"Signor, good-day."
Dejected, melancholy, and yet enraged amidst all his sorrow, G.o.dolphin returned to Rome. Lucilla"s letter rankled in his heart like the barb of a broken arrow; but the stern resolve with which she had refused to see him appeared to the pride that belongs to manhood a harsh and unfeeling insult. He knew not that poor Lucilla"s eyes had watched him from the walls of the convent, and that while, for his sake more than her own, she had refused the meeting he prayed for, she had not the resolution to deny herself the luxury of gazing on him once more.
He reached Rome; he found a note on his table from Lady Charlotte Deerham, saying she had heard it was his intention to leave Rome, and begging him to receive from her that evening her adieux. "Lady Erpingham will be with me," concluded the note.
This brought a new train of ideas. Since Lucilla"s flight, all thought but of Lucilla had been expelled from G.o.dolphin"s mind. We have seen how his letter to Lady Erpingham miscarried: he had written no other. How strange to Constance must seem his conduct, after the scene of the avowal in the Siren"s Cave: no excuse on the one hand, no explanation on the other; and now what explanation should he give? There was no longer a necessity, for it was no longer honesty and justice to fly from the bliss that might await him--the love of his early--worshipped Constance.
But could he, with a heart yet bleeding from the violent rupture of one tie, form a new one? Agitated, restless, self-reproachful, bewildered, and uncertain, he could not bear thoughts that demanded answers to a thousand questions; he flung from his cheerless room, and hastened, with a feverish pulse and burning temples, to Lady Charlotte Deerham"s.
"Good Heavens! how ill you look, Mr. G.o.dolphin!" cried the hostess, involuntarily.
"Ill!--ha! ha! I never was better; but I have just returned from a long journey: I have not touched food nor felt sleep for three days and nights! 1-ha, ha! no, I"m not ill;" and, with an eye bright with gathering delirium, G.o.dolphin glared around him.
Lady Charlotte drew back and shuddered; G.o.dolphin felt a cool, soft hand laid on his; he turned and the face of Constance, full of anxious and wondering pity, was bent upon him. He stood arrested for one moment, and then, seizing that hand, pressed it to his lips--his heart, and burst suddenly into tears. That paroxysm saved his life; for days afterwards he was insensible.
CHAPTER XLV.
THE DECLARATION.--THE APPROACHING NUPTIALS.--IS THE IDEALIST CONTENTED?
As G.o.dolphin returned to health, and, day after day, the presence of Constance, her soft tones, her deep eyes, grew on him, renewing their ancient spells, the reader must perceive that bourne to which events necessarily tended. For some weeks not a word that alluded to the Siren"s Cave was uttered by either; but when that allusion came at last from G.o.dolphin"s lips, the next moment he was kneeling beside Constance, her hand surrendered to his, and her proud cheek all bathed in the blushes of sixteen.
"And so," said Saville, "you, Percy G.o.dolphin, are at last the accepted lover of Constance, Countess of Erpingham. When is the wedding to be?"
"I know not," replied G.o.dolphin, musingly.
"Well, I almost envy you; you will be very happy for six weeks, and that"s something in this disagreeable world. Yet now, I look on you, I grow reconciled to myself again; you do not seem so happy as that I, Augustus Saville, should envy you while my digestion lasts. What are you thinking of?"
"Nothing," replied G.o.dolphin, vacantly; the words of Lucilla were weighing at his heart, like a prophecy working towards its fulfilment: "Come what may, you will never find the happiness you ask: you exact too much."
At that moment Lady Erpingham"s page entered with a note from Constance, and a present of flowers. No one ever wrote half so beautifully, so spiritually as Constance, and to Percy the wit was so intermingled with the tenderness!
"No," said he, burying his lips among the flowers; "no! I discard the foreboding; with you I must be happy!" But conscience, still unsilenced, whispered Lucilla!
The marriage was to take place at Rome. The day was fixed; and, owing to Constance"s rank, beauty and celebrity, the news of the event created throughout "the English in Italy" no small sensation. There was a great deal of gossip, of course, on the occasion; and some of this gossip found its way to the haughty ears of Constance. It was said that she had made a strange match--that it was a curious weakness in one so proud and brilliant, to look no loftier than a private and not very wealthy gentleman; handsome, indeed, and reputed clever; but one who had never distinguished himself in anything--who never would!
Constance was alarmed and stung, not at the vulgar accusation, the paltry sneer, but at the prophecy relating to G.o.dolphin: "he had never distinguished himself in anything--he never would." Rank, wealth, power, Constance felt these she wanted not, these she could command of herself; but she felt also that a n.o.bler vanity of her nature required that the man of her mature and second choice should not be one, in repute, of that mere herd, above whom, in reality, his genius so eminently exalted him. She deemed it essential to her future happiness that G.o.dolphin"s ambition should be aroused, that he should share her ardour for those great objects that she felt would for ever be dear to her.
"I love Rome!" said she, pa.s.sionately, one day, as accompanied by G.o.dolphin, she left the Vatican; "I feel my soul grow larger amidst its ruins. Elsewhere, through Italy, we live in the present, but here in the past."
