What are fears, but voices airyWhisp'ring harm, where harm is not?And deluding the unwary.Till the fatal bolt is shot?WORDSWORTH.
What are fears, but voices airyWhisp'ring harm, where harm is not?And deluding the unwary.Till the fatal bolt is shot?
What are fears, but voices airyWhisp'ring harm, where harm is not?And deluding the unwary.Till the fatal bolt is shot?
WORDSWORTH.
Lord Lodore was disgusted at the very threshold of his new purpose. His long residence abroad prevented his ever acquiring the habit of public speaking; nor had he the respect for human nature, nor the enthusiasm for a party or a cause, which is necessary for one who would make a figure as a statesman. His sensitive disposition, his pride, which, when excited, verged into arrogance; his uncompromising integrity, his disdain of most of his associates, his incapacity of yielding obedience, rendered his short political career one of struggle and mortification. "And this is life!" he said; "abroad, to mingle with the senseless and the vulgar; and at home, to find a—wife, who prefers the admiration of fools, to the love of an honest heart!"
Within a year after her marriage, Lady Lodore gave birth to a daughter. This circumstance, which naturally tends to draw the parents nearer, unfortunately in this instance set them further apart. Lady Santerre had been near, with so many restrictions and so much interference, which though probably necessary, considering Cornelia's extreme youth, yet seemed vexatious and impertinent to Lodore. All things appeared to be permitted, except those which he proposed. A drive, a ride, even a walk with him, was to be considered fatal; while, at the same time, Lady Lodore was spending whole nights in heated rooms, and even dancing. Her confinement was followed by a long illness; the child was nursed by a stranger, secluded in a distant part of the house; and during her slow recovery, the young mother seemed scarcely to remember that it existed. The love for children is a passion often developed most fully in the second stage of life. Lodore idolized his little offspring, and felt hurt and angry when his wife, after it had been in her room a minute or two, on the first approach it made to a squall, ordered it to be taken away. At the time, in truth, she was reduced to the lowest ebb of weakness; but Lodore, as men are apt to do, was slow to discern her physical suffering, while his cheeks burnt with indignation, as she peevishly repeated the command that his child should go.
When she grew better this was not mended. She was ordered into the country for air, at a time when the little girl was suffering from some infantine disorder, and could not be moved. It was left with its nurses, but Lodore remained also, and rather suffered his wife to travel without him, so to demonstrate openly, that he thought her treatment of her baby unmotherly; not that he expressed this sentiment, nor did Lady Lodore guess at it; she saw only his usual spirit of contradiction and neglect, in his desertion of her at this period.
The mother pressed with careless lips the downy cheek of the little cherub, and departed; while Lodore passed most of his time in the child's apartment, or, turning his library into a nursery, it was continually with him there. "Here," he thought, "I have something to live for, something to love. And even though I am not loved in return, my heart's sacrifice will not be repaid with insolence and contempt." But when the infant began to show tokens of recognition and affection, when it smiled and stretched out its little hands on seeing him, and crowed with innocent pleasure; and still more, when the lisped paternal name fell from its roseate lips—the father repeated more emphatically, "Here is something that makes it worth while to have been born—to live!" An illness of the child overwhelmed him with anxiety and despair. She recovered; and he thanked God, with a lively emotion of joy, to which he had long been a stranger.
His affection for his child augmented the annoyance which he derived from his domestic circle. He had been hitherto sullenly yielding on any contest; but whatever whim, or whatever plan, he formed with regard to his daughter, he abided by unmoved, and took pleasure in manifesting his partiality for her. Lodore was by nature a man of violent and dangerous passions, add to which, his temper was susceptible to irritability. He disdained to cope with the undue influence exercised by Lady Santerre over his wife. He beheld in the latter, a frivolous, childish puppet, endowed with the usual feminine infirmities—
"The love of pleasure, and the love of sway;"
"The love of pleasure, and the love of sway;"
and destitute of that tact and tenderness of nature which should teach her where to yield and how to reign. He left her therefore to her own devices, resolved only that he would not give up a single point relative to his child, and consequently, according to the weakness of human nature, ever ready to find fault with and prohibit all her wishes on the subject.
Cornelia, accustomed to be guided by her mother's watchful artifices, and to submit to a tyranny which assumed the guise of servitude, felt only with the feelings implanted by her parent. She was not, like Lady Santerre, heartless; but cherished pride, the effect of perpetual misrepresentation, painted her as such. She looked on her husband as a man essentially selfish—one who, worn out by passion, had married her to beguile his hours during a visitation ofennui, and incapable of the softness of love or the kindness of friendship. On occasion of his new conduct with regard to her child, her haughty soul was in arms against him, and something almost akin to hatred sprung up within her. She resented his interference; she believed that his object was to deprive her of the consolation of her daughter's love, and that his chief aim was to annoy and insult her. She was jealous of her daughter with her husband, of her husband with her daughter. If by some chance a word or look passed that might have softened the mutual sentiment of distrust, the evil genius of the scene was there to freeze again the genial current; and any approach to kindness, by an inexplicable but certain result, only tended to place them further apart than before.
