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FALKLAND

By Edward Bulwer-Lytton

BOOK II.

It is dangerous for women, however wise it be for men, "to commune with
their own hearts, and to be still!" Continuing to pursue the follies of
the world had been to Emily more prudent than to fly them; to pause, to
separate herself from the herd, was to discover, to feel, to murmur at
the vacuum of her being; and to occupy it with the feelings which it
craved, could in her be but the hoarding a provision for despair.

Married, before she had begun the bitter knowledge of herself, to a man
whom it was impossible to love, yet deriving from nature a tenderness of
soul, which shed itself over everything around, her only escape from
misery had been in the dormancy of feeling. The birth of her son had
opened to her a new field of sensations, and she drew the best charm of
her own existence from the life she had given to another. Had she not
met Falkland, all the deeper sources of affection would have flowed into
one only and legitimate channel; but those whom he wished to fascinate
had never resisted his power, and the attachment he inspired was in
proportion to the strength and ardour of his own nature.

It was not for Emily Mandeville to love such as Falkland without feeling
that from that moment a separate and selfish existence had ceased to be.
Our senses may captivate us with beauty; but in absence we forget, or by
reason we can conquer, so superficial an impression. Our vanity may
enamour us with rank; but the affections of vanity are traced in sand;
but who can love Genius, and not feel that the sentiments it excites
partake of its own intenseness and its own immortality? It arouses,
concentrates, engrosses all our emotions, even to the most subtle and
concealed. Love what is common, and ordinary objects can replace or
destroy a sentiment which an ordinary object has awakened. Love what we
shall not meet again amidst the littleness and insipidity which surround
us, and where can we turn for a new object to replace that which has no
parallel upon earth? The recovery from such a delirium is like return
from a fairy land; and still fresh in the recollections of a bright and
immortal clime, how can we endure the dulness of that human existence to
which for the future we are condemned?

It was some weeks since Emily had written to Mrs. St. John; and her last
letter, in mentioning Falkland, had spoken of him with a reserve which
rather alarmed than deceived her friend. Mrs. St. John had indeed a
strong and secret reason for fear. Falkland had been the object of her
own and her earliest attachment, and she knew well the singular and
mysterious power which he exercised at will over the mind. He had, it is
true, never returned, nor even known of, her feelings towards him; and
during the years which had elapsed since she last saw him, and in the new
scenes which her marriage with Mr. St. John had opened, she had almost
forgotten her early attachment, when Lady Emily's letter renewed its
remembrance. She wrote in answer an impassioned and affectionate caution
to her friend. She spoke much (after complaining of Emily's late
silence) in condemnation of the character of Falkland, and in warning of
its fascinations; and she attempted to arouse alike the virtue and the
pride which so often triumph in alliance, when separately they would so
easily fail. In this Mrs. St. John probably imagined she was actuated
solely by friendship; but in the best actions there is always some latent
evil in the motive; and the selfishness of a jealousy, though hopeless
not conquered, perhaps predominated over the less interested feelings
which were all that she acknowledged to herself.

In this work it has been my object to portray the progress of the
passions; to chronicle a history rather by thoughts and feelings than by
incidents and events; and to lay open those minuter and more subtle mazes
and secrets of the human heart, which in modern writings have been so
sparingly exposed. It is with this view that I have from time to time
broken the thread of narration, in order to bring forward more vividly
the characters it contains; and in laying no claim to the ordinary
ambition of tale-writers, I have deemed myself at liberty to deviate from
the ordinary courses they pursue. Hence the motive and the excuse for
the insertion of the following extracts, and of occasional letters. They
portray the interior struggle when Narration would look only to the
external event, and trace the lightning "home to its cloud," when History
would only mark the spot where it scorched or destroyed.

EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE.

Tuesday.--More than seven years have passed since I began this journal!
I have just been looking over it from the commencement. Many and various
are the feelings which it attempts to describe--anger, pique, joy,
sorrow, hope, pleasure, weariness, ennui; but never, never once,
humiliation or remorse!--these were not doomed to be my portion in the
bright years of my earliest youth. How shall I describe them now? I
have received--I have read, as well as my tears would let me, a long
letter from Julia. It is true that I have not dared to write to her:
when shall I answer this? She has showed me the state of my heart;
I more than suspected it before. Could I have dreamed two months--six
weeks--since that I should have a single feeling of which I could be
ashamed? He has just been here He--the only one in the world, for all
the world seems concentred in him. He observed my distress, for I looked
on him; and my lips quivered and my eyes were full of tears. He came to
me--he sat next to me--he whispered his interest, his anxiety--and was
this all? Have I loved before I even knew that I was beloved? No, no;
the tongue was silent, but the eye, the cheek, the manner--alas! these
have been but too eloquent!

