As Constance turned away her eyes, they fell on the opposite mirror, which reflected her still lofty but dimmed and faded beauty; the worn cheek, the dejected eye, those lines and hollows which tell the progress of years! There are certain moments when the time we have been forgetting makes its march suddenly apparent to our own eyes; when the change we have hitherto marked not stares upon us rude and abrupt; we almost fancy those lines, these wrinkles, planted in a single hour so unperceived have they been before. And such a moment was this to the beautiful Constance: she started at her own likeness, and turned involuntarily from the unflattering mirror. Beside it, on her table, lay a locket, given her by G.o.dolphin just before they married, and containing his hair; it was a simple trifle, and the simplicity seemed yet more striking amidst the costly and modern jewels that were scattered round it. As she looked on it, her heart, all woman still, flew back to the day on which, whispering eternal love, he hung it round her neck. "Ah, happy days! would that they could return!" sighed the desolate schemer; and she took the locket, kissed it, and softened by all the numberless recollections of the past, wept silently over it.
"And yet," she said, after a pause, and wiping away her tears, "and yet this weakness is unworthy of me. Lone, sad, ill, broken in frame and spirit as I am, he comes not near me; I am nothing to him, nothing to any one in the wide world. My heart, my heart, reconcile thyself to thy fate!--what thou hast been from thy cradle, that shalt thou be to my grave. I have not even the tenderness of a child to look to--the future is all blank!"
Constance was yet half yielding to, half struggling with, these thoughts, when Stainforth Radclyffe (to whom she was never denied) was suddenly announced. Time, which, sooner or later, repays perseverance, although in a deceitful coin, had brought to Radclyffe a solid earnest of future honors. His name had risen high in the science of his country; it was equally honoured by the many and the few; he had become a marked man, one of whom all predicted a bright hereafter. He had not yet, it is true, entered Parliament--usually the great arena in which English reputations are won--but it was simply because he had refused to enter it under the auspices of any patron; and his political knowledge, his depths of thought, and his stern, hard, ambitious mind were not the less appreciated and acknowledged. Between him and Constance friendship had continued to strengthen, and the more so as their political sentiments were in a great measure the same, although originating in different causes--hers from pa.s.sion, his from reflection.
Hastily Constance turned aside her face, and brushed away her tears, as Radclyffe approached; and then seeming to busy herself amongst some papers that lay scattered on her escritoire, and gave her an excuse for concealing in part her countenance, she said, with a constrained cheerfulness, "I am happy you are come to relieve my ennui; I have been looking over letters, written so many years ago, that I have been forced to remember how soon I shall cease to be young; no pleasant reflection for any one, much less a woman."
"I am at a loss for a compliment in return, as you may suppose,"
answered Radclyffe; "but Lady Erpingham deserves a penance for even hinting at the possibility of being ever less charming than she is; so I shall hold my tongue."
"Alas!" said Constance, gravely, "how little, save the mere triumphs of youth and beauty, is left to our s.e.x! How much, nay, how entirely, in all other and loftier objects, is our ambition walled in and fettered!
The human mind must have its aim, its aspiring; how can your s.e.x blame us, then, for being frivolous when no aim, no aspiring, save those of frivolity, are granted us by society?"
"And is love frivolous?" said Radclyffe; "is the empire of the heart nothing?"
"Yes!" exclaimed Constance, with energy; "for the empire never lasts.
We are slaves to the empire we would found; we wish to be loved, but we only succeed in loving too well ourselves. We lay up our all--our thoughts, hopes, emotions-all the treasures of our hearts--in one spot; and when we would retire from the deceits and cares of life, we find the sanctuary walled against us--we love, and are loved no longer!"
Constance had turned round with the earnestness of the feeling she expressed; and her eyes, still wet with tears, her flushed cheek, her quivering lip, struck to Radclyffe"s heart more than her words. He rose involuntarily; his own agitation was marked; he moved several steps towards Constance, and then checked the impulse, and muttered indistinctly to himself.
