It is the same, for be it joy or sorrow.
The path of its departure still is free;
Man's yesterday can ne'er be like his morrow,
Nor aught endure save mutability.
SHELLEY.
The month of June had commenced. In spite of lawyer's delays and the
difficulties attendant on all such negociations, they were at last
concluded, and nothing remained but for Lady to sign the paper which was
to consign her to comparative destitution. In all changes we feel most
keenly the operation of small circumstances, and are chiefly depressed
by the necessity of stooping to the direction of petty arrangements, and
having to deal with subordinate persons. To complete her design, Lady
Lodore had to make many arrangements, trivial yet imperative, which
called for her attention, when she was least fitted to give it. She had
met these demands on her patience without shrinking; and all was
prepared for the finishing stroke about to be put to her plans. She
dismissed those servants whom she did not intend to leave in the house
for Ethel's use. She contrived to hasten the intended marriage of her
own maid, so to disburthen herself wholly. The mode by which she was,
solitary and unknown, to reach the mountains of Wales, without creating
suspicion, or leaving room for conjecture, was no easy matter. In human
life, one act is born of another, so that any one that disjoins itself
from the rest, instantly gives rise to curiosity and inquiry. Lady
Lodore, though fertile in expedients, was almost foiled: the eligibility
of having one confidant pressed itself upon her. She thought of Fanny
Derham; but her extreme youth, and her intimacy with Mrs. Villiers,
which would have necessitated many falsehoods, so to preserve the
secret, deterred her: she determined at last to trust to herself alone.
She resolved to take with her one servant only, who had not been long in
her service, and to dismiss him immediately after leaving London.
Difficulties presented themselves on every side; but she believed that
they could be best surmounted by obviating them in succession as they
arose, and that any fixed artificial plan would only tend to embarrass,
while a simple mode of proceeding would continue unquestioned.
Her chief art consisted in not appearing to be making any change at all.
She talked of a visit of two or three months to Emms, and mentioned her
intention of lending her house, during the interval, to her daughter.
She thus secured to herself a certain period during which no curiosity
would be exicited; and after a month or two had passed away, she would
be utterly forgotten:--thus she reasoned; and whether it were a real
tomb that she entered, or the living grave which she anticipated, her
name and memory would equally vanish from the earth, and she be thought
of no more. If Ethel ever entertained a wish to see her, Villiers would
be at hand to check and divert it. Who else was there to spend a thought
upon her? Alone upon earth, no friendly eye, solicitous for her welfare,
would seek to penetrate the mystery in which she was about to envelope
herself.
The day came, it was the second of June, when every preliminary was
accomplished. She had signed away all that she possessed--she had done
it with a smile--and her voice was unfaltering. The sum which she had
saved for herself consisted of but a few hundred pounds, on which she
was to subsist for the future. Again she enforced his pledge of secrecy
on Mr. Gayland; and glad that all was over, yet heavy at heart in spite
of her gladness, she returned to her home, which in a few hours she was
to quit for ever.
During all this time, her thoughts had seldom reverted to Saville. Hope
was dead, and the regrets of love had vanished with it. That he would
approve her conduct, was an idea that now and then flashed across her
mind; but he would remain in eternal ignorance, and therefore it could
not bring their thoughts into any communion. Whether he came to England,
or remained at Naples, availed her nothing. No circumstance could add
to, or diminish, the insuperable barrier which his marriage placed
between them.
She returned home from her last interview with Mr. Gayland: it was four
o'clock in the day; at six she had appointed Fanny Derham to call on
her; and an hour afterwards, the horses were ordered to be at the door,
which were to convey her away.
She became strangely agitated. She took herself to task for her
weakness; but every moment disturbed yet more the calm she was so
anxious to attain. She walked through the rooms of the house she had
dwelt in for so many years. She looked on the scene presented from her
windows. The drive in Hyde Park was beginning to fill with carriages and
equestrians, to be thronged with her friends whom she was never again to
see. Deep sadness crept over her mind. Her uncontrollable thoughts, by
some association of ideas, which she could not disentangle--brought
before her the image of Lodore, with more vividness than it had possessed
for years. A kind of wish to cross the Atlantic, and to visit the scenes
where he had dwelt so long, arose within her; and then again she felt a
desire to visit Longfield, and to view the spot in which his mortal
remains were laid. As her imagination pictured the grave of the husband
of her youth, whom she had abandoned and forgotten, tears streamed from
her eyes--the first she had shed, even in idea, beside it. "It is not to
atone--for surely I was not guilty towards him"--such were Lady Lodore's
reflections,--"yet, methinks, in this crisis of my fate, when about to
imitate his abrupt and miserable act of self-banishment, my heart yearns
for some communication with him; and it seems to me as if, approaching
his cold, silent dust, he would hear me if I said, 'Be at peace! your
child is happy through my means!"'
