Читать книгу Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 - Various - Страница 8

I visited the cottage frequently, and for several months after Mr. Germaine's death, it was the scene of no ordinary grief. Mrs. Germaine bore her bereavement patiently – for it was an event she had long anticipated with womanly meekness and resignation; but she mourned most deeply – for it is a great mistake to think commonplace persons deficient in vividness of feeling. I believe their emotions are as keen, and generally more enduring, than those of more decided minds, from the very fact of their possessing few self-resources to divert the course of affliction. Be this as it may, Mrs. Germaine was soon, in all that was apparent, the quiet and anxious mother she had always been; and if she suffered still, it was in the silence of a heart that had no language for its sorrows. Far wilder and more vehement was the passionate and unresisted tide of Theresa's suffering; and for many weeks she refused all the consolation that could be offered to a child of her age. She would sit by my side and converse of her father, with an admiration for his virtues, and an appreciation of his character far beyond what I had supposed she could comprehend.

This violent emotion necessarily exhausted itself, as a heavy cloud weeps itself away; but for a long time she was painfully dejected, and her face lost its childishness of expression, and wore a look of appealing, unspeakable melancholy I never remarked on any other countenance. It was the "settled shadow of an inward strife," the outward impress of a mind suddenly aroused to a knowledge of trial, and never again to sleep in unconsciousnes; and often in after years, the same inexpressible look darkened her brow through the tumult of conflicting impulses, and amid the war of triumph and pain.

I have said that Mr. Germaine's pecuniary circumstances were limited; but for some time previous to his illness, he had, at the expense of many a personal comfort, laid by a sum sufficient to procure for Theresa all the advantages of an accomplished education. His wife had frequently remonstrated against the innumerable little privations he voluntarily endured for this favorite purpose, for she attached more value to physical than mental gratifications, and could scarcely sympathize with his disinterested solicitude for his daughter's intellectual culture. It had been a great happiness to him to trace the gradual development of her intelligence, and to direct her simple studies; and it had been one of his last requests that I would in this respect occupy his place until she should be old enough to require other superintendence. His love was one of hope and trust, and he had diligently sown the seed, though he knew he never might behold its ripening.

For two months I made no attempt to alter the current of her thoughts, believing it better to allow her sensibilities to exhaust themselves without interruption. When she grew calmer, I proposed that she should come every morning to the parsonage to resume her daily studies; and, as I had hoped and anticipated, she eagerly acceded to the arrangement. And thus commenced the cultivation of a mind, whose early maturity bore a rich harvest of recompense; and thus dawned that loving anxiety for my pupil's welfare which realized many of my life's younger wishes, and lent so sunny and living an interest to my solitary and remembering years.

It was with some difficulty and after much remonstrance that I induced Theresa's application to the graver branches of acquirement, which, with my old-fashioned ideas of education, I considered indispensable even to a woman. At last, I believe, it was only through affection for me that she yielded her taste, and consented to devote her mind to such acquisitions. Her inclinations were all for what was beautiful or imaginative; she early loved whatever touched her feelings or awoke the vivid impressions of her young fancy; and I found some trouble in curbing within rational limits her natural and fascinating prepossessions. As she grew older, and passed what she deemed the drudgery of learning, and drew nearer, with rapid steps, to Thought's promised land of compensation, we constantly read and conversed together. We dwelt on the inspired pages of the poets, I, with old age's returning love for the romantic, and increasing reverence for the true, and she, with the intense, bewildered delight of a spirit that hoped all things, and a simple faith that trusted the future would brightly fulfill all the fairest prospects which poetry could portray.

Her disposition was sanguine to an extreme, with the happy faculty of believing what she hoped; and she possessed in a remarkable degree the power of expressing and defining her ideas and emotions, and rendering them visible by words. She never paused for an expression, or selected an injudicious one; and her fluency was the result of a mingled vividness and clearness of intellect, blended with artist-skill, and all the fervor of dawning and dreaming womanhood.

Her affections were spontaneous and impassioned, at once impulsive and enduring, and, like all enthusiasts, she was frequently governed by prejudice. Her little sister was a child of rare beauty and gentleness, and was Theresa's perfect idol. She was perpetually contriving pleasant surprises for her favorite; and it was her delight to wreath flowers around Amy's golden curls, and to add a thousand fantastic decorations to her delicate and seraphic loveliness. They would have made an exquisite picture, those two sisters, so different in age and character; the one so fair, with childhood's silent and fragile beauty, the other glowing with life and premature thought, already testing the "rapture of the strife," and revealing in the intense gaze of her dark, restless eyes, the world of gleaming visions within whose enchantment she lived.

It was when my pupil had reached her fourteenth year, that, in obedience to her father's written directions, she prepared to leave our tranquil home, to enter the school of the convent, near the city of – . I know not why Mr. Germaine wished her placed there, for he was himself a Protestant, but the advantages of instruction were at that time tempting. Probably, in dwelling on them, he overlooked the risk of placing his daughter where the unnumbered graces of mind and manner veil another creed, and make it alluring, and where the imaginative and gorgeous pomp of a different faith were to be placed in their most attractive colors before her unsuspecting eyes. It was with many a misgiving, many a secret fear, that I anticipated Theresa's removal from my watchfulness; and I warned her with the most sincere affection, against the temptations of various kinds which she would probably encounter in her new abode. Early in the autumn we were to part with her, and the sweet summer, with its wealth of fruit and flowers was now around us, and our village, in its garlands of blossoms, looked its loveliest.