Book: Godolphin, Volume 4.
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Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Godolphin, Volume 4.
The social relations of the sex often make men villanous--they more often
make them weak.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
AN EVENING WITH CONSTANCE.
Constances's heart was in her eyes when she saw Godolphin that evening.
She had, it is true, as Saville observed, been compelled by common
courtesy to invite him; and although there was an embarrassment in their
meeting, who shall imagine that it did not bring to Constance more of
pleasure than pain? She had been deeply shocked by Lord Erpingham's
sudden death: they had not been congenial minds, but the great have an
advantage denied to the less wealthy orders. Among the former, a husband
and wife need not weary each other with constant companionships; different
establishments, different hours, different pursuits, allow them to pass
life in great measure apart, so that there is no necessity for hatred, and
indifference is the coldest feeling which custom induces.
Still in the prime of youth and at the zenith of her beauty, Constance was
now independent. She was in the enjoyment of the wealth and rank her
early habits of thought had deemed indispensable, and she now for the
first time possessed the power of sharing them with whom she pleased. At
this thought how naturally her heart flew back to Godolphin! And while
she now gazed, although by stealth, at his countenance, as he sat at a
little distance from her, and in his turn watched for the tokens of past
remembrance, she was deeply touched by the change (light as it seemed to
others) which years had brought to him; and in recalling the emotion he
had testified at meeting her, she suffered her heart to soften, while it
reproached her in whispering, "Thou art the cause!"--All the fire--the
ardour of a character not then confirmed, which, when she last saw him
spoke in his eye and mien, were gone for ever. The irregular brilliancy
of his conversation--the earnestness of his air and gesture were replaced
by a calm, and even, and melancholy composure. His forehead was stamped
with the lines of thought; and the hair, grown thinner toward the temples,
no longer concealed by its luxuriance the pale expanse of his brow. The
air of delicate health which had at first interested her in his
appearance, still lingered, and gave its wonted and ineffable charm to his
low voice, and the gentle expression of his eyes. By degrees, the
conversation, at first partial and scattered, became more general.
Constance and Godolphin were drawn into it.
"It is impossible," said Godolphin, "to compare life in a southern climate
with that which we lead in colder countries. There is an indolence, a
laissez aller, a philosophical insouciance, produced by living under these
warm suns, and apart from the ambition of the objects of our own nation,
which produce at last a state of mind that divides us for ever from our
countrymen. It is like living amidst perpetual music--a different kind of
life--a soft, lazy, voluptuous romance of feeling, that indisposes us to
action--almost to motion. So far from a sojourn in Italy being friendly
to the growth of ambition, it nips and almost destroys the germ."
"In fact, it leaves us fit for nothing but love," said Saville; "an
occupation that levels us with the silliest part of our species."
"Fools cannot love," said Lady Charlotte.
"Pardon me, love and folly are synonymous in more languages than the
French," answered Saville.
"In truth," said Godolphin, "the love which you both allude to is not
worth disputing about."
"What love is?" asked Saville.
"First love," cried Lady Charlotte; "is it not, Mr. Godolphin?"
Godolphin changed color, and his eyes met those of Constance. She too
sighed and looked down: Godolphin remained silent.
"Nay, Mr. Godolphin, answer me," said Lady Charlotte; "I appeal to you!"
"First love, then," said Godolphin, endeavouring to speak composedly, "has
this advantage over others--it is usually disappointed, and regret for
ever keeps it alive."
The tone of his voice struck Constance to the heart. Nor did she speak
again--save with visible effort--during the rest of the evening.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
CONSTANCE'S UNDIMINISHED LOVE FOR GODOLPHIN.--HER REMORSE AND HER
HOPE.--THE CAPITOL.--THE DIFFERENT THOUGHTS OF GODOLPHIN AND CONSTANCE AT
THE VIEW.--THE TENDER EXPRESSIONS OF CONSTANCE.
All that Constance heard from others of Godolphin's life since they
parted, increased her long-nursed interest in his fate. His desultory
habits, his long absences from cities, which were understood to be passed
in utter and obscure solitude (for the partner of the solitude and its
exact spot were not known), she coupled with the quiet melancholy in his
aspect, with his half-reproachful glances toward herself, and with the
emotions which he had given vent to in their conversation. And of this
objectless and unsatisfactory life she was led to consider herself the
cause. With a bitter pang she recalled his early words, when he said, "My
future is in your hands;" and she contrasted his vivid energies--his
cultivated mind--his high talents--with the life which had rendered them
all so idle to others and unprofitable to himself. Few, very few, know
how powerfully the sentiment that another's happiness is at her control
speaks to a woman's heart. Accustomed to dependence herself, the feeling
that another depends on her is the most soothing aliment to her pride.
This makes a main cause of her love to her children; they would be
incomparably less dear to her if they were made independent of her cares.
And years, which had brought the young countess acquainted with the
nothingness of the world, had softened and deepened the sources of her
affections, in proportion as they had checked those of her ambition. She
could not, she did not, seek to disguise from herself that Godolphin yet
loved her; she anticipated the hour when he would avow that love, and when
she might be permitted to atone for all of disappointment that her former
rejection might have brought to him. She felt, too, that it would be a
noble as well as delightful task, to awaken an intellect so brilliant to
the natural objects of its display; to call forth into active life his
teeming thought, and the rich eloquence with which he could convey it.
Nor in this hope were her more selfish designs, her political schemings,
and her desire of sway over those whom she loved to humble, forgotten; but
they made, however,--to be just,--a small part of her meditations. Her
hopes were chiefly of a more generous order. "I refused thee," she
thought, "when I was poor and dependent--now that I have wealth and rank,
how gladly will I yield them to thy bidding!"
But Godolphin, as if unconscious of this favorable bias of her
inclinations, did not warm from his reserve. On the contrary, his first
abstraction, and his first agitation, had both subsided into a distant and
cool self-possession. They met often, but he avoided all nearer or less
general communication. She saw, however, that his eyes were constantly in
search of her, and that a slight trembling in his voice when he addressed
her, belied the calmness of his manner. Sometimes, too, a word, or a
touch from her, would awaken the ill-concealed emotions--his lips seemed
about to own the triumph of her and of the past; but, as if by a violent
effort, they were again sealed; and not unoften, evidently unwilling to
trust his self-command, he would abruptly depart. In short, Constance
perceived that a strange embarrassment, the causes of which she could not
divine, hung about him, and that his conduct was regulated by some secret
motive, which did not spring from the circumstances that had occurred
between them. For it was evident that he was not withheld by any
resentment toward her from her former rejection: even his looks, his
words, had betrayed that he had done more than forgive. Lady Charlotte
Deerham had heard from Saville of their former attachment: she was a woman
of the world, and thought it but common delicacy to give them all occasion
to renew it. She always, therefore, took occasion to retire from the
immediate vicinity of Constance whenever Godolphin approached, and, as if
by accident, to leave them the opportunity to be sufficiently alone. This
was a danger that Godolphin had, however, hitherto avoided. One day fate
counteracted prudence, and a conference ensued which perplexed Constance
and tried severely the resolution of Godolphin.
They went together to the Capitol, from whose height is beheld perhaps the
most imposing landscape in the world. It was a sight pre-eminently
calculated to arouse and inspire the ambitious and working mind of the
young countess.
"Do you think," said she to Godolphin, who stood beside her, that there
lives any one who could behold these countless monuments of eternal glory,
and not sigh to recall the triteness, or rather burn to rise from the
level, of our ordinary life?"
"Nay," said Godolphin, "to you the view may be an inspiration, to others a
warning. The arch and the ruin you survey speak of change yet more
eloquently than glory. Look on the spot where once was the temple of
Romulus:--there stands the little church of an obscure saint. Just below
you is the Tarpeian Rock: we cannot see it; it is hidden from us by a
crowd of miserable houses. Along the ancient plain of the Campus Martins
behold the numberless spires of a new religion, and the palaces of a
modern race! Amidst them you see the triumphal columns of Trajan and
Marcus lntoninus; but whose are the figures that crown their summits? St.
Peter's and St. Paul's! And this awful wilderness of men's labours--this
scene and token of human revolutions--inspires you with a love of glory;
to me it proves its nothingness. An irresistible--a crushing sense of the
littleness and brief life of our most ardent and sagacious achievements
seems to me to float like a voice over the place!"
"And are you still, then," said Constance, with a half sigh, "dead to all
but the enjoyment of the present moment?"
"No," replied Godolphin, in a low and trembling voice: "I am not dead to
the regret of the past!"
Constance blushed deeply; but Godolphin, as if feeling he had committed
himself too far, continued in a hurried tone:--"Let us turn our eyes,"
said he, "yonder among the olive groves. There
'Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,'
were the summer retreats of Rome's brightest and most enduring spirits.
There was the retirement of Horace and Mecaenas: there Brutus forgot his
harsher genius; and there the inscrutable and profound Augustus indulged
in those graceful relaxations-those sacrifices to wit, and poetry, and
wisdom--which have made us do so unwilling and reserved a justice to the
crimes of his earlier and the hypocrisy of his later years. Here, again,
is a reproach to your ambition," added Godolphin, smiling; "his ambition
made Augustus odious; his occasional forgetfulness of ambition alone
redeems him."
"And what, then," said Constance, "would you consider inactivity the
happiest life for one sensible of talents higher than the common
standard?"
"Nay, let those talents be devoted to the discovery of pleasures, not the
search after labours; the higher our talents, the keener our perceptions;
the keener our perceptions the more intense our capacities for
pleasure:[1]--let pleasure then, be our object. Let us find out what is
best fitted to give our peculiar tastes gratification, and, having found
out, steadily pursue it."
"Out on you! it is a selfish, an ignoble system," said Constance. "You
smile--well, I may be unphilosophical, I do not deny it. But, give me one
hour of glory, rather than a life of luxurious indolence. Oh, would,"
added Constance, kindling as she spoke, "that you--you, Mr.
Godolphin,--with an intellect so formed for high accomplishment--with all
the weapons and energies of life at your command,--would that you could
awaken to a more worthy estimate--pardon me--of the uses of exertion!
Surely, surely, you must be sensible of the calls that your country, that
mankind, have at this epoch of the world, upon all--all, especially,
possessing your advantages and powers. Can we pierce one inch beyond the
surface of society, and not see that great events are hastening to their
birth? Will you let those inferior to yourself hurry on before you, and
sit inactive while they win the reward? Will you have no share in the
bright drama that is already prepared behind the dark curtain of fate, and
which will have a world for its spectators? Ah, how rejoiced, how elated
with myself I should feel, if I could will over one like you to the great
cause of honourable exertion!"
For one instant Godolphin's eye sparkled, and his pale cheek burned--but
the transient emotion faded away as he answered--
"Eight years ago, when she who spoke to me was Constance Vernon, her wish
might have moulded me according to her will. Now," and he struggled with
emotion, and turned away his face,--"now it is too late!"
Constance was smitten to the heart. She laid her hand gently on his arm,
and said, in a sweet and soothing tone, "No, Percy, not too late!"
At that instant, and before Godolphin could reply, they were joined by
Saville and Lady Charlotte Deerham.
[1] I suppose Godolphin by the word pleasure rather signifies happiness.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
LUCILLA'S LETTER.--THE EFFECT IT PRODUCES ON GODOLPHIN.
The short conversation recorded in the last chapter could not but show to
Godolphin the dangerous ground on which his fidelity to Lucilla rested.
Never before,--no, not in the young time of their first passion, had
Constance seemed to him so lovely or so worthy of love. Her manners now
were so much more soft and unreserved than they had necessarily been at a
period when Constance had resolved not to listen to his addresses or her
own heart, that the only part of her character that had ever repulsed his
pride or offended his tastes seemed vanished for ever. A more subdued and
gentle spirit had descended on her surpassing beauty, and the change was
of an order that Percy Godolphin could especially appreciate. And the
world, for which he owned reluctantly that she yet lived too much, had,
nevertheless, seemed rather to enlarge and animate the natural nobleness
of her mind, than to fritter it down to the standard of its common
votaries. When she spoke he delighted in, even while he dissented from,
the high and bold views which she conceived. He loved her indignation of
all that was mean and low-her passion for all that was daring and exalted.
Never was he cast down from the height of the imaginative part of his love
by hearing from her lips one petty passion or one sordid desire; much
about her was erroneous, but all was lofty and generous--even in error.
And the years that had divided them had only taught him to feel more
deeply how rare was the order of her character, and how impossible it was
ever to behold her like. All the sentiments, faculties, emotions, which
in his affection for Lucilla had remained dormant, were excited into full
play the moment he was in the presence of Constance. She engrossed no
petty portion--she demanded and obtained the whole empire--of his soul.