Three winters had passed since their marriage, and the third spring was merging into summer, while they continued in this state of warlike neutrality. Any slight incident might have destroyed the fictitious barriers erected by ill-will and guile between them; or, so precarious was their state, any new event might change petty disagreements into violent resentment, and prevent their ever entertaining towards each other those feelings which, but for one fatal influence, would naturally have had root between them. The third summer was come. They were spending the commencement of it in London, when circumstances occurred, unanticipated by either, which changed materially the course of their domestic arrangements.
Lord Lodore returned home one evening at a little after eleven, from a dinner-party, and found, as usual, his drawing-room deserted—Lady Lodore had gone to a ball. He had returned in that humour to moralize, which we so often bring from society into solitude; and he paced the empty apartments with impatient step. "Home!—yes, this is my home! I had hoped that gentle peace and smiling love would be its inmates, that returning as now, from those who excite my spleen and contempt, one eye would have lighted up to welcome me, a dear voice have thanked me for my return. Home! a Tartar beneath his tent—a wild Indian in his hut, may speak of home—I have none. Where shall I spend the rest of this dull, deserted evening?"—for it may be supposed that, sharing London habits, eleven o'clock was to him but an evening hour.
He went into his dressing-room, and casting his eyes on the table, a revulsion came over him, a sudden shock—for there lay a vision, which made his breath come thick, and caused the blood to recede to his heart—a like vision has had the same effect on many, though it took but the unobtrusive form of a little note—a note, whose fold, whose seal, whose superscription, were all once so familiar, and now so strange. Time sensibly rolled back; each event of the last few years was broken off, as it were, from his life, leaving it as it had been ten years ago. He seized the note, and then threw it from him. "It is a mere mistake," he said aloud, while he felt, even to the marrow of his bones, the thrill and shudder as of an occurrence beyond the bounds of nature. Yet still the note lay there, and half as if to undeceive himself, and to set witchcraft at nought, he again took it up—this time in a less agitated mood, so that when the well-known impression of a little foreign coronet on the seal met his eye, he became aware that however unexpected such a sight might be, it was in the moral course of things, and he hastily tore open the epistle: it was written in French, and was very concise. "I arrived in town last night," the writer said; "I and my son are about to join my husband in Paris. I hear that you are married; I hope to see you and your lady before I leave London."
After reading these few lines, Lord Lodore remained for a considerable time lost in thought. He tried to consider what he should do, but his ideas wandered, as they sadly traced the past, and pictured to him the present. Never did life appear so vain, so contemptible, so odious a thing as now, that he was reminded of the passions and sufferings of former days, which, strewed at his feet like broken glass, might still wound him, though their charm and their delight could never be renewed. He did not go out that night; indeed it seemed as if but a minute had passed, when, lo! morning was pouring her golden summer beams into his room—when Lady Lodore's carriage drove up; and early sounds in the streets told him that night was gone and the morrow come.
That same day Lord Lodore requested Cornelia to call with him on a Polish lady of rank, with whom he had formerly been acquainted, to whom he was under obligations. They went. And what Lodore felt when he stood with his lovely wife before her, who for many by-gone years had commanded his fate, had wound him to her will, through the force of love and woman's wiles—who he knew could read every latent sentiment of his soul, and yet towards whom he was resolved now, and for ever in future, to adopt the reserved manners of a mere acquaintance—what of tremor or pain all this brought to Lodore's bosom was veiled, at least beyond Cornelia's penetration, who seldom truly observed him, and who was now occupied by her new acquaintance.
The lady had passed the bloom of youth, and even mid life; she was verging on fifty, but she had every appearance of having been transcendently beautiful. Her dark full oriental eyes still gleamed from beneath her finely-arched brows, and her black hair, untinged by any grizzly change, was gathered round her head in such tresses as bespoke an admirable profusion. Her person was tall and commanding: her manners were singular, for she mingled so strangely, stateliness and affability, disdain and sweetness, that she seemed like a princess dispensing the favour of her smile, or the terror of her frown on her submissive subjects; her sweetest smiles were for Cornelia, who yet turned from her to another object, who attracted her more peculiar attention. It was her son; a youth inheriting all his mother's beauty, added to the fascination of early manhood, and a frank and ingenuous address, which his parent could never have possessed.
The party separated, apparently well pleased with each other. Lady Lodore offered her services, which were frankly accepted; and after an hour spent together, they appointed to meet again the next day, when the ladies should drive out together to shop and see sights.
They became not exactly intimate, yet upon familiar terms. There was a dignity and even a constraint in the Countess Lyzinski's manner that was a bar to cordiality; but they met daily, and Lady Lodore introduced her new friend everywhere. The Countess said that motives of curiosity had induced her to take this country in her way to Paris. Her wealth was immense, and her rank among the first in her own country. The Russian ambassador treated her with distinction, so that she gained facile and agreeable entrance into the highest society. The young Count Casimir was an universal favourite, but his dearest pleasure was to attend upon Lady Lodore, who readily offered to school him on his entrance into the English world. They were pretty exactly the same age; Casimir was somewhat the junior, yet he looked the elder, while the lady, accustomed to greater independence, took the lead in their intercourse, and acted the monitress to her docile scholar.
