Part 35 (1/2)
It represented the head and shoulders of a winged female; the countenance was inflexible, grim, and cadaverous. The large, lurid eyes had an owlish stare; and the outspread pinions, black as night, made the wan face yet more livid by contrast. The extended hands were like those of a skeleton.
”What strange fancies you have! It makes the blood curdle in my veins to look at that awful countenance,” said Clara shudderingly.
”I cannot draw it as I saw it in my dream! Cannot do justice to my ideal Mors!” answered Beulah, in a discontented tone, as she took up the crayon and retouched the poppies which cl.u.s.tered in the sable locks.
”For Heaven's sake, do not attempt to render it any more horrible!
Put it away, and finish this lovely Greek face. Oh, how I envy you your talent for music and drawing! Nature gifted you rarely!”
”No! she merely gave me an intense love of beauty, which constantly impels me to embody, in melody or coloring, the glorious images which the contemplation of beauty creates in my soul. Alas! I am not a genius. If I were I might hope to achieve an immortal renown.
Gladly would I pay its painful and dangerous price!” She placed the drawing of Mors in her portfolio and began to touch lightly an unfinished head of Sappho.
”Ah, Clara, how connoisseurs would carp at this portrait of the 'Lesbian Muse'! My guardian, for one, would sneer, superbly.”
”Why, pray? It is perfectly beautiful!”
”Because, forsooth, it is no low-browed, swarthy Greek. I have a penchant for high, broad, expansive foreheads, which are antagonistic to all the ancient models of beauty. Low foreheads characterize the antique; but who can fancy 'violet-crowned, immortal Sappho,'
”'With that gloriole Of ebon hair, on calmed brows,'
other than I have drawn her!” She held up the paper, and smiled triumphantly.
In truth, it was a face of rare loveliness; of oval outline, with delicate yet n.o.ble features, whose expression seemed the reflex of the divine afflatus. The uplifted eyes beamed with the radiance of inspiration; the full, ripe lips were just parted; the curling hair cl.u.s.tered with child-like simplicity round the cla.s.sic head; and the exquisitely formed hands clasped a lyre.
”Beulah, don't you think the eyes are most too wild?” suggested Clara timidly.
”What? for a poetess! Remember poesy hath madness in it,” answered Beulah, still looking earnestly at her drawing.
”Madness? What do you mean?”
”Just what I say. I believe poetry to be the highest and purest phase of insanity. Those finely strung, curiously nervous natures that you always find coupled with poetic endowments, are characterized by a remarkable activity of the mental organs; and this continued excitement and premature development of the brain results in a disease which, under this aspect, the world offers premiums for. Though I enjoy a fine poem as much as anybody, I believe, in nine cases out of ten, it is the spasmodic vent of a highly nervous system, overstrained, diseased. Yes, diseased! If it does not result in the frantic madness of Lamb, or the final imbecility of Southey, it is manifested in various other forms, such as the morbid melancholy of Cowper, the bitter misanthropy of Pope, the abnormal moodiness and misery of Byron, the unsound and dangerous theories of Sh.e.l.ley, and the strange, fragmentary nature of Coleridge.”
”Oh, Beulah! what a humiliating theory! The poet placed on an ignominious level with the nervous hypochondriac! You are the very last person I should suppose guilty of entertaining such a degraded estimate of human powers,” interposed Clara energetically.
”I know it is customary to rave about Muses, and Parna.s.sus, and Helicon, and to throw the charitable mantle of 'poetic idiosyncrasies' over all those dark spots on poetic disks. All conceivable and inconceivable eccentricities are pardoned, as the usual concomitants of genius; but, looking into the home lives of many of the most distinguished poets, I have been painfully impressed with the truth of my very unpoetic theory. Common sense has arraigned before her august tribunal some of the socalled 'geniuses' of past ages, and the critical verdict is that much of the famous 'fine frenzy' was bona-fide frenzy of a sadder nature.”
”Do you think that Sappho's frenzy was established by the Leucadian leap?”
”You confound the poetess with a Sappho who lived later, and threw herself into the sea from the promontory of Leucate. Doubtless she too had 'poetic idiosyncrasies'; but her spotless life and, I believe, natural death, afford no indication of an unsound intellect. It is rather immaterial, however, to--” Beulah paused abruptly as a servant entered and approached the table, saying:
”Miss Clara, Dr. Hartwell is in the parlor and wishes to see you.”
”To see me!” repeated Clara in surprise, while a rosy tinge stole into her wan face; ”to see me! No! It must be you, Beulah.”
”He said Miss Sanders,” persisted the servant, and Clara left the room.
Beulah looked after her with an expression of some surprise; then continued penciling the chords of Sappho's lyre. A few minutes elapsed, and Clara returned with flushed cheeks and a smile of trembling joyousness.
”Beulah, do pin my mantle on straight. I am in such a hurry. Only think how kind Dr. Hartwell is; he has come to take me out to ride; says I look too pale, and he thinks a ride will benefit me. That will do, thank you.”
She turned away, but Beulah rose and called out: