For one instant G.o.dolphin"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 G.o.dolphin could reply, they were joined by Saville and Lady Charlotte Deerham.
(1) I suppose G.o.dolphin by the word pleasure rather signifies happiness.
CHAPTER x.x.xIX.
LUCILLA"S LETTER.--THE EFFECT IT PRODUCES ON G.o.dOLPHIN.
The short conversation recorded in the last chapter could not but show to G.o.dolphin the dangerous ground on which his fidelity to Lucilla rested. Never before,--no, not in the young time of their first pa.s.sion, 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 surpa.s.sing beauty, and the change was of an order that Percy G.o.dolphin 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 n.o.bleness 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion 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 G.o.d, 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 pa.s.s 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 superst.i.tion.
"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 G.o.dolphin, 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sionate 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 a.s.sociations spoke to him in another tone. The broken statue of the river G.o.d--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 pa.s.sion in the very antiquity of the spot; four-and-twenty centuries had pa.s.sed away since the origin of the tale that made it holy--and that tale, too, was fable! What, in this vast acc.u.mulation 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 pa.s.sion of one mortal, withering as it sprung! Thus differently moralises the heart, according to the pa.s.sion which bestows on it the text.
Before he regained his home, G.o.dolphin"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 a.s.surances 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.
CHAPTER XL.
TIVOLI.--THE SIREN"S CAVE.--THE CONFESSION.
Along the deathly Campagna, a weary and desolate length of way,--through a mean and squalid row of houses--you thread your course; and behold--Tivoli bursts upon you!
"Look--look!" cried Constance, with enthusiasm, as she pointed to the rushing torrent that, through matted trees and cragged precipices, thundered on.
Astonished at the silence of G.o.dolphin, whom scenery was usually so wont to kindle and inspire, she turned hastily round, and her whole tide of feeling was revulsed by the absorbed but intense dejection written on his countenance. "Why," said she, after a short pause, and affecting a playful smile, "why, how provoking is this! In general, not a common patch of green with an old tree in the centre, not a common rivulet with a willow hanging over it, escapes you. You insist upon our sharing your raptures--you dilate on the picturesque--you rise into eloquence; nay, you persuade us into your enthusiasm, or you quarrel with us for our coldness; and now, with this divinest of earthly scenes around us,--when even Lady Charlotte is excited, and Mr. Saville forgets himself, you are stricken into silence and apathy! The reason--if it be not too abstruse?"
"It is here!" said G.o.dolphin, mournfully, and pressing his hand to his heart.
Constance turned aside; she indulged herself with the hope that he alluded to former scenes, and despaired of the future from their remembrance. She connected his melancholy with herself, and knew that, when referred to her, she could dispel it. Inspired by this idea, and exhilarated by the beauty of the morning, and the wonderful magnificence of nature, she indulged her spirits to overflowing. And as her brilliant mind lighted up every subject it touched, now glowing over description, now flashing into remark, G.o.dolphin at one time forgot, and at another more keenly felt, the magnitude of the sacrifice he was about to make.
But every one knows that feeling which, when we are unhappy, illumines (if I may so speak) our outward seeming from the fierceness of our inward despair,--that recklessness which is the intoxication of our grief.
By degrees G.o.dolphin broke from his reserve. He seemed to catch the enthusiasm of Constance; he echoed back--he led into new and more dazzling directions--the delighted remarks of his beautiful companion.
His mind, if not profoundly learned, at least irregularly rich, in the treasures of old times, called up a spirit from every object. The waterfall, the ruin, the hollow cave--the steep bank crested with the olive--the airy temple, the dark pomp of the cypress grove, and the roar of the headlong Anio,--all he touched with the magic of the past--clad with the glories of history and of legend--and decked ever and anon with the flowers of the eternal Poesy that yet walks, mourning for her children, amongst the vines and waterfalls of the ancient Tibur.
And Constance, as she listened to him, entranced, until she herself unconsciously grew silent, indulged without reserve in that, the proudest luxury of love--pride in the beloved object. Never had the rare and various genius of G.o.dolphin appeared so worthy of admiration. When his voice ceased, it seemed to Constance like a sudden blank in the creation.
G.o.dolphin and the young countess were several paces before the little party, and they now took their way towards the Siren"s Cave. The path that leads to that singular spot is humid with an eternal spray; and it is so abrupt and slippery, that in order to preserve your footing, you must cling to the bushes that vegetate around the sides of the precipice.
"Let us dispense with our guide," said G.o.dolphin. "I know every part of the way, and I am sure you share with me in dislike to these hackneyed indicators and sign-posts for admiration. Let us leave him to Lady Charlotte and Saville, and suffer me to be your guide to the cavern."
