 | CHAPTER X. El Fureidîs |  |
10. CHAPTER X.
This visit to the convent was but one among many similar
excursions which Meredith made in the companionship
of Havilah, though seldom in the exclusive enjoyment of
her society. Whether Father Lapierre's superior acquaintance
with the world had taught him a degree of caution
unknown to M. Trefoil, or whether the former simply followed
the leading of his own inclinations, it henceforth
rarely proved the case that a mountain expedition was undertaken
which did not include the good missionary in the
party. His distant, parochial labors, however, afforded him
a sufficient pretext for frequently proposing to accompany
his young friends, and aid Havilah in the duties delegated
to her by her father; and it may be doubted whether the old
man's true motive was ever suspected either by Meredith
or his guide, both of whom appeared to find equal delight
in the rich and varied resources with which M. Lapierre
contributed to their edification and enjoyment.
Had Meredith sought to evade this venerable guardianship,
nothing would have been easier than for him to intrude
himself upon Havilah's solitary hours, for he was familiar
with her daily avocations, knew all her accustomed haunts,
and the precise moment when she might be encountered at
the peasant's cottages, the mission school, or at Ayn el Bered,
where she went regularly to procure her mother's noonday
beverage. But even if he had been capable of thus taking
further from his thoughts than attempting to play the gallant
towards the young girl, who neither sought nor avoided
his society, but treated him with the simple, unaffected cordiality
which she might have bestowed on a respected kinsman,
long admitted to the privileges of the household.
Had Meredith's early impressions of Havilah continued
in full force, had he departed on his travels with only the
vague, mystical sense of beauty which dawned upon him in
the chapel on the first night of his arrival, and was confirmed
by the vision that haunted him in his illness, it is probable
that she would have been treasured in his memory as a dim
unreality, the angelic but shadowy creation of his fancy.
But this poetic dream could not exist in the daylight of his
nearer intercourse with her. He had been startled from it
when she burst upon him in the character of a mountain
wood-nymph; he forgot it altogether as he beheld her amid
the endearing relations of her home.
But although the fictitious emotions of an imaginative
mind had been thus suddenly dissipated, they were superseded
by sentiments none the less engrossing. The picturesque
beauty of Havilah's face and figure, the artless and
attractive graces of her manner, so far from being dimmed
by familiarity, gained new power with every varia on of her
features, every circumstance which called her sensibilities
into play; and the Englishman, who, in the isolated enjoyment
of his favorite pursuits had hitherto seemed blind and
deaf to female fascinations, became lost in admiration and
curiosity. Not that admiration which seeks to appropriate
what is fair, but that artistic and zealous enthusiasm which
he would have bestowed upon any other lovely object in
nature; not that rude curiosity which avails itself of every
opportunity to pry into the sacred recesses of life and character,
range of thought and action, but rather that intense
and absorbing interest which made her every word a problem,
her every motion a study.
This deep, and, to Meredith himself, half-conscious influence,
would never have strengthened into a motive power,—
it might even have sunk into indifference or been palled by
satiety,—had Havilah been nothing more than the light-hearted
mountain girl, the idol of her parents, the pride of
the highland valley. The man of large culture and fastidious
tastes would soon have wearied of her fair features if
they had never been illumined by intelligence, would have
smiled with ill-disguised contempt at her simplicity, if it had
been but another name for ignorance, and would have been
disgusted with her unfailing good-humor, if it had ever
degenerated into insipidity.
But Havilah, heir as she was of many and varied gifts,
had been trained in a school which eminently fitted her for
the companionship of an intellectual and cultivated man.
From infancy she had been the cherished pupil of M. Lapierre,
and the mind in which he had early awakened the
thirst for knowledge had drunk freely from the ever open
fountain of his ripened wisdom and experience. The accomplishments
which to many cost years of labor had been
hers by circumstance or intuition. Music had come to her
as an inspiration, and most of the modern languages had
been familiar to her ears from childhood. Thus she had
been spared much of the usual toilsome routine, and had
found time for the severer pursuits into which it had been
M. Lapierre's delight to initiate her, even at a tender age.
Nor had books been the only or the chief means of her instruction.