Lord Lodore looked on, or took a part, in what was passing around him, with a caprice perfectly unintelligible. With the Countess he was always gentle and obliging, but reserved. While she treated him with a coldness resembling disdain, yet whose chiefest demonstration was silence. Lodore never altered towards her; it was with regard to her son that he displayed his susceptible temper. He took pains to procure for him every proper acquaintance; he was forward in directing him; he watched over his mode of passing his time, he appeared to be interested in every thing he did, and yet to hate him. His demeanour towards him was morose, almost insulting. Lodore, usually so forbearing and courteous, would contradict and silence him, as if he had been a child or a menial. It required all Casimir's deference for one considerably his senior, to prevent him from resenting openly this style of treatment; it required all the fascination of Lady Lodore to persuade him to encounter it a second time. Once he had complained to her, and she remonstrated with her husband. His answer was to reprimand her for listening to the impertinence of the stripling. She coloured angrily, but did not reply. Cold and polite to each other, the noble pair were not in the habit of disputing. Lady Santerre guarded against that. Any thing as familiar as a quarrel might have produced a reconciliation, and with that a better understanding of each other's real disposition. The disdain that rose in Cornelia's bosom on this taunt, fostered by conscious innocence, and a sense of injustice, displayed itself in a scornful smile, and by an augmentation of kindness towards Casimir. He was now almost domesticated at her house; he attended her in the morning, hovered round her during the evening; and she, given up to the desire of pleasing, did not regard, did not even see, the painful earnestness with which Lord Lodore regarded them. His apparent jealousy, if she at all remarked it, was but a new form of selfishness, to which she was not disposed to give quarter. Yet any unconcerned spectator might have started to observe how, from an obscure corner of the room, Lodore watched every step they took, every change of expression of face during their conversation; and then approaching and interrupting them, endeavoured to carry Count Casimir away with him; and when thwarted in this, dart glances of such indignation on the youth, and of scorn upon his wife, as might have awoke a sense of danger, had either chanced to see the fierce, lightning-like passions written in those moments on his countenance, as letters of fire and menace traced upon the prophetic wall.
The Countess appeared to observe him indeed, and sometimes it seemed as if she regarded the angry workings of his heart with malicious pleasure. Once or twice she had drawn near, and said a few words in her native language, on which he endeavoured to stifle each appearance of passion, answering with a smile, in a low calm voice, and retiring, left, as it were, the field to her. Lady Santerre also had remarked his glances of suspicion or fury; they were interpreted into new sins against her daughter, and made with her the subject of ridicule or bitter reproach.
Lord Lodore was entirely alone. To no one human being could he speak a word that in the least expressed the violence of his feelings. Perhaps the only person with whom he felt the least inclined to overflow in confidence, was the Countess Lyzinski. But he feared her: he feared the knowledge she possessed of his character, and the power she had once exercised to rule him absolutely; the barrier between them must be insuperable, or the worst results would follow: he redoubled his own cautious reserve, and bore patiently the proud contempt which she exhibited, resolved not to yield one inch in the war he waged with his own heart, with regard to her. But he was alone, and the solitude of sympathy in which he lived, gave force and keenness to all his feelings. Had they evaporated in words, half their power to wound had been lost; as it was, there was danger in his meditations, and each one in collision with him had occasion to dread that any sudden overflow of stormy rage would be the more violent for having been repressed so long.
One day the whole party, with the exception of Lady Santerre, dined at the house of the Russian ambassador. As Lord and Lady Lodore proceeded towards their destination, he, with pointed sarcasm of manner, requested her to be less marked in her attentions to Count Casimir. The unfounded suspicions of a lover may please as a proof of love, but those of a husband, who thus claims affections which he has ceased to endeavour to win, are never received except as an impertinence and an insult. Those of Lord Lodore appeared to his haughty wife but a new form of cold-hearted despotism, checking her pleasures whencesoever they might arise. She replied by a bitter smile, and afterwards still more insultingly, by the display of kindness and partiality towards the object of her husband's dislike. Her complete sense of innocence, roused to indignation, by the injury she deemed offered to it, led her thus to sport with feelings, which, had she deigned to remark, she might have seen working with volcano-power in the breast of Lodore.
The ladies retired after dinner. They gathered together in groups in the drawing-room, while Lady Lodore, strange to say, sat apart from all. She placed herself on a distant sopha, apparently occupied by examining various specimens of bijouterie, nic-nacs of all kinds, which she took up one after the other, from the table near her. One hand shaded her eyes as she continued thus to amuse herself. She was not apt to be so abstracted; as now, that intent on self-examination, or self-reproach, or on thoughts that wandered to another, she forgot where she was, and by whom surrounded. She did not observe the early entrance of several gentlemen from the dining-room, nor remark a kind of embarrassment which sat upon their features, spreading a sort of uncomfortable wonder among the guests. The first words that roused her, were addressed to her by her husband: "Your carriage waits, Cornelia; will you come?"