Constance readily enough a.s.sented, and they proceeded. Saville, by no means liking the difficult and perilous path which was to lead only to a very cold place, soon halted; and suggested to Lady Charlotte the propriety of doing the same. Lady Charlotte much preferred the wit of her companion"s conversation to the picturesque. "Besides," as she said, "she had seen the cave before." Accordingly, they both waited for the return of the more adventurous countess and her guide.
Unconscious of the defalcation of her friends, and not--from the attention that every step required--once looking behind, Constance continued. And now, how delightful to her seemed that rugged way, as, with every moment, G.o.dolphin"s care--G.o.dolphin"s hand became necessary; and he, inspired, inflamed by her company, by her touch, by the softness of her manner, and the devotion of her attention--no, no! not yet was Lucilla forgotten!
And now they stood within the Siren"s Cave. From this spot alone you can view that terrible descent of waters which rushes to earth like the coming of a G.o.d! The rocks dripped around them--the torrent dashed at their very feet. Down--down, in thunder, for ever and for ever, dashed the might of the maddening element; above, all wrath; below, all blackness;--there, the cataract; here, the abyss. Not a moment"s pause to the fury, not a moment"s silence to the roar;--forward to the last glimpse of the sun--the curse of labour, and the soul of unutterable strength, shall be upon those waters! The demon, tormented to an eternity, filling his dread dwelling-place with the unresting and unearthly voice of his rage and despair, is the only type meet for the spirit of the cataract.
And there--amidst this awful and tremendous eternity of strife and power--stood two beings whose momentary existence was filled with the master-pa.s.sion of humanity. And that pa.s.sion was yet audible there: the nature without coal; I not subdue that within. Even amidst the icy showers of spray that fell around, and would have frozen the veins of others, G.o.dolphin felt the burning at his heart. Constance was indeed utterly lost in a whirl and chaos of awe and admiration, which deprived her of all words. But it was the nature of her wayward lover to be aroused only to the thorough knowledge of his powers and pa.s.sions among the more unfrequent and fierce excitements of life. A wild emotion now urged him on; something of that turbulent exaggeration of mind which gave rise to a memorable and disputed saying--"If thou stoodest on a precipice with thy mistress, hast thou ever felt the desire to plunge with her into the abyss?--If so--thou hast loved!" No doubt the sentiment is exaggerated, but there are times when love is exaggerated too. And now Constance, without knowing it, had clung closer and closer to G.o.dolphin. His hand at first--now his arm--supported her; and at length, by an irresistible and maddening impulse, he clasped her to his breast, and whispered in a voice which was heard by her even amidst the thunder of the giant waters, "Here, here, my early--my only love, I feel, in spite of myself, that I never utterly, fully, adored you until now!"
CHAPTER XLI.
LUCILLA.--THE SOLITUDE.--THE SPELL.--THE DREAM AND THE RESOLVE.
While the above events, so fatal to Lucilla, were in progress at Rome, she was holding an unquiet commune with her own pa.s.sionate and restless heart, by the borders of the lake, whose silver quiet mocked the mind it had, in happier moments, reflected. She had now dragged on the weary load of time throughout the winter; and the early and soft spring was already abroad--smoothing the face of the waters, and calling life into the boughs. Hitherto this time of the year had possessed a mysterious and earnest attraction for Lucilla--now all its voices were mute.
The letters that G.o.dolphin had written to her were so few, and so restrained, in comparison with those which she had received in the former periods of absence, that--ever alive as she was to impulse, and unregulated by settled principles of hope--her only relief to a tearful and spiritless dejection was in paroxysms of doubt, jealousy, and despair.
It is the most common thing in the world, that, when we have once wronged a person, we go on in the wrong, from a certain soreness with which conscience links the a.s.sociations of the injured party. And thus, G.o.dolphin, struggling with the return to his early and never-forgotten love, felt an unwillingness that he could seldom successfully combat, in playing the hypocrite to Lucilla. His very remorse made him unkind; the feeling that he ought to write often, made him write seldom: and conscious that he ought to return her expressions of eager devotion, he returned them with involuntary awkwardness and reserve. All this is very natural, and very evident to us; but a thousand mysteries were more acceptable to, more sought for and more clung to, by Lucilla, than a conjecture at the truth.
Meanwhile she fed more and more eagerly on those vain researches which yet beguiled her time, and flattered her imagination. In a science so false, and so unprofitable, it mattered, happily, little, whether or not the poor disciple laboured with success; but I need scarcely tell to any who have had the curiosity to look over the entangled schemes and quaint figures of the art, how slender was the advancement of the daughter in the learning of the sire. Still it was a comfort and a soothing, even to look upon the placid heaven, and form a conjecture as to the language of its stars. And, above all, while she questioned the future, she thought only of her lover. But day after day pa.s.sed--no letter, or worse than none; and at length Lucilla became utterly impatient of all rest: a nervous fever possessed her; the extreme solitude of the place filled her with that ineffable sensation of irritability which sometimes preludes the madness that has been produced in criminals by solitary confinement.
