Flemming took his leave and departed. Berkley went with him, to see, he said, what kind of a nest his young friend was to sleep in.
“The chamber is not what I could wish,” said the landlord, as he led them across the street. “It is in the old cloister. But to-morrow or next day, you can no doubt have a room at the house.”
The name of the cloister struck Flemming’s imagination pleasantly. He was owl enough to like ruins and old chambers, where nuns or friars had slept. And he said to Berkley;
“So, you perceive, my nest is to be in a cloister. It already makes me think of a bird’s-nest I once saw on an old tower of Heidelberg castle, built in the jaws of a lion, which formerly served as a spout. But pray tell me, who was that young lady, with the soft voice?”
“What young lady with the soft voice?”
“The young lady in black, who sat by the window.”
“O, she is the daughter of an English officer, who died not long ago at Naples. She is passing the summer here with her mother, for her health.”
“What is her name?”
“Ashburton.”
“Is she beautiful?”
“Not in the least; but very intellectual. A woman of genius, I should say.”
And now they had reached the walls of the cloister, and passed under an arched gateway, and close beneath the round towers, which Flemming had already seen, rising with their cone-shaped roofs above the trees, like tall tapers, with extinguishers upon them.
“It is not so bad, as it looks,” said the landlord, knocking at a small door, in the main building. “The Bailiff lives in one part of it.”
A servant girl, with a candle in her hand, opened the door, and conducted Flemming and Berkley to the chamber which had been engaged. It was a large room on the lower floor, wainscoted with pine, and unpainted. Three lofty and narrowwindows, with leaden lattices and small panes, looked southward towards the valley of Lauterbrunnen and the mountains. In one corner was a large square bed, with a tester and checked curtains. In another, a huge stove of painted tiles, reaching almost to the ceiling. An old sofa, a few high-backed antique chairs, and a table, completed the furniture of the room.
Thus Flemming took possession of his monkish cell and dormitory. He ordered tea, and began to feel at home. Berkley passed the evening with him. On going away he said;
“Good night! I leave you to the care of the Virgin and all the Saints. If the ghost of any old monk comes back after his prayer-book, my compliments to him. If I were a younger man, you certainly should see a ghost. Good night!”
When he had departed, Flemming opened the lattice of one of the windows. The moon had risen, and silvered the dark outline of the nearest hills; while, afar off, the snowy summits of the Jungfrau and the Silver-Horn shone like a white cloud in the sky. Close beneath the windows was a flower-garden; and the breath of the summer night came to him with dewy fragrance. There was a grateful seclusion about the place. He blessed the happy accident, which gave him such a lodging, and fell asleep that night thinking of the nuns, who once had slept in the same quiet cells; but neither wimpled nun nor cowled monk appeared to him in his dreams; not even the face of Mary Ashburton; nor did he hear her voice.
CHAPTER IV. THE EVENING AND THE MORNING STAR.
Old Froissart tells us, in his Chronicles, that when King Edward beheld the Countess of Salisbury at her castle gate, he thought he had never seen before so noble nor so fair a lady; he was stricken therewith to the heart with a sparkle of fine love, that endured long after; he thought no lady in the world so worthy to be beloved, as she. And so likewise thought Paul Flemming, when he beheld the English lady in the fair light of a summer morning. I will not disguise the truth. She is my heroine; and I mean to describe her with great truth and beauty, so that all shall be in love with her, and I most of all.
Mary Ashburton was in her twentieth summer. Like the fair maiden Amoret, she was sitting inthe lap of womanhood. They did her wrong, who said she was not beautiful; and yet
“she was not fair,
Nor beautiful; — those words express her not.
But O, her looks had something excellent,
That wants a name!”
Her face had a wonderful fascination in it. It was such a calm, quiet face, with the light of the rising soul shining so peacefully through it. At times it wore an expression of seriousness, — of sorrow even; and then seemed to make the very air bright with what the Italian poets so beautifully call the lampeggiar dell’ angelico riso, — the lightning of the angelic smile.
