She did not seem to heed the flattery of this remark, nor did she appear to note the expression of face with which it was accompanied. Her feelings took the ascendency. She spoke out her uncommissioned thoughts and fancies musingly, as if without the knowledge of her will.
“I fancy that I could kneel down and worship the poet, and feel no shame, no humility. It is the only voice that enchants me—that leads me out from myself; that carries me where it pleases and finds for me companions in the solitude; songs in the storm; affections in the barren desert! Even here, it brings me friends and fellowships. How voiceless would be all these woods to me had it no voice speaking to, and in, my soul. Hoping nothing, and performing nothing here, it is my only consolation. It reconciles me to this wretched spot. It makes endurance tolerable. If it were not for this companionship—if I heard not this voice in my sorrows, soothing my desolation, I could freely die!—die here, beside this rock, without making a struggle to go forward, even to reach the stream that flows quietly beyond!”
She had stopped in her progress while this stream of enthusiasm poured from her lips. Her action was suited to her utterance. Unaccustomed to restraint—nay, accustomed only to pour herself forth to woods, and trees, and waters, she was scarcely conscious of the presence of any other companion, yet she looked even while she spoke, in the eyes of Stevens. He gazed on her with glances of unconcealed admiration. The unsophisticated nature which led her to express that enthusiasm which a state of conventional existence prompts us, through fear of ridicule, industriously to conceal, struck him with the sense of a new pleasure. The novelty alone had its charm; but there were other sources of delight. The natural grace and dignity of the enthusiastic girl, adapting to such words the appropriate action, gave to her beauty, which was now in its first bloom, all the glow which is derived from intellectual inspiration. Her whole person spoke. All was vital, spiritual, expressive, animated; and when the last word lingered on her lips, Stevens could scarcely repress the impulse which prompted him to clasp her in his embrace.
“Margaret!” he exclaimed—“Miss Cooper!—you are yourself a poet!”
“No, no!” she murmured, rather than spoke;—“would I were!—a dreamer only—a self-deluded dreamer.”
“You can not deceive me!” he continued, “I see it in your eyes, your action; I hear it in your words. I can not be deceived. You are a poet—you will, and must be one!”
“And if I were!” she said mournfully, “of what avail would it be here? What heart in this wilderness would be touched by song of mine? Whose ear could I soothe in this cold and sterile hamlet? Where would be the temple—who the worshippers—even were the priestess all that her vanity would believe, or her prayers and toils might make her? No, no! I am no poet; and if I were, better that the flame should go out—vanish altogether in the smoke of its own delusions—than burn with a feeble light, unseen, untrimmed, unhonored—perhaps, beheld with the scornful eye of vulgar and unappreciating ignorance!”
“Such is not your destiny, Margaret Cooper,” replied Stevens, using the freedom of address, perhaps unconsciously, which the familiarity of country life is sometimes found to tolerate. “Such is not your destiny, Margaret. The flame will not go out—it will be loved and worshipped!”
“Ah! never! what is here to justify such a hope—such a dream?”
“Nothing HERE; but it was not of Charlemont I spoke. The destiny which has endowed you with genius will not leave it to be extinguished here. There will come a worshipper, Margaret. There will come one, equally capable to honor the priestess and to conduct her to befitting altars. This is not your home, though it may have been your place of trial and novitiate. Here, without the restraint of cold, oppressive, social forms, your genius has ripened—your enthusiasm has been kindled into proper glow—your heart, and mind, and imagination, have kept equal pace to an equal maturity! Perhaps this was fortunate. Had you grown up in more polished and worldly circles, you would have been compelled to subdue the feelings and fancies which now make your ordinary language the language of a muse.”