Again her reveries were attended by a gush of tears. "How strange a fate
is mine, ever to be abandoned by, or to abandon, those towards whom I am
naturally drawn into near contact. Fifteen years are flown since I
parted from Lodore for ever! Then by inspiring one so high-minded, so richly
gifted, as Saville, with love for me, fortune appeared ready to
compensate for my previous sufferings; but the curse again operated, and
I shall never see him more. Yet do I not forget thee, Saville, nor thy
love!--nor can it be a crime to think of the past, which is as
irretrievable as if the grave had closed over it. Through Saville it has
been that I have not lived quite in vain--that I have known what love
is; and might have even tasted of happiness, but for the poison which
perpetually mingles with my cup. I never wish to see him more; but if I
earnestly desire to visit Lodore's grave, how gladly would I make a far
longer pilgrimage to see Saville's child, and to devote myself to one
who owes its existence to him. Wretched Cornelia! what thoughts are
these? Is it now, that you are a beggar and an outcast, that you first
encourage unattainable desires?"
Still as she looked round, and remembered how often Saville had been
beside her in that room, thoughts and regrets thronged faster and more
thickly on her. She recollected the haughty self-will and capricious
coquetry which had caused the destruction of her dearest hopes. She took
down a miniature of herself, which her lover had so fruitlessly besought
her to give him. It was on the belief that she had bestowed this picture
on a rival that he had so suddenly come to the determination of quitting
England. It seemed now in its smiles and youth to reproach her for
having wasted both; and the sight of it agitated her bosom, and produced
a tumult of regret and despair at his loss--till she threw it from her,
as too dearly associated with one she must forget. And yet wherefore
forget?--he had forgotten; but as a dead wife might in her grave, love
her husband, though wedded to another, so might the lost, buried
Cornelia remember him, though the husband of Clorinda. Self-compassion
now moved her to tears, and she wept plentiful showers, which rather
exhausted than relieved her.
With a strong effort she recalled her sense of what was actually going
on, and struggling resolutely to calm herself, she sat down and began a
letter to her daughter, which was necessary, as some sort of
explanation, at once to allay wonder and baffle curiosity. Thus she
wrote:
"DEAREST ETHEL,
"My hopes have not been deceived. Mr. Gayland has at last contrived
means for the liberation of your husband; and to-morrow morning you will
leave that shocking place. Perhaps I receive more pleasure from this
piece of good fortune than you, for your sense of duty and sweet
disposition so gild the vilest objects, that you live in a world of your
own, as beautiful as yourself, and the accident of situation is
immaterial to you.
"It is not enough, however, that you should be free. I hope that the
punctilious delicacy of Mr. Villiers will not cause you to reject the
benefits of a mother. In this instance there is more of justice than
generosity in my offer; and it may therefore be accepted without the
smallest hesitation. My jointure ought to satisfy me, and the additional
six hundred a year--which I may call the price of blood, since I bought
it at the sacrifice of the dearest ties and duties,--is most freely at
your service. It will delight me to get rid of it, as much as if thus I
threw off the consciousness of a crime. It is yours by every law of
equity, and will be hereafter paid into your banker's hands. Do not
thank me, my dear child--be happy, that will be my best reward. Be
happy, be prudent--this sum will not make you rich; and the only
acknowledgment I ask of you is, that you make it suffice, and avoid debt
and embarrassment.
"By singular coincidence I am imperatively obliged to leave England at
this moment. The horses are ordered to be here in half an hour--I am
obliged therefore to forego the pleasure of seeing you until my return.
Will you forgive me this apparent neglect, which is the result of
necessity, and favour me by coming to my house to-morrow, on leaving
your present abode, and making it your home until my return? Miss Derham
has promised to call here this afternoon; I shall see her before I go,
and through her you will learn how much you will make me your debtor by
accepting my offers, and permitting me to be of some slight use to you.
"Excuse the brevity and insufficiency of this letter, written at the
moment of departure.--You will hear from me again, when I am able to
send you my address, and I shall hope to have a letter from you.
Meanwhile Heaven bless you, my angelic Ethel! Love your mother, and
never, in spite of every thing, permit unkind thoughts of her to harbour
in your mind. Make Mr. Villiers think as well of me as he can, and
believe me that your welfare will always be the dearest wish of my
heart. Adieu.
"Ever affectionately yours.
"C. LODORE."
