If any indifferent person approach us, it either is disagreeable, or at
least unimportant; but when it is a person we love, it thrills through
the heart, and we are unable to speak or to think. Could she have
imagined, that Lord Glenarvon felt for her, she had been lost. But that
was impossible; and yet his manner;—it was so marked, there could be
no doubt. She was inexperienced, we may add, innocent; though no doubt
sufficiently prepared to become every thing that was the reverse. Yet
in a moment she felt her own danger, and resolved to guard against it.
How then can so many affirm, when they know that they are loved, that
it is a mere harmless friendship! how can they, in palliation of their
errors, bring forward the perpetually repeated excuse, that they were
beguiled! The heart that is chaste and pure will shrink the soonest
from the very feeling that would pollute it:—in vain it would attempt
to deceive itself: the very moment we love, or are loved, something
within us points out the danger:—even when we fly from him, to whom
we could attach ourselves, we feel a certain embarrassment—an emotion,
which is not to be mistaken; and, in a lover’s looks, are there not a
thousand assurances and confessions which no denial of words can affect
to disguise?
Lord Glenarvon had denied to Calantha the possibility of his ever again
feeling attachment. This had not deceived her; but she was herself too
deeply and suddenly struck to the heart to venture to hope for a return.
Besides, she did not think of this as possible:—he seemed to her so
far above her—so far above everything. She considered him as entirely
different from all others; and, if not superior, at least dissimilar
and consequently not to be judged of by the same criterion.
It is difficult to explain Calantha’s peculiar situation with respect
to Lord Avondale. Yet it is necessary briefly to state in what manner
they were situated at this particular period; for otherwise, all that is
related must appear like a mere fable, improbable and false. They were
dearer to each other perhaps, than any two who had been so long united in
marriage. They loved each other with more passion, more enthusiasm than
is often retained; but they were, from a thousand circumstances, utterly
estranged at this time; and that apparently by mutual consent—like two
violent spirits which had fretted and chafed and opposed each other,
till both were sore and irritated.
In the course of years, they had said every thing that was most galling
and bitter; and though the ardent attachment they really felt, had
ever followed those momentary bursts of fury, the veil had been torn
aside—that courtesy, which none should ever suffer themselves to forget,
had been broken through, and they had yielded too frequently to the
sudden impulse of passion, ever to feel secure that the ensuing moment
might not produce a scene of discord.
A calm, a deliberate tyrant, had vanquished Calantha; a violent one
could not. When provoked, Lord Avondale was too severe; and when he saw
her miserable and oppressed, it gave him more suffering than if he had
himself been subdued. There are few spirits which cannot be overcome
if dexterously attacked; but with the fierce and daring, force and
violence will generally be found useless. It should be remembered that,
like madness, these disturbed characters see not things as they are;
and, like martyrs and fanatics, they attach a degree of glory to every
privation and punishment in the noble cause of opposition to what they
conceive is unjust authority. Such a character is open and guileless;
but unhappily, the very circumstance that makes it sincere, renders it
also, if misturned, desperate and hardened.
During the first years of their marriage, these tumultuous scenes but
strengthened the attachment they felt for each other; but when Lord
Avondale’s profession absorbed his mind, he dreaded a recurrence of what
had once so fully engrossed his thoughts. He left Calantha, therefore,
to the guidance of that will, which she had so long and pertinaciously
indulged. Absent, pre-occupied, he saw not, he heard not, the misuse
she made of her entire liberty. Some trifle, perhaps, at times, reached
his ear; a scene of discord ensued; much bitterness on both sides
followed: and the conviction that they no longer loved each other, added
considerably to the violence of recrimination. They knew not how deeply
rooted affection such as they had once felt, must ever be—how the very
ties that compelled them to belong to each other, strengthened, in fact,
the attachment which inclination and love had first inspired; but, with
all the petulance and violence of character natural to each, they fled
estranged and offended from each other’s society.
Lord Avondale sought, in an active and manly profession, for some
newer interest, in which every feeling of ambition could have part; and
she, surrendering her soul to the illusive dream of a mad and guilty
attachment, boasted that she had found again the happiness she had lost;
and contrasted even the indifference of her husband, to the ardour, the
devotion, the refined attention of a newly acquired friend.