Book: Falkland, Book 3.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Falkland, Book 3.

Pages:
1 | 2

This eBook was produced by David Widger

FALKLAND

By Edward Bulwer-Lytton

BOOK III.

EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE.

Friday.--Julia is here, and so kind! She has not mentioned his name, but
she sighed so deeply when she saw my pale and sunken countenance, that I
threw myself into her arms and cried like a child. We had no need of
other explanation: those tears spoke at once my confession and my
repentance. No letter from him for several days! Surely he is not ill!
how miserable that thought makes me!

Saturday.--A note has just been brought me from him. He is come
back-here! Good heavens! how very imprudent! I am so agitated that I
can write no more.

Sunday.--I have seen him! Let me repeat that sentence--I have seen him.
Oh that moment! did it not atone for all that I have suffered? I dare
not write everything he said, but he wished me to fly with him--him--what
happiness, yet what guilt, in the very thought! Oh! this foolish heart
--would that it might break! I feel too well the sophistry of his
arguments, and yet I cannot resist them. He seems to have thrown a spell
over me, which precludes even the effort to escape.

Monday.--Mr. Mandeville has asked several people in the country to dine
here to-morrow, and there is to be a ball in the evening. Falkland is of
course invited. We shall meet then, and how? I have been so little
accustomed to disguise my feelings, that I quite tremble to meet him with
so many witnesses around. Mr. Mandeville has been so harsh to me to-day;
if Falkland ever looked at me so, or ever said one such word, my heart
would indeed break. What is it Alfieri says about the two demons to whom
he is for ever a prey? "_La mente e il cor in perpetua lite_." Alas!
at times I start from my reveries with such a keen sense of agony and
shame! How, how am I fallen!

Tuesday.--He is to come here to-day and I shall see him!

Wednesday morning.--The night is over, thank Heaven! Falkland came late
to dinner: every one else was assembled. How gracefully he entered! how
superior he seemed to all the crowd that stood around him! He appeared
as if he were resolved to exert powers which he had disdained before. He
entered into the conversation, not only with such brilliancy, but with
such a blandness and courtesy of manner! There was no scorn on his lip,
no haughtiness on his forehead--nothing which showed him for a moment
conscious of his immeasurable superiority over every one present. After
dinner, as we retired, I caught his eyes. What volumes they told! and
then I had to listen to his praises, and say nothing. I felt angry even
in my pleasure. Who but I had a right to speak of him so well!

The ball came on: I felt languid and dispirited. Falkland did not dance.
He sat: himself by me--he urged me to--O God! O God! would that I were
dead!

FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE.

How are you this morning, my adored friend? You seemed pale and ill when
we parted last night, and I shall be so unhappy till I hear something of
you. Oh, Emily, when you listened to me with those tearful and downcast
looks; when I saw your bosom heave at every word which I whispered in
your ear; when, as I accidentally touched your hand, I felt it tremble
beneath my own; oh! was there nothing in those moments at your heart
which pleaded for me more eloquently than words? Pure and holy as you
are, you know not, it is true, the feelings which burn and madden in me.
When you are beside me, your hand, if it trembles, is not on fire, your
voice, if it is more subdued, does not falter with the emotions it dares
not express: your heart is not like mine, devoured by a parching and
wasting flame: your sleep is not turned by restless and turbulent dreams
from the healthful renewal, into the very consumer, of life. No, Emily!
God forbid that you should feel the guilt, the agony which preys upon me;
but, at least, in the fond and gentle tenderness of your heart, there
must be a voice you find it difficult to silence. Amidst all the
fictitious ties and fascinations of art, you cannot dismiss from your
bosom the unconquerable impulse of nature. What is it you fear?--you
will answer, disgrace! But can you feel it, Emily, when you share it
with me? Believe me that the love which is nursed through shame and
sorrow is of a deeper and holier nature than that which is reared in
pride, fostered in joy. But, if not shame, it is guilt, perhaps, which
you dread? Are you then so innocent now? The adultery of the heart is
no less a crime than that of the deed; and--yet I will not deceive you--
it is guilt to which I tempt you!--it is a fall from the proud eminence
you hold now. I grant this, and I offer you nothing in recompense but my
love. If you loved like me, you would feel that it was something of
pride--of triumph--to dare all things, even crime, for the one to whom
all things are as nought! As for me, I know that if a voice from Heaven
told me to desert you, I would only clasp you the closer to my heart!