And O, those eyes, — those deep, unutterable eyes, with “down-falling eyelids, full of dreams and slumber,” and within them a cold, living light, as in mountain lakes at evening, or in the river of Paradise, forever gliding,
“with a brown, brown current
Under the shade perpetual, that never
Ray of the sun lets in, nor of the moon.”
I dislike an eye that twinkles like a star. Those only are beautiful which, like the planets, have a steady, lambent light; — are luminous, but not sparkling. Such eyes the Greek poets give to the Immortals. But I forget myself.
The lady’s figure was striking. Every step, every attitude was graceful, and yet lofty, as if inspired by the soul within. Angels in the old poetic philosophy have such forms; it was the soul itself imprinted on the air. And what a soul was hers! A temple dedicated to Heaven, and, like the Pantheon at Rome, lighted only from above. And earthly passions in the form of gods were no longer there, but the sweet and thoughtful faces of Christ, and the Virgin Mary, and the Saints. Thus there was not one discordant thing in her; but a perfect harmony of figure, and face, and soul, in a word of the whole being. And he who had a soul to comprehend hers, must of necessity love her, and, having once loved her, could love no other woman forevermore.
No wonder, then, that Flemming felt his heartdrawn towards her, as, in her morning walk, she passed him, sitting alone under the great walnut trees near the cloister, and thinking of Heaven, but not of her. She, too, was alone. Her cheek was no longer pale; but glowing and bright, with the inspiration of the summer air. Flemming gazed after her till she disappeared, even as a vision of his dreams, he knew not whither. He was not yet in love, but very near it; for he thanked God, that he had made such beautiful beings to walk the earth.
Last night he had heard a voice to which his soul responded; and he might have gone on his way, and taken no farther heed. But he would have heard that voice afterwards, whenever at evening he thought of this evening at Interlachen. To-day he had seen more clearly the vision, and his restless soul calm. The place seemed pleasant to him; and he could not go. He did not ask himself whence came this calm. He felt it; and was happy in the feeling; and blessed thelandscape and the summer morning, as if they possessed the wonder-working power.
“A pleasant morning dream to you;” said a friendly voice; and at the same moment some one laid his hand upon Flemming’s shoulder. It was Berkley. He had approached unseen and unheard.
“I see by the smile on your countenance,” he continued, “that it is no day-incubus.”
“You are right,” replied Flemming. “It was a pleasant dream, which you have put to flight.”
“And I am glad to see, that you have also put to flight the gloomy thoughts which used to haunt you. I like to see people cheerful and happy. What is the use of giving way to sadness in this beautiful world?”
“Ah! this beautiful world!” said Flemming, with a smile. “Indeed, I know not what to think of it. Sometimes it is all gladness and sunshine, and Heaven itself lies not far off. And then it changes suddenly; and is dark and sorrowful, and clouds shut out the sky. In the lives of the saddestof us, there are bright days like this, when we feel as if we could take the great world in our arms and kiss it. Then come the gloomy hours, when the fire will neither burn on our hearths nor in our hearts; and all without and within is dismal, cold, and dark. Believe me, every heart has its secret sorrows, which the world knows not, and
oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad.”
“And who says we don’t?” interrupted Berkley. “Come, come! Let us go to breakfast. The morning air has given me a rude appetite. I long to say grace over a fresh egg; and eat salt with my worst enemies; namely, the Cockneys at the hotel. After breakfast you must give yourself up wholly to me. I shall take you to the Grindelwald!”
“To-day, then, you do not breakfast like Diogenes, but consent to leave your tub.”
“Yes, for the pleasure of your company. I shall also blow out the light in my lantern, having found you.”
“Thank you.”
The breakfast passed without any unusual occurrence. Flemming watched the entrance of every guest; but she came not, — the guest he most desired to see.
“And now for the Grindelwald!” said Berkley.
“Why such haste? We have the whole day before us. There is time enough.”
“Not a moment to loso, I assure you. The carriage is at the door.”
