Ma la fede degli Amanti
È come l'Araba fenice;
Che vi sia, ciaschun' lo dice.
Ma dove sia, nessun lo sa.
METASTASIO.
Meanwhile Lady Lodore had been enduring the worst miseries of ill-fated
love. The illness of Lady Santerre, preceding her death, had demanded all
her time; and she nursed her with exemplary patience and kindness. During
her midnight watchings and solitary days, she had full time to feel how
deep a wound her heart had received. The figure and countenance of her
absent friend haunted her in spite of every effort; and when death
hovered over the pillow of her mother, she clung, with mad desperation,
to the thought, that there was still one, when this parent should be
gone, to love her, even though she never saw him more.
Lady Santerre died. After the first burst of natural grief, Cornelia
began to reflect that Lord Lodore might now imagine that every obstacle to
their reconciliation was removed. She had looked upon her husband as her
enemy and injurer; she had regarded him with indignation and fear;--but
now she hated him. Strong aversion had sprung up, during the struggles
of passion, in her bosom. She hated him as the eternal barrier between
her and one who loved her with rare disinterestedness. The human heart
must desire happiness;--in spite of every effort at resignation, it must
aspire to the fulfilment of its wish. Lord Lodore was the cause why she
was cut off from it for ever. He had foreseen that this feeling, this
combat, this misery, would be her doom, in the deserted situation she
chose for herself: she had laughed his fears to scorn. Now she abhorred
him the more for having divined her destiny. While she banished the
pleasant thoughts of love, she indulged in the poisoned ones of hate;
and while she resisted each softer emotion as a crime, she opened her
heart to the bitterest resentment, as a permitted solace; nor was she
aware that thus she redoubled all her woes. It was under the influence
of these feelings, that she had written to Mrs. Elizabeth Fitzhenry that
harsh, decided letter, which Lodore received at New York. The
intelligence of his violent death came as an answer to her expressions
of implacable resentment. A pang of remorse stung her, when she thought
how she had emptied the vials of her wrath on a head which had so soon
after been laid low for ever.
The double loss of husband and mother caused Lady Lodore to seclude
herself, not in absolute solitude, but in the agreeable retreat of friendly
society. She was residing near Brighton, when Saville returned from
America, and, with a heart beating high with its own desires, again
beheld the mistress of his affections. His delicate nature caused him to
respect the weeds she wore, even though they might be termed a mockery:
they were the type of her freedom and his hopes; yet, as the tokens of
death, they were to be respected. He saw her more beautiful than ever,
more courted, more waited on; and he half despaired. How could he, the
abstracted student, the man of dreams, the sensitive and timid invalid,
ensnare the fancy of one formed to adorn the circles of wealth and
fashion?
Thus it was that Saville and Cornelia were further off than ever, when
they imagined themselves most near. Neither of them could afterwards
comprehend what divided them; or why, when each would have died for the
other's sake, cobweb barriers should have proved inextricable; and
wherefore, after weathering every more stormy peril, they should perish
beneath the influence of a summer breeze.
The pride of Cornelia's heart, hid by the artificial courtesies of
society, was a sentiment resolved, confirmed, active, and far beyond her
own controul. The smallest opposition appeared rebellion to her majesty
of will; while her own caprices, her own desires, were sacred decrees.
She was too haughty to admit of discussion--too firmly intrenched in a
sense of what was due to her, not to start indignantly from
remonstrance. It is true, all this was but a painted veil. She was
tremblingly alive to censure, and wholly devoted to the object of her
attachment; but Saville was unable to understand these contradictions.
His modesty led him to believe, that he, of all men, was least
calculated to excite love in a woman's bosom. He saw in Cornelia a
beautiful creation, to admire and adore; but he was slow to perceive the
tenderness of soul, which her disposition made her anxious to conceal,
and he was conscious of no qualities in himself that could entitle him
to a place in her affections. Except that he loved her, what merit had
he? And the interests of his affection he was willing to sacrifice at
the altar of her wishes, though his life should be the oblation
necessary to insure their accomplishment.
This is not the description of true love on either side; for, to be
perfect, that sentiment ought to exist through the entireness of mutual
sympathy and trust: but not the less did their passionate attachment
engross the minds of both. All might have been well, indeed, had the
lovers been left to themselves; but friends and relations interfered to
mar and to destroy. The sisters of Saville accused Lady Lodore of
encouraging, and intending to marry, the Marquess of C--. Saville instantly
resolved to be no obstacle in the way of her ambition. Cornelia was fired
with treble indignation to perceive that he at once conceded the place to
his rival. One word or look of gentleness would have changed this; but she
resolved to vanquish by other arms, and to force him to show some
outward sign of jealousy and resentment. Saville had a natural dignity
of mind, founded on simplicity of heart and directness of purpose.