Wednesday.--It was so sweet to listen to his low and tender voice; to
watch the expression of his countenance--even to breathe the air that he
inhaled. But now that I know its cause, I feel that this pleasure is a
crime, and I am miserable even when he is with me. He has not been here
to-day. It is past three. Will he come? I rise from my seat--I go to
the window for breath--I am restless, agitated, disturbed. Lady Margaret
speaks to me--I scarcely answer her. My boy--yes, my dear, dear Henry
comes, and I feel that I am again a mother. Never will I betray that
duty, though I have forgotten one as sacred though less dear! Never
shall my son have cause to blush for his parent! I will fly hence--
I will see him no more!

FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO THE HON. FREDERICK MONKTON.

Write to me, Monkton--exhort me, admonish me, or forsake me for ever.
I am happy yet wretched: I wander in the delirium of a fatal fever, in
which I see dreams of a brighter life, but every one of them only brings
me nearer to death. Day after day I have lingered here, until weeks have
flown--and for what? Emily is not like the women of the world--virtue,
honour, faith, are not to her the mere _convenances_ of society. "There
is no crime," said Lady A., "where there is concealment." Such can never
be the creed of Emily Mandeville. She will not disguise guilt either in
the levity of the world, or in the affectations of sentiment. She will
be wretched, and for ever. I hold the destinies of her future life, and
yet I am base enough to hesitate whether to save or destroy her. Oh, how
fearful, how selfish, how degrading, is unlawful love!

You know my theoretical benevolence for everything that lives; you have
often smiled at its vanity. I see now that you were right; for it seems
to me almost superhuman virtue not to destroy the person who is dearest
to me on earth.

I remember writing to you some weeks since that I would come to London
Little did I know of the weakness of my own mind. I told her that I
intended to depart. She turned pale--she trembled--but she did not
speak. Those signs which should have hastened my departure have taken
away the strength even to think of it.

I am here still! I go to E------ every day. Sometimes we sit in
silence; I dare not trust myself to speak. How dangerous are such
moments! _Ammutiscon lingue parlen l'alme_.

Yesterday they left us alone. We had been conversing with Lady Margaret
on indifferent subjects. There was a pause for some minutes. I looked
up; Lady Margaret had left the room. The blood rushed into my cheek--my
eyes met Emily's; I would have given worlds to have repeated with my lips
what those eyes expressed. I could not even speak--I felt choked with
contending emotions. There was not a breath stirring; I heard my very
heart beat. A thunderbolt would have been a relief. Oh God! if there
be a curse, it is to burn, swell, madden with feelings which you are
doomed to conceal! This is, indeed, to be "a cannibal of one's own
heart." [Bacon]

It was sunset. Emily was alone upon the lawn which sloped towards the
lake, and the blue still waters beneath broke, at bright intervals,
through the scattered and illuminated trees. She stood watching the sun
sink with wistful and tearful eyes. Her soul was sad within her. The
ivy which love first wreathes around his work had already faded away, and
she now only saw the desolation of the ruin it concealed. Never more for
her was that freshness of unwakened feeling which invests all things with
a perpetual daybreak of sunshine, and incense, and dew. The heart may
survive the decay or rupture of an innocent and lawful affection--
"la marque reste, mais la blessure guerit"--but the love of darkness and
guilt is branded in a character ineffaceable--eternal! The one is, like
lightning, more likely to dazzle than to destroy, and, divine even in its
danger, it makes holy what it sears; but the other is like that sure and
deadly fire which fell upon the cities of old, graving in the barrenness
of the desert it had wrought the record and perpetuation of a curse. A
low and thrilling voice stole upon Emily's ear. She turned--Falkland
stood beside her. "I felt restless and unhappy," he said, "and I came to
seek you. If (writes one of the fathers) a guilty and wretched man could
behold, though only for a few minutes, the countenance of an angel, the
calm and glory which it wears would so sink into his heart, that he would
pass at once over the gulf of gone years into his first unsullied state
of purity and hope; perhaps I thought of that sentence when I came to
you." "I know not," said Emily, with a deep blush at this address, which
formed her only answer to the compliment it conveyed; "I know not why it
is, but to me there is always something melancholy in this hour--
something mournful in seeing the beautiful day die with all its pomp and
music, its sunshine, and songs of birds."