Hand in hand with the old man, she had trod the
mountain paths, each tree, each stone, each flower furnishing
shrine the open volume in which she read the history
of a mighty past. But better far than all her acquirements
was the sweet docility with which she ever bent her mind to
new attainments. Labor as she might, she could never
probe the depths of her master's learning; and as the pious
man had not forgotten to impress her with the truth that his
own stores of knowledge were but as a drop in the sea of
the great unknown, she had been saved alike from pedantry
and presumption, and, ignorant of the comparative progress
she had made, maintained invariably the mental attitude of
a child.
It was this, perhaps, more than any other trait, which captivated
her father's English guest. Astonished he might
well be, when accident revealed her familiarity with abstruse
science, when, in the capacity of his Lebanon guide, she
readily deciphered some old Saracenic inscription, or defined
the intricate shades of ancient architecture; but the moments
when her winning graces stole into his heart were those in
which, having strayed beyond the boundaries of her own
sphere of learning, she plied him with some earnest question,
or fixed her large eyes gravely on his face, while he discoursed
on some foreign land or original theme. Nor is
this strange; for man loves a reverential spirit in woman,
and the Englishman was by nature proud.
Meredith's genius was of the reflective order; but never
had he meditated with such ardor as upon the subject which
now engrossed him. He had been a student all his life, but
he had never been so enamored of study; he had philosophized
upon men and things, but never had he so flattered
himself that he saw and interpreted aright, as while he
watched the unfolding of Havilah's youthful charms, and
read a new treatise upon humanity on the fair and open
page of the young girl's character.
But there were moments when, despite all the progress
he had made, he felt himself suddenly baffled; moments
when the sympathetic chain seemed broken, and he could
no longer comprehend the emotions veiled beneath Havilah's
countenance. A look, a word, was sometimes enough
to call up that expression, so strangely sweet, so deeply
incomprehensible, which had awed him when he first beheld
her in the village church, but which now, as then,
he failed to trace to its mysterious source. It was no
searching glance, no pensive melancholy, which thus stole
over the face, rested there a moment, then vanished gradually
away, or melted into a smile; it was but the reflection
of an inward communing, a look such as infants sometimes
wear when mothers say, “Hush! the angels whisper to
them.” Let it come when or how it would, however, let it
overspread the face for a moment only, or linger upon it
for hours, it never failed to check the young man's presumptuous
faith in his own penetration, to throw him back
to the earliest point in his acquaintance with Havilah, and
impress him with the conviction that, after all, he understood
scarce anything of her inner nature.
He little knew that, while he lent himself to the engrossing
study of her heart and life, daily becoming more familiar
with every external gift and grace, and arrested only on the
verge of the spiritual realm, she, through the power of her
own simplicity, was reading and comprehending him as no
mortal had ever done before,—that with the clearness of an
unsophisticated mind she was weighing him in the balance,
and that by the intuition of her own pure spirit she had
probed the depths of his unsatisfied soul, and had beheld
the void within.
We have said that there was nothing clandestine in the
conduct or views of Meredith. Still less did it occur to his
interest in their household than that of a friendly guest;
and looking upon him merely in the light of an intelligent
and earnest traveller, they sought, not to engross his
society, but to facilitate his acquaintance with the beauties,
the antiquities, and the natural resources of their Syrian
home.
Had he been wanting in the enthusiasm requisite to the
Oriental traveller, he could not have failed to find inspiration
in El Fureidîs. Both M. Trefoil and M. Lapierre had
implicit faith in Syria,—the one in its internal capabilities,
its striking position among nations, its industrial facilities,
and its future destiny as the depot and mart of Eastern
and Western commerce; the other, in its soul-stirring
memories, its incomparable beauties, its historical and
scientific records, its ever-living verdict in confirmation
of recorded truth.
True enthusiasm seldom fails to make converts; and
both these ardent men found in Meredith a ready disciple
to their creed. Each vied with the other in exciting his
interest and riveting his attention, and each in turn had the
satisfaction of awakening his sympathetic zeal, and seeing
with what unflagging devotion he engaged in their favorite
explorations and researches.
