The pure, the open, prosperous love,
That pledged on earth, and sealed above,
Grows in the world's approving eyes,
In friendship's smile and home's caress,
Collecting all the heart's sweet ties
Into one knot of happiness.
LALLA ROOKH.
Another month withered away in fruitless expectation. Villiers felt that
he was following an ignis fatuus, yet knew not how to give up his
pursuit. At length, he listened more docilely to Ethel's representations
of the expediency of quitting town. She wished to pay her long-promised
visit to her aunt, and Villiers at last consented to accompany her. They
gave up their house, dispersed a tolerably numerous establishment, and
left town for their sober and rural seclusion in Essex.
Taken from the immediate scene where care met him at every turn,
Edward's spirits rose; and the very tranquillity and remoteness of
Longfield became a relief and an enjoyment. It was bright October
weather. The fields were green, the hedges yet in verdant trim. The air
was so still that the dead leaves hung too lazy to fall, from the
topmost boughs of the earlier trees. The oak was still dressed in a dark
sober green--the fresh July shoot, having lost its summer hue, was
unapparent among the foliage; the varying tints of beach, ash, and elm,
diversified the woods. The morning and evening skies were resplendent
with crimson and gold, and the moonlight nights were sweeter than the
day.
Fatigued by the hurry of town, and one at least worn out with care, the
young pair took a new lease of love in idleness in this lonely spot. A
slight attack of rheumatism confined Aunt Bessy to her chimney-corner,
but in spite of her caution to Ethel not to incur the same penalty from
all the array of wet walks and damp shoes, it was her best pleasure each
morning to tie on her bonnet, take her husband's arm, and they wandered
away together, returning only to find their horses ready, and then they
departed for hours, coming back late and unwillingly after the sun was
down. Mrs. Elizabeth wondered where all the beautiful spots were, which
Ethel described so enthusiastically as to be found in the neighbourhood.
The good lady longed to go out herself to see if she could not reap
equal delight from viewing the grouping of trees, whose various autumnal
tints were painted in Ethel's speech with hues too bright for earth, or
to discover what there could be so extraordinarily picturesque in a
moss-grown cottage, near a brook, with a high bank clothed with wood
behind, which she believed must be one Dame Nixon's cottage, in the Vale
of Bewling, and which she knew she must have passed a thousand times,
and yet she had never noticed its beauty. Very often Ethel could give no
information of whither they had been, only they had lost themselves in
majestic woods, lingered in winding lanes, which led to resplendent
views, or even reached the margin of the barren sea, to behold the
enveloping atmosphere reflected in its fitful mirror--to watch the
progress of evanescent storms, or to see the moon light up her silvery
pathway on the dusky waste. Villiers took his gun with him in his walks,
but, though American bred, Ethel was so unfeignedly distressed by the
sight of death, that he never brought down a bird: he shot in its
direction now and then, to keep his pointer in practice, and to laugh at
his wife's glad triumph when he missed his feathery mark.
Ethel was especially delighted to renew her acquaintance with Longfield,
her father's boyhood home, under such sunny circumstances. She had loved
it before: with anguish in her heart, and heavy sadness weighing on her
steps, she had loved it for his sake. But now that it became the home,
the dedicated garden of love, it received additional beauty in her eyes
from its association with the memory of Lord Lodore. All things conjoined;
the season, calmed and brightened, as if for her especial enjoyment;
remembrance of the past, and the undivided possession of her Edward's
society, combined to steep her soul in happiness. Even he, whose more
active and masculine spirit might have fretted in solitude and sloth,
was subdued by care and uncertainty to look on the peace of the present
moment as the dearest gift of the gods. Both so young, and the minds of
both open as day to each other's eyes, no single blot obscured their
intercourse. They never tired of each other, and the teeming spirit of
youth filled the empty space of each hour as it came, with a new growth
of sentiments and ideas. The long evening had its pleasures, with its
close-drawn curtains and cheerful fire. Even whist with the white-haired
parson, and Mrs. Fitzhenry in her spectacles, imparted pleasure. Could
any thing duller have been devised, which would have been difficult, it
had not been so to them; and a stranger coming in and seeing their
animated looks, and hearing their cheerful tones and light-hearted
laugh, must have envied the very Elysium of delight, which aunt Bessy's
usually so sober drawing-room contained. Merely to see Ethel leaning on
her husband's arm, and looking up in his face as he drew her yet closer,
and, while his fingers were twined among her silken ringlets, kissed so
fondly her fair brow, must have demonstrated to a worldling the
irrefragable truth that happiness is born a twin, love being the parent.
The beauty of a pastoral picture has but short duration in this cloudy
land,--and happiness, the sun of our moral existence, is yet more fitful
in its visitations. Villiers and his young wife took their accustomed
ride through shady lanes and copses, and through parks, where, though
the magnificent features of nature were wanting, the eye was delighted
by a various prospect of wood and lawny upland. The soft though wild
west wind drove along vast masses of snowy clouds, which displayed in
their intervals the deep stainless azure of the boundless sky. The
shadows of the clouds now darkened the pathway of our riders, and now
they saw the sunlight advance from a distance, coming on with steps of
light and air, till it reached them, and they felt the warmth and
gladness of sunshine descend on them. The various coloured woods were
now painted brightly in the beams, and now half lost in shadow. There
was life and action everywhere--yet not the awakening activity of
spring, but rather a vague, uneasy restlessness, allied to languor, and
pregnant with melancholy.
Villiers was silent and sad. Ethel too well knew the cause wherefore he
was dispirited. He had received letters that morning which stung him
into a perception of the bitter realities which were gathering about
them. One was to say that no communication had been received from his
father, but that it was believed that he was somewhere in London--the
other was from his banker, to remind him that he had overdrawn his
credit--nearly the most disagreeable intelligence a man can hear when he
possesses no immediate means of replenishing his drained purse. Ethel
was grieved to see him pained, but she could not acutely feel these
pecuniary distresses. She tried to divert his thoughts by conversation,
and pointing out the changes which the advancing season made in the
aspect of the country.
"Yes," said Villiers, "it is a beautiful world; poets tell us this, and
religious men have drawn an argument for their creed from the wisdom and
loveliness displayed in the external universe, which speaks to every
heart and every understanding. The azure canopy fretted with golden
lights, or, as now, curtained by wondrous shapes, which, though they are
akin to earth, yet partake the glory of the sky--the green expanse,
variegated by streams, teeming with life, and prolific of food to
sustain that life, and that very food the chief cause of the beauty we
enjoy--with such magnificence has the Creator set forth our table--all
this, and the winds that fan us so balmily, and the flowers that enchant
our sight--do not all these make earth a type of heaven?"
Ethel turned her eyes on him to read in his face the expression of the
enthusiasm and enjoyment that seemed to dictate his words. But his
countenance was gloomy, and as he continued to speak, his expressions
took more the colour of his uneasy feelings. "How false and senseless
all this really is!" he pursued. "Find a people who truly make earth,
its woods and fells, and inclement sky, their unadorned dwelling-place,
who pluck the spontaneous fruits of the soil, or slay the animals as
they find them, attending neither to culture nor property, and we give
them the name of barbarians and savages--untaught, uncivilized,
miserable beings--and we, the wiser and more refined, hunt and
exterminate them:--we, who spend so many words, either as preachers or
philosophers, to vaunt that with which they are satisfied, we feel
ourselves the greater, the wiser, the nobler, the more barriers we place
between ourselves and nature, the more completely we cut ourselves off
from her generous but simple munificence."
"But is this necessary?" asked the forest-bred girl: "when I lived in the
wilds of the Illinois--the simplest abode, food and attire, were all I
knew of human refinements, and I was satisfied."
Villiers did not appear to heed her remark, but continued the train of
his own reflections. "The first desire of man is not for wealth nor
luxury, but for sympathy and applause. He desires to remove to the
furthest extremity of the world contempt and degradation; and according
to the ideas of the society in which he is bred, so are his desires
fashioned. We, the most civilized, high-bred, prosperous people in the
world, make no account of nature, unless we add the ideas of possession,
and of the labours of man. We rate each individual, (and we all desire
to be rated as individuals, distinct from and superior to the mass,) not
by himself, but by his house, his park, his income. This is a trite
observation, yet it appears new when it comes home: what is lower,
humbler, more despicable than a poor man? Give him learning, give him
goodness--see him with manners acquired in poverty, habits dyed in the
dusky hues of penury; and if we do not despise him, yet we do not admit
him to our tables or society. Refinement may only be the varnish of the
picture, yet it is necessary to make apparent to the vulgar eye even the
beauties of Raphael."
"To the vulgar eye!" repeated Ethel, emphatically.
"And I seem one of those, by the way I speak," said Edward, smiling.
"Yet, indeed, I do not despise any man for being poor, except myself. I
can feel pride in showing honour where honour is due, even though clad
in the uncouth and forbidding garb of plebeianism; but I cannot claim
this for myself--I cannot demand the justice of men, which they would
nickname pity. The Illinois would be preferable far."
"And the Illinois might be a paradise," said Ethel.
"We hope for a better--we hope for Italy. Do you remember Rome and the
Coliseum, my love?--Naples, the Chiaja, and San Carlo?--these were
better than the savannas of the west. Our hopes are good; it is the
present only which is so thorny, so worse than barren: like the souls of
Dante, we have a fiery pass to get through before we reach our place of
bliss; that we have it in prospect will gift us with fortitude.
Meanwhile I must string myself to my task. Ethel, dearest, I shall go to
town to-morrow."
"And I with you, surely?"
"Do not ask it; this is your first lesson in the lore you were so ready
to learn, of bearing all for me--"
"With you," interrupted his wife.
"With me--it shall soon be," replied Edward; "but to speak according to
the ways of this world, my presence in London is necessary for a few
days--for a very few days; a journey there and back for me is nothing,
but it would be a real and useless expense if you went. Indeed, Ethel,
you must submit to my going without you--I ask it of you, and you will
not refuse."
"A few days, you say," answered Ethel--"a very few days? It is hard. But
you will not be angry, if I should join you if your return is delayed?"
"You will not be so mad," said Villiers. "I go with a light heart,
because I leave you in security and comfort. I will return--I need not
protest--you know that I shall return the moment I can. I speak of a few
days; it cannot be a week: let me go then, with what satisfaction I may,
to the den of darkness and toil, and not be farther annoyed by the fear
that you will not support my absence with cheerfulness. As you love me,
wait for me with patience--remain with your aunt till I return."
"I will stay for a week, if it must be so," replied Ethel.
"Indeed, my love, it must--nor will I task you beyond--before a week is
gone by, you shall see me."
Ethel looked wistfully at him, but said no more. She thought it
hard--she did not think it right that he should go--that he should toil
and suffer without her; but she had no words for argument or contention,
so she yielded. The next morning--a cold but cheerful morning--at seven
o'clock, she drove over with him in Mrs. Fitzhenry's little pony chaise
to the town, four miles off, through which the stages passed. A first
parting is a kind of landmark in life--a starting post whence we begin
our career out of illusion and the land of dreams, into reality and
endurance. They arrived not a moment too soon: she had yet a thousand
things to say--one or two very particular things, which she had reserved
for the last moment; there was no time, and she was forced to
concentrate all her injunctions into one word, "Write!"
"Every day--and do you."
"It will be my only pleasure," replied his wife. "Take care of
yourself."
He was on the top of the stage and gone; and Ethel felt that a blank
loneliness had swallowed up the dearest joy of her life.
She drew her cloak round her--she gazed along the road--there were no
traces of him--she gave herself up to thought, and as he was the object
of all her thoughts, this was her best consolation. She reviewed the
happy days they had spent together--she dwelt on the memory of his
unalterable affection and endearing kindness, and then tears rushed into
her eyes. "Will any ill ever befall him?" she thought. "O no, none ever
can! he must be rewarded for his goodness and his love. How dear he
ought to be to me! Did he not take the poor friendless girl from
solitude and grief; and disdaining neither her poverty nor her orphan
state, give her himself, his care, his affection? O, my Edward! what
would Ethel have been without you? Her father was gone--her mother
repulsed her--she was alone in the wide world, till you generously made
her your own!"
With the true enthusiasm of passion, Ethel delighted to magnify the
benefits she had received, and to make those which she herself conferred
nothing, that gratitude and love might become yet stronger duties. In
her heart, though she reproached herself for what she termed
selfishness, she could not regret his poverty and difficulties, if thus
she should acquire an opportunity of being useful to him; but she felt
herself defrauded of her best privileges, of serving and consoling, by
their separation.
Thus,--now congratulating herself on her husband's attachment, now
repining at the fate that divided them,--agitated by various emotions
too sweet and bitter for words, she returned to Longfield. Aunt Bessy
was in her arm-chair, waiting for her to begin breakfast. Edward's seat
was empty--his cup was not placed--he was omitted in the domestic
arrangements;--tears rushed into her eyes; and in vain trying to calm
herself, she sobbed aloud. Aunt Bessy was astonished; and when all the
explanation she got was, "He is gone!" she congratulated herself, that
her single state had spared her the endurance of these conjugal
distresses.