Spirit-like fair forms are pressing
'Round her now,
With their angel hands caressing
Her pale brow.
Words of solace they are chanting,
Sweet and clear,
That evermore will now be haunting
Her life here.
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.