"No," said Constance, mournfully, and scarcely heeding him--"it is in vain for us to be ambitious. We only deceive ourselves; we are not stern and harsh enough for the pa.s.sion. Touch our affections, and we are recalled at once to the sense of our weakness; and I--I--would to G.o.d that I were a humble peasant girl, and not--not what I am!"
So saying, the lofty Constance sank down, overpowered with the bitterness of her feelings, and covered her face with her hands. Was Radclyffe a man that he could see this unmoved?--that he could hear those beautiful lips breathe complaints for the want of love, and not acknowledge the love that burned at his own heart? Long, secretly, resolutely, had he struggled against the pa.s.sion for Constance, which his frequent intercourse with her had fed, and which his consciousness, that in her was the only parallel to himself that he had ever met with in her s.e.x, had first led him to form; and now lone, neglected, sad, this haughty woman wept over her unloved lot in his presence, and still he was not at her feet! He spoke not, moved not, but his breath heaved thick, and his face was as pale as death. He conquered himself.
All within Radclyffe obeyed the idol he had worshipped, even before Constance; all within him, if ardent and fiery, was also high and generous. The acuteness of his reason permitted him no self-sophistried; and he would have laid his head on the block rather than breathe a word of that love which he knew, from the moment it was confessed, would become unworthy of Constance and himself.
There was a pause. Lady Erpingham, ashamed, confounded at her own weakness, recovered herself slowly and in silence. Radclyffe at length spoke; and his voice, at first trembling and indistinct, grew, as he proceeded, clear and earnest.
"Never," said he, "shall I forget the confidence your emotions have testified in my--my friendship; I am about to deserve it. Do not, my dear friend (let me so call you), do not forget that life is too short for misunderstandings in which happiness is concerned. You believe that--that G.o.dolphin does not repay the affection you have borne him: do not be angry, dear Lady Erpingham; I feel it indelicate in me to approach that subject, but my regard for you emboldens me. I know G.o.dolphin"s heart; he may seem light, neglectful, but he loves you as deeply as ever; he loves you entirely."
Constance, humbled as she was, listened in breathless silence; her cheek burned with blushes, and those blushes were at once to Radclyffe a torture and a reward.
"At this moment," continued he, with constrained calmness, "at this moment he fancies in you that very coldness you lament in him. Pardon me, Lady Erpingham; but G.o.dolphin"s nature is wayward, mysterious, and exacting. Have you consulted, have you studied it sufficiently? Note it well, soothe it; and if his love can repay you, you will be repaid. G.o.d bless you, dearest Lady Erpingham."
In a moment more Radclyffe had left the apartment.
CHAPTER LIX.
CONSTANCE MAKES A DISCOVERY THAT TOUCHES AND ENLIGHTENS HER AS TO G.o.dOLPHIN"S NATURE.--AN EVENT, ALTHOUGH IN PRIVATE LIFE, NOT WITHOUT ITS INTEREST.
If Constance most bitterly reproached herself, or rather her slackened nerves, her breaking health, that she had before another--that other too, not of her own s.e.x--betrayed her dependence upon even her husband"s heart for happiness; if her conscience instantly took alarm at the error (and it was indeed a grave one) which had revealed to any man her domestic griefs; yet, on the other hand, she could not control the wild thrill of delight with which she recalled those words that had so solemnly a.s.sured her she was still beloved by G.o.dolphin. She had a firm respect in Radclyffe"s penetration and his sincerity, and knew that he was one neither to deceive her nor be deceived himself. His advice, too, came home to her. Had she, indeed, with sufficient address, sufficient softness, insinuated herself into G.o.dolphin"s nature? Neglected herself, had she not neglected in return? She asked herself this question, and was never weary of examining her past conduct. That Radclyffe, the austere and chilling Radclyffe, entertained for her any feeling warmer than friendship, she never for an instant suspected; that suspicion alone would have driven him from her presence for ever. And although there had been a time, in his bright and exulting youth, when Radclyffe had not been without those arts which win, in the opposite s.e.x, affection from aversion itself, those arts doubled, ay, a hundredfold, in their fascination, would not have availed him with the pure but disappointed Constance, even had a sense of right and wrong very different from the standard he now acknowledged permitted him to exert them. So that his was rather the sacrifice of impulse, than of any triumph that impulse could afterwards have gained him.