Many, therefore, were the schemes that were formed, the
excursions that were mapped out, for the benefit of our traveller,
and the promotion of the objects which he cherished
in common with his new friends. Some of these expeditions
led to places of interest in the neighborhood, and occupied
but a single day; others were of greater magnitude,
giving rise to extensive preparation, and not infrequently
involving exciting incident and adventure. In the former
case, M. Lapierre and Havilah were usually Meredith's
hired guides, or, as business cares became less pressing, by
M. Trefoil, who on one occasion joined him on an interesting
circuit among the mountains, including a visit to some of
the cities of the sea-coast, and occupying no less than a
week.
It must be confessed, however, that while fully appreciating
the information gained in these more extended tours,
the most grateful feature attending them, in Meredith's estimation,
was the cordial welcome home; and that he gave
his unhesitating preference to those shorter and less pretentious
journeys, when, accompanied by the hoary old man and
the light-footed maiden, he spent the day among the Barûk
mountains, and returned at night to the sweet seclusion of
the villa.
It was on these occasions that he realized most fully the
pleasures of congenial intercourse, and gained a closer knowledge
of Havilah's peculiar graces of intellect and heart;
for, though Father Lapierre's was ever the leading mind, the
old man wisely forbore to exercise any restraint upon his
cherished pupil, but, satisfied with the protection his presence
afforded, left to her all the minor duties of hostess and
guide, for which she was admirably fitted. It was on these
occasions, too, that, unconsciously to himself, the characteristic
bias of Meredith's mind was not infrequently exhibited,
though in those delicate lines of light and shade perceptible
only to a pure and exalted sensibility.
This unique, but as it were organized trio of pedestrians,
were returning one evening from a pilgrimage to the little
village of Barûk, on the opposite side of the mountain to
that on which El Fureidîs is situated. It was near the hour
of sunset, and, as they approached the topmost verge of the
mountain, Meredith and Havilah instinctively quickened
which the elevation afforded while yet clothed in the
gorgeous western light. The path, as usual, was precipitous,
and Father Lapierre, who, though an equally skilful, was a
far less agile climber, continued somewhat in the rear, and,
proceeding with firm but measured step, was still at the
foot of the final acclivity when his companions gained the
summit.
Meredith had stood with entranced vision upon many of
the glorious heights of Lebanon, but never had the circumstance
and the hour combined to impart such sublimity to
the scene. Far as the eye could reach, in every direction, it
commanded a panorama of mingled beauty and grandeur,
from the yellow corn-fields and dusky olive-groves of the
Eastern plain to the clear blue waters of the Mediterranean,
which terminated the western view. Here stretched a long
mountain line, the fertile sides of the nearer hills clothed
with terraced groves and vineyards, and embosoming white
villages in their sheltered nooks. Yonder might be seen
distant and more rugged crags, bristling with precipices of
tawny rock, seamed with dark-brown veins, and clothed at
intervals with the heavy foliage of the fir and pine. Towering
above all, the hoary Hermon reared its lofty crest,
capped with snow which glistened like silver in the light of
the setting sun. Far away against the horizon might be
dimly discerned the graceful outline of lesser ridges, which,
veiled in misty blue, seemed to melt into the very ether; and
along the shore of the placid sea might be traced the undulating
curves of the sandy coast, with the white walls and
towers of Beyrout standing boldly out against their dark
background of orchards, gardens, and groves. If anything
could have served to add dignity to such a scene, it was
furnished by the solemn memorials of the past which were
summit, thrown together in wildest confusion, either by
an earthquake or the mighty hand of some human destroyer,
lay the ruins of an ancient temple, such as are frequent
in these regions, and which, although their precise origin is
unknown to the traveller, are in themselves impressive
chroniclers of a once powerful race and age, the lofty porticos,
broken pilasters, and huge levelled blocks of stone
telling of the majestic hand which reared them,—a hand
only less mighty than that which hurled them down.
Seated on a fallen column, impressed by the sublimity of
the scene, and scarcely less so perhaps by its perfect repose,
Meredith and Havilah gazed upon the prospect for a
while in a silence which was at length broken by the former.
“No wonder,” exclaimed he, “that the old poets of Syria
were inspired by such visions of nature as they were permitted
to enjoy! No wonder that their imagery is unequalled
in beauty and grandeur, since it was drawn from
such a source!” and with the eloquent tongue of one whose
artistic and poetical enthusiasm is aroused, he repeated, not
without fine effect, some of those many passages of the
ancient prophets descriptive of the greatness and glory of
Lebanon.