And against this empire he had now to contend! Torn as he was by a
thousand conflicting emotions, a letter from Lucilla was suddenly put into
his hands; its contents were as follows:--
LUCILLA'S LETTER.
"Thy last letter, my love, was so short and hurried, that it has not cost
me my usual pains to learn it by heart; nor (shall I tell the truth?) have
I been so eager as I once was to commit all thy words to my memory. Why,
I know not, and will guess not,--but there is something ill thy letters
since we parted that chills me;--they throw back my heart upon itself. I
tear open the seal with so much eagerness--thou wouldst smile if thou
couldst see me, and when I discover how few are the words upon which I am
to live for many days, I feel sick and disappointed, and lay down the
letter. Then I chide myself and say, 'At least these few words will be
kind!'--and I spell them one by one, not to hurry over my only solace.
Alas! before I arrive at the end, I am blinded by my tears; my love for
thee, so bounding and full of life, seems frozen and arrested at every
line. And then I lie down for very weariness, and wish to die. O God, if
the time has come which I have always dreaded--if thou shouldst no longer
love me!--And how reasonable this fear is! For what am I to thee? How
often dost thou complain that I can understand thee not--how often dost
thou imply that there is much of thy nature which I am incapable--
unworthy--to learn! If this be so, how natural is it to dread that thou
wilt find others whom thou wilt fancy more congenial to thee, and that
absence will only remind thee more of my imperfections!
"And yet I think that I have read thee to the letter; I think that my
love, which is always following thee, always watching thee, always
conjecturing thy wishes, must have penetrated into every secret of thy
heart: only I want words to express what I feel, and thou layest the blame
upon the want of feeling! I know how untutored, how ignorant, I must seem
to thee; and sometimes--and lately very often--I reproach myself that I
have not more diligently sought to make myself a worthier companion to
thee. I think if I had the same means as others; I should acquire the
same facility of expressing my thoughts; and my thoughts thou couldst
never blame, for I know that they are full of a love to thee
which--no--not the wisest--the most brilliant--whom thou mayest see could
equal even in imagination. But I have sought to mend this deficiency
since we parted; and I have looked into all the books thou hast loved to
read, and I fancy that I have imbibed now the same ideas which pleased
thee, and in which once thou imaginedst I could not sympathise. Yet how
mistaken thou hast been! I see, by marks thou hast placed on the page,
the sentiments that more especially charm thee; and I know that I have
felt them much, oh! how much more deeply and vividly than they are there
expressed--only they seem to me to have no language--methinks that I have
learned the language now. And I have taught myself songs that thou wilt
love to hear when thou returnest home to me; and I have practised music,
and I think--nay, I am sure, that time will not pass so heavily with thee
as when thou wast last here.
"And when shall I see thee again?--forgive me if I press thee to return.
Thou hast stayed away longer than thou hast been wont; but that I would
not heed; it is not the number of days, but the sensations with which I
have counted them, that make me pine for thy beloved voice, and long once
more to behold thee. Never before did I so feel thy absence, never before
was I so utterly wretched. A secret voice whispers me that we are parted
for ever. I cannot withstand the omens of my own heart. When my poor
father lived, I did not, child as I was, partake of those sentiments with
which he was wont to say the stars inspired us. I could not see in them
the boders of fear and the preachers of sad tidings; they seemed to me
only full of serenity and tenderness, and the promise of enduring love!
And ever when I looked on them, I thought of thee; and thy image to me
then, as thou knowest it was from childhood, was bright with unimaginable
but never melancholy spells. But now, although I love thee so far more
powerfully, I cannot divest the thoughts of thee from a certain sadness;
and so the stars, which are like thee, which are full of thee, have a
sadness also! And this, the bed, where every morning I stretch my arms
for thee, and find thee not, and have yet to live through the day, and on
which I now write this letter to thee--for, I who used to rise with the
sun, am now too dispirited not to endeavour to cheat the weary day--I have
made them place nearer to the window; and I look out upon the still skies
every night, and have made a friend of every star I see. I question it of
thyself, and wonder, when thou lookest at it, if thou hast any thought of
me. I love to look upon the heavens much more than upon the earth; for
the trees, and the waters and the hills around, thou canst not behold; but
the same heaven which I survey is above thee also; and this, our common
companion, seems in some measure to unite us. And I have thought over my
father's lore, and have tried to learn it; Day, thou mayest smile, but it
is thy absence that has taught me superstition.
