THE FULL RENEWAL OF LOVE.--HAPPINESS PRODUCES FEAR, "AND IN TO-DAY ALREADY WALKS TOMORROW."
Oh, First Love! well sang the gay minstrel of France, that we return again and again to thee. As the earth returns to its spring, and is green once more, we go back to the life of life and forget the seasons that have rolled between! Whether it was--perhaps so--that in the minds of both was a feeling that their present state was not fated to endure; whether they felt, in the deep calm they enjoyed, that the storm was already at hand; whether this was the truth I know not; but certain it is, that during the short time they remained at G.o.dolphin Priory, previous to their earthly separation, Constance and G.o.dolphin were rather like lovers for the first time united, than like those who have dragged on the chain for years. Their perfect solitude, the absence of all intrusion, so unlike the life they had long pa.s.sed, renewed all that charm, that rapture in each other"s society, which belong to the first youth of love. True, that this could not have endured long; but Fate suffered it to endure to the last of that tether which remained to their union. Constance was not again doomed to the severe and grating shock which the sense of estrangement brings to a woman"s heart; she was sensible that G.o.dolphin was never so entirely, so pa.s.sionately her own, as towards the close of their mortal connection. Every thing around them breathed of their first love. This was that home of G.o.dolphin"s to which, from the splendid halls of Wendover, the young soul of the proud orphan had so often and so mournfully flown with a yearning and wistful interest: this was that spot in which he, awaking from the fever of the world, had fed his first dreams of her. The scene, the solitude, was as a bath to their love: it braced, it freshened, it revived its tone. They wandered, they read, they thought together; the air of the spot was an intoxication. The world around and without was agitated; they felt it not: the breakers of the great deep died in murmurs on their ear.
Ambition lulled its voice to Constance; G.o.dolphin had realised his visions of the ideal. Time had dimmed their young beauty, but their eyes saw it not; they were young, they were all beautiful, to each other.
And Constance hung on the steps of her lover--still let that name be his! She could not bear to lose him for a moment: a vague indistinctness of fear seized her if she saw him not. Again and again, in the slumbers of the night, she stretched forth her arms to feel that he was near; all her pride, her coldness seemed gone, as by a spell; she loved as the softest, the fondest, love. Are we, 0 Ruler of the future! imbued with the half-felt spirit of prophecy as the hour of evil approaches--the great, the fierce, the irremediable evil of a life? In this depth and intensity of their renewed pa.s.sion, was there not something preternatural? Did they not tremble as they loved? They were on a spot to which the dark waters were slowly gathering; they clung to the Hour, for eternity was lowering round.
It was one evening that a foreboding emotion of this kind weighed heavily on Constance. She pressed G.o.dolphin"s hand in hers, and when he returned the pressure, she threw herself on his neck, and burst into tears. G.o.dolphin was alarmed; he covered her cheek with kisses, he sought the cause of her emotion.
"There is no cause," answered Constance, recovering herself, but speaking in a faltering voice, "only I feel the impossibility that this happiness can last; its excess makes me shudder."
As she spoke, the wind rose and swept mourningly over the large leaves of the chestnut-tree beneath which they stood: the serene stillness of the evening seemed gone; an unquiet and melancholy spirit was loosened abroad, and the chill of the sudden change which is so frequent to our climate, came piercingly upon them. G.o.dolphin was silent for some moments, for the thought found a sympathy in his own.
"And is it truly so?" he said at last; "is there really to be no permanent happiness for us below? Is pain always to tread the heels of pleasure? Are we never to say the harbour is reached, and we are safe? No, my Constance," he added, warming into the sanguine vein that traversed even his most desponding moods, "no! let us not cherish this dark belief; there is no experience for the future; one hour lies to the next; if what has been seem thus chequered, it is no type of what may be. We have discovered in each other that world that was long lost to our eyes; we cannot lose it again; death only can separate us!"
"Ah, death!" said Constance, shuddering.
"Do not recoil at that word, my Constance, for we are yet in the noon of life; why bring, like the Egyptian, the spectre to the feast? And, after all, if death come while we thus love, it is better than change and time--better than custom which palls--better than age which chills. Oh!"
continued G.o.dolphin, pa.s.sionately, "oh! if this narrow shoal and sand of time be but a breathing-spot in the great heritage of immortality, why cheat ourselves with words so vague as life and death? What is the difference? At most, the entrance in and the departure from one scene in our wide career. How many scenes are left to us! We do but hasten our journey, not close it. Let us believe this, Constance, and cast from us all fear of our disunion."
As he spoke, Constance"s eyes were fixed upon his face, and the deep calm that reigned there sank into her soul, and silenced its murmurs.
The thought of futurity is that which G.o.dolphin (because it is so with all idealists) must have revolved with the most frequent fervour; but it was a thought which he so rarely touched upon, that it was the first and only time Constance ever heard it breathed from his lips.