"So early?" she asked.
"I particularly wish it," he replied.
"You can go, and send them back for me—and yet it is not worth while, we shall see most of the people here at Lady C——'s to night."
She glanced round the room, Casimir was not there; as she passed the Countess Lyzinski, she was about to ask her whether they should meet again that evening, when she caught the lady's eye fixed on her husband, meeting and returning a look of his. Alarm and disdain were painted on her face, and added to this, a trace of feeling so peculiar, so full of mutual understanding, that Lady Lodore was filled with no agreeable emotion of surprise. She entered the carriage, and the reiterated "Home!" of Lord Lodore, prevented her intended directions. Both were silent during their short drive. She sat absorbed in a variety of thoughts, not one of which led her to enter into conversation with her companion; they were rather fixed on her mother, on the observations she should make to, and the conjectures she should share with, her. She became anxious to reach home, and resolved at once to seek Lady Santerre's advice and directions by which to regulate her conduct on this occasion.
Who then to frail mortality shall trust,But limns the water, or but writes in dust.BACON.
Who then to frail mortality shall trust,But limns the water, or but writes in dust.
Who then to frail mortality shall trust,But limns the water, or but writes in dust.
BACON.
They arrived in Berkeley-square. Lady Lodore alighted, and perceived with something of a beating heart, that her husband followed her, as she passed on to the inner drawing-room. Lady Santerre was not there. Taking a letter from the table, so to give herself the appearance of an excuse for having entered a room she was about immediately to quit, she was going, when Lodore, who stood hesitating, evidently desirous of addressing her, and yet uncertain how to begin, stopped her by speaking her name, "Cornelia!"
She turned—she was annoyed; her conscience whispered what was in all probability the subject to which her attention was to be called. Her meditations in the drawing-room of the Russian Ambassador, convinced her that she had, to use the phrase of the day, flirted too much with Count Casimir, and she had inwardly resolved to do so no more. It was particularly disagreeable therefore, that her husband should use authority, as she feared that he was about to do, and exact from his wife's obedience, what she was willing to concede to her own sense of propriety. She was resolved to hear as little as she could on the subject, and stood as if in haste to go. His faltering voice betrayed how much he felt, and once or twice it refused to frame the words he desired to utter: how different was their import from that expected by his impatient auditress!
"Cornelia," said he, at length, "can you immediately, and at once—this very night—prepare to quit England?"
"Quit England! Why?—whither?" she exclaimed.
"I scarcely know," replied Lodore, "nor is it of the slightest import. The world is wide, a shelter, a refuge can be purchased any where—and that is all I seek."
The gaming table, the turf, loss of fortune, were the ideas naturally conveyed into the lady's mind by this reply. "Is all—every thing gone—lost?" she asked.
"My honour is," he answered, with an effort, "and the rest is of little worth."
He paused, and then continued in a low but distinct voice, as if every word cost him a struggle, yet as if he wished each one to be fraught with its entire meaning to his hearer; "I cannot well explain to you the motives of my sudden determination, nor will I complain of the part you have had in bringing on this catastrophe. It is over now. No power on earth—no heavenly power can erase the past, nor change one iota of what, but an hour ago, did not exist, but which now exists; altering all things to both of us for ever; I am a dishonoured man."
"Speak without more comment," cried Lady Lodore; "for Heaven's sake explain—I must know what you mean."
"I have insulted a gentleman," replied her husband, "and I will yield no reparation. I have disgraced a nobleman by a blow, and I will offer no apology, could one be accepted—and it could not; nor will I give satisfaction."
Lady Lodore remained silent. Her thoughts speedily ran over the dire objects which her husband's speech presented. A quarrel—she too readily guessed with whom—a blow, a duel; her cheek blanched—yet not so; for Lodore refused to fight. In spite of the terror with which an anticipated rencontre had filled her, the idea of cowardice in her husband, or the mere accusation of it, brought the colour back to her face. She felt that her heedlessness had given rise to all this harm; but again she felt insulted that doubts of her sentiments or conduct should be the occasion of a scene of violence. Both remained silent. Lodore stood leaning on the mantelpiece, his cheek flushed, agitation betraying itself in each gesture, mixed with a resolve to command himself. Cornelia had advanced from the door to the middle of the room; she stood irresolute, too indignant and too fearful to ask further explanation, yet anxious to receive it. Still he hesitated. He was desirous of finding some form of words which might convey all the information that it was necessary she should receive, and yet conceal all that he desired should remain untold.
At last he spoke. "It is unnecessary to allude to the irretrievable past. The future is not less unalterable for me. I will not fight with, nor apologize to, the boy I have insulted I must therefore fly—fly my country and the face of man; go where the name of Lodore will not be synonymous with infamy—to an island in the east—to the desert wilds of America—it matters not whither. The simple question is, whether you are prepared on a sudden to accompany me? I would not ask this of your generosity, but that, married as we are, our destinies are linked, far beyond any power we possess to sunder them. Miserable as my future fortunes will be, far other than those which I invited you but four years ago to share, you are better off incurring the worst with me, than you could be, struggling alone for a separate existence."