"But tell me, dearest, kindest, tell me when--oh, when wilt then return?
Return only this once--if but for a day, and I will never persecute thee
again. Truant as thou art, thou shalt have full liberty for life. But I
cannot tell thee how sad and heavy I am grown, and every hour knocks at my
heart like a knell! Come back to thy poor Lucilla--if only to see what
joy is! Come--I know thou wilt! But should anything I do not foresee
detain thee, fix at least the day--nay, if possible, the hour--when we
shall meet, and let the letter which conveys such happy tidings be long,
and kind, and full of thee, as thy letters once were. I know I weary
thee, but I cannot help it. I am weak, and dejected, and cast down, and
have only heart enough to pray for thy return."
"You have conquered--you have conquered, Lucilla!" said Godolphin, as he
kissed this wild and reproachful letter, and thrust it into his bosom;
"and I--I will be wretched rather than you shall be so!"
His heart rebuked him even for that last sentence. This pure and devoted
attachment, was it indeed an unhappiness to obtain, and a sacrifice to
return! Stung by his thoughts, and impatient of rest, he hurried into the
air;--he traversed the city; he passed St. Sebastian's Gate, gained the
Appia Via, and saw, lone and sombre, as of old--the house of the departed
Volktman. He had half unconsciously sought that direction, in order to
strengthen his purpose, and sustain his conscience in its right path. He
now hurried onwards, and stopped not till he stood in that lovely and
haunted spot--the valley of Egeria--in which he had met Lucilla on the day
that he first learned her love. There was a gloom over the scene now, for
the day was dark and clouded: the birds were silent; a heavy oppression
seemed to brood upon the air. He entered that grotto which is the witness
of the most beautiful love-story chronicled even in the soft south. He
recalled the passionate and burning emotions which, the last time he had
been within that cell, he had felt for Lucilla, and had construed
erroneously into real love. As he looked around, how different an aspect
the spot wore! Then, those walls, that spring, even that mutilated
statue, had seemed to him the encouragers of the soft sensations he had
indulged. Now, they appeared to reprove the very weakness which hallowed
themselves--the associations spoke to him in another tone. The broken
statue of the river god--the desert silence in which the water of the
sweet fountain keeps its melancholy course--the profound and chilling
Solitude of the spot--all seemed eloquent, not of love, but the broken
hope and the dreary loneliness that succeed it! The gentle plant (the
capillaire) that overhangs the sides of the grotto, and nourishes itself
on the dews of the fountain, seemed an emblem of love itself after
disappointment--the love that might henceforth be Lucilla's--drooping in
silence on the spot once consecrated to rapture, and feeding itself with
tears. There was something mocking to human passion in the very antiquity
of the spot; four-and-twenty centuries had passed away since the origin of
the tale that made it holy--and that tale, too, was fable! What, in this
vast accumulation of the sands of time, was a solitary atom! What, among
the millions, the myriads, that around that desolate spot had loved, and
forgotten love, was the brief passion of one mortal, withering as it
sprung! Thus differently moralises the heart, according to the passion
which bestows on it the text.
Before he regained his home, Godolphin's resolve was taken. The next day
he had promised Constance to attend her to Tivoli; he resolved then to
take leave of her, and on the following day to return to Lucilla. He
remembered, with bitter reproach, that he had not written to her for a
length of time, treble the accustomed interval between his letters; and
felt that, while at the moment she had written the lines he had now
pressed to his bosom, she was expecting, with unutterable fondness and
anxiety, to receive his lukewarm assurances of continued love, the letter
he was about to write in answer to hers was the first one that would greet
her eyes. But he resolved, that in that letter, at least, she should not
be disappointed. He wrote at length, and with all the outpourings of a
tenderness reawakened by remorse. He informed her of his immediate
return, and even forced himself to dwell upon it with kindly hypocrisy of
transport. For the first time for several weeks, he felt satisfied with
himself as he sealed his letter. It is doubtful whether that letter
Lucilla ever received.