He knew that Margaret thought far too well of him—honoured him greatly beyond his deserts. He would not allow her to be any longer thus deceived. He would tell her what a poor creature he was. But he would say, too, that he hoped one day to be worthy of her praise, that he hoped to grow to what she thought him. If he should fail in convincing her, he would receive all the honour she gave him humbly, as paid, not to him, but to what he ought to be. God grant it might be as to his future self!
In this mood he went to Janet.
CHAPTER XXIV. THE FIR-WOOD AGAIN.
Er stand vor der himmlischen Jungfrau. Da hob er den leichten, glänzenden Schleir, und—Rosenblüthchen sank in seine Arme.—Novalis.—Die Lehrlinge zu Sais.
He stood before the heavenly Virgin (Isis, the Goddess of Nature). Then lifted he the light, shining veil, and—Rosebud (his old love) sank into his arms.
So womanly, so benigne, and so meek.
CHAUCER.—Prol. to Leg. of Good Women.
It was with a mingling of strange emotions, that Hugh approached the scene of those not very old, and yet, to his feeling, quite early memories. The dusk was beginning to gather. The hoar-frost lay thick on the ground. The pine-trees stood up in the cold, looking, in their garment of spikes, as if the frost had made them. The rime on the gate was unfriendly, and chilled his hand. He turned into the footpath. He say the room David had built for him. Its thatch was one mass of mosses, whose colours were hidden now in the cuckoo-fruit of the frost. Alas! how Death had cast his deeper frost over all; for the man was gone from the hearth! But neither old Winter nor skeleton Death can withhold the feet of the little child Spring. She is stronger than both. Love shall conquer hate; and God will overcome sin.
He drew night to the door, trembling. It seemed strange to him that his nerves only, and not his mind, should feel.—In moments of unusual excitement, it sometimes happens that the only consciousness a strong man has of emotion, lies in an unwonted physical vibration, the mind itself refusing to be disturbed. It is, however, but a seeming: the emotion is so deep, that consciousness can lay hold of its physical result only.—The cottage looked the same as ever, only the peat-stack outside was smaller. In the shadowiness of the firs, the glimmer of a fire was just discernible on the kitchen window. He trembled so much that he could not enter. He would go into the fir-wood first, and see Margaret’s tree, as he always called it in his thoughts and dreams.