"Say not that that is the better life, dear Constance; the present--can we surpa.s.s it?"
Constance blushed, and thanked her lover with a look that told him he was understood.
"Yet," said she, returning to the subject, "who can breathe the air that is rife with glory, and not be intoxicated with emulation? Ah, Percy!"
"Ah, Constance! and what wouldst thou have of me? Is it not glory enough to be thy lover?"
"Let the world be as proud of my choice as I am." G.o.dolphin frowned; he penetrated in those words to Constance"s secret meaning. Accustomed to be an idol from his boyhood, he resented the notion that he had need of exertion to render him worthy even of Constance; and sensible that it might be thought he made an alliance beyond his just pretensions, he was doubly tenacious as to his own claims. G.o.dolphin frowned, then, and turned away in silence. Constance sighed; she felt that she might not renew the subject. But, after a pause, G.o.dolphin himself continued it.
"Constance," said he, in a low firm voice, "let us understand each other. You are all to me in the world; fame, and honor, and station and happiness. Am I, also, that all to you? If there be any thought at your heart which whispers you, "You might have served your ambition better; you have done wrong in yielding to love and love only,"--then, Constance, pause; it is not too late."
"Do I deserve this, Percy?"
"You drop words sometimes," answered G.o.dolphin, "that seem to indicate that you think the world may cavil at your choice, and that some exertion on my part is necessary to maintain your dignity. Constance, need I say, again and again, that I adore the very dust you tread on?
But I have a pride, a self-respect, beneath which I cannot stoop; if you really think or feel this, I will not condescend to receive even happiness from you: let us part."
Constance saw his lips white and quivering as he spoke; her heart smote her, her pride vanished: she sank on his shoulder, and forgot even ambition; nay, while she inly murmured at his sentiment, she felt it breathed a sort of n.o.bility that she could not but esteem. She strove then to lull to rest all her more worldly anxieties for the future; to hope that, cast on the exciting stage of English ambition, G.o.dolphin must necessarily be stirred despite his creed; and if she sometimes doubted, sometimes despaired of this, she felt at least that his presence had become dearer to her than all things. Nay, she checked her own enthusiasm, her own worship of fame, since they clashed with his opinions; so marvellously and insensibly bad Love bowed down the proud energies and the lofty soul of the daughter of John Vernon.
CHAPTER XLVI.
THE BRIDALS.--THE ACCIDENT.--THE FIRST LAWFUL POSSESSION OF LOVE.
It was the morning on which Constance and G.o.dolphin were to be married; it had been settled that they were to proceed the same day towards Florence; and Constance was at her toilette when her woman laid beside her a large bouquet of flowers.
"From Percy--from Mr. G.o.dolphin, I mean?" she asked, taking them up.
"No, my lady; a young woman outside the palace gave them me, and bade me in such pretty English be sure to give them to your ladyship; and when I offered her money, she would not take anything, my lady."
"The Italians are a courteous people," replied Constance; and she placed the flowers in her bosom.
As, after the ceremony, G.o.dolphin a.s.sisted his bride into the carriage, a girl, wrapped in a large cloak, pressed forward for a moment.
G.o.dolphin had in that moment turned his head to give some order to his servant, and with the next the girl had sunk back into the throng that was drawn around the carriage--yet not before Constance had heard her murmur in deep, admiring, yet sorrowful tone: "Beautiful! how beautiful!--Ah me!"
"Did you observe what beautiful eyes that young girl had?" asked Constance, as the carriage whirled off.
"What girl? I saw nothing but you!"
"Hark! there is a noise behind."
G.o.dolphin looked out; the crowd seemed collected round one person.
"Only a young woman fainted, sir!" said his servant seated behind. "She fell down in a fit just before the horses; but they started aside, and did not hurt her."
"That is fortunate!" said G.o.dolphin, reseating himself by his new bride; "drive on faster."
At Florence, G.o.dolphin revealed to Constance the outline of Lucilla"s history, and Constance shared somewhat of the feelings with which he told it.
"I left," said he, "in the hands of the abbess a sum to be entirely at Lucilla"s control, whether she stay in the convent or not, and which will always secure to her an independence. But I confess I should like now, once more to visit the convent, and learn on what fate she has decided."
"You would do well, dear Percy," replied Constance, who from her high and starred sphere could stoop to no vulgar jealousy; "indeed, I think you could do no less."
And G.o.dolphin covered those generous lips with the sweet kisses in which esteem begins to mingle with pa.s.sion. What has the earth like that first fresh union of two hearts long separated, and now blended for ever?
However close the sympathy between woman and her lover--however each thinks to have learned the other--what a world is there left un-learned, until marriage brings all those charming confidences, that holy and sweet intercourse, which leaves no separate interest, no undivided thought! But there is one thing that distinguishes the conversation of young married people from that of lovers on a less sacred footing--they talk of the future! Other lovers talk rather of the past; an uncertainty pervades their hereafter; they feel they recoil from, it; they are sensible that their plans are not one and indivisible." But married people are always laying out the "to come;" always talking over their plans: this often takes something away from the tenderness of affection, but how much it adds to its enjoyment!