AMBITION VINDICATED.--THE HOME OF GODOLPHIN AND LUCILLA.--LUCILLA'S
MIND.--THE EFFECT OF HAPPY LOVE ON FEMALE TALENT.--THE EVE OF FAREWELL.
LUCILLA ALONE.--TEST OF A WOMAN'S AFFECTION.
0 much-abused and highly-slandered passion!--passion rather of the soul
than the heart: hateful to the pseudo-moralist, but viewed with favouring,
though not undiscriminating eyes by the true philosopher: bright-winged
and august ambition! It is well for fools to revile thee, because thou
art liable, like other utilities, to abuse! The wind uproots the oak--but
for every oak it uproots it scatters a thousand acorns. Ixion embraced
the cloud, but from the embrace sprang a hero. Thou, too, hast thy fits
of violence and storm; but without thee, life would stagnate:---thou, too,
embracest thy clouds; but even thy clouds have the demigods for their
offspring!
It was the great and prevailing misfortune of Godolphin's life, that he
had early taught himself to be superior to exertion. His talents,
therefore, only preyed on himself; and instead of the vigorous and daring
actor of the world, he was alternately the indolent sensualist or the
solitary dreamer. He did not view the stir of the great Babel as a man
with a wholesome mind should do; and thus from his infirmities we draw a
moral. The moral is not the worse, in that it opposes the trite
moralities of those who would take from action its motive: the men of
genius, who are not also men of ambition, are either humourists, or
visionaries, or hypochondriacs.
By the side of one of the Italian lakes, Godolphin and Lucilla fixed their
abode; and here the young idealist for some time imagined himself happy.
Never until now so fond of nature as of cities, he gave himself up to the
enchantment of the Eden around him. He spent the long sunny hours of
noon on the smooth lake, or among the sheltering trees by which it was
encircled. The scenes he had witnessed in the world became to him the
food of quiet meditation, and for the first time in his life, thought did
not weary him with its sameness.
When his steps turned homeward, the anxious form of Lucilla waited for
him: her eye brightened at his approach, her spirit escaped restraint and
bounded into joy: and Godolphin, touched by her delight, became eager to
witness it: he felt the magnet of a Home. Yet as the first enthusiasm of
passion died away, he could not but be sensible that Lucilla was scarcely
a companion. Her fancy was indeed lively, and her capacity acute; but
experience had set a confined limit to her ideas. She had nothing save
love, and a fitful temperament, upon which she could draw for
conversation. Those whose education debars them from deriving instruction
from things, have in general the power to extract amusement from
persons:--they can talk of the ridiculous Mrs. So-and-so, or the absurd
Mr. Blank. But our lovers saw no society: and thus their commune was
thrown entirely on their internal resources.
There was always that in the peculiar mind of Godolphin which was inclined
towards ideas too refined and subtle even for persons of cultivated
intellect. If Constance could scarcely comprehend the tone of his
character, we may believe that to Lucilla he was wholly a mystery. This,
perhaps, enhanced her love, but the consciousness of it disappointed his.
He felt that what he considered the noblest faculties he possessed were
unappreciated. He was sometimes angry with Lucilla that she loved only
those qualities in his character which he shared with the rest of mankind.
His speculative and Hamlet-like temper--(let us here take Goethe's view of
Hamlet, and combine a certain weakness with finer traits of the royal
dreamer)--perpetually deserted the solid world, and flew to aerial
creations. He could not appreciate the present. Had Godolphin loved
Lucilla as he once thought that he should love her, the beauties of her
character would have blinded him to its defects; but its passion had been
too sudden to be thoroughly grounded. It had arisen from the knowledge of
her affection---not grown step by step from the natural bias of his own.
Between the interval of liking and possession, love (to be durable) should
pass through many stages. The doubt, the fear, the first pressure of the
hand, the first kiss, each should be an epoch for remembrance to cling to.
In moments of after coolness or anger, the mind should fly from the sated
present to the million tender and freshening associations of the past.
With these associations the affection renews its youth. How vast a store
of melting reflections, how countless an accumulation of the spells that
preserve constancy, does that love forfeit, in which the memory only
commences with possession!
And the more delicate and thoughtful our nature, the more powerful are
these associations. Do they not constitute the immense difference between
the love and the intrigue? All things that savour of youth make our most
exquisite sensations, whether to experience, or recall:--thus, in the
seasons of the year, we prize the spring; and in the effusions of the
heart, the courtship.
Beautiful, too, and tender--wild and fresh in her tenderness--as Lucilla
was, there was that in her character, in addition to her want of
education, which did not wholly accord with Godolphin's preconception of
the being his fancy had conjured up. His calm and profound nature desired
one in whom he could not only confide, but, as it were, repose. Thus one
great charm that had attracted him to Constance was the evenness and
smoothness of her temper. But the self-formed mind of Lucilla was ever in
a bright, and to him a wearying, agitation;--tears and smiles perpetually
chased each other. Not comprehending his character, but thinking only and
wholly of him, she distracted herself with conjectures and suspicions,
which she was too ingenious and too impassioned to conceal. After
watching him for hours, she would weep that he did not turn from his books
or his reverie to search also for her, with eyes equally yearning and
tender as her own. The fear in absence, the absorbed devotion when
present, that absolutely made her existence--she was wretched because he
did not reciprocate with the same intensity of soul. She could conceive
nothing of love but that which she felt herself; and she saw, daily and
hourly, that in that love he did not sympathise; and therefore she
embittered her life by thinking that he did not return her affection.
"You wrong us both," said he in answer to her tearful accusations; "but
our sex love differently from yours."
"Ah," she replied, "I feel that love has no varieties: there is but one
love, but there may be many counterfeits."