"Pardon me, Lodore," said Cornelia, somewhat subdued by the magnitude of the crisis brought about, she believed, however involuntarily by herself, and by the sadness that, as he spoke, filled the dark eyes of her companion with an expression more melancholy than tears; "pardon me, if I seek for further explanation. Your antagonist" (they neither of them ventured to speak a name, which hung on the lips of both) "is a mere boy. Your refusal to fight with him results of course from this consideration; while angry, and if I must allude to so distasteful a falsehood, while unjust suspicion prevent your making him fitting and most due concessions. Were the occasion less terrible, I might disdain to assert my own innocence; but as it is, I do most solemnly declare, that Count Casimir——"
"I ask no question on that point, but simply wish to know whether you will accompany me," interrupted Lodore, hastily; "the rest I am sorry for—but it is over. You, my poor girl, though in some measure the occasion, and altogether the victim, of this disaster, can exercise no controul over it. No foreign noble would accept the most humiliating submissions as compensation for a blow, and this urchin shall never receive from me the shadow of any."
"Is there no other way?" asked Cornelia.
"Not any," replied Lodore, while his agitation increased, and his voice grew tremulous; "No consideration on earth could arm me against his life. One other mode there is. I might present myself as a mark for his vengeance, with a design of not returning his fire, but I am shut out even from this resource. And this," continued Lodore, losing as he spoke, all self-command, carried away by the ungovernable passions he had hitherto suppressed, and regardless, as he strode up and down the room, of Cornelia, who half terrified had sunk into a chair; "this—these are the result of my crimes—such, from their consequences, I now term, what by courtesy I have hitherto named my follies—this is the end! Bringing into frightful collision those who are bound by sacred ties—changing natural love into unnatural, deep-rooted, unspeakable hate—arming blood against kindred blood—and making the innocent a parricide. O Theodora, what have you not to answer for!"
Lady Lodore started. The image he presented was too detestable. She repressed her emotions, and assuming that air of disdain, which we are so apt to adopt to colour more painful feelings, she said, "This sounds very like a German tragedy, being at once disagreeable and inexplicable."
"It is a tragedy," he replied; "a tragedy brought now to its last dark catastrophe. Casimir is my son. We may neither of us murder the other; nor will I, if again brought into contact with him, do other than chastise the insolent boy. The tiger is roused within me. You have a part in this."
A flash of anger glanced from Cornelia's eyes. She did not reply—she rose—she quitted the room—she passed on with apparent composure, till reaching the door of her mother's chamber, she rushed impetuously in. Overcome with indignation, panting, choked, she threw herself into her arms, saying, "Save me!" A violent fit of hysterics followed.
At first Lady Lodore could only speak of the injury and insult she had herself suffered; and Lady Santerre, who by no means wished to encourage feelings, which might lead to violence in action, tried to soothe her irritation. But when allusions to Lodore's intention of quitting England and the civilized world for ever, mingled with Cornelia's exclamations, the affair assumed a new aspect in the wary lady's eyes. The barbarity of such an idea excited her utmost resentment. At once she saw the full extent of the intended mischief, and the risk she incurred of losing the reward of years of suffering and labour. When an instantaneous departure was mentioned, an endless, desolate journey, which it was doubtful whether she should be admitted to share, to be commenced that very night, she perceived that her measures to prevent it must be promptly adopted. The chariot was still waiting which was to have conveyed Lord and Lady Lodore to their assembly; dressed as she was for this, without preparation, she hurried her daughter into the carriage, and bade the coachman drive to a villa they rented at Twickenham; leaving, in explanation, these few lines addressed to her son-in-law.
"The scene of this evening has had an alarming effect upon Cornelia. Time will soften the violence of her feelings, but some immediate step was necessary to save, I verily believe, her life. I take her to Twickenham, and will endeavour to calm her: until I shall have in some measure succeeded, I think you had better not follow us; but let us hear from you; for although my attention is so painfully engrossed by my daughter's sufferings, I am distressed on your account also, and shall continue very uneasy until I hear from you.
"Friday Evening."
Lady Santerre and her daughter reached Twickenham. Lady Lodore went to bed, and assisted by a strong composing draught, administered by her mother, her wrongs and her anger were soon hushed in profound sleep. Night, or rather morning, was far spent before this occurred, so that it was late in the afternoon of the ensuing day before she awoke, and recalled to her memory the various conflicting sentiments which had occupied her previous to her repose.
During the morning, Lady Santerre had despatched a servant to Berkeley-square, to summon her daughter's peculiar attendants. He now brought back the intelligence that Lord Lodore had departed for the continent, about three hours after his wife had quitted his house. But to this he added tidings of another circumstance, for which both ladies were totally unprepared. Cornelia had entered the carriage the preceding night, without spending one thought on the sleeping cherub in the nursery. What was her surprise and indignation, when she heard that her child and its attendant formed a part of his lordship's travelling suite. The mother's first impulse was to follow her offspring; but this was speedily exchanged for a bitter sense of wrong, aversion to her husband, and a resolve not to yield one point, in the open warfare thus declared by him.
