Charlemont

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"I do, I do! It must be as you say. But of love I have thought
nothing. No, no! I know not, Alfred Stevens, if I love or not--if
I can love."

"You mistake, Margaret. It is in the heart that the head finds its
inspiration. Mere intellect makes not genius. All the intellect in
the world would fail of this divine consummation. It is from the
fountains of feeling that poetry drinks her inspiration. It is at
the altars of love that the genius of song first bends in adoration.
You have loved, Margaret, from the first moment when you sung.
It did not alter the case that there was no object of sight. The
image was in your mind--in your hope. One sometimes goes through
life without ever meeting the human counterpart of this ideal; and
the language of such a heart will be that of chagrin--distaste of
life--misanthropy, and a general scorn of his own nature. Such,
I trust, is not your destiny. No, Margaret, that is impossible. I
take your doubt as my answer, and unless your own lips undeceive
me, dearest Margaret, I will believe that your love is willing to
requite my own."

She was actually sobbing on his breast. With an effort she struggled
into utterance.

"My heart is so full, my feelings are so strange--oh! Alfred Stevens,
I never fancied I could be so weak."

"So weak--to love! surely, Margaret, you mistake the word. It is in
loving only that the heart finds its strength. Love is the heart's
sole business; and not to exercise it in its duties is to impair its
faculties, and deprive it equally of its pleasures and its tasks.
Oh, I will teach you of the uses of this little heart of yours,
dear Margaret--ay, till it grow big with its own capacity to teach.
We will inform each other, every hour, of some new impulses and
objects. Our dreams, our hopes, our fears, and our desires, ah!
Margaret--what a study of love will these afford us. Nor to love
only. Ah! dearest, when your muse shall have its audience, its
numerous watching eyes and eager ears, then shall you discover how
much richer will be the strain from your lips once informed by the
gushing fullness of this throbbing heart."

She murmured fondly in his embrace, "Ah! I ask no other eyes and
ears than yours."

In the glow of a new and overpowering emotion, such indeed was her
feeling. He gathered her up closer in his arms. He pressed his lips
upon the rich ripe beauties of hers, as some hungering bee, darting
upon the yet unrifled flower which it first finds in the shadows
of the forest, clings to, and riots on, the luscious loveliness,
as if appetite could only be sated in its exhaustion. She struggled
and freed herself from his embrace: but, returning home that
evening her eye was cast upon the ground; her step was set down
hesitatingly; there was a tremor in her heart; a timid expression
in her face and manner! These were proofs of the discovery which
she then seems to have made for the first time, that there is a
power stronger than mere human will--a power that controls genius;
that mocks at fame; feels not the lack of fortune, and is independent
of the loss of friends! She now first knew her weakness. She had
felt the strength of love! Ah! the best of us may quail, whatever
his hardihood, in the day when love asserts HIS strength and goes
forth to victory.

Margaret Cooper sought her chamber, threw herself on the bed, and
turned her face in the pillow to hide the burning blushes which,
with every movement of thought and memory, seemed to increase upon
her cheek. Yet, while she blushed and even wept, her heart throbbed
and trembled with the birth of a new emotion of joy. Ah! how sweet
is our first secret pleasure--shared by one other only--sweet to
that other as to ourself--so precious to him also. To be carried
into our chamber--to be set up ostentatiously--there, where none
but ourselves may see--to be an object of our constant tendance,
careful idolatry, keen suspicion, delighted worship!

Ah! but if the other makes it no idol--his toy only--what shall
follow this desecration of the sacred thing! What but shame, remorse,
humiliation, perhaps death!--alas! for Margaret Cooper, the love
which had so suddenly grown into a precious divinity with her, was
no divinity with him. He is no believer. He has no faith in such
things, but like the trader in religion, he can preach deftly the
good doctrines which he can not feel and is slow to practise.

CHAPTER XXVI.

FALL.

We should speak unprofitably and with little prospect of being
understood, did our readers require to be told, that there is a
certain impatient and gnawing restlessness in the heart of love,
which keeps it for ever feverish and anxious. Where this passion
is associated with a warm, enthusiastic genius, owning the poetic
temperament, the anxiety is proportionatly greater. The ideal of
the mind is a sort of classical image of perfect loveliness, chaste,
sweet, commanding, but, how cold! But love gives life to this
image, even as the warm rays of the sun falling upon the sullen
lips of the Memnon, compel its utterance in music. It not only looks
beauty--it breathes it. It is not only the aspect of the Apollo, it
is the god himself; his full lyre strung, his golden bow quivering
at his back with the majesty of his motion; and his lips parting
with the song which shall make the ravished spheres stoop, and
gather round to listen.

