“Ah! do not flatter me, Alfred Stevens, do not deceive me. I am too willing to believe you, for it is so dear a feeling to think that I too am a poet. Yet, at the first, I had not the smallest notion of this kind: I neither knew what poetry was, nor felt the desire to be a poet. Yet I yearned with strange feelings, which uttered themselves in that form ere I had seen books or read the verses of others. It was an instinct that led me as it would. I sometimes fear that I have been foolish in obeying it; for oh, what has it brought me? What am I? what are my joys? I am lonely even with my companions. I share not the sports and feel not the things which delight my sex. Their dances and frolics give me no pleasure. I have no sympathy with them or their cares. I go apart—I am here on the hills, or deep in the forests—sad, lonely, scarcely knowing what I am, and what I desire.”
“You are not alone, nor are your pleasures less acute than theirs. If they laugh, their laughter ends in sleep. If you are sad, you lose not the slightest faculty of perception or sensibility, but rather gain them in consequence. Laughter and tears are signs neither of happiness nor grief, and as frequently result from absolute indifference as from any active emotion. If you are absent from them, you have better company. You can summon spirits to your communion, Margaret; noble thoughts attend you; eyes that cheer, lips that assure you, and whispers, from unknown attendants, that bid you be of good heart, for the good time is coming. Ah! Margaret, believe me when I tell you that time is at hand. Such a genius as yours, such a spirit, can not always be buried in these woods.”
It was in such artful language as this that the arch-hypocrite flattered and beguiled her. They were wandering along the edge of the streamlet to which we have more than once conducted the footsteps of the reader. The sun was about setting. The autumn air was mild with a gentle breathing from the south. The woods were still and meek as the slumbers of an infant. The quiet of the scene harmonized with the temper of their thoughts and feelings. They sat upon a fragment of the rock. Margaret was silent, but her eyes were glistening bright—not with hope only, but with that first glimmering consciousness of a warmer feeling, which gives a purple light to hope, and makes the heart tremble, for the first time, with its own expectations. It did not escape Alfred Stevens that, for the first time, her eye sank beneath his glance; for the first time there was a slight flush upon her cheek. He was careful not to startle and alarm the consciousness which these signs indicated. The first feeling which the young heart has of its dependence upon another is one little short of terror; it is a feeling which wakens up suspicion, and puts all the senses upon the watch. To appear to perceive this emotion is to make it circumspect; to disarm it, one must wear the aspect of unconsciousness. The wily Stevens, practised in the game, and master of the nature of the unsuspecting girl, betrayed in his looks none of the intelligence which he felt. If he uttered himself in the language of admiration, it was that admiration which would be natural to a profound adorer of literature and all its professors. His words were those of the amateur:—
“I can not understand, Margaret, how you have studied—how you have learned so much—your books are few—you have had no masters. I never met in my life with so remarkable an instance of unassisted endeavor.”
“My books were hero in the woods—among these old rocks. My teacher was solitude. Ah! there is no teacher like one's own heart. My instinct made me feel my deficiencies—my deficiencies taught me contemplation—and from contemplation came thoughts and cravings, and you know, when the consciousness of our lack is greatest, then, even the dumb man finds a voice. I found my voice in consequence of my wants. My language you see is that of complaint only.”
“And a sweet and noble language it is, Margaret; but it is not in poetry alone that your utterance is so distinct and beautiful—you sing too with a taste as well as power which would prove that contemplation was as happy in bringing about perfection in the one as in the other art. Do sing me, Margaret, that little ditty which you sang here the other night?”
His hand gently detained and pressed hers as he urged the request.
“I would rather not sing to-night,” she replied, “I do not feel as if I could, and I trust altogether to feeling. I will sing for you some other time when you do not ask, and, perhaps would prefer not to hear me.”
“To hear you at all, Margaret, is music to my ears.”
She was silent, and her fingers made a slight movement to detach themselves from his.