Amid two seas, on one small point of land,Wearied, uncertain, and amazed, we stand;On either side our thoughts incessant turn,Forward we dread, and looking back we mourn.PRIOR.
Amid two seas, on one small point of land,Wearied, uncertain, and amazed, we stand;On either side our thoughts incessant turn,Forward we dread, and looking back we mourn.
Amid two seas, on one small point of land,Wearied, uncertain, and amazed, we stand;On either side our thoughts incessant turn,Forward we dread, and looking back we mourn.
PRIOR.
Accustomed to obey the more obvious laws of necessity, those whose situation in life obliges them to earn their daily bread, are already broken in to the yoke of fate. But the rich and great are vanquished more slowly. Their time is their own; as fancy bids them, they can go east, west, north, or south; they wish, and accomplish their wishes; and cloyed by the too easy attainment of the necessaries, and even of the pleasures of life, they fly to the tortures of passion, and to the labour of overcoming the obstacles that stand in the way of their forbidden desires, as resources against ennui and satiety. Reason is lost in the appetite for excitement, and a kind of unnatural pleasure springs from their severest pains, because thus alone are they roused to a full sense of their faculties; thus alone is existence and its purposes brought home to them.
In the midst of this, their thoughtless career, the eternal law which links ill to ill, is at hand to rebuke and tame the rebel spirit; and such a tissue of pain and evil is woven from their holiday pastime, as checks them midcourse, and makes them feel that they are slaves. The young are scarcely aware of this; they delight to contend with Fate, and laugh as she clanks their chains. But there is a period—sooner or later comes to all—when the links envelop them, the bolts are shot, the rivets fixed, the iron enters the flesh, the soul is subdued, and they fly to religion or proud philosophy, to seek for an alleviation, which the crushed spirit can no longer draw from its own resources.
This hour! this fatal hour! How many can point to the shadow on the dial, and say, "Then it was that I felt the whole weight of my humanity, and knew myself to be the subject of an unvanquishable power!" This dark moment had arrived for Lodore. He had spent his youth in passion, and exhausted his better nature in a struggle for, and in the enjoyment of, pleasure. He found disappointment, and desired change. It came at his beck. He married. He was not satisfied; but still he felt that it was because he did not rouse himself, that the bonds sate so heavily upon him. He was enervated. He sickened at the idea of the struggle it would require to cast off his fetters, and he preferred adapting his nature to endure their weight. But he believed that it was only because he did not raise his hand, nor determine on one true effort, that he was thus enslaved. And now his hand was raised—the effort made; but no change ensued; and he felt that there was no escape from the inextricable bonds that fastened him to misery.
He had believed that he did right in introducing his wife to the Countess Lyzinski. He felt that he could not neglect this lady; and such was her rank, that any affectation of a separate acquaintance would invite those observations which he deprecated. It was, after all, matter of trivial import that he should be the person to bring them acquainted. Moving in the same circles, they must meet—they might clash: it was better that they should be on friendly terms. He did not foresee the intimacy that ensued; and still less, that his own violent passions would be called into action. That they were so, was, to the end, a mystery even to himself. He no longer loved the Countess; and, in the solitude of his chamber, he often felt his heart yearn towards the noble youth, her son; but when they met—when Cornelia spent her blandest smiles upon him, and when the exquisitely beautiful countenance of Casimir became lighted up with gladness and gratitude, a fire of rage was kindled in his heart, and he could no more command himself, than can the soaring flames of a conflagration bend earthward. He felt ashamed; but new fury sprung from this very sensation. For worlds, he would not have his frenzy pried into by another; and yet he had no power to controul its manifestation. His wife expostulated with him concerning Casimir, and laughed his rebuke to scorn. But she did not read the tumult of unutterable jealousy and hate, that slept within his breast, like an earthquake beneath the soil, the day before a city falls.
All tended to add fuel to this unnatural flame. His own exertions to subdue its fierceness but kindled it anew. Often he entered the same room with the young Count, believing that he had given his suspicions to the winds—that he could love him as a son, and rejoice with a father's pride in the graces of his figure and the noble qualities of his mind. For a few seconds the fiction endured: he felt a pang—it was nothing—gone; it would not return again:—another! was he for ever to be thus tortured? And then a word a look, an appearance of slighting him on the part of Casimir, an indiscreet smile on Cornelia's lips, would at once set a-light the whole devastating blaze. The Countess alone had any power over him; but though he yielded to her influence, he was the more enraged that she should behold his weakness; and that while he succeeded in maintaining an elevated impassibility with regard to herself, his heart, with all its flaws and poverty of purpose, should, through the ill-timed interference of this boy, be placed once more naked in her hand.