On the day that she wrote that letter to G.o.dolphin which I have transcribed, this painful tension of the nerves was more than hitherto acute. She longed to fly somewhere; nay, once or twice, she remembered that Rome was easily gained, that she might be there as expeditiously as her letter. Although in that letter only we have signified that Lucilla had expressed her wish for G.o.dolphin"s return; yet, in all her later letters, she had (perhaps, more timidly) urged that desire. But they had not taken the same hold on G.o.dolphin; nor, while he was playing with his danger, had they produced the same energetic resolution. Lucilla could not, however, hope with much reason that the success of her present letter would be greater than that of her former ones; and, at all events, she did not antic.i.p.ate an immediate compliance with her prayers.
She looked forward to some excuses, and to some delay. We cannot, therefore, wonder that she felt a growing desire to follow her own epistle to Rome; and although she had been prevented before, and still drew back from absolutely favoring and enforcing the idea, by the fear of G.o.dolphin"s displeasure; yet she trusted enough to his gentleness of character to feel sure that the displeasure could scarcely be lasting.
Still the step was bold, and Lucilla loved devotedly enough to be timid; and besides, her inexperience made her look upon the journey as a far more formidable expedition than it really was.
Debating the notion in her mind, she sought her usual retreat, and turned listlessly over the books which she had so lately loved to study.
At length, in moving one she had not looked into before, a paper fell to the ground; she picked it up; it was the paper containing that figure, which it will be remembered, the astrologer had shown to his daughter, as a charm to produce dreams prophetic of any circ.u.mstance or person concerning whom the believer might be anxious to learn aught. As she saw the image, which, the reader will recollect, was of a remarkable design, the whole of her conversation with Volktman on the subject rushed into her mind, and she resolved that very night to prove the efficacy of the charm on which he had so confidently insisted. Fraught with the chimerical delusion, she now longed for the hours to pa.s.s, and the night to come. She looked again and again at the singular image and the portentous figures wrought upon the charm; the very strangeness of the characters inspired her, as was natural, with a belief of their efficacy; and she felt a thrill, an awe, creep over her blood, as the shadows of eve, deepening over the far mountains, brought on the time of trial. At length it was night, and Lucilla sought her chamber.
The hour was exceedingly serene, and the stars shone through the cas.e.m.e.nt with a l.u.s.tre that to her seemed ominous. With bare feet, and only in her night-robe, she stole tremblingly across the threshold. She paused for a moment at the window, and looked out on the deep and quiet night; and as she so stood, it was a picture that, had I been a painter, I would have devoted a youth to accomplish. Half in light--half in shadow--her undress gave the outline, and somewhat more, of a throat and breast, whose roundness, shape, and hue, never were surpa.s.sed. Her arms were lightly crossed above her bosom; and her long rich hair seeming darker by that light, fell profusely, yet not dishevelled, around her neck; parting from her brow. Her att.i.tude at that moment was quite still, as if in worship, and perhaps it was; her face was inclined slightly upward, looking to the heavens and towards Rome. But that face--there was the picture! It was so young, so infantine, so modest; and yet, the youth and the timidity were elevated and refined by the earnest doubt, the preternatural terror, the unearthly hope, which dwelt upon her forehead--her parted lip, and her wistful and kindled eye.
There was a sublimity in her loneliness and her years, and in the fond and vain superst.i.tion, which was but a spirit called from the deeps of an unfathomable and mighty love. And afar was heard the breaking of the lake in upon the sh.o.r.e--no other sound! And now, among the unwaving pines, there was a silver shimmer as the moon rose into her empire, and deepened at once, along the universal scene, the loveliness and the awe.
Lucilla turned from the window, and kneeling down wrote with a trembling hand upon the figure one word--the name of G.o.dolphin. She then placed it under her pillow, and the spell was concluded. The astrologer had told her of the necessary co-operation which the mind must afford to the charm; but it will easily be believed that Lucilla required no injunction to let her imagination dwell upon the vision she expected to invoke. And it would have been almost strange, if, so intently and earnestly brooding, as she had done over the image of G.o.dolphin, that image had not, without recurring to any cabalistical spells, been present to her dreams.
She thought that it was broad noonday, and that she was sitting alone in the house she then inhabited, and weeping bitterly. Of a sudden the voice of G.o.dolphin called to her; she ran eagerly forth, but no sooner had she pa.s.sed the threshold, than the scene so familiar to her vanished, and she was alone in an immense and pathless wilderness; there was no tree and no water in this desert; all was arid, solitary, and inanimate. But what seemed most strange to her was that in the heavens, although they were clear and bright, there was neither sun nor stars; the light seemed settled and stagnant--there was in it no life.
And she thought that she continued to move involuntarily along the waste; and that, ever and anon, she yearned and strove to rest, but her limbs did not obey her will, and a power she could not control urged her onward.