They turned into the house; and the mark is still in that page of the volume which they read, where the melodious accents of G.o.dolphin died upon the heart of Constance. Can she ever turn to it again?
CHAPTER LXVIII.
THE LAST CONVERSATION BETWEEN G.o.dOLPHIN AND CONSTANCE.--HIS THOUGHTS AND SOLITARY WALK AMIDST THE SCENES OF HIS YOUTH.--THE LETTER.--THE DEPARTURE.
They had denied themselves to all the visitors who had attacked the Priory; but on their first arrival, they had deemed it necessary to conciliate their neighbours by concentrating into one formal act of hospitality all those social courtesies which they could not persuade themselves to relinquish their solitude in order singly to perform.
Accordingly, a day had been fixed for one grand fete at the Priory; it was to follow close on the election, and be considered as in honour of that event. The evening for this gala succeeded that which I have recorded in the last chapter. It was with great reluctance that they prepared themselves to greet this sole interruption of their seclusion; and they laughed, although they did not laugh cordially, at the serious annoyance which the giving a ball was for the first time to occasion to persons who had been giving b.a.l.l.s for a succession of years.
The day was remarkably still and close; the sun had not once pierced through the dull atmosphere, which was charged with the yet silent but gathering thunder; and as the evening came on, the sullen tokens of an approaching storm became more and more loweringly p.r.o.nounced.
"We shall not, I fear, have propitious weather for our festival to-night," said G.o.dolphin; "but after a general election, people"s nerves are tolerably hardened: what are the petty fret and tumult of nature, lasting but an hour, to the angry and everlasting pa.s.sions of men?"
"A profound deduction from a wet night, dear Percy," said Constance, smiling.
"Like our friend C----," rejoined G.o.dolphin, in the same vein; "I can philosophise on the putting on one"s gloves, you know:" and therewith their conversation flowed into a vein singularly contrasted with the character of the coming events. Time fled on as they were thus engaged until Constance started up, surprised at the lateness of the hour, to attend the duties of the toilette.
"Wear this, dearest," said G.o.dolphin, taking a rose from a flower-stand by the window, "in memory of that ball at Wendover Castle, which although itself pa.s.sed bitterly enough for me, has yet left so many happy recollections." Constance put the rose into her bosom; its leaves were then all fresh and brilliant--so were her prospects for the future.
He kissed her forehead as they parted;--they parted for the last time.
G.o.dolphin, left alone, turned to the window, which, opening to the ground, invited him forth among the flowers that studded the gra.s.s-plots which sloped away to the dark and unwavering trees that girded the lawn. That pause of nature which precedes a storm ever had a peculiar attraction to his mind; and instinctively he sauntered from the house, wrapped in the dreaming, half-developed thought which belonged to his temperament. Mechanically he strayed on until he found himself beside the still lake which the hollows of the dismantled park embedded. There he paused, gazing unconsciously on the gloomy shadows which fell from the arches of the Priory and the tall trees around. Not a ripple stirred the broad expanse of waters; the birds had gone to rest; no sound, save the voice of the distant brook that fed the lake beside which, on the first night of his return to his ancestral home, he had wandered with Constance, broke the universal silence. That voice was never mute. All else might be dumb; but that living stream, rushing through its rocky bed, stilled not its repining music. Like the soul of the landscape is the gush of a fresh stream; it knows no sleep, no pause; it works for ever--the life, the cause of life to all around. The great frame of nature may repose, but the spirit of the waters rests not for a moment.
As the soul of the landscape is the soul of man, in our deepest slumbers its course glides on, and works unsilent, unslumbering, through its destined channel.
With slow step and folded arms G.o.dolphin moved along. The well-remembered scenes of his childhood were all before him; the wild verdure of the fern, the broken ground, with its thousand mimic mounts and valleys, the deep dell overgrown with matted shrubs and dark as a wizard"s cave; the remains of many a stately vista, where the tender green of the lime showed forth, even in that dusky light, beneath the richer leaves of the chestnut; all was familiar and home-breathing to his mind. Fragments of boyish verse, forgotten for years, rose hauntingly to his remembrance, telling of wild thoughts, unsatisfied dreams, disappointed hopes.
