A volume of Wordsworth"s most exquisite poetry had then just appeared.
"Is not this wonderful?" said G.o.dolphin, reciting some of those lofty, but refining thoughts which characterise the Pastor of modern poets.
Constance shook her head.
"What! you do not admire it?"
"I do not understand it."
"What poetry do you admire?"
"This."
It was Pope"s translation of the Iliad.
"Yes, yes, to be sure," said G.o.dolphin, a little vexed; "we all admire this in its way: but what else?"
Constance pointed to a pa.s.sage in the Palamon and Arcite of Dryden.
G.o.dolphin threw down his Wordsworth. "You take an ungenerous advantage of me," said he. "Tell me something you admire, which, at least, I may have the privilege of disputing,--something that you think generally neglected."
"I admire few things that are generally neglected," answered Constance, with her bright and proud smile. "Fame gives its stamp to all metal that is of intrinsic value."
This answer was quite characteristic of Constance: she worshipped fame far more than the genius which won it. "Well, then," said G.o.dolphin, "let us see now if we can come to a compromise of sentiment;" and he took up the Comus of Milton.
No one read poetry so beautifully: his voice was so deep and flexible; and his countenance answered so well to every modulation of his voice.
Constance was touched by the reader, but not by the verse. G.o.dolphin had great penetration; he perceived it, and turned to the speeches of Satan in Paradise Lost. The n.o.ble countenance before him grew luminous at once: the lip quivered, the eye sparkled; the enthusiasm of G.o.dolphin was not comparable to that of Constance. The fact was, that the broad and common emotions of the intellectual character struck upon the right key. Courage, defiance, ambition, these she comprehended to their fullest extent; but the rich subtleties of thought which mark the cold and bright page of the Comus; the n.o.ble Platonism--the high and rare love for what is abstractedly good, these were not "sonorous and trumpet-speaking" enough for the heart of one meant by Nature for a heroine or a queen, not a poetess or a philosopher.
But all that in literature was delicate, and half-seen, and abstruse, had its peculiar charm for G.o.dolphin. Of a reflective and refining mind, he had early learned to despise the common emotions of men: glory touched him not, and to ambition he had shut his heart. Love, with him--even though he had been deemed, not unjustly, a man of gallantry and pleasure--love was not compounded of the ordinary elements of the pa.s.sions. Full of dreams, and refinements, and intense abstractions, it was a love that seemed not homely enough for endurance, and of too rare a nature to hope for sympathy in return.
And so it was in his intercourse with Constance, both were continually disappointed. "You do not feel this," said Constance. "She cannot understand me," sighed G.o.dolphin.
But we must not suppose--despite his refinements, and his reveries, and his love for the intellectual and the pure--that G.o.dolphin was of a stainless character or mind. He was one who, naturally full of decided and marked qualities, was, by the peculiar elements of our society, rendered a doubtful, motley, and indistinct character, tinctured by the frailties that leave us in a wavering state between vice and virtue.
The energies that had marked his boyhood were dulled and crippled in the indolent life of the world. His wandering habits for the last few years--the soft and poetical existence of the South--had fed his natural romance, and nourished that pa.s.sion for contemplation which the intellectual man of pleasure so commonly forms; for pleasure has a philosophy of its own--a sad, a fanciful, yet deep persuasion of the vanity of all things--a craving after the bright ideal--
"The desire of the moth for the star."
Solomon"s thirst for pleasure was the companion of his wisdom: satiety was the offspring of the one--discontent of the other. But this philosophy, though seductive, is of no wholesome nor useful character; it is the philosophy of feelings, not principles--of the heart, not head. So with G.o.dolphin: he was too refined in his moralising to cling to what was moral. The simply good and the simply bad he left for us plain folks to discover. He was unattracted by the doctrines of right and wrong which serve for all men; but he had some obscure and shadowy standard in his own mind by which he compared the actions of others.
He had imagination, genius, even heart; was brilliant always, sometimes profound; graceful in society, yet seldom social: a lonely man, yet a man of the world; generous to individuals, selfish to the ma.s.s. How many fine qualities worse than thrown away!
Who will not allow that he has met many such men?--and who will not follow this man to his end?
One day (it was the last of G.o.dolphin"s protracted visit) as the sun was waning to its close, and the time was unusually soft and tranquil, Constance and G.o.dolphin were returning slowly home from their customary ride. They pa.s.sed by a small inn, bearing the common sign of the "Chequers," round which a crowd of peasants were a.s.sembled, listening to the rude music which a wandering Italian boy drew from his guitar. The scene was rustic and picturesque; and as G.o.dolphin reined in his horse and gazed on the group, he little dreamed of the fierce and dark emotions with which, at a far distant period, he was destined to revisit that spot.