"And yet," replied Falkland, "if I remember the time when my feelings
were more in unison with yours (for at present external objects have lost
for me much of their influence and attraction), the melancholy you
perceive has in it a vague and ineffable sweetness not to be exchanged
for more exhilarated spirits. The melancholy which arises from no cause
within ourselves is like music--it enchants us in proportion to its
effect upon our feelings. Perhaps its chief charm (though this it
requires the contamination of after years before we can fathom and
define) is in the purity of the sources it springs from. Our feelings
can be but little sullied and worn while they can yet respond to the
passionless and primal sympathies of Nature; and the sadness you speak
of is so void of bitterness, so allied to the best and most delicious
sensations we enjoy, that I should imagine the very happiness of Heaven
partook rather of melancholy than mirth."

There was a pause of some moments. It was rarely that Falkland alluded
even so slightly to the futurity of another world; and when he did, it
was never in a careless and commonplace manner, but in a tone which sank
deep into Emily's heart. "Look," she said, at length, "at that beautiful
star! the first and brightest! I have often thought it was like the
promise of life beyond the tomb--a pledge to us that, even in the depths
of midnight, the earth shall have a light, unquenched and unquenchable,
from Heaven!"

Emily turned to Falkland as she said this, and her countenance sparkled
with the enthusiasm she felt. But his face was deadly pale. There went
over it, like a cloud, an expression of changeful and unutterable
thought; and then, passing suddenly away, it left his features calm and
bright in all their noble and intellectual beauty. Her soul yearned to
him, as she looked, with the tenderness of a sister.

They walked slowly towards the house. "I have frequently," said Emily,
with some hesitation, "been surprised at the little enthusiasm you appear
to possess even upon subjects where your conviction must be strong." "_I
have thought enthusiasm away!_" replied Falkland; "it was the loss of
hope which brought me reflection, and in reflection I forgot to feel.
Would that I had not found it so easy to recall what I thought I had lost
for ever!" Falkland's cheek changed as he said this, and Emily sighed
faintly, for she felt his meaning. In him that allusion to his love had
aroused a whole train of dangerous recollections; for Passion is the
avalanche of the human heart--a single breath can dissolve it from its
repose.

They remained silent; for Falkland would not trust himself to speak,
till, when they reached the house, he faltered out his excuses for not
entering, and departed. He turned towards his solitary home. The
grounds at E------ had been laid out in a classical and costly manner
which contrasted forcibly with the wild and simple nature of the
surrounding scenery. Even the short distance between Mr. Mandeville's
house and L------ wrought as distinct a change in the character of the
country as any length of space could have effected. Falkland's ancient
and ruinous abode, with its shattered arches and moss-grown parapets, was
situated on a gentle declivity, and surrounded by dark elm and larch
trees. It still retained some traces both of its former consequence, and
of the perils to which that consequence had exposed it. A broad ditch,
overgrown with weeds, indicated the remains of what once had been a moat;
and huge rough stones, scattered around it, spoke of the outworks the
fortification had anciently possessed, and the stout resistance they had
made in "the Parliament Wars" to the sturdy followers of Ireton and
Fairfax. The moon, that flatterer of decay, shed its rich and softening
beauty over a spot which else had, indeed, been desolate and cheerless,
and kissed into light the long and unwaving herbage which rose at
intervals from the ruins, like the false parasites of fallen greatness.
But for Falkland the scene had no interest or charm, and he turned with a
careless and unheeding eye to his customary apartment. It was the only
one in the house furnished with luxury, or even comfort. Large
bookcases, inlaid with curious carvings in ivory; busts of the few public
characters the world had ever produced worthy, in Falkland's estimation,
of the homage of posterity; elaborately-wrought hangings from Flemish
looms; and French fauteuils and sofas of rich damask, and massy gilding
(relics of the magnificent days of Louis Quatorze), bespoke a costliness
of design suited rather to Falkland's wealth than to the ordinary
simplicity of his tastes.