"But I am happy at last," said he aloud; "yes, happy. I have pa.s.sed that bridge of life which divides us from the follies of youth; and better prospects, and n.o.bler desires, extend before me. What a world of wisdom in that one saying of Radclyffe"s, "Benevolence is the sole cure to idealism;" to live for others draws us from demanding miracles for ourselves. What duty as yet have I fulfilled? I renounced ambition as unwise, and with it I renounced wisdom itself. I lived for pleasure--I lived the life of disappointment. Without one vicious disposition, I have fallen into a hundred vices; I have never been actively selfish, yet always selfish. I nursed high thoughts--for what end? A poet in heart, a voluptuary in life. If mine own interest came into clear collision with that of another, mine I would have sacrificed, but I never asked if the whole course of my existence was not that of a war with the universal interest. Too thoughtful to be without a leading principle in life, the one principle I adopted has been one error. I have tasted all that imagination can give to earthly possession: youth, health, liberty, knowledge, love, luxury, pomp. Woman was my first pa.s.sion,--what woman have I wooed in vain? I imagined that my career hung upon Constance"s breath--Constance loved and refused me. I attributed my errors to that refusal; Constance became mine--how have I retrieved them? A vague, a dim, an unconfessed remorse has pursued me in the memory of Lucilla; yet, why not have redeemed that fault to her by good to others? What is penitence not put into action, but the great fallacy in morals? A sin to one, if irremediable, can only be compensated by a virtue to some one else. Yet was I to blame in my conduct to Lucilla? Why should conscience so haunt me at that name? Did I not fly her? Was it not herself who compelled our union? Did I not cherish, respect, honour, forbear with her, more than I have since with my wedded Constance? Did I not resolve to renounce Constance herself, when most loved, for Lucilla"s sake alone? Who prevented that sacrifice--who deserted me--who carved out her own separate life?--Lucilla herself. No, so far, my sin is light. But ought I not to have left all things to follow her, to discover her, to force upon her an independence from want, or possibly from crime? Ah, there was my sin, and the sin of my nature; the sin, too, of the children of the world--pa.s.sive sin. I could sacrifice my happiness, but not my indolence; I was not ungenerous, I was inert. But is it too late? Can I not yet search, discover her, and remove from my mind the anxious burthen which her remembrance imposes on it? For, oh, one thought of remorse linked with the being who has loved us, is more intolerable to the conscience than the gravest crime!"
Muttering such thoughts, G.o.dolphin strayed on until the deepening night suddenly recalled his attention to the lateness of the hour. He turned to the house and entered his own apartment. Several of the guests had already come. G.o.dolphin was yet dressing, when a servant knocked at the door and presented him with a note.
"Lay it on the table," said he to the valet; "it is probably some excuse about the ball."
"Sir," said the servant, "a lad has just brought it from S----," naming a village about four miles distant; "and says he is to wait for an answer. He was ordered to ride as fast as possible."
With some impatience G.o.dolphin took up the note; but the moment his eye rested on the writing, it fell from his hands; his cheek, his lips, grew as white as death; his heart seemed to refuse its functions; it was literally as if life stood still for a moment, as by the force of a sudden poison. With a strong effort he recovered himself, tore open the note, and read as follows:
"Percy G.o.dolphin, the hour has arrived-once more we shall meet. I summon you, fair love, to that meeting--the bed of death. Come! Lucilla Volktman."
"Don"t alarm the countess," said G.o.dolphin to his servant, in a very low, calm voice; "bring my horse to the postern, and send the bearer of this note to me."
The messenger appeared--a rough country lad, of about eighteen or twenty.
"You brought this note?"
"I did, your honour."
"From whom?"
"Why, a sort of a strange lady as is lying at the "Chequers," and not expected to live. She be mortal bad, sir, and do run on awesome."
G.o.dolphin pressed his hands convulsively together.
"And how long has she been there?"
"She only came about two hours since, sir; she came in a chaise, sir, and was taken so ill, that we sent for the doctor directly. He says she can"t get over the night."
G.o.dolphin walked to and fro, without trusting himself to speak, for some minutes. The boy stood by the door, pulling about his hat, and wondering, and staring, and thoroughly stupid.
"Did she come alone?"
"Eh, your honour?"
"Was no one with her?"
"Oh, yes! a little n.i.g.g.e.r girl: she it was sent me with the letter."
"The horse is ready, sir," said the servant; "but had you not better have the carriage brought out? It looks very black; it must rain shortly, sir; and the ford between this and S---- is dangerous to cross in so dark a night."
"Peace!" cried G.o.dolphin, with flashing eyes, and a low convulsive laugh. "Shall I ride to that death-bed at my ease and leisure?"
He strode rapidly down the stairs, and reached the small postern door: it was a part of the old building: one of the grooms held his impatient horse--the swiftest in his splendid stud; and the dim but flaring light, held by another of the servitors, streamed against the dull heavens and the imperfectly seen and frowning ruins of the ancient pile.
G.o.dolphin, unconscious of all around, and muttering to himself, leaped on his steed: the fire glinted from the coursers hoofs; and thus the last lord of that knightly race bade farewell to his father"s halls.
Those words which he had muttered, and which his favourite servant caught and superst.i.tiously remembered, were the words in Lucilla"s note--"The hour has arrived!"