Havilah listened with pleasure to the recital, half wondering,
meanwhile, at Meredith's familiarity with Scripture.
He had scarcely finished, when the venerable head of Father
Lapierre appeared above the bare rocks which lined the
mountain pass, the hood of his black cloak having fallen
back, permitting the light evening breeze to sway his hoary
locks, while his noble countenance was lit by an expression
of beatific joy. The sun sunk to the verge of the horizon
at the very moment when the old man planted his foot on a
heavy fragment of rock just above the fallen column on
the vesper-bells of the neighboring village sounded a musical
stroke, which was echoed from cliff to cliff,—was answered
by more distant peals from the various convents among the
mountains, and all the notes in turn were caught up and re-echoed
through height and valley, until the air rang with
the sacred chime.
As the monitory sounds died away upon the air, the
majestic old man, whose figure seemed to expand in the
glowing light, pointed with one hand towards the expiring
rays of the sun, which were gilding earth and sea, then,
stretching the other towards the slender crescent just discernible
in the topmost ether, broke forth with grave emphasis
in the words of the Psalmist:—
“ `He looketh on the earth, and it trembleth; He toucheth
the hills, and they smoke. Man goeth forth unto his work
and to his labor until the evening. O Lord, how manifold
are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the
earth is full of thy riches. The glory of the Lord shall
endure forever! I will sing unto the Lord as long as I
live. My meditation of him shall be sweet. I will be
glad in the Lord.' ”
The sacred harpist of Israel himself could scarcely have
looked more sweetly sanctified than did the holy man who
thus gave vent to his feelings in worship. Havilah had
been impressed by the appropriateness of Meredith's Scriptural
allusions, but a deeper sympathetic chord was struck
as the saintly priest rose above the worship of nature, and
poured out his soul in gladness to the Lord. She rose from
her seat beside Meredith, gently drew near to the old man,
locked her arm within his, and, while the Englishman coolly
took out his drawing-materials and commenced a sketch,
she followed the serene flight of her soul's best friend, and,
felt themselves for a while transported into the nearer
Presence before the throne of God.
When Meredith looked up from the complicated outlines
of his unfinished drawing, that look was on Havilah's face
which he had vainly tried to understand. With her wonted
courtesy she approached and examined his sketch, but her
thoughts had been ranging beyond the sphere which can be
measured by angles and lines, and she could not at once
bring herself to the comprehension of those rules of art
with which her English friend had lately sought to acquaint
her.
When, therefore, Father Lapierre, who remembered the
difficulties of the return-path to the villa, suggested that they
should commence the descent before the shades of night
overtook them, Meredith closed with alacrity the book whose
fly-leaf had served him for a tablet, and, with a mind singularly
out of tune, accompanied his friends down the
mountain, oppressed with the undefined consciousness that
the old man and the young girl were in the enjoyment of
a communion of spirit from which he was ungenerously
excluded.
The book which had furnished Meredith with drawing-paper,
and which was seldom absent from him in his rambles,
was the same sacred volume which had suggested
to him words of beauty, and had dictated to Father Lapierre
a hymn of praise. This English pocket-Bible, which
served our traveller as text-book, manual, and guide in his
journeyings and explorations through Palestine, bore many
marks of the frequency with which it was called into
requisition. Its margins were crowded with annotations
and references, numerous leaves were turned down at the
corners, or had slips of paper inserted between them, and
of a man of business.
It was produced for consultation on all occasions, and
was the arbiter in all doubtful questions of Hebrew literature,
Syrian route, and antiquarian research. In the long
evening conversations on the housetop, when Havilah,
seated on the upper stair, with her head resting against
her father's knee, listened to the discussion of excursions
that were past or the arrangements for future travels, the
unquestioned facts of Scripture were the invariable records
with which experiences were compared or expectations
adduced; and of nothing could Meredith be more unjustly
accused than of indifference to the authority which in this
view he found invaluable. To Havilah's clear perceptions,
however, nothing so fully held the mirror up to this
man's nature as his estimation of the volume to her so
precious. It taught him the way, but not the only way,—
the truth, but not the highest truth; for he had yet to learn
that he bore with him in his wanderings the spirit's compass
and the soul's great guide.
| CHAPTER X. El Fureidîs | |