She folded and sealed this letter, and at the same moment there was a
knock at the door of her house, which she knew announced the arrival of
Fanny Derham. She was still much agitated, and trying to calm herself,
she took up a newspaper, and cast her eyes down the columns; so, by one
of the most common place of the actions of our life, to surmount the
painful intensity of her thoughts. She read mechanically one or two
paragraphs--she saw the announcements of births, marriages, and deaths.
"My moral death will not be recorded here," she thought, "and yet, I
shall be more dead than any of these." The thought in her mind remained
as it were truncated; her eye was arrested--a paleness came over
her--the pulses of her heart paused, and then beat tumultuously--how
strange--how fatal were the words she read!--
"Died suddenly at the inn at the Mola di Gaeta, on her way from Naples,
Clorinda, the wife of the honourable Horatio Saville, in the
twenty-second year of her age."
Her drawing-room door was opened, the butler announced Miss Derham,
while her eyes still were fixed on the paragraph: her head swam
round--the world seemed to slide from under her. Fanny's calm clear
voice recalled her. She conquered her agitation--she spoke as if she had
not just crossed a gulf--not been transported to a new world; and,
again, swifter than light, brought back to the old one. She conversed
with Fanny for some time; giving some kind of explanation for not having
been to see Ethel, begging her young friend to press her invitation, and
speaking as if in autumn they should all meet again. Fanny, philosophic as
she was, regarded Lady Lodore with a kind of idolatry. The same charm that
had fascinated the unworldly and abstracted Saville, she exercised over
the thoughtful and ingenuous mind of the fair young student. It was the
attraction of engaging manners, added now to the sense of right, joined
to the timid softness of a woman, who trembled on acting unsupported,
even though her conscience approved her deeds. It was her loveliness
which had gained in expression what it had lost in youth, and kindness
of heart was the soul of the enchantment. Fanny ventured to remonstrate
against her sudden departure. "O we shall soon meet again," said
Cornelia; but her thoughts were more of heaven than earth, as the scene
of meeting; for her heart was chilled--her head throbbed--the words she
had read operated a revolution in her frame, more allied to sickness and
death, than hope or triumph.
Fanny at length took her leave, and Lady Lodore was again alone. She took
up the newspaper--hastily she read again the tidings; she sunk on the sofa,
burying her face in the pillow, trying not to think, while she was
indeed the prey to the wildest thoughts.
"Yes," thus ran her reflections, "he is free--he is no longer _married_!
Fool, fool! he is still lost to you!--an outcast and a beggar, shall I
solicit his love! which he believes that I rejected when prosperous.
Rather never, never, let me see him again. My beauty is tarnished, my
youth flown; he would only see me to wonder how he had ever loved me.
Better hide beneath the mountains among which I am soon to find a
home--better, far better, die, than see Saville and read no love in his
eyes.
"Yet thus again I cast happiness from me. What then would I do? Unweave
the web--implore Mr. Villiers to endure my presence--reveal my state of
beggary--ask thanks for my generosity, and humbly wait for a kind glance
from Saville, to raise me to wealth as well as to happiness.--Cornelia,
awake!--be not subdued at the last--act not against your disposition, the
pride of your soul--the determinations you have formed--do not learn to
be humble in adversity--you, who were disdainful in happier days--no! if
they need me--if they love me--if Saville still remembers the
worship--the heart's entire sacrifice which once he made to me--will a
few miles--the obscurity of my abode--or the silence and mystery that
surrounds me, check his endeavours that we should once again meet?
"No!" she said, rising, "my destiny is in other and higher hands than my
own. It were vain to endeavour to controul it. Whatever I do, works
against me; now let the thread be spun to the end, while I do nothing; I
can but endure the worst patiently; and how much better to bear in
silence, than to struggle vainly with the irrevocable decree! I submit.
Let Providence work out its own ends, and God dispose of the being he
has made--whether I reap the harvest in this world or in the next, my
part is played, I will strive no more!"
She believed in her own singleness of purpose as she said this, and yet
she was never more deceived. While she boasted of her resignation, she
was yielding not to a high moral power, but to the pride of her soul.
Her resolutions were in accordance with the haughtiness of her
disposition, and she felt satisfied, not because she was making a noble
sacrifice, but because she thus adorned more magnificently the idol she
set up for worship, and believed herself to be more worthy of applause
and love. Yet who could condemn even errors that led to such unbending
and heroic forgetfulness of all the baser propensities of our nature.
Nor was this feeling of triumph long-lived; the wounding and humiliating
realities of life, soon degraded her from her pedestal, and made her
feel, as it were, the disgrace and indignities of abdication.
