‘Oh! Mrs. Lee,’ she exclaimed, ‘your companion, I am sure, is the shipwrecked lady. I have been dying to see her. May I address her?’
‘Let me introduce Mrs. Webber,’ said Mrs. Lee. ‘Mrs. Webber is good enough to take a great interest in you, Miss C----. She wishes to share in the pleasure of being useful to you.’
‘Yes, if you please,’ cried Mrs. Webber. ‘Do not let me keep you standing. There are trunksful of things belonging to me somewhere in the ship, and if you will make out a list of your wants my maid shall see that they are supplied. And you are to be called Miss C----? How truly romantic! Mrs. Lee, I would give anything to be known by an initial only. What could be more delightfully mysterious than to go through life as an initial? Oh, I shall want to ask you so many questions, Miss C----.’
‘Mrs. Webber is a poetess,’ said Mrs. Lee. ‘My daughter is very much pleased with your poem, “The Lonely Heart,” Mrs. Webber. It is truly affecting.’
‘I was certain she would like it,’ answered Mrs. Webber; ‘yet it is not so good as the “Lonely Soul.” The first I wrote with a pen dipped in simple tears, the other with a pen dipped in tears of blood. What a delightful subject Miss C---- would make for a poem--not a short poem, but a volume.’
‘There may be some sorrows which lie too deep for poetry,’ said Mrs. Lee.
‘Yes, in the sense that there are thoughts which lie too deep for tears,’ said Mrs. Lee.
‘That line by Longfellow I never could understand,’ said Mrs. Webber.
‘It is by Wordsworth,’ exclaimed Mrs. Lee.
‘Too deep!’ cried Mrs. Webber again; ‘why, I should have imagined that nothing could be too deep or too high for poetry. Take Browning; doesn’t he go deep? Take Shelley; didn’t he go high? Over and over again they disappear, and what’s a surer sign of a great poet than to sink or soar out of sight? Any simple fellow can make himself understood. The sublime in writing is quite another affair. Don’t you agree with me, Miss C----?’
‘I am sorry I am not able to understand you,’ I answered.
I observed Mrs. Lee give Mrs. Webber a look. The latter cried, ‘Oh yes, I now remember. And yet, do you know, as I was telling my husband not an hour ago, I cannot see that it is very dreadful to be without memory. I mean to say, that it cannot be very dreadful to forget one’s past. To be able to recollect enough to go on with is really all one wants. The condition of a mind that cannot look back, but that can look forward, must surely be romantically delightful; because forward everything is fresh; all the flowers are springing, there are no graves; but behind--for my part, I hate looking back.’