Many, and soft and sweet were now the recollections of Constance. Her heart flew back to her early love among the shades of Wendover; to the first confession of the fair enthusiastic boy, when he offered at her shrine a mind, a genius, a heart capable of fruits which the indolence of after-life, and the lethargy of disappointed hope, had blighted before their time.
If he was now so deaf to what she considered the n.o.bler, because more stirring, excitements of life, was she not in some measure answerable for the supineness? Had there not been a day in which he had vowed to toil, to labour, to sacrifice the very character of his mind, for a union with her? Was she, after all, was she right to adhere so rigidly to her father"s dying words, and to that vow afterwards confirmed by her own pride and bitterness of soul? She looked to her father"s portrait for an answer; and that daring and eloquent face seemed, for the first time, cold and unanswering to her appeal.
In such meditations the hours pa.s.sed, and midnight came on without Constance having quitted her apartment. She now summoned her woman, and inquired if G.o.dolphin was at home. He had come in about an hour since, and, complaining of fatigue, had retired to rest. Constance again dismissed her maid, and stole to his apartment. He was already asleep, his cheek rested on his arm, and his hair fell wildly over a brow that now worked under the influence of his dreams. Constance put the light softly down, and seating herself beside him, watched over a sleep which, if it had come suddenly on him, was not the less unquiet and disturbed.
At length he muttered, "Yes, Lucilla, yes; I tell you, you are avenged.
I have not forgotten you! I have not forgotten that I betrayed, deserted you! but was it my fault? No, no! Yet I have not the less sought to forget it. These poor excesses,--these chilling gaieties,--were they not incurred for you?--and now you come--you--ah, no--spare me!"
Shocked and startled, Constance drew back. Here was a new key to G.o.dolphin"s present life, his dissipation, his thirst for pleasure. Had he indeed sought to lull the stings of conscience? And she, instead of soothing, of reconciling him to the past, had she left him alone to struggle with bitter and unresting thoughts, and to contrast the devotion of the one lost with the indifference of the one gained? She crept back to her own chamber, to commune with her heart and be still.
"My dear Percy," said she, the next day, when he carelessly sauntered into her boudoir before he rode out, "I have a favour to ask of you."
"Who ever denied a favour to Lady Erpingham?"
"Not you, certainly; but my favour is a great one."
"It is granted."
"Let us pa.s.s the summer in ----shire."
G.o.dolphin"s brow clouded.
"At Wendover Castle?" said he, after a pause.
"We have never been there since our marriage," said Constance evasively.
"Humph!--as you will."
"It was the place," said Constance, "where you, Percy, first told me you loved!"
The tone of his wife"s voice struck on the right chord in G.o.dolphin"s breast; he looked up, and saw her eyes full of tears and fixed upon him.
"Why, Constance," said he, much affected, "who would have thought that you still cherished that remembrance?"
"Ah! when shall I forget it?" said Constance; "then you loved me!"
"And was rejected."
"Hush! but I believe now that I was wrong."
"No, Constance; you were wrong, for your own happiness, that the rejection was not renewed."
"Percy!"
"Constance!" and in the accent of that last word there was something that encouraged Constance, and she threw herself into G.o.dolphin"s arms, and murmured:--
"If I have offended, forgive me; let us be to each other what we once were."
Words like these from the lips of one in whom such tender supplications, such feminine yearnings, were not common, subdued G.o.dolphin at once.
He folded her in his arms, and kissing her pa.s.sionately, whispered, "Be always thus, Constance, and you will be more to me than ever."
CHAPTER LX.