy and suffering. I reflected long and deeply on the subject. If doubts assailed me, I came to her to solve them; if difficulties embarrassed me, I asked her to explain them. I applied the question to the circumstances of my own position in life, and began to believe that it was exactly the career to suit me. I eagerly inquired, next, how the fitting education might be obtained, and learned that since the destruction of the religious societies of France and the Low Countries, many had emigrated to Spain and Italy, and some to England. Sister “Ursule” was in correspondence with more than one of these, and promised to obtain all the information I sought for; meanwhile, she besought me to devote my whole mind and thoughts to these sacred subjects, withdrawing, so far as I might, all my desires and ambition from the world.
Margot, I am obliged to own, contributed but little to aid my pious purpose; her gay and joyous nature had no sympathy with asceticism and restraint. The poets and dramatists, whose works she read in secret, inspired very different thoughts from the subject of my studies; her childish buoyancy could not endure the weight of that gloom which a life of denial imposes; and whenever we were alone together, she rallied me on my newly assumed seriousness as on a costume which I would soon discover to be insufferable.
I dwell on these things, trifling as they are, because they convey the curious conflict which my mind sustained at this time, and the struggle that went on within me between the tendencies natural to my age, and the impulses that grew out of a sudden enthusiasm. Perhaps I might not care to recall them, if it was not that they remind me of Margot such as I then remember her. I see her before me: her dark eyes, flashing with daring brilliancy, dropped in a half-rebellious submission, her changing color, her fair and open brow, her beautiful mouth, with all its varying expression, her very gait, haughty even in its girlish gayety,—all rise to my mind's eye; and I feel even yet within me the remembrance of that strange distrust and bashfulness with which I endeavored to reply to her witty sallies, and recall her to a seriousness like my own I I was no hypocrite, and yet she half hinted that I was; neither was it a dash of thoughtless enthusiasm that carried me away, though she often said so. It was the very reverse of vanity or self-exaltation,—it was humility that prompted me to devote myself to a career from which others might have been withheld by the ties of home and affection.
“You forget, Margot,” cried I one day, when she bantered me beyond endurance, “that I am already an idle and homeless being, without one on earth to love me!”
“But I love you, Jasper!” said she, seizing my hand and pressing it to her lips; and then, as suddenly dropping it, she became pale as death, and staggered as if falling. I caught her in my arms; but she disengaged herself at once, and, with her hands pressed closely over her face, fled from the spot.
From that day she never jested with me, nor even alluded to my choice of a career. She, I fancied, even avoided being alone with me as she used to be; the playful tricks she had indulged in of hiding my serious books, or substituting for them others of a very different kind, were all abandoned. Her whole manner and bearing were changed, nor could I fail to see that there was no longer between us the cordial frankness that hitherto united us. If this were, in one respect, a source of sorrow to me, in another there was a strange, secret charm in that reserve so full of meaning,—in that shyness so suggestive!
Up to that time I had been in the habit of reading with her some part of every day. My school-learning, such as it was, was yet fresh in my memory, and I was delighted to have a pupil so gifted and intelligent; but from this time forth she never resumed her studies, but pretended a variety of occupations as excuses. I know not, I cannot even speculate, on how this might have ended, when a sudden change of events gave a decisive turn to my destinies.