I tell you, my own love, that when your hand is in mine, when your head
rests upon my bosom, when those soft and thrilling eyes shall be fixed
upon my own, when every sigh shall be mingled with my breath, and every
tear be kissed away at the very instant it rises from its source--I tell
you that then you shall only feel that every pang of the past, and every
fear for the future, shall be but a new link to bind us the firmer to
each other. Emily, my life, my love, you cannot, if you would, desert
me. Who can separate the waters which are once united, or divide the
hearts which have met and mingled into one?

Since they had once more met, it will be perceived that Falkland had
adopted a new tone in expressing his passion to Emily. In the book of
guilt another page, branded in a deeper and more burning character, had
been turned. He lost no opportunity of summoning the earthlier emotions
to the support of his cause. He wooed her fancy with the golden language
of poetry, and strove to arouse the latent feelings of her sex by the
soft magic of his voice, and the passionate meaning it conveyed. But at
times there came over him a deep and keen sentiment of remorse; and even,
as his experienced and practised eye saw the moment of his triumph
approach, he felt that the success he was hazarding his own soul and hers
to obtain, might bring him a momentary transport, but not a permanent
happiness. There is always this difference in the love of women and of
men; that in the former, when once admitted, it engrosses all the sources
of thought, and excludes every object but itself; but in the latter, it
is shared with all the former reflections and feelings which the past yet
bequeaths us, and can neither (however powerful be its nature) constitute
the whole of our happiness or woe. The love of man in his maturer years
is not indeed so much a new emotion, as a revival and concentration of
all his departed affections to others; and the deep and intense nature of
Falkland's passion for Emily was linked with the recollections of
whatever he had formerly cherished as tender or dear; it touched--
it awoke a long chain of young and enthusiastic feelings, which arose,
perhaps, the fresher from their slumber. Who, when he turns to recall
his first and fondest associations; when he throws off, one by one, the
layers of earth and stone which have grown and hardened over the records
of the past: who has not been surprised to discover how fresh and
unimpaired those buried treasures rise again upon his heart? They have
been laid up in the storehouse of Time; they have not perished; their
very concealment has preserved them! _We remove the lava, and the world
of a gone day is before us_!

The evening of the day on which Falkland had written the above letter was
rude and stormy. The various streams with which the country abounded
were swelled by late rains into an unwonted rapidity and breadth; and
their voices blended with the rushing sound of the winds, and the distant
roll of the thunder, which began at last sullenly to subside. The whole
of the scene around L------ was of that savage yet sublime character,
which suited well with the wrath of the aroused elements. Dark woods,
large tracts of unenclosed heath, abrupt variations of hill and vale, and
a dim and broken outline beyond of uninterrupted mountains, formed the
great features of that romantic country.

It was filled with the recollections of his youth, and of the wild
delight which he took then in the convulsions and varieties of nature,
that Falkland roamed abroad that evening. The dim shadows of years,
crowded with concealed events and corroding reflections, all gathered
around his mind, and the gloom and tempest of the night came over him
like the sympathy of a friend.

He passed a group of terrified peasants; they were cowering under a tree.
The oldest hid his head and shuddered; but the youngest looked steadily
at the lightning which played at fitful intervals over the mountain
stream that rushed rapidly by their feet. Falkland stood beside them
unnoticed and silent, with folded arms and a scornful lip. To him,
nature, heaven, earth had nothing for fear, and everything for
reflection. In youth, thought he (as he contrasted the fear felt at one
period of life with the indifference at another), there are so many
objects to divide and distract life, that we are scarcely sensible of the
collected conviction that we live. We lose the sense of what is by
thinking rather of what is to be. But the old, who have no future to
expect, are more vividly alive to the present, and they feel death more,
because they have a more settled and perfect impression of existence.

He left the group, and went on alone by the margin of the winding and
swelling stream. "It is (said a certain philosopher) in the conflicts of
Nature that man most feels his littleness." Like all general maxims,
this is only partially true. The mind, which takes its first ideas from
perception, must take also its tone from the character of the objects
perceived. In mingling our spirits with the great elements, we partake
of their sublimity; we awaken thought from the secret depths where it had
lain concealed; our feelings are too excited to remain riveted to
ourselves; they blend with the mighty powers which are abroad; and as, in
the agitations of men, the individual arouses from himself to become a
part of the crowd, so in the convulsions of nature we are equally
awakened from the littleness of self, to be lost in the grandeur of the
conflict by which we are surrounded.

