Many persons have this order of enthusiasm; it is
a clammy thing to attract. A curate with a glimpse
at Shelley’s mind once roused Margaret’s
enthusiasm for the poet. It welled so suffocatingly
about him that he came near to damning Shelley and
all his works; threw up his hat when opportunity put
out a beckoning finger and drew him elsewhere.
Margaret walked in considerable fear of her father;
but she clung to him despite his oppressive foibles,
because this was her nature. She loved church;
incense; soft music; a prayer-book tastefully bound.
She “wrote poetry.”
Warmed by the gloom that lay over Herons’ Holt
upon this evening, she sat brooding upon her cousin
George’s failure until a beautiful picture was
hatched. He had gone to his room directly after
dinner; during the meal had not spoken. She imagined
him seated on his bed, hands deep in pockets, chin
sunk, brow knitted, wrestling with that old devil
despair. She knew that latterly he had worked
tremendously hard. He had told her before the
examination how confident of success he was, had revealed
how much in the immediate prospect of freedom he gloried.
She recalled his gay laugh as he had bade her good-bye
on the first day, and the recollection stung her just
as, she reflected, it must now be stinging him....
Only he must a thousand times more fiercely be feeling
the burn of its venom....
Margaret moved impatiently with a desire to shake
into herself a profounder sense of her cousin’s
misfortune. By ten she was plunged in a most
pleasing melancholy.
She was of those who are by nature morbid; who deceive
themselves if they imagine they have enjoyment from
the recreations that provoke lightness of heart in
the majority. Only the surface of their spirits
ripples under such breezes; to stir the whole, to produce
the counterpart of a hearty laugh in your vigorous
animal, a feast on melancholy must be provided.
This is a quality that is common among the lower classes
who find their greatest happiness in funerals.
The sombre trappings; white handkerchiefs against
black dresses; tears; the mystery of gloom—these
trickle with a warm glow through all their senses.
They are as aroused by grief, unpleasant to the majority,
as the drunkard is quickened by wine, to many abhorrent.
Thus it was with Margaret, and to her the shroud of
melancholy in which she was now wrapped brought an
added boon—arrayed in it she was best able
to make her verses. Not of necessity sad little
verses; many of her brightest were conceived in profoundest
gloom. With a pang at the heart she could be
most merry—tinkling out her laughing little
lines just as martyrs could breathe a calm because,
rather than spite of, they were devilishly racked.
But this was no hour for tinkling lines. A manuscript
returned by the last post emphasised her gloom.