A large writing-table was overspread with books in various languages, and
upon the most opposite subjects. Letters and papers were scattered
amongst them; Falkland turned carelessly over the latter. One of the
epistolary communications was from Lord ------, the --. He smiled
bitterly, as he read the exaggerated compliments it contained, and saw to
the bottom of the shallow artifice they were meant to conceal. He tossed
the letter from him, and opened the scattered volumes, one after another,
with that languid and sated feeling common to all men who have read
deeply enough to feel how much they have learned, and how little they
know. "We pass our lives," thought he, "in sowing what we are never to
reap! We endeavour to erect a tower, which shall reach the heavens, in
order to escape one curse, and lo! we are smitten by another! We would
soar from a common evil, and from that moment we are divided by a
separate language from our race! Learning, science, philosophy, the
world of men and of imagination, I ransacked--and for what? I centred my
happiness in wisdom. I looked upon the aims of others with a scornful
and loathing eye. I held commune with those who have gone before me; I
dwelt among the monuments of their minds, and made their records familiar
to me as friends: I penetrated the womb of nature, and went with the
secret elements to their home: I arraigned the stars before me, and
learned the method and the mystery of their courses: I asked the tempest
its bourn, and questioned the winds of their path. This was not
sufficient to satisfy my thirst for knowledge, and I searched in this
lower world of new sources to content it. Unseen and unsuspected, I saw
and agitated the springs of the automaton that we call 'the Mind.' I
found a clue for the labyrinth of human motives, and I surveyed the
hearts of those around me as through a glass. Vanity of vanities! What
have I acquired? I have separated myself from my kind, but not from
those worst enemies, my passions! I have made a solitude of my soul, but
I have not mocked it with the appellation of Peace.

"Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant."--TACITUS.
"They make a solitude, and call it peace."--BYRON.

"In flying the herd, I have not escaped from myself; like the wounded
deer, the barb was within me, and that I could not fly!" With these
thoughts he turned from his reverie, and once more endeavoured to charm
his own reflections by those which ought to speak to us of quiet, for
they are graven on the pages of the dead; but his attempts were as idle
as before. His thoughts were still wandering and confused, and could
neither be quieted nor collected: he read, but he scarcely distinguished
one page from another: he wrote--the ideas refused to flow at his call;
and the only effort at connecting his feelings which even partially
succeeded, was in the verses which I am about to place before the reader.
It is a common property of poetry, however imperfectly the gift be
possessed, to speak to the hearts of others in proportion as the
sentiments it would express are felt in our own; and I subjoin the lines
which bear the date of that evening, in the hope that, more than many
pages, they will show the morbid yet original character of the writer,
and the particular sources of feeling from which they took the bitterness
that pervades them.

KNOWLEDGE.

Ergo hominum genus incassum frustraque laborat
Semper, et in curis consumit inanibus aevum.--Lucret.

'Tis midnight! Round the lamp which o'er
My chamber sheds its lonely beam,
Is wisely spread the varied lore
Which feeds in youth our feverish dream

The dream--the thirst--the wild desire,
Delirious yet divine-to know;
Around to roam--above aspire
And drink the breath of Heaven below!

From Ocean-Earth-the Stars-the Sky
To lift mysterious Nature's pall;
And bare before the kindling eye
In MAN the darkest mist of all--

Alas! what boots the midnight oil?
The madness of the struggling mind?
Oh, vague the hope, and vain the toil,
Which only leave us doubly blind!

What learn we from the Past? the same
Dull course of glory, guilt, and gloom--
I ask'd the Future, and there came
No voice from its unfathom'd womb.

The Sun was silent, and the wave;
The air but answer'd with its breath
But Earth was kind; and from the grave
Arose the eternal answer--Death!

And this was all! We need no sage
To teach us Nature's only truth!
O fools! o'er Wisdom's idle page
To waste the hours of golden youth!

In Science wildly do we seek
What only withering years should bring
The languid pulse--the feverish cheek
The spirits drooping on their wing!

To think--is but to learn to groan
To scorn what all beside adore
To feel amid the world alone,
An alien on a desert shore;

To lose the only ties which seem
To idler gaze in mercy given!
To find love, faith, and hope, a dream,
And turn to dark despair from heaven!