Hitherto Margaret Cooper had been a girl of strong will; will
nursed in solitude, and by the wrong-headed indulgence of a vain
and foolish mother. She was conscious of that bounding, bursting
soul of genius which possessed her bosom; that strange, moody, and
capricious god; pent-up, denied, crying evermore for utterance,
with a breath more painful to endure, because of the suppression.
This consciousness, with the feeling of denial which attended it,
had cast a gloomy intensity over her features not less than her
mind. The belief that she was possessed of treasures which were
unvalued--that she had powers which were never to be exercised--that
with a song such as might startle an empire, she was yet doomed
to a silent and senseless auditory of rocks and trees; this belief
had brought with it a moody arrogance of temper which had made
itself felt by all around her. In one hour this mood had departed.
Ambition and love became united for a common purpose; for the object
of the latter, was also the profound admirer of the former.

The anxious restlessness which her newly-acquired sensations
occasioned in her bosom, was not diminished by a renewal of those
tender interviews with her lover, which we have endeavored, though
so faultily, already to describe. Evening after evening found them
together; the wily hypocrite still stimulating, by his glozing
artifices, the ruling passion for fame, which, in her bosom, was
only temporarily subservient to love, while he drank his precious
reward from her warm, lovely, and still-blushing lips and cheeks.
The very isolation in which she had previously dwelt in Charlemont,
rendered the society of Stevens still more dear to her heart. She
was no longer alone--no longer unknown--not now unappreciated in
that respect in which hitherto she felt her great denial. "Here is
one--himself a genius--who can do justice to mine."

The young poet who finds an auditor, where he has never had one
before, may be likened to a blind man suddenly put in possession
of his sight. He sees sun and moon and stars, the forms of beauty,
the images of grace; and his soul grows intoxicated with the
wonders of its new empire. What does he owe to him who puts him in
possession of these treasures? who has given him his sight? Love,
devotion, all that his full heart has to pay of homage and affection.

Such was very much the relation which Margaret Cooper bore to
Alfred Stevens; and when, by his professions of love, he left the
shows of his admiration no longer doubtful, she was at once and
entirely his. She was no longer the self-willed, imperious damsel,
full of defiance, dreaming of admiration only, scornful of the
inferior, and challenging the regards of equals. She was now a timid,
trembling girl--a dependant, such as the devoted heart must ever
be, waiting for the sign to speak, looking eagerly for the smile
to reward her sweetest utterance. If now she walked with Stevens,
she no longer led the way; she hung a little backward, though she
grasped his arm--nay, even when her hand was covered with a gentle
pressure in the folds of his. If she sung, she did not venture to
meet his eyes, which she FELT must be upon hers, and now it was no
longer her desire that the village damsels should behold them as
they went forth together on their rambles. She no longer met their
cunning and significant smiles with confidence and pride, but with
faltering looks, and with cheeks covered with blushes. Great, indeed,
was the change which had come over that once proud spirit--change
surprising to all, but as natural as any other of the thousand changes
which are produced in the progress of moments by the arch-magician,
Love. Heretofore, her song had disdained the ordinary topics
of the youthful ballad-monger. She had uttered her apostrophes to
the eagle, soaring through the black, billowy masses of the coming
thunder-storm; to the lonely but lofty rock, lonely in its loftiness,
which no foot travelled but her own; to the silent glooms of the
forest--to the majesty of white-bearded and majestic trees. The
dove and the zephyr now shared her song, and a deep sigh commonly
closed it. She was changed from what she was. The affections had
suddenly bounded into being, trampling the petty vanities underfoot;
and those first lessons of humility which are taught by love, had
subdued a spirit which, hitherto, had never known control.

