CHAPTER X.
“So Love doth raine
In stoutest minds and maketh monstrous Warre:
He maketh warre: he maketh Peace again.
And yet his Peace is but continual Jarre.
Oh miserable men that to him subject arre.”
Spenser.
The situation of Beatriz alone, so far as companionship of her sex was concerned, was peculiar. She was not one readily to give or seek confidence. Were she surrounded with her equals in race and cultivation, she would not have disclosed her inmost self, and least of all to a female. This was instinct rather than reason. Those about her thought they knew her in all points, because they saw how good and true she was to them. They loved her, because her vast capacity of love drew all lesser loves towards it. They came readily to her with their trials, because in her large heart and womanly perceptions there was an inexhaustible fountain of sympathy and a foresight truer than a sybil’s. Thus daily, wherever she was, whoever among, she received a constant tribute of devotion and confidence. The character of those about her grew better by her presence. But with all this power, of which each word or look could not but make her conscious, she was often inexpressibly sad.
Whence this sadness? Beatriz had never analyzed her own heart. While all others were open to her, her own had remained a mystery. She felt within it deep, broad currents of emotion, which led, she scarcely knew whither. That their waters flowed from a clear spring was self-evident, because her desires were pure and high. She loved her brother warmly, and he returned her love; still there was a wide gulf between them. With other men the gulf was wider. With women she had never been intimate. Hence, while she seemed so easily read by all about her, there still remained a mystery of which none had been able to lift the veil.
Her sympathy, self-sacrificing spirit and generosity; her indignation at the mean or base; her approving glance at the noble and true; her quiet courage and patient endurance; her piety, her quick perception, which so often anticipated man’s slower judgment; her passions even, for she had shown, when roused, a force and decision, that awed armed men and controlled rude hearts; all this was intelligible to her companions, and commanded their love and esteem. But there still remained a depth to her nature, that theirs could never have sounded, and would have remained fathomless to herself, unless stirred by a depth answering to her own.