Her travelling chariot drove up to the door, and, after a few moments'
preparation, she was summoned. Again she looked round the room; her
heart swelled high with impatience and repining, but again she conquered
herself. She took up her miniature--_that_ now she might possess--for she
could remember without sin--she took up the newspaper, which did or did
not contain the fiat of her fate; but this action appeared to militate
against the state of resignation she had resolved to attain, so she
threw it down: she walked down the stairs, and passed out from her house
for the last time--she got into the carriage--the door was closed--the
horses were in motion--all was over.
Her head felt sick and heavy; she leaned back in her carriage half
stupified. When at last London and its suburbs were passed, the sight of
the open country a little revived her--but she soon drooped again.
Nothing presented itself to her thoughts with any clearness, and the
exultation which had supported her vanished totally. She only knew that
she was alone, poor, forgotten; these words hovered on her lips, mingled
with others, by which she endeavoured to charm away her despondency.
Fortitude and resignation for herself--freedom and happiness for Ethel.
"O yes, she is free and happy--it matters not then what I am!" No tears
flowed to soften this thought. The bright green country--the meadows
mingled with unripe corn-fields--the tufted woods--the hedgerows full of
flowers, could not attract her eye; pangs every now and then seized upon
her heart--she had talked of resignation, but she was delivered up to
despair.
At length she sank into a kind of stupor. She was accompanied by one
servant only; she had told him where she intended to remain that night.
It was past eleven before they arrived at Reading; the night was chill,
and she shivered while she felt as if it were impossible to move, even
to draw up the glasses of her chariot. When she arrived at the inn where
she was to pass the night, she felt keenly the discomfort of having no
female attendant. It was new--she felt as if it were disgraceful, to
find herself alone among strangers, to be obliged to give orders
herself, and to prepare alone for her repose.
All night she could not sleep, and she became aware at last that she was
ill. She burnt with fever--her whole frame was tormented by aches, by
alternate hot and shivering fits, and by a feeling of sickness. When
morning dawned, it was worse. She grew impatient--she rose. She had
arranged that her servant should quit her at this place. He had been but
a short time with her, and was easily dismissed under the idea, that she
was to be joined by a man recommended by a friend, who was accustomed to
the continent, whither it was supposed that she was going. She had
dismissed him the night before, he was already gone, when on the morrow
she ordered the horses.--She paid the bills herself--and had to answer
questions about luggage; all these things are customary to the poor, and
to the other sex. But take a high-born woman and place her in immediate
contact with the rough material of the world, and see how like a
sensitive plant she will shrink, close herself up and droop, and feel as
if she had fallen from her native sphere into a spot unknown, ungenial,
and full of storms.
The illness that oppressed Lady Lodore, made these natural feelings even
more acute, till at last they were blunted by the same cause. She now
wondered what it was that ailed her, and became terrified at the
occasional wanderings that interrupted her torpor. Once or twice she
wished to speak to the post-boy, but her voice failed her. At length
they drove up to the inn at Newbury; fresh horses were called for, and
the landlady came up to the door of the carriage, to ask whether the
lady had breakfasted--whether she would take anything. There was
something ghastly in Lady Lodore's appearance, which at once frightened
the good woman, and excited her compassion. She renewed her questions,
which Lady Lodore had not at first heard, adding, "You seem ill, ma'am;
do take something--had you not better alight?"
"O yes, far better," said Cornelia, "for I think I must be very ill."
The change of posture and cessation of motion a little revived her, and
she began to think that she was mistaken, and that it was all nothing,
and that she was well. She was conducted into the parlour of the inn,
and the landlady left her to order refreshment. "How foolish I am," she
thought; "this is mere fancy; there is nothing the matter with me;" and
she rose to ring the bell, and to order horses. When suddenly, without
any previous warning, struck as by a bolt, she fainted, and fell on the
floor, without any power of saving herself. The sound of her fall
quickened the steps of the landlady, who was returning; all the
chamber-maids were summoned, a doctor sent for, and when Lady Lodore opened
her eyes she saw unknown faces about her, a strange place, and voices yet
stranger. She did not speak, but tried to collect her thoughts, and to
unravel the mystery, as it appeared, of her situation. But soon her
thoughts wandered, and fever and weakness made her yield to the
solicitations of those around. The doctor came, and could make out
nothing but that she was in a high fever: he ordered her to be put to
bed. And thus--Saville, and Ethel, and all hopes and fears, having
vanished from her thoughts,--given up to delirium and suffering, poor
Lady Lodore, alone, unknown, and unattended, remained for several weeks
at a country inn--under the hands of a village doctor--to recover, if
God pleased, if not, to sink, unmourned and unheard of, into an untimely
grave.