I pass on to a wilder period of my history. The passion, as yet only
revealed by the eye, was now to be recorded by the lip; and the scene
which witnessed the first confession of the lovers was worthy of the last
conclusion of their loves!

E------ was about twelve miles from a celebrated cliff on the seashore,
and Lady Margaret had long proposed an excursion to a spot, curious alike
for its natural scenery and the legends attached to it. A day was at
length fixed for accomplishing this plan. Falkland was of the party. In
searching for something in the pockets of the carriage, his hand met
Emily's, and involuntarily pressed it. She withdrew it hastily, but he
felt it tremble. He did not dare to look up: that single contact had
given him a new life: intoxicated with the most delicious sensations, he
leaned back in silence. A fever had entered his veins--the thrill of the
touch had gone like fire into his system--all his frame seemed one nerve.

Lady Margaret talked of the weather and the prospect, wondered how far
they had got, and animadverted on the roads, till at last, like a child,
she talked herself to rest. Mrs. Dalton read "Guy Mannering;" but
neither Emily nor her lover had any occupation or thought in common with
their companions: silent and absorbed, they were only alive to the vivid
existence of the present. Constantly engaged, as we are, in looking
behind us or before, if there be one hour in which we feel only the time
being--in which we feel sensibly that we live, and that those moments of
the present are full of the enjoyment, the rapture of existence--it is
when we are with the one person whose life and spirits have become the
great part and principle of our own. They reached their destination--a
small inn close by the shore. They rested there a short time, and then
strolled along the sands towards the cliff. Since Falkland had known
Emily, her character was much altered. Six weeks before the time I write
of, and in playfulness and lightness of spirits she was almost a child:
now those indications of an unawakened heart had mellowed into a
tenderness full of that melancholy so touching and holy, even amid the
voluptuous softness which it breathes and inspires. But this day,
whether from that coquetry so common to all women, or from some cause
more natural to her, she seemed gayer than Falkland ever remembered to
have seen her. She ran over the sands, picking up shells, and tempting
the waves with her small and fairy feet, not daring to look at him, and
yet speaking to him at times with a quick tone of levity which hurt and
offended him, even though he knew the depth of those feelings she could
not disguise either from him or from herself. By degrees his answers and
remarks grew cold and sarcastic. Emily affected pique; and when it was
discovered that the cliff was still nearly two miles off, she refused to
proceed any farther. Lady Margaret talked her at last into consent, and
they walked on as sullenly as an English party of pleasure possibly could
do, till they were within three quarters of a mile of the place, when
Emily declared she was so tired that she really could not go on.
Falkland looked at her, perhaps, with no very amiable expression of
countenance, when he perceived that she seemed really pale and fatigued;
and when she caught his eyes, tears rushed into her own.

"Indeed, indeed, Mr. Falkland," she said, eagerly, "this is not
affectation. I am very tired; but rather than prevent your amusement,
I will endeavour to go on." "Nonsense, child," said Lady Margaret, "you
do seem tired. Mrs. Dalton and Falkland shall go to the rock, and I will
stay here with you." This proposition, however, Lady Emily (who knew
Lady Margaret's wish to see the rock) would not hear of; she insisted
upon staying by herself. "Nobody will run away with me; and I can very
easily amuse myself with picking up shells till you comeback." After
along remonstrance, which produced no effect, this plan was at last
acceded to. With great reluctance Falkland set off with his two
companions; but after the first step, he turned to look back. He caught
her eye, and felt from that moment that their reconciliation was sealed.
They arrived, at last, at the cliff. Its height, its excavations, the
romantic interest which the traditions respecting it had inspired, fully
repaid the two women for the fatigue of their walk. As for Falkland, he
was unconscious of everything around him; he was full of "sweet and
bitter thoughts." In vain the man whom they found loitering there, in
order to serve as a guide, kept dinning in his ear stories of the
marvellous, and exclamations of the sublime. The first words which
aroused him were these; "It's lucky, please your Honour, that you have
just saved the tide. It is but last week that three poor people were
drowned in attempting to come here; as it is, you will have to go home
round the cliff." Falkland started: he felt his heart stand still.
"Good God!" cried Lady Margaret, "what will become of Emily?"

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