"Our peasants," said he, as they rode on, "require some humanising relaxation like that we have witnessed. The music and the morris-dance have gone from England; and instead of providing, as formerly, for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the grinded labourer, our legislators now regard with the most watchful jealousy his most distant approach to festivity. They cannot bear the rustic to be merry: disorder and amus.e.m.e.nt are words for the same offence."
"I doubt," said the earnest Constance, "whether the legislators are not right. For men given to amus.e.m.e.nt are easily enslaved. All n.o.ble thoughts are grave."
Thus talking, they pa.s.sed a shallow ford in the stream. "We are not far from the Priory," said G.o.dolphin, pointing to its ruins, that rose greyly in the evening skies from the green woods around it.
Constance sighed involuntarily. She felt pain in being reminded of the slender fortunes of her companion. Ascending the gentle hill that swelled from the stream, she now, to turn the current of her thoughts, pointed admiringly to the blue course of the waters, as they wound through their s.h.a.gged banks. And deep, dark, rushing, even at that still hour, went the stream through the boughs that swept over its surface.
Here and there the banks suddenly shelved down, mingling with the waves; then abruptly they rose, overspread with thick and tangled umbrage, several feet above the level of the river.
"How strange it is," said G.o.dolphin, "that at times a feeling comes over us, as we gaze upon certain places, which a.s.sociates the scene either with some dim-remembered and dream-like images of the Past, or with a prophetic and fearful omen of the Future! As I gaze now upon this spot--those banks--that whirling river--it seems as if my destiny claimed a mysterious sympathy with the scene: when--how-wherefore--I know not--guess not: only this shadowy and chilling sentiment unaccountably creeps over me. Every one has known a similar strange, indistinct, feeling at certain times and places, and with a similar inability to trace the cause. And yet, is it not singular that in poetry, which wears most feelings to an echo, I leave never met with any attempt to describe it?"
"Because poetry," said Constance, "is, after all, but a hackneyed imitation of the most common thoughts, giving them merely a gloss by the brilliancy of verse. And yet how little poets _know!_ They _imagine,_ and they _imitate;_--behold all their secrets!"
"Perhaps you are right," said G.o.dolphin, musingly; "and I, who have often vainly fancied I had the poetical temperament, have been so chilled and sickened by the characteristics of the tribe, that I have checked its impulses with a sort of disdain; and thus the Ideal, having no vent in me, preys within, creating a thousand undefined dreams and unwilling superst.i.tions, making me enamoured of the Shadowy and Unknown, and dissatisfying me with the petty ambitions of the world."
"You will awake hereafter," said Constance, earnestly.
G.o.dolphin shook his head, and replied not.
Their way now lay along a green lane that gradually wound round a hill commanding a view of great richness and beauty. Cottages, and spires, and groves, gave life--but it was scattered and remote life--to the scene; and the broad stream, whose waves, softened in the distance, did not seem to break the even surface of the tide, flowed onward, glowing in the sunlight, till it was lost among dark and luxuriant woods.
Both once more arrested their horses by a common impulse, and both became suddenly silent as they gazed. G.o.dolphin was the first to speak: it brought to his memory a scene in that delicious land, whose Southern loveliness Claude has transfused to the canvas, and De Stael to the page. With his own impa.s.sioned and earnest language, he spoke to Constance of that scene and that country. Every tree before him furnished matter for his ill.u.s.tration or his contrast; and, as she heard that magic voice, and speaking, too, of a country dedicated to love, Constance listened with glistening eyes, and a cheek which he,--consummate master of the secrets of womanhood--perceived was eloquent with thoughts which she knew not, but which _he_ interpreted to the letter.
"And in such a spot," said he, continuing, and fixing his deep and animated gaze on her,--"in such a spot I could have stayed for ever but for one recollection, one feeling--_I should have been too much alone!_ In a wild or a grand, or even a barren country, we may live in solitude, and find fit food for thought; but not in one so soft, so subduing, as that which I saw and see. Love comes over us then in spite of ourselves; and I feel--I feel now"--his voice trembled as he spoke--"that any secret we may before have nursed, though hitherto unacknowledged, makes itself at length a voice. We are oppressed with the desire to be loved; we long for the courage to say we love."
Never before had G.o.dolphin, though constantly verging into sentiment, spoken to Constance in so plain a language. Eye, voice, cheek--all spoke. She felt that he had confessed he loved her! And was she not happy at that thought? She was: it was her happiest moment. But, in that sort of vague and indistinct shrinking from the subject with which a woman who loves hears a disclosure of love from him on whose lips it is most sweet, she muttered some confused attempt to change the subject, and quickened her horse"s pace. G.o.dolphin did not renew the topic so interesting and so dangerous, only, as with the winding of the road the landscape gradually faded from their view, he said, in a low voice, as if to himself,--"How long, how fondly, shall I remember this day!"
CHAPTER XVI.
G.o.dOLPHIN"S RETURN HOME.--HIS SOLILOQUY.--LORD ERPINGHAM"S ARRIVAL AT WENDOVER CASTLE.--THE EARL DESCRIBED.--HIS ACCOUNT OF G.o.dOLPHIN"S LIFE AT ROME.