Cornelia knew that he loved her;--on that his claim rested: all that
might be done to embellish and elevate her existence, he would study to
achieve; but he could not enter into, nor understand, the puerile
fancies of a spoiled Beauty: and while she was exerting all her powers,
and succeeded in fascinating a crowd of flatterers, she saw Saville
apart, abstracted from such vanities, pursuing a silent course; ready to
approach her when her attention was disengaged, but at no time making
one among her ostentatious admirers.
There was no moment of her life in which Cornelia did not fully
appreciate her lover's value, and her own good fortune in having
inspired him with a serious and faithful attachment. But she imagined
that this must be known and acknowledged; and that to ask any
demonstration of gratitude, was ungenerous and tyrannical. An untaught
girl could not have acted with more levity and wilfulness. It was worse
when she found that she was accused of encouraging a wealthier and more
illustrious rival. She disdained to exculpate herself from the charge of
such low ambition, but rather furnished new grounds for accusation; and,
in the arrogance of conscious power, smiled at the pettiness of the
attempts made to destroy her influence. Proud in the belief that she
could in an instant dispel the clouds she had conjured athwart her
heaven, she cared not how ominously the thunder muttered, nor how dark
and portentous lowered the threatening storm. It came when she least
expected it: convinced of the fallacy of his confidence, made miserable
by her caprices, agonized by the idea that he only lingered to add
another trophy to his rival's triumph, Saville, who was always impetuous
and precipitate, suddenly quitted England.
This was a severe blow at first; but soon Cornelia smiled at it. He
would return--he must. The sincerity of their mutual preference would
overcome the petty obstacles of time and distance. She never felt more
sure of his devotion than now; and she looked so happy, and spoke so
gaily, that those who were more ready to discern indifference, than
love, in her sentiments, assured the absent Saville, that Lady Lodore
rejoiced at his absence, as having shaken off a burthen, and got rid of an
impediment, which, in spite of herself, was a clog to her brilliant
career. The trusting love that painted her face in smiles was a traitor
to itself and while she rose each day in the belief that the one was
near at hand which would bring her lover before her, dearer and more
attached than ever, she was in reality at work in defacing the whole web
of life, and substituting dark, blank, and sad disappointment, for the
images of light and joy with which her fancy painted it.
Saville had been gone five months. It was strange that he did not
return; and she began to ponder upon how she must unbend, and what
demonstration she must make, to attract him again to her side. The
Marquess of C--was dismissed; and she visited the daughters of Lord
Maristow, to learn what latest news they had received of their brother.
"Do you know, Lady Lodore," said Sophia Saville, "that this is Horatio's
wedding-day? It is too true: we regret it, because he weds a
foreigner--but there is no help now. He is married."
Had sudden disease seized on the frame-work of her body, and dissolved
and scattered with poisonous influence and unutterable pains, the atoms
that composed it, Lady Lodore would have been less agonized, less
terrified. A thousand daggers were at once planted in her bosom. Saville
was false! married! divided from her for ever! She was stunned:--scarcely
understanding the meaning of the phrases addressed to her, and, unable
to conceal her perturbation, she replied at random, and hastened to
shorten her visit.
But no interval of doubt or hope was afforded. The words she had heard
were concise, true to their meaning and all-sufficing. Her heart died
within her. What had she done? Was she the cause? She longed to learn
all the circumstances that led to this hasty marriage, and whether
inconstancy or resentment had impelled him to the fatal act. Yet
wherefore ask these things? It was over; the scene was closed. It were
little worth to analyze the poison she had imbibed, since she was past
all mortal cure.
Her first resolve was to forget--never, never to think of the false one
more. But her thoughts never wandered from his image, and she was
eternally busied in retrospection and conjecture. She was tempted at one
time to disbelieve the intelligence, and to consider it as a piece of
malice on the part of Miss Saville; then the common newspaper told her,
that at the Ambassador's house at Naples, the Honourable Horatio Saville
had married Clorinda, daughter of the Principe Villamarina, a Neapolitan
nobleman of the highest rank.
It was true therefore--and how was it true? Did he love his bride? why
else marry?--had he forgotten his tenderness towards her? Alas! it
needed not forgetting; it was a portion of past time, fleeting as time
itself; it had been borne away with the hours as they passed, and
remembered as a thing which had been, and was no more. The reveries of
love which for months had formed all her occupation, were a blank; or
rather to be replaced by the agonies of despair. Her native haughtiness
forsook her. She was alone and desolate--hedged in on all sides by
insuperable barriers, which shut out every glimpse of hope. She was
humbled in her own eyes, through her want of success, and heartily
despised herself, and all her caprices and vanities, which had led her
to this desart, and then left her to pine. She detested her position in
society, her mechanism of being, and every circumstance, self-inherent,
or adventitious, that attended her existence. All seemed to her sick
fancy so constructed as to ensure disgrace, desertion, and contempt. She
lay down each night feeling as if she could never endure to raise her
head on the morrow.