Godolphin smiled to think how the untutored daughter of nature had
unconsciously uttered the sparkling aphorism of the most artificial of
maxim-makers.[1] Lucilla saw the smile, and her tears flowed instantly.
"Thou mockest me."
"Thou art a little fool," said Godolphin, kindly, and he kissed away the
storm.
And this was ever an easy matter. There was nothing unfeminine or sullen
in Lucilla's irregulated moods; a kind word--a kind caress--allayed them
in an instant, and turned the transient sorrow into sparkling delight.
But they who know how irksome is the perpetual trouble of conciliation to
a man meditative and indolent like Godolphin, will appreciate the pain
that even her tenderness occasioned him.
There in one thing very noticeable in women when they have once obtained
the object of their life--the sudden check that is given to the impulses
of their genius!--Content to have found the realisation of their chief
hope, they do not look beyond to other but lesser objects, as they had
been wont to do before. Hence we see so many who, before marriage, strike
us with admiration, from the vividness of their talents, and after
marriage settle down into the mere machine. We wonder that we ever
feared, while we praised, the brilliancy of an intellect that seems now
never to wander from the limits of house and hearth. So with poor
Lucilla; her restless mind and ardent genius had once seized on every
object within their reach:--she had taught herself music; she had learned
the colourings and lines of art; not a book came in her way, but she would
have sought to extract from it a new idea. But she was now with
Godolphin, and all other occupations for thought were gone; she had
nothing beyond his love to wish for, nothing beyond his character to
learn. He was the circle of hope, and her heart its centre; all lines
were equal to that heart, so that they touched him. It is clear that this
devotion prevented her, however, from fitting herself to be his companion;
she did not seek to accomplish herself, but to study him: thus in her
extreme love was another reason why that love was not adequately returned.
But Godolphin felt all the responsibility that he had taken on himself.
He felt how utterly the happiness of this poor and solitary child--for a
child she was in character, and almost in years--depended upon him. He
roused himself, therefore, from his ordinary selfishness, and rarely, if
ever, gave way to the irritation which she unknowingly but constantly kept
alive. The balmy and delicious climate, the liquid serenity of the air,
the majestic repose with which Nature invested the loveliness that
surrounded their home, contributed to soften and calm his mind. And he
had persuaded Lucilla to look without despair upon his occasional although
short absences. Sometimes he passed two or three weeks at Rome, sometimes
at Naples or Florence. He knew so well how necessary such intervals of
absence are to the preservation of love, to the defeat of that satiety
which creeps over us with custom, that he had resolutely enforced it as a
necessity, although always under the excuse of business--a plea that
Lucilla could understand and not resist; for the word business seemed to
her like destiny--a call that, however odious, we cannot disobey. At
first, indeed, she was disconsolate at the absence only of two days; but
when she saw how eagerly her lover returned to her, with what a fresh
charm he listened to her voice or her song, she began to confess that even
in the evil might be good.
By degrees he accustomed her to longer intervals; and Lucilla relieved the
dreariness of the time by the thousand little plans and surprises with
which women delight in receiving the beloved wanderer after absence. His
departure was a signal for a change in the house, the gardens, the arbour;
and when she was tired with these occupations, she was not forbidden at
least to write to him and receive his letters. Daily intoxication! and
men's words are so much kinder when written, than they are when uttered!
Fortunately for Lucilla, her early habits, and her strange qualities of
mind, rendered her independent of companionship, and fond of solitude.
Often Godolphin, who could not conceive how persons without education
could entertain themselves, taking pity on her loneliness and seclusion,
would say,
"But how, Lucilla, have you passed this long day that I have spent away
from you?--among the woods or on the lake?"
And Lucilla, delighted to recount to him the history of her hours, would
go over each incident, and body forth every thought that had occurred to
her, with a grave and serious minuteness that evinced her capabilities of
dispensing with the world.
In this manner they passed somewhat more than two years: and in spite of
the human alloy, it was perhaps the happiest period of Godolphin's life,
and the one that the least disappointed his too exacting imagination.
Lucilla had had one daughter, but she died a few weeks after birth. She
wept over the perished flower, but was not inconsolable; for, before its
loss, she had taught herself to think no affliction could be irremediable
that did not happen to Godolphin. Perhaps Godolphin was the more grieved
of the two; men of his character are fond of the occupation of watching
the growth of minds; they put in practice their chimeras of education.
Happy child, to have escaped an experiment!
It was the eve before one of Godolphin's periodical excursions, and it was
Rome that he proposed to visit; Godolphin had lingered about the lake
until the sun had set; and Lucilla, grown impatient, went forth to seek
him. The day had been sultry, and now a sombre and breathless calm hung
over the deepening eve. The pines, those gloomy children of the forest,
which shed something of melancholy and somewhat of sternness over the
brighter features of an Italian landscape, drooped heavily in the
breezeless air. As she came on the border of the lake, its waves lay dark
and voiceless; only, at intervals, the surf, fretting along the pebbles
made a low and dreary sound, or from the trees some lingering songster
sent forth a shrill and momentary note, and then again all became
"An atmosphere without a breath, A silence sleeping there."
There was a spot where the trees, receding in a ring, left some bare and
huge fragments of stone uncovered by verdure. It was the only spot around
that rich and luxuriant scene that was not in harmony with the soft spirit
of the place: might I indulge a fanciful comparison, I should say that it
was like one desolate and grey remembrance in the midst of a career of
pleasure. On this spot Godolphin now stood alone, looking along the still
and purple waters that lay before him. Lucilla, with a light step,
climbed the rugged stones, and, touching his shoulder, reproached him with
a tender playfulness for his truancy.
"Lucilla," said he, when