Do you not think yourself truly happy?
You have the abstract of all sweetness by you,
The precious wealth youth labours to arrive at,
Nor is she less in honour than in beauty.
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
The following day was one of pouring, unintermitting rain. Villiers and
Ethel drew their chairs near their cheerful fire, and were happy. Edward
could not quite conquer his repugnance to seeing his wife in lodgings,
and in those also of so mean and narrow a description. But the spirit of
Ethel was more disencumbered of earthly particles: that had found its
rest in the very home of Love. The rosy light of the divinity invested
all things for her. Cleopatra on the Cydnus, in the bark which--
"Like a burnished throne
Burnt on the water,"
borne along
"By purple sails . . .
. . . So perfumed, that
The winds were love-sick with them;"
was not more
gorgeously attended than Ethel was to her own fancy, lapped and cradled
in all that love has of tender, voluptuous, and confiding.
Several days past before Villiers could withdraw her from this blissful
dream, to gaze upon the world as it was. He could not make her disgusted
with her fortunes nor her abode, but he awakened anxiety on his own
account. His father, as he had conjectured, was gone to Paris, leaving
merely a message for his son, that he would willingly join him in any
act for raising money, by mortgage or the absolute disposal of a part of
the estate. Edward had consulted with his solicitor, who was to look
over a vast variety of papers, to discover the most eligible mode of
making some kind of sale. Delay, in all its various shapes, waited on
these arrangements; and Villiers was very averse to leaving town till he
held some clue to the labyrinth of obstacles which presented themselves
at every turn. He talked of their taking a house in town; but Ethel
would not hear of such extravagance. In the first place, their actual
means were at a very low ebb, with little hope of a speedy supply. There
was another circumstance, the annoyance of which he understood far
better than Ethel could. He had raised money on annuities, the interest
of which he was totally unable to pay; this exposed him to a personal
risk of the most disagreeable kind, and he knew that his chief creditor
was on the point of resorting to harsh measures against him. These
things, dingy-visaged, dirty-handed realities as they were, made a
strange contrast with Ethel's feeling of serene and elevated bliss; but
she, with unshrinking heart, brought the same fortitude and love into
the crooked and sordid ways of modern London, which had adorned heroines
of old, as they wandered amidst trackless forests, and over barren
mountains.
Several days passed, and the weather became clear, though cold. The
young pair walked together in the parks at such morning hours as would
prevent their meeting any acquaintances, for Edward was desirous that it
should not be known that they were in town. Villiers also traced his
daily, weary, disappointing way to his solicitor, where he found things
look more blank and dismal each day. Then when evening came, and the
curtains were drawn, they might have been at the top of Mount Caucasus,
instead of in the centre of London, so completely were they cut off from
every thing except each other. They then felt absolutely happy: the
lingering disgusts of Edward were washed clean away by the bounteous,
everspringing love, that flowed, as waters from a fountain, from the
heart of Ethel, in one perpetual tide.
In those hours of unchecked talk, she learned many things she had not
known before--the love of Horatio Saville for Lady Lodore was revealed to
her; but the story was not truly told, for the prejudices as well as the
ignorance of Villiers rendered him blind to the sincerity of Cornelia's
affection and regret. Ethel wondered, and in spite of the charm with
which she delighted to invest the image of her mother, she could not
help agreeing with her husband that she must be irrevocably wedded to
the most despicable worldly feelings, so to have played with the heart
of a man such as Horatio: a man, whose simplest word bore the stamp of
truth and genius; one of those elected few whom nature elevats to her
own high list of nobility and greatness. How could she, a simple girl,
interest feelings which were not alive to Saville's merits? She could
only hope that in some dazzling marriage Lady Lodore would find a
compensation for the higher destiny which might have been hers, but
that, like the "base Indian," she had thrown
"A pearl away,
Richer than all his tribe."
There was a peaceful quiet in their secluded and obscure life, which
somewhat resembled the hours spent on board ship, when you long for, yet
fear, the conclusion of the voyage, and shrink involuntarily from
exchanging a state, whose chief blessing is an absence of every care,
for the variety of pains and pleasures which chequer life. Ethel
possessed her all--so near, so undivided, so entirely her own, that she
could not enter into Villiers's impatience, nor quite sympathize with
the disquietude he could not repress. After considerable delays, his
solicitor informed him that his father had so entirely disposed of all
his interest in the property, that his readiness to join in any act of
sale would be useless. The next thing to be done was for Edward to sell
a part of his expectations, and the lawyer promised to find a purchaser,
and begged to see him three days hence, when no doubt he should have
some proposal to communicate.
Whoever has known what such things are--whoever has waited on the demurs
and objections, and suffered the alternations of total failure and
suddenly renewed hopes, which are the Tantalus-food held to the lips of
those under the circumstances of Villiers, can follow in imagination his
various conferences with his solicitor, as day after day something new
was discovered, still to drag on, or to impede, the tortoise pace of his
negociations. It will be no matter of wonder to such, that a month
instead of three days wasted away, and found him precisely in the same
position, with hopes a little raised, though so frequently blasted, and
nothing done.
In recording the annoyances, or rather the adversity which the young
pair endured at this period, a risk is run, on the one hand, of being
censured for bringing the reader into contact with degrading and sordid
miseries; and on the other, of laying too much stress on circumstances
which will appear to those in a lower sphere of life, as scarcely
deserving the name of misfortune. It is very easy to embark on the wild
ocean of romance, and to steer a danger-fraught passage, amidst giant
perils,--the very words employed, excite the imagination, and give grace
to the narrative. But all beautiful and fairylike as was Ethel Villiers,
in tracing her fortunes, it is necessary to descend from such altitudes,
to employ terms of vulgar use, and to describe scenes of common-place
and debasing interest; so that, if she herself, in her youth and
feminine tenderness, does not shed light and holiness around her, we
shall grope darkling, and fail utterly in the scope which we proposed to
ourselves in selecting her history for the entertainment of the reader.