Alfred Stevens soon perceived how complete was his victory. He
soon saw the extent of that sudden change which had come over
her character. Hitherto, she had been the orator. When they stood
together by the lake-side, or upon the rock, it was her finger
which had pointed out the objects for contemplation; it was her
voice whose eloquence had charmed the ear, dilating upon the beauties
or the wonders which they surveyed. She was now no longer eloquent
in words. But she looked a deeper eloquence by far than any words
could embody. He was now the speaker; and regarding him through the
favoring media of kindled affections, it seemed to her ear, that
there was no eloquence so sweet as his. He spoke briefly of the
natural beauties by which they were surrounded.

"Trees, rocks, the valley and the hill, all realms of solitude
and shade, inspire enthusiasm and ardor in the imaginative spirit.
They are beneficial for this purpose. For the training of a great
poet they are necessary. They have the effect of lifting the mind
to the contemplation of vastness, depth, height, profundity. This
produces an intensity of mood--the natural result of any association
between our own feelings and such objects as are lofty and noble in
the external world. The feelings and passions as they are influenced
by the petty play of society, which diffuses their power and breaks
their lights into little, become concentrated on the noble and the
grand. Serious earnestness of nature becomes habitual--the heart
flings itself into all the subjects of its interest--it trifles
with none--all its labors become sacred in its eyes, and the latest
object of study and analysis is that which is always most important.
The effect of this training in youth on the poetic mind, is to
the last degree beneficial; since, without a degree of seriousness
amounting to intensity--without a hearty faith in the importance
of what is to be done--without a passionate fullness of soul which
drives one to his task--there will be no truthfulness, no eloquence,
no concentrated thought and permanent achievement. With, you, dear
Margaret, such has already been the effect. You shrink from the
ordinary enjoyments of society. Their bald chat distresses you, as
the chatter of so many jays. You prefer the solitude which feeds
the serious mood which you love, and enables your imagination,
unrepressed by the presence of shallow witlings, to evoke its
agents from storm and shadow--from deep forest and lonesome lake--to
minister to the cravings of an excited heart, and a soaring and
ambitious fancy."

"Oh, how truly, Alfred, do you speak it," she murmured as he closed.

"So far, so good; but, dear Margaret--there are other subjects
of study which are equally necessary for the great poet. The wild
aspects of nature are such as are of use in the first years of his
probation. To grow up in the woods and among the rocks, so that a
hearty simplicity, an earnest directness, with a constant habit of
contemplation should be permanently formed, is a first and necessary
object. But it is in this training as in every other. There are
successive steps. There is a law of progressive advance. You must
not stop there. The greatest moral study for the poet must follow.
This is the study of man in society--in the great world--where he
puts on a thousand various aspects--far other than those which are
seen in the country--in correspondence with the thousand shapes of
fortune, necessity, or caprice, which attend him there. Indeed, it
may safely be said, that he never knows one half of the responsibility
of his tasks who toils without the presence of those for whom he
toils. It is in the neighborhood of man that we feel his and our
importance. It is while we are watching his strifes and struggles
that we see the awful importance of his destiny; and the great trusts
of self, and truth, and the future, which have been delivered to
his hands. Here you do not see man. You see certain shapes, which
are employed in raising hay, turnips, and potatoes; which eat and
drink very much as man does; but which, as they suffer to sleep
and rest most of those latent faculties, the exercise of which
can alone establish the superiority of the intellectual over the
animal nature, so they have no more right to the name of man than
any other of those animals who eat as industriously, and sleep
as profoundly, as themselves. The contemplation of the superior
being, engaged in superior toils, awakens superior faculties in the
observer. He who sees nothing but the gathering of turnips will
think of nothing but turnips. As we enlarge the sphere of our
observation, the faculty of thought becomes expanded. You will
discover this wonderful change when you go into the world. Hitherto,
your inspirers have been these groves, these rocks, lakes, trees,
and silent places. But, when you sit amid crowds of bright-eyed,
full-minded, and admiring people; when you see the eyes of thousands
looking for the light to shine from yours; hanging, with a delight
that still hungers, on the words of truth and beauty which fall
from your lips--then, then only, dearest Margaret, will you discover
the true sources of inspiration and of fame."

"Ah!" she murmured despondingly--"you daunt me when you speak of
these crowds--crowds of the intellectual and the wise. What should
I be--how would I appear among them?"

"As you appear to me, Margaret--their queen, their idol, their
divinity, not less a beauty than a muse?"

The raptures which Stevens expressed seemed to justify the embrace
which followed it; and it was some moments before she again spoke.
When she did the same subject was running in her mind.