They drove up the valley of Lauterbrunnen, and turned eastward among the mountains of the Grindelwald. There they passed the day; half-frozen by the icy breath of the Great Glacier, upon whose surface stand pyramids and blocks of ice, like the tombstones of a cemetery. It was a weary day to Flemming. He wished himself at Interlachen; and was glad when, towards evening, he saw once more the cone-roofed towers of the cloister rising above the walnut trees.
That evening is written in red letters in his history. It gave him another revelation of thebeauty and excellence of the female character and intellect; not wholly new to him, yet now renewed and fortified. It was from the lips of Mary Ashburton, that the revelation came. Her form arose, like a tremulous evening star, in the firmament of his soul. He conversed with her; and with her alone; and knew not when to go. All others were to him as if they were not there. He saw their forms, but saw them as the forms of inanimate things. At length her mother came; and Flemming beheld in her but another Mary Ashburton, with beauty more mature; — the same forehead and eyes, the same majestic figure; and, as yet, no trace of age. He gazed upon her with a feeling of delight, not unmingled with holy awe. She was to him the rich and glowing Evening, from whose bosom the tremulous star was born.
Berkley took no active part in the conversation, but did what was much more to the purpose, that it is to say, arranged a drive for the next day with the Ashburtons, and of course invited Flemming, who went home that night with a halo round hishead; and wondering much at a dandy, who stood at the door of the hotel, and said to his companion, as Flemming passed;
“What do you call this place? I have been here two hours already, and find it devilish dull!”
CHAPTER V. A RAINY DAY.
When Flemming awoke the next morning he saw the sky dark and lowering. From the mountain tops hung a curtain of mist, whose heavy folds waved to and fro in the valley below. Over all the landscape, the soft, summer rain was falling. No admiring eyes would look up that day at the Staubbach.
A rainy day in Switzerland puts a sudden stop to many diversions. The coachman may drive to the tavern and then back to the stable; but no farther. The sunburnt guide may sit at the ale-house door, and welcome; and the boatman whistle and curse the clouds, at his own sweet will; but no foot stirs abroad for all that; no traveller moves, if he has time to stay. The rainy daygives him time for reflection. He has leisure now to take cognizance of his impressions, and make up his account with the mountains. He remembers, too, that he has friends at home; and writes up the Journal, neglected for a week or more; and letters neglected longer; or finishes the rough pencil-sketch, begun yesterday in the open air. On the whole he is not sorry it rains; though disappointed.
Flemming was both sorry and disappointed; but he did not on that account fail to go over to the Ashburtons at the appointed hour. He found them sitting in the parlour. The mother was reading, and the daughter retouching a sketch of the Lake of Thun. After the usual salutations, Flemming seated himself near the daughter, and said;
“We shall have no Staubbach to-day, I presume; only this Giessbach from the clouds.”
“Nothing more, I suppose. So we must be content to stay in-doors; and listen to the soundof the eves-dropping rain. It gives me time to finish some of these rough sketches.”
“It is a pleasant pastime,” said Flemming; “and I perceive you are very skilful. I am delighted to see, that you can draw a straight line. I never before saw a lady’s sketch-book, in which all the towers did not resemble the leaning Tower of Pisa. I always tremble for the little men under them.”
“How absurd!” exclaimed Mary Ashburton, with a smile that passed through the misty air of Flemming’s thoughts, like a sunbeam; “For one, I succeed much better in straight lines than in any others. Here I have been trying a half-hour to make this water-wheel round; and round it never will be.”
“Then let it remain as it is. It looks uncommonly picturesque, and may pass for a new invention.”
The lady continued to sketch, and Flemming to gaze at her beautiful face; often repeating to himself those lines in Marlow’s Faust;
“O thou art fairer than the evening air,
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars!”
He certainly would have betrayed himself to the maternal eye of Mrs. Ashburton, had she not been wholly absorbed in the follies of a fashionable novel. Ere long the fair sketcher had paused for a moment; and Flemming had taken her sketch-book in his hands and was looking it through from the beginning with ever-increasing delight, half of which he dared not express, though he favored her with some comments and bursts of admiration.
