Felise grew and became beautiful.
There were books at Beechknoll such as are seldom read outside the circle of the learned, though they are books far more interesting than those of modern days. The reason the classics are not read is because there still lingers a tradition, handed down from the eighteenth century, that it is useless to read them unless in the original. A tone of sarcastic contempt is maintained towards the person who shall presume to peruse Xenophon not in the original Greek, or Virgil not in the original Latin.
In the view of these critics it is the Greek, it is the Latin, that is valuable, not the contents of the volume. Shakespeare, however, the greatest genius of England, thought otherwise. It is known that his ideas of Grecian and Roman history were derived from somewhat rude translations, yet it is acknowledged that the spirit of the ancient warriors and of the ancient luxury lives in his “Antony and Cleopatra,” and nowhere in all the ancient writers is there a poem breathing the idea of Aphrodite like his “Venus and Adonis.” The example of so great a genius may shield us in an effort to free the modern mind from this eighteenth century incubus.
The truth is, the classics are much better understood in a good translation than in the original. To obtain a sufficient knowledge of Greek, for instance, to accurately translate is almost the work of a lifetime. Concentration upon this one pursuit gradually contracts the general perceptions, and it has often happened that an excellent scholar has been deficient in common knowledge, as shown by the singular character of his own notes. But his work of translation in itself is another matter.
It is a treasure; from it poets derive their illustrations; dramatists their plots; painters their pictures. A young mind full of intelligence, coming to such a translation, enters at once into the spirit of the ancient writer. A good translation is thus better than the original.
Such books Mr. Goring had accumulated for his own study; they were now opened to Felise by the same kindly hand and voice that had opened to her the knowledge of the fields and woods.
She read the beautiful memoirs of Socrates, some parts of Plato, most of the histories, and the higher and purer poets. Therein she found expressed in words and metre the very ideas, the very feelings which had come to her in the flowery meadows and woodland solitudes; ideas and feelings that floated in her mind, but which she could not utter. Here they were—written down at the lips of the flowers that had faded two thousand years ago.
The soul of Greece—the pure soul of antique Greece—visited her as she read and dreamed.
Felise grew and became yet more beautiful.
Her heart, too, had grown within her—the heart of a woman as it is in its purest nature. She was unconvinced. No specious casuistry of the vain world or the false priest, no arguments of the tyrannic science of the nineteenth century, nothing could convince her that the emotion of her heart was wrong. She was unconvinced. All the sophistry and chicanery, all the philosophy and the sociology, all the statutes on the statute book, all the Acts of Parliament, would have utterly failed for one instant to shake that heart, would have failed to convince her that wrong was right, or that a lie was the truth.
Felise was unswervingly true to herself.
XXIII
And while her physical frame grew, and her moral being was strengthened, all these nine years from girlhood to womanhood, a colourless eye watched her—the eye of Robert Godwin. There is something grim—weird—almost terrible in the thought that even this pure and beautiful creature could not exist without so opposite a nature stealthily regarding it.
Not the faintest suspicion that Robert Godwin cared for Felise, or indeed for any woman, ever occurred to anyone. The man was so absolutely concentrated, it precluded the very idea of his thinking of a second person.
Had Godwin’s concentration upon one fixed idea any influence in producing the hardness of his conduct towards those who happened to come under his sway? Rendering him more abstracted than he would otherwise have been, it closed his eyes to everything but his own will. Robert Godwin was hard enough; Robert Godwin riding and walking, and acting in bodily form while his mind was absent, became a mere figure of stone.
Imaginative persons are commonly reproached with gazing at the stars and overlooking the road at their feet. Here, by a singular reversal, was a man incapable of imagination, whose life was in the work of his hands, who saw nothing but mounds of chalk and pieces of timber where there were woods and hills, and yet he was more under the influence of a distant and unattainable object than the most veritable dreamer.
Each year as Felise grew, so grew his conviction that she was not for him. He held this question up close to his mind (closer and closer as he became mentally shorter of sight) and observed with more vivid perception her perfection and beauty.
This concentration in time produced a reflex action. He could not have her—he was ready, like a tiger, to tear to pieces, anything or anyone she preferred, to oppose her, to cross her, and almost injure her.
As a lover he should, in accordance with all precedent, have sought to gratify her and render himself pleasant. By simple courtesy towards Mr. Goring he could have seen her continually, and had every opportunity of influencing her mind in his favour. On the contrary, he never omitted an opportunity of annoying Mr. Goring; he quarrelled with him about fences, attempted to cut off the supply of water to the trout-pond, and made himself disagreeable in every petty way possible.
His notice to Abner’s parents was intended as a sidelong