"Ah! Alfred, still I fear!"

"Fear nothing, Margaret. It will be as I tell you--as I promise!
If I deceive you, I deceive myself. Is it not for the wife of my
bosom that I expect this homage?"

Her murmurs were unheard. They strolled on--still deeper into
the mazes of the forest, and the broad disk of the moon, suddenly
gleaming, yellow, through the tops of the trees, sirprised them in
their wanderings.

"How beautiful!" he exclaimed. "Let us sit here, dearest Margaret.
The rock here is smooth and covered with the softest lichen. A
perfect carpet of it is at our feet, and the brooklet makes the
sweetest murmuring as it glides onward through the grove, telling
all the while, like some silly schoolgirl, where you may look for
it. See the little drops of moonlight falling here--and there in
the small openings of the forest, and lying upon the greensward
like so many scattered bits of silver. One might take it for fairy
coin. And, do you note the soft breeze that seems to rise with the
moon as from some Cytherean isle, breathing of love, love only--love
never perishing!"

"Ah! were it so, Alfred!"

"Is it not, Margaret? If I could fancy that you would cease to love
me or I you--could I think that these dear joys were to end--but
no! no! let us not think of it. It is too sweet to believe, and
the distrust seems as unholy as it is unwholesome. That bright soft
planet seems to persuade to confidence as it inspires love. Do you
not feel your heart soften in the moonlight, Margaret? your eye
glistens, dearest--and your heart, I know, must be touched. It
is--I feel its beating! What a tumult, dear Margaret, is here!"

"Do not, do not!" she murmured, gently striving to disengage herself
from his grasp.

"No! no!--move not, dearest," he replied in a subdued tone--a
murmur most like hers. "Are we not happy? Is there anything, dear
Margaret, which we could wish for?"

"Nothing! nothing!"

"Ah! what a blessed chance it was that brought me to these hills.
I never lived till now. I had my joys, Margaret--my triumphs! I
freely yield them to the past! I care for them no more! They are
no longer joys or triumphs! Yes, Margaret you have changed my heart
within me. Even fame which I so much worshipped is forgotten."

"Say not that; oh, say not that!" she exclaimed, but still in
subdued accents.

"I must--it is too far true. I could give up the shout of applause--the
honor of popular favor--the voice of a people's approbation--the
shining display and the golden honor--all, dear Margaret, sooner
than part with you."

"But you need not give them up, Alfred."

"Ah, dearest, but I have no soul for them now. You are alone my
soul, my saint--the one dear object, desire, and pride, and conquest."

"Alas! and have you not conquered, Alfred?"

"Sweet! do I not say that I am content to forfeit all honors,
triumphs, applauses--all that was so dear to me before--and only
in the fond faith that I had conquered? You are mine--you tell me
so with your dear lips--I have you in my fond embrace--ah! do not
talk to me again of fame."

"I were untrue to you as to myself, dear Alfred, did I not. No!
with your talents, to forego their uses--to deliver yourself up to
love wholly, were as criminal as it would be unwise."

"You shall be my inspiration then, dear Margaret. These lips shall
send me to the forum--these eyes shall reward me with smiles when
I return. Your applause shall be to me a dearer triumph than all
the clamors of the populace."

"Let us return home--it is late."

"Not so!--and why should we go? What is sleep to us but loss? What
the dull hours, spent after the ordinary fashion, among ordinary
people. Could any scene be more beautiful than this--ah! can any
feeling be more sweet? Is it not so to you, dearest? tell me--nay,
do not tell me--if you love as I do, you can not leave me--not
now--not thus--while such is the beauty of earth and heaven--while
such are the rich joys clustering in our hearts. Nay, while, in
that hallowing moonlight, I gaze upon thy dark eyes, and streaming
hair, thy fair, beautiful cheeks, and those dear rosy lips!"

"Oh! Alfred, do not speak so--do not clasp me thus. Let us go. It
is late--very late, and what will they say?"

"Let them say! Are we not blessed? Can all their words take from
us these blessings--these sacred, sweet, moments--such joys, such
delights? Let them dream of such, with their dull souls if they
can. No! no! Margaret--we are one! and thus one, our world is as
free from their control as it is superior to their dreams and hopes.
Here is our heaven, Margaret--ah! how long shall it be ours! at
what moment may we lose it, by death, by storm, by what various
mischance! What profligacy to fly before the time! No! no! but a
little while longer--but a little while!"