Falkland still continued to track the stream: it wound its way through
Mandeville's grounds, and broadened at last into the lake which was so
consecrated to his recollections. He paused at that spot for some
moments, looking carelessly over the wide expanse of waters, now dark as
night, and now flashing into one mighty plain of fire beneath the
coruscations of the lightning. The clouds swept on in massy columns,
dark and aspiring-veiling, while they rolled up to, the great heavens,
like the shadows of human doubt. Oh! weak, weak was that dogma of the
philosopher! There is a pride in the storm which, according to his
doctrine, would debase us; a stirring music in its roar; even a savage
joy in its destruction: for we can exult in a defiance of its power, even
while we share in its triumphs, in a consciousness of a superior spirit
within us to that which is around. We can mock at the fury of the
elements, for they are less terrible than the passions of the heart; at
the devastations of the awful skies, for they are less desolating than
the wrath of man; at the convulsions of that surrounding nature which has
no peril, no terror to the soul, which is more indestructible and eternal
than itself. Falkland turned towards the house which contained his
world; and as the lightning revealed at intervals the white columns of
the porch, and wrapt in sheets of fire, like a spectral throng, the tall
and waving trees by which it was encircled, and then as suddenly ceased,
and "the jaws of darkness" devoured up the scene; he compared, with that
bitter alchymy of feeling which resolves all into one crucible of
thought, those alternations of sight and shadow to the history of his own
guilty love--that passion whose birth was the womb of Night; shrouded in
darkness, surrounded by storms, and receiving only from the angry heavens
a momentary brilliance, more terrible than its customary gloom.

As he entered the saloon, Lady Margaret advanced towards him. "My dear
Falkland," said she, "how good it is in you to come in such a night. We
have been watching the skies till Emily grew terrified at the lightning;
formerly it did not alarm her." And Lady Margaret turned, utterly
unconscious of the reproach she had conveyed, towards Emily.

Did not Falkland's look turn also to that spot? Lady Emily was sitting
by the harp which Mrs. St. John appeared to be most seriously employed
in tuning: her countenance was bent downwards, and burning beneath the
blushes called forth by the gaze which she felt was upon her.

There was in Falkland's character a peculiar dislike to all outward
display of less worldly emotions. He had none of the vanity most men
have in conquest; he would not have had any human being know that he was
loved. He was right! No altar should be so unseen and inviolable as the
human heart! He saw at once and relieved the embarrassment he had
caused. With the remarkable fascination and grace of manner so
peculiarly his own, he made his excuses to Lady Margaret of his
disordered dress; he charmed his uncle, Don Alphonso, with a quotation
from Lope de Vega; he inquired tenderly of Mrs. Dalton touching the
health of her Italian greyhound; and then, nor till then--he ventured to
approach Emily, and speak to her in that soft tone, which, like a fairy
language, is understood only by the person it addresses. Mrs. St. John
rose and left the harp; Falkland took her seat. He bent down to whisper
Emily. His long hair touched her cheek! it was still wet with the night
dew. She looked up as she felt it, and met his gaze: better had it been
to have lost earth than to have drunk the soul's poison from that eye
when it tempted to sin.

Mrs. St. John stood at some distance: Don Alphonso was speaking to her
of his nephew, and of his hopes of ultimately gaining him to the cause
of his mother's country. "See you not," said Mrs. St. John, and her
colour went and came, "that while he has such attractions to detain him,
your hopes are in vain?" "What mean you?" replied the Spaniard; but his
eye had followed the direction she had given it, and the question came
only from his lips. Mrs. St. John drew him to a still remoter corner of
the room, and it was in the conversation that then ensued between them,
that they agreed to unite for the purpose of separating Emily from her
lover--"I to save my friend," said Mrs. St. John, "and you your kinsman."
Thus is it with human virtue:--the fair show and the good deed
without--the one eternal motive of selfishness within. During the
Spaniard's visit at E------, he had seen enough of Falkland to perceive
the great consequence he might, from his perfect knowledge of the Spanish
language, from his singular powers, and, above all, from his command of
wealth, be to the cause of that party he himself had adopted. His aim,
therefore, was now no longer confined to procuring Falkland's goodwill
and aim at home: he hoped to secure his personal assistance in Spain: and
he willingly coincided with Mrs. St. John in detaching his nephew from a
tie so likely to detain him from that service to which Alphonso wished he
should be pledged.