The unkindness and cruelty of her lover's conduct next presented
themselves to her contemplation. She had suffered much during the past
years, more than she had ever acknowledged, even to herself; she had
suffered of regret and sorrow, while she brooded over her solitary
position, and the privation of every object on whom she might bestow
affection. She had had nothing to hope. Saville had changed all this; he
had banished her cares, and implanted hope in her heart. Now again his
voice recalled the evils, his hand crushed the new-born expectation of
happiness. He was the cause of every ill; and the adversity which she
had endured proudly and with fortitude while it seemed the work of fate,
grew more bitter and heavy when she felt that it arose through the
agency of one, whose kind affection and guardianship she had fondly
believed would hereafter prove a blessing sent as from Heaven itself, be
to the star of her life.
This fit passed off; with struggles and relapses she wore down the first
gush of sorrow, and her disposition again assumed force over her. She
had found it difficult to persuade herself, in spite of facts, that she
was not loved; but it was easy, once convinced of the infidelity of her
lover, to regard him with indifference. She now regretted lost
happiness--but Saville was no longer regretted. She wept over the
vanished forms of delight, lately so dear to her; but she remembered
that he who had called them into life had driven them away; and she
smiled in proud scorn of his fleeting and unworthy passion. It was not
to this love that she had made so tender and lavish a return. She had
loved his constancy, his devotion, his generous solicitude for her
welfare--for the happiness which she bestowed on him, and for the
sympathy that so dearly united them. These were fled; and it were vain
to consecrate herself to an empty and deformed mockery of so beautiful a
truth.
Then she tried to hate him--to despise and to lessen him in her own
estimation. The attempt recoiled on herself. The recollection of his
worth stole across her memory, to frustrate her vain endeavours: his
voice haunted--his expressive eyes beamed on her. It were better to
forget. Indifference was her only refuge, and to attain this she must
wholly banish his image from her mind. Cornelia was possessed of
wonderful firmness of purpose. It had carried her on so long unharmed,
and now that danger was at hand, it served effectually to defend her.
She rose calm and free, above unmerited disaster. She grew proud of the
power she found that she possessed of conquering the most tyrannical of
passions. Peace entered her soul, and she hailed it as a blessing.
The clause in her husband's will which deprived her of the guardianship
of her daughter had been forgotten during this crisis. Before, under the
supposition that she should marry, she had deferred taking any step to
claim her. The idea of a struggle to be made, unassisted, unadvised, and
unshielded, was terrible. She had not courage to encounter all the
annoyances that might ensue. To get rid for a time of the necessity of
action and reflection, she went abroad. She changed the scene--she
travelled from place to place. She gave herself up in the solitude of
continental journies to the whole force of contending passions; now
overcome by despair, and again repressing regret, asserting to herself
the lofty pride of her nature.
By degrees she recovered a healthier tone of mind--a distant and faint,
yet genuine sense of duty dawned upon her; and she began to think on
what her future existence was to depend, and how she could best secure
some portion of happiness. Her heart once again warmed towards the image
of her daughter--and she felt that in watching the development of her
mind, and leading her to love and depend on her, a new interest and real
pleasure might spring up in life. She reproached herself for having so
long, by silence and passive submission, given scope to the belief that
she was willing to be a party against herself, in the injustice of Lodore;
and she returned to England with the intention of instantly enforcing her
rights over her child, and taking to her bosom and to her fondest care
the little being, whose affection and gratitude was to paint her future
life with smiles.
She called to mind Lady Santerre's worldly maxims, and her own
experience. She knew that the first step to success is the appearance of
prosperity and power. To command the good wishes and aid of her friends
she must appear independent of them. She was earnest therefore to hide
the wounds her heart had received, and the real loathing with which she
regarded all things. She arrayed herself in smiles, and banished, far
below into the invisible recesses of her bosom, the contempt and disgust
with which she viewed the scene around her.
She returned to England. She appeared at the height of the season, in
the midst of society, as beautiful, as charming, as happy in look and
manner, as in her days of light-hearted enjoyment. She paused yet a
moment longer, to reflect on what step she had better take on first
enforcing her claim; but her mind was full of its intention, and set
upon the fulfilment.
At this time, but a few days after her arrival in London, she went to
the opera. She heard the name of Fitzhenry called in the lobby--she saw
and recognized Mrs. Elizabeth--the venerable sister Bessy, so little
altered, that time might be said to have touched, but not trenched her
homely kindly face. With her, in attendance on her, she beheld Horatio
Saville's favourite cousin--the gay and fashionable Edward Villiers. It
was strange; her curiosity was strongly excited. It had not long to
languish: the next morning Villiers called, and was readily admitted.