Such a state of feeling, where passion combated passion, while reason was forgotten in the strife, was necessarily pregnant with ruin. The only safety was in flight;—and Lodore would have flown—he would have absented himself until the cause of his sufferings had departed—but that, more and more, jealousy entered into his feelings—a jealousy, wound up by the peculiarity of his situation, into a sensitiveness that bordered on insanity, which saw guilt in a smile, and overwhelming, hopeless ruin, in the simplest expression of kindness. Cornelia herself was disinclined to quit London, and tenacious pride rendered him averse to proposing it, since he could frame no plausible pretext for his change of purpose, and it had been previously arranged that they should remain till the end of July. The presence of the Countess Lyzinski was a tie to keep her; and to have pleaded his feelings with regard to Casimir, could he have brought himself so to do, would probably have roused her at once into rebellion. There was no resource; he must bear, and also he must forbear;—but the last was beyond his power, and his attempt at the first brought with it destruction. In the last instance, at the Russian Ambassador's, irritated by Cornelia's tone of defiance, and subsequent levity, he levelled a scornful remark at the guiltless and unconscious offender. Casimir had endured his arrogance and injustice long. He knew of no tie, no respect due, beyond that which youth owes to maturer years; yet the natural sweetness of his disposition inclined him to forbearance, until now, that surrounded by his own countrymen and by Russians, it became necessary that he should assert himself. He replied with haughtiness; Lodore rejoined with added insult;—and when again Casimir retorted, he struck him. The young noble's eyes flashed fire: several gentlemen interposed between them;—and yielding to the expediency of the moment, the Pole, with admirable temper, withdrew.
Humiliated and dismayed, but still burning with fury, Lodore saw at once the consequences of his angry transport. With all the impetuosity of his fiery spirit, he resolved to quit at once the scene in which he had played his part so ill. There was no other alternative. The most frightful crimes blocked up every other outlet: this was his sole escape, and he must seize on it without delay. Lady Lodore had not even deigned to answer his request that she should accompany him; and her mother's note appeared the very refinement of insolence. They abandoned him. They left the roof from which he was about to exile himself, even before he had quitted it, as if in fear of contamination during his brief delay. Thus he construed their retreat; and worked up, as he was, almost to madness, he considered their departure as the commencement of that universal ban, which for ever, hereafter, was to accompany his name. It opened anew the wound his honour had sustained; and he poured forth a vow never more to ally himself in bonds of love or amity with one among his kind.
His purpose was settled, and he did not postpone its execution. Post-horses were ordered, and hasty preparations made, for his departure. Alone, abandoned, disgraced, in another hour he was to quit his home, his wife, all that endears existence, for ever: yet the short interval that preceded his departure hung like a long-drawn day upon him; and time seemed to make a full stop, at a period when he would have rejoiced had it leaped many years to come. The heart's prayer in agony did not avail: he was still kept lingering, when a knocking at the door announced a visitor, who, at that late hour, could come for one purpose only. Lord Lodore ordered himself to be denied, and Count Casimir's second departed to seek him elsewhere. Cold dew-drops stood on Lodore's brow as he heard this gentleman parley in a foreign accent with the servant; trying, doubtless, to make out where it was likely that he should meet with him: the door closed at last, and he listened to the departing steps of his visitor, who could scarcely have left the square, before his travelling chariot drove up. And now, while final arrangements were making, with a heart heavy from bitter self-condemnation, he visited the couch of his sleeping daughter, once more to gaze on her sweet face, and for the last time to bestow a father's blessing on her. The early summer morning was abroad in the sky; and as he opened her curtains, the first sun-beam played upon her features. He stooped to kiss her little rosy lips:—"And I leave this spotless being to the blighting influence of that woman!" His murmurs disturbed the child's slumbers: she woke, and smiled to see her father; and then insisted upon rising, as he was up, and it was day.
"But I am come to say good-bye, sweet," he said; "I am going a long journey."
"O take me with you!" cried the little girl, springing up, and fastening her arms round his neck. He felt her soft cheek prest to his; her hands trying to hold fast, and to resist his endeavours to disengage them. His heart warmed within him. "For a short distance I may indulge myself," he said, and he thought how her prattle would solace his darker cares, during his road to Southampton. So, causing her attendant to make speedy preparation, he took her in the carriage with him; and her infantine delight so occupied him, that he scarcely remembered his situation, or what exactly he was doing, as he drove for the last time through the lightsome and deserted streets of the metropolis.
And now he had quitted these; and the country, in all its summer beauty, opened around him—meadows and fields with their hedge-rows, tufted groves crowning the uplands, and "the blue sky bent over all." "From these they cannot banish me," he thought; "in spite of dishonour and infamy, the loveliness of nature, and the freedom of my will, still are mine:—and is this all?"—his child had sunk to sleep, nestled close in his arms; "Ah! what will these be to me, when I have lost this treasure, dearest of all?—yet why lose her?" This question, when it first presented itself to him, he put aside as one that answered itself—to deprive a mother of her child were barbarity beyond that of savages;—but again and again it came across him, and he began to reason with it, and to convince himself that he should be unjust towards himself in relinquishing this last remaining blessing. His arguments were false, his conclusions rash and selfish; but of this he was not aware. Our several minds, in reflecting to our judgments the occurrences of life, are like mirrors of various shapes and hues, so that we none of us perceive passing objects with exactly similar optics; and while all pretend to regulate themselves by the quadrant of justice, the deceptive medium through which the reality is viewed, causes our ideas of it to be at once various and false. This is the case in immaterial points; how much more so, when self-love magnifies, and passion obscures, the glass through which we look upon others and ourselves. The chief task of the philosopher is to purify and correct the intellectual prism;—but Lodore was the reverse of a philosopher; and the more he gazed and considered, the more imperfect and distorted became his perception.