And there they lingered! He, fond, artful, persuasive; she, trembling
with the dangerous sweetness of wild, unbidden emotions. Ah! why
did she not go? Why was the strength withheld which would have
carried out her safer purpose? The moon rose until she hung in
the zenith, seeming to linger there in a sad, sweet watch, like
themselves--the rivulet ran along, still prattling through the
groves; the breeze, which had been a soft murmur among the trees
at the first rising of the moon, now blew a shrill whistle among
the craggy hills; but they no longer heard the prattle of the
rivulet--even the louder strains of the breeze were unnoticed,
and it was only when they were about to depart, that poor Margaret
discovered that the moon had all the while been looking down upon
them.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE BIRTH OF THE AGONY.

It was now generally understood in Charlemont that Margaret Cooper
had made a conquest of the handsome stranger. We have omitted--as
a matter not congenial to our taste--the small by-play which had
been carried on by the other damsels of the village to effect the
same object. There had been setting of caps, without number, ay,
and pulling them too, an the truth were known among the fair Stellas
and Clarissas, the Daphnes and Dorises, of Charlemont, but, though
Stevens was sufficiently considerate of the claims of each, so far
as politeness demanded it, and contrived to say pleasant things,
pour passer le temps, with all of them, it was very soon apparent
to the most sanguine, that the imperial beauties and imperious mind
of Margaret Cooper had secured the conquest for herself.

As a matter of course, the personal and intellectual attractions
of Stevens underwent no little disparagement as soon as this fact
was known. It was now universally understood that he was no such
great things, after all; and our fair friend the widow Thackeray,
who was not without her pretensions to wit and beauty, was bold
enough to say that Mr. Stevens was certainly too fat in the face,
and she rather thought him stupid. Such an opinion gave courage
to the rest, and pert Miss Bella Tompkins, a romp of first-rate
excellence, had the audacity to say that he squinted!--and this
opinion was very natural, since neither of his eyes had ever rested
with satisfaction on her pouting charms.

It may be supposed that the discontent of the fair bevy, and its
unfavorable judgment of himself, did not reach the ears of Alfred
Stevens, and would scarcely have disturbed them if it did. Margaret
Cooper was more fortunate than himself in this respect. She could
not altogether be insensible to the random remarks which sour envy
and dark-eyed jealousy continued to let fall in her hearing; but
her scorn for the speakers, and her satisfaction with herself,
secured her from all annoyance from this cause. Such, at least,
had been the case in the first days of her conquest. Such was not
exactly the case now. She had no more scorn of others. She was no
longer proud, no longer strong. Her eyes no longer flashed with
haughty defiance on the train which, though envious, were yet
compelled to follow. She could no longer speak in those superior
tones, the language equally of a proud intellect, and a spirit
whose sensibilities had neither been touched by love nor enfeebled
by anxiety and apprehension. A sad change had come over her heart
and all her features in the progress of a few days. Her courage had
departed. Her step was no longer firm; her eye no longer uplifted
like that of the mountain-eagle, to which, in the first darings
of her youthful muse, she had boldly likened herself. Her look was
downcast, her voice subdued; she was now not less timid than the
feeblest damsel of the village in that doubtful period of life
when, passing from childhood to girlhood, the virgin falters, as
it were, with bashful thoughts, upon the threshold of a new and
perilous condition. The intercourse of Margaret Cooper with her
lover had had the most serious effect upon her manners and her
looks. But the change upon her spirit was no less striking to all.

"I'm sure if I did love any man," was the opinion of one of the
damsels, "I'd die sooner than show it to him, as she shows it to
Alfred Stevens. It's a guess what he must think of it."

"And no hard guess neither," said another; "I reckon there's no
reason why he should pick out Margaret Cooper except that he saw
that it was no such easy matter any where else."

"Well! there can be no mistake about it with them; for now they're
always together--and Betty, her own maid, thinks--but it's better
not to say!"

And the prudent antique pursed up her mouth in a language that said
everything.

"What!--what does she say?" demanded a dozen voices.

"Well! I won't tell you that. I won't tell you all; but she does
say, among other things, that the sooner John Cross marries them,
the better for all parties."

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