“This is truly a very beautiful sketch of Murten and the battle-field! How quietly the land-scape sleeps there by the lake, after the battle! Did you ever read the ballad of Veit Weber, the shoe-maker, on this subject? He says, the routed Burgundians jumped into the lake, and the Swiss Leaguers shot them down like wild ducks among the reeds. He fought in the battle and wrote the ballad afterwards; —
‘He had himself laid hand on sword,
He who this rhyme did write;
Till evening mowed he with the sword,
And sang the song at night.’”
“You must give me the whole ballad,” said Miss Ashburton; “it will serve to illustrate the sketch.”
“And the sketch to illustrate the ballad. And now we suddenly slide down the Alps into Italy, and are even in Rome, if I mistake not. This is surely a head of Homer?”
“Yes,” replied the lady, with a little enthusiasm. “Do you not remember the marble bust at Rome? When I first beheld that bust, it absolutely inspired me with awe. It is not the face of a man, but of a god!”
“And you have done it no injustice in your copy,” said Flemming, catching a new enthusiasm from hers. “With what a classic grace the fillet, passing round the majestic forehead, confines his flowing locks, which mingle with his beard! The countenance, too, is calm, majestic, godlike! Even the fixed and sightless eyeballs do not mar the imageof the seer! Such were the sightless eyes of the blind old man of Chios. They seem to look with mournful solemnity into the mysterious future; and the marble lips to repeat that prophetic passage in the Hymn to Apollo; ‘Let me also hope to be remembered in ages to come. And when any one, born of the tribes of men, comes hither, a weary traveller, and inquires, who is the sweetest of the Singing Men, that resort to your feasts, and whom you most delight to hear, do you make answer for me. It is the Blind Man, who dwells in Chios; his songs excel all that can ever be sung!’ But do you really believe, that this is a portrait of Homer?”
“Certainly not! It is only an artist’s dream. It was thus, that Homer appeared to him in his visions of the antique world. Every one, you know, forms an image in his fancy of persons and things he has never seen; and the artist reproduces them in marble or on canvass.”
“And what is the image in your fancy? Is it like this?”
“No; not entirely. I have drawn my impressions from another source. Whenever I think of
Homer, which is not often, he walks before me, solemn and serene, as in the vision of the great Italian; in countenance neither sorrowful nor glad, followed by other bards, and holding in his right hand a sword!”
“That is a finer conception, than even this,” said Flemming. “And I perceive from your words, as well as from this book, that you have a true feeling for art, and understand what it is. You have had bright glimpses into the enchanted land.”
“I trust,” replied the lady modestly, “that I am not wholly without this feeling. Certainly I have as strong and passionate a love of Art as of Nature.”
“But does it not often offend you to hear people speaking of Art and Nature as opposite and discordant things? Surely nothing can be more false. Nature is a revelation of God; Art a revelation of man. Indeed, Art signifies no more than this. Art is Power. That is the original meaning of the word. It is the creative power by which the soul of man makes itself known, through some external manifestation or outward sign. As we can always hear the voice of God, walking in the garden, in the cool of the day, or under the star-light, where, to quote one of this poet’s verses, ‘high prospects and the brows of all steep hills and pinnacles thrust up themselves for shows’; — so, under the twilight and the starlight of past ages, do we hear the voice of man, walking amid the works of his hands, and city walls and towers and the spires of churches, thrust up themselves for shows.”
The lady smiled at his warmth; and he continued;
“This, however, is but a similitude; and Art and Nature are more nearly allied than by similitudes only. Art is the revelation of man; and not merely that, but likewise the revelation of Nature, speaking through man. Art preëxists in Nature, and Nature is reproduced in Art. As vaporsfrom the ocean, floating landward and dissolved in rain, are carried back in rivers to the ocean, so thoughts and the semblances of things that fall upon the soul of man in showers, flow out again in living streams of Art, and lose themselves in the great ocean, which is Nature. Art and Nature are not, then, discordant, but ever harmoniously working in each other.”
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 163