To act justly by ourselves and others, is the aim of every well-conditioned mind: for the sight of pain in our fellow-creatures, and the sense of self-condemnation within ourselves, is fraught with a pang from which we would willingly escape; and every heart not formed of the coarsest materials is keenly alive to such emotions. Lodore resolved to judge calmly, and he reviewed coolly, and weighed (he believed) impartially, the various merits of the question. He thought of Lady Santerre's worldliness, her vulgar ambition, her low-born contempt for all that is noble and elevating in human nature. He thought of Cornelia's docility to her mother's lessons, her careless disregard of the nobler duties of life, of her frivolity and unfeeling nature:—then, almost against his will, his own many excellencies rose before him;—his lofty aspirations, his self-sacrifice for the good of others, the affectionateness of his disposition, his mildness, his desire to be just and kind to all, his willingness to devote every hour of the day, and every thought of his mind, to the well-bringing-up of his daughter: a person must be strangely blind who did not perceive that, as far as the child was concerned, she would be far better off with him.
And then, in another point of view: Lady Lodore had her mother—and she had the world. She had not only beauty, rank, and wealth; but she had a taste for enjoying the advantages yielded by these on the common soil of daily life. He cared for nothing in the wide world—he loved nothing but this little child. He would willingly exchange for her the far greater portion of his fortune, which Lady Lodore should enjoy; reserving for himself such a pittance merely as would suffice for his own and his daughter's support. He had neither home, nor friends, nor youth, nor taintless reputation; nor any of all the blessings of life, of which Cornelia possessed a superabundance. Her child was as nothing in the midst of these. She had left her without a sigh, even without a thought; while but to imagine the moment of parting was a dagger to her father's heart. What a fool he had been to hesitate so long—to hesitate at all! There she was, this angel of comfort; her little form was cradled in his arms, he felt her soft breath upon his hand, and the regular heaving of her bosom responded to the beatings of his own heart; her golden, glossy hair, her crimsoned cheek, her soft, round limbs;—all this matchless "bower of flesh," that held in the budding soul, and already expanding affections of this earthly cherub, was with him. And had he imagined that he could part with her? Rather would he return to Lady Lodore, to dishonour, to scenes of hate and of the world's contempt, so that thus he preserved her: it could not be required of him; but if Cornelia's heart was animated by a tithe of the fondness that warmed his, she would not hesitate in her choice; but, discarding every unworthy feeling, follow her child into the distant and solitary abode he was about to select.
Thus pacifying his conscience, Lodore came to the conclusion of making his daughter the partner of his exile. Soon after mid-day, they arrived at Southampton; a small vessel was on the point of sailing for Havre, and on board this he hurried. Before he went he gave one hasty retrospective view to those he was leaving behind—his wife, his sister, the filial antagonist from whom he was flying; he could readily address himself to the first of these, when landed on the opposite coast; but as he wished to keep his destination a secret from the latter, and to prevent, if possible, his being followed and defied by him, an event still to be feared, he employed the few remaining minutes, before quitting his country for ever, in writing a brief letter to the Countess Lyzinski, which he gave in charge to a servant whom he dismissed, and sent back to town. And thus he now addressed her, who, in his early life, had been as the moon to raise the tide of passion, incapable, alas! of controlling its waves when at the full.
"It is all over: I have fulfilled my part—the rest remains with you. To prevent the ruin which my folly has brought down, from crushing any but myself, I quit country, home, good name—all that is dear to man. I do not complain, nor will I repine. But let the evil, I entreat you, stop here. Casimir must not follow me; he must not know whither I am gone; and while he brands his antagonist with the name of coward, he must not guess that for his sake I endure this stain. I leave it to your prudence and sagacity to calm or to mislead him, to prevent his suspecting the truth, or rashly seeking my life. I sacrifice more, far more, than my heart's blood on his account—let that satisfy even your vengeance.
"I would not write harshly. The dream of life has long been over for me; it matters not how or where the last sands flow out. I do not blame you even for this ill-omened journey to England, which could avail you nothing. Once before we parted for ever, Theodora; but that separation was as the pastime of children in comparison with the tragic scene we now enact. A thousand dangers yawn between us, and we shall neither dare to repass the gulf that divides us. Forget me;—be happy, and forget me! May Casimir be a blessing to you, and while you glory in his perfections and prosperity, cast into oblivion every thought of him, who now bids you an eternal adieu."