While the sunlight of
hope had shone upon him, Mr. Hawkehurst had found the hardest work
pleasant. Was he not working for _her_ sake? Did not his future union
with that dear girl depend upon his present industry? It had seemed to
him as if she stood at his elbow while he wrote, as Pallas stood beside
Achilles at the council, invisible to all but her favourite. It was that
mystic presence which lent swiftness to his pen. When he was tired and
depressed, the thought of Charlotte had revived his courage and
vanquished his fatigue. Pleasant images crowded upon him when he thought
of her. What could be easier than for him to write a love-story? He had
but to create a shadowy Charlotte for his heroine, and the stream of
foolish lover's babble flowed from his pen perennial and inexhaustible.
To his reading she lent a charm and a grace that made the most perfect
poetry still more poetical. It was not Achilles and Helen who met on
Mount Ida, but Valentine and Charlotte; it was not Paolo and Francesca
who read the fatal book together, but Valentine and Charlotte, in an
unregenerate and mediaeval state of mind. The mere coincidence of a name
made the "Sorrows of Werter" delightful. The all-pervading presence was
everywhere and in everything. His religion was not Pantheism, but
Charlottism.
Now all was changed. A brooding care was with him in every moment. The
mystic presence was still close to him in every hour of his lonely days
and nights; but that image, which had been fair and blooming as the
incarnation of youth and spring-time, was now a pale shrouded phantom
which he dared not contemplate.
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