With a listless step, G.o.dolphin re-entered the threshold of his cottage-home. He pa.s.sed into a small chamber, which was yet the largest in his house. The poor and scanty furniture scattered around; the old, tuneless, broken harpsichord; the worn and tattered carpet; the tenantless birdcage in the recess by the window; the bookshelves, containing some dozens of worthless volumes; the sofa of the last century (when, if people knew comfort, they placed it not in lounging) small, narrow, highbacked, hard, and knotted; these, just as his father had left, just as his boyhood had seen, them, greeted him with a comfortless and chill, though familiar welcome. It was evening: he ordered a fire and lights; and leaning his face on his hand as he contemplated the fitful and dusky outbreakings of the flame through the bars of the n.i.g.g.ard and contracted grate, he sat himself down to hold commune with his heart.
"So, I love this woman," said he, "do I? Have I not deceived myself? She is poor--no connection; she has nothing whereby to reinstate my house"s fortunes, to rebuild this mansion, or repurchase yonder demesnes. I love her! _I_ who have known the value of her s.e.x so well, that I have said, again and again, I would not shackle life with a princess! Love may withstand possession--true--but not time. In three years there would be no glory in the face of Constance, and I should be--what? My fortunes, broken as they are, can support me alone, and with my few wants. But if married! the haughty Constance my wife! Nay, nay, nay! this must not be thought of! I, the hero of Paris! the pupil of Saville! I, to be so beguiled as even to _dream_ of such a madness!
"Yet I have that within me that might make a stir in the world--I might rise. Professions are open; the Diplomacy, the House of Commons. What!
Percy G.o.dolphin be a.s.s enough to grow ambitious! to toil, to fret, to slave, to answer fools on a first principle, and die at length of a broken heart for a lost place! Pooh, pooh! I, who despise your prime ministers, can scarcely stoop to their apprenticeship. Life is too short for toil. And what do men strive for?--to enjoy: but why not enjoy without the toil? And relinquish Constance? Ay, it is but one woman lost!"
So ended the soliloquy of a man scarcely of age. The world teaches us its last lessons betimes; but then, lest we should have nothing left to acquire from its wisdom, it employs the rest of our life in unlearning all that it first taught.
Meanwhile, the time approached when Lord Erpingham was to arrive at Wendover Castle; and at length came the day itself. Naturally anxious to enjoy as exclusively as possible the company of her son the first day of his return from so long an absence, Lady Erpingham had asked no one to meet him. The earl"s heavy travelling-carriage at length rolled clattering up the court-yard; and in a few minutes a tall man, in the prime of life, and borrowing some favourable effect as to person from the large cloak of velvet and furs which hung round him, entered the room, and Lady Erpingham embraced her son. The kind and familiar manner with which he answered her inquiries and congratulations was somewhat changed when he suddenly perceived Constance. Lord Erpingham was a cold man, and, like most cold men, ashamed of the evidence of affection. He greeted Constance very quietly; and, as she thought, slightly: but his eyes turned to her far more often than any friend of Lord Erpingham"s might ever have remarked those large round hazel eyes turn to any one before.
When the earl withdrew to adjust his toilet for dinner, Lady Erpingham, as she wiped her eyes, could not help exclaiming to Constance, "Is he not handsome? What a figure!"
Constance was a little addicted to flattery where she liked the one who was to be flattered, and she a.s.sented readily enough to the maternal remark. Hitherto, however, she had not observed anything more in Lord Erpingham than his height and his cloak: as he re-entered and led her to the dining-room she took a better, though still but a casual, survey.
Lord Erpingham was that sort of person of whom _men_ always say, "What a prodigiously fine fellow!" He was above six feet high, stout in proportion: not, indeed, accurately formed, nor graceful in bearing, but quite as much so as a man of six feet high need be. He had a manly complexion of brown, yellow, and red. His whiskers were exceedingly large, black, and well arranged. His eyes, as I have before said, were round, large, and hazel; they were also unmeaning. His teeth were good; and his nose, neither aquiline nor Grecian, was yet a very showy nose upon the whole. All the maidservants admired him; and you felt, in looking at him, that it was a pity our army should lose so good a grenadier.
Lord Erpingham was a Whig of the old school: he thought the Tory boroughs ought to be thrown open. He was generally considered a sensible man. He had read Blackstone, Montesquieu, Cowper"s Poems, and _The Rambler_; and he was always heard with great attention in the House of Lords. In his moral character he was a bon Vivant, as far as wine is concerned; for choice _eating_ he cared nothing. He was good-natured, but close; brave enough to fight a duel, if necessary; and religious enough to go to church once a week--in the country.
So far Lord Erpingham might seem modelled from one of Sir Walter"s heroes: we must reverse the medal, and show the points in which he differed from those patterns of propriety.