Mandeville had left E------ that morning: he suspected nothing of Emily's
attachment. This, on his part, was Bulwer, less confidence than
indifference. He was one of those persons who have no existence separate
from their own: his senses all turned inwards; they reproduced
selfishness. Even the House of Commons was only an object of interest,
because he imagined it a part of him, not he of it. He said, with the
insect on the wheel, "Admire our rapidity." But did the defects of his
character remove Lady Emily's guilt? No! and this, at times, was her
bitterest conviction. Whoever turns to these pages for an apology for
sin will be mistaken. They contain the burning records of its
sufferings, its repentance, and its doom. If there be one crime in
the history of woman worse than another, it is adultery. It is, in fact,
the only crime to which, in ordinary life, she is exposed. Man has a
thousand temptations to sin--woman has but one; if she cannot resist it,
she has no claim upon our mercy. The heavens are just! Her own guilt is
her punishment! Should these pages, at this moment, meet the eyes of one
who has become the centre of a circle of disgrace--the contaminator of
her house--the dishonour of her children,--no matter what the excuse for
her crime--no matter what the exchange of her station--in the very arms
of her lover, in the very cincture of the new ties which she has chosen
--I call upon her to answer me if the fondest moments of rapture are free
from humiliation, though they have forgotten remorse; and if the passion
itself of her lover has not become no less the penalty than the
recompense of her guilt? But at that hour of which I now write, there
was neither in Emily's heart, nor in that of her seducer, any
recollection of their sin. Those hearts were too full for thought--they
had forgotten everything but each other. Their love was their creation:
beyond all was night--chaos--nothing!

Lady Margaret approached them. "You will sing to us, Emily, to-night?
it is so long since we have heard you!" It was in vain that Emily tried
--her voice failed. She looked at Falkland, and could scarcely restrain
her tears. She had not yet learned the latest art which sin teaches
us-its concealment! "I will supply Lady Emily's place," said Falkland.
His voice was calm, and his brow serene the world had left nothing for
him to learn. "Will you play the air," he said to Mrs. St. John, "that
you gave us some nights ago? I will furnish the words." Mrs. St. John's
hand trembled as she obeyed.

SONG.

1.
Ah, let us love while yet we may,
Our summer is decaying;
And woe to hearts which, in their gray
December, go a-maying.

2.
Ah, let us love, while of the fire
Time hath not yet bereft us
With years our warmer thoughts expire,
Till only ice is left us!

3.
We'll fly the bleak world's bitter air
A brighter home shall win us;
And if our hearts grow weary there,
We'll find a world within us.

4.
They preach that passion fades each hour,
That nought will pall like pleasure;
My bee, if Love's so frail a flower,
Oh, haste to hive its treasure.

5.
Wait not the hour, when all the mind
Shall to the crowd be given;
For links, which to the million bind,
Shall from the one be riven.

6.
But let us love while yet we may
Our summer is decaying;
And woe to hearts which, in their gray
December, go a-maying.

The next day Emily rose ill and feverish. In the absence of Falkland,
her mind always awoke to the full sense of the guilt she had incurred.
She had been brought up in the strictest, even the most fastidious,
principles; and her nature was so pure, that merely to err appeared like
a change in existence--like an entrance into some new and unknown world,
from which she shrank back, in terror, to herself.

Judge, then, if she easily habituated her mind to its present
degradation. She sat, that morning, pale and listless; her book lay
unopened before her; her eyes were fixed upon the ground, heavy with
suppressed tears. Mrs. St. John entered: no one else was in the room.
She sat by her, and took her hand. Her countenance was scarcely less
colourless than Emily's, but its expression was more calm and composed.
"It is not too late, Emily," she said; "you have done much that you
should repent--nothing to render repentance unavailing. Forgive me, if I
speak to you on this subject. It is time--in a few days your fate will
be decided. I have looked on, though hitherto I have been silent: I have
witnessed that eye when it dwelt upon you; I have heard that voice when
it spoke to your heart. None ever resisted their influence long: do you
imagine that you are the first who have found the power? Pardon me,
pardon me, I beseech you, my dearest friend, if I pain you. I have known
you from your childhood, and I only wish to preserve you spotless to your
old age."

Emily wept, without replying. Mrs. St. John continued to argue and
expostulate. What is so wavering as passion? When, at last, Mrs. St.
John ceased, and Emily shed upon her bosom the hot tears of her anguish
and repentance, she imagined that her resolution was taken, and that she
could almost have vowed an eternal separation from her lover; Falkland
came that evening, and she loved him more madly than before.

Mrs. St. John was not in the saloon when Falkland entered. Lady Margaret
was reading the well-known story of Lady T----- and the Duchess of ---,
in which an agreement had been made and kept, that the one who died first
should return once more to the survivor. As Lady Margaret spoke
laughingly of the anecdote, Emily, who was watching Falkland's
countenance, was struck with the dark and sudden shade which fell over
it. He moved in silence towards the window where Emily was sitting. "Do
you believe," she said, with a faint smile, "in the possibility of such
an event?" "I believe--though I reject--nothing!" replied Falkland, "but
I would give worlds for such a proof that death does not destroy."
"Surely," said Emily, "you do not deny that evidence of our immortality
which we gather from the Scriptures?--are they not all that a voice from
the dead could be?" Falkland was silent for a few moments: he did not
seem to hear the question; his eyes dwelt upon vacancy; and when he at
last spoke, it was rather in commune with himself than in answer to her.
"I have watched," said he, in a low internal tone, "over the tomb: I have
called, in the agony of my heart, unto her--who slept beneath; I would
have dissolved my very soul into a spell, could it have summoned before
me for one, one moment the being who had once been the spirit of my life!
I have been, as it were, entranced with the intensity of my own
adjuration; I have gazed upon the empty air, and worked upon my mind to
fill it with imaginings; I have called aloud unto the winds and tasked my
soul to waken their silence to reply. All was a waste--a stillness--an
infinity--without a wanderer or a voice! The dead answered me not, when
I invoked them; and in the vigils of the still night I looked from the
rank grass and the mouldering stones to the Eternal Heavens, as man looks
from decay to immortality! Oh! that awful magnificence of repose--that
living sleep--that breathing yet unrevealing divinity, spread over those
still worlds! To them also I poured my thoughts--but in a whisper. I
did not dare to breathe aloud the unhallowed anguish of my mind to the
majesty of the unsympathising stars! In the vast order of creation--in
the midst of the stupendous system of universal life, my doubt and
inquiry were murmured forth--a voice crying in the wilderness and
returning without an echo unanswered unto myself!"

The deep light of the summer moon shone over Falkland's countenance,
which Emily gazed on, as she listened, almost tremblingly, to his words.
His brow was knit and hueless, and the large drops gathered slowly over
it, as if wrung from the strained yet impotent tension of the thoughts
within. Emily drew nearer to him--she laid her hand upon his own.
"Listen to me," she said: "if a herald from the grave could satisfy your
doubt, I would gladly die that I might return to you!" "Beware," said
Falkland, with an agitated but solemn voice; "the words, now so lightly
spoken, may be registered on high." "Be it so!" replied Emily firmly,
and she felt what she said. Her love penetrated beyond the tomb, and she
would have forfeited all here for their union hereafter.

"In my earliest youth," said Falkland, more calmly than he had yet
spoken, "I found in the present and the past of this world enough to
direct my attention to the futurity of another: if I did not credit all
with the enthusiast, I had no sympathies with the scorner: I sat myself
down to examine and reflect: I pored alike over the pages of the
philosopher and the theologian; I was neither baffled by the subtleties
nor deterred by the contradictions of either. As men first ascertained
the geography of the earth by observing the signs of the heavens, I did
homage to the Unknown God, and sought from that worship to inquire into
the reasonings of mankind. I did not confine myself to books--all things
breathing or inanimate constituted my study. From death itself I
endeavoured to extract its secret; and whole nights I have sat in the
crowded asylums of the dying, watching the last spark flutter and decay.
Men die away as in sleep, without effort, or struggle, or emotion. I
have looked on their countenances a moment before death, and the serenity
of repose was upon them, waxing only more deep as it approached that
slumber which, is never broken: the breath grew gentler and gentler, till
the lips it came from fell from each other, and all was hushed; the light
had departed from the cloud, but the cloud itself, gray, cold, altered as
it seemed, was as before. They died and made no sign. They had left the
labyrinth without bequeathing us its clew. It is in vain that I have
sent my spirit into the land of shadows--it has borne back no witnesses
of its inquiry. As Newton said of himself, 'I picked up a few shells by
the seashore, but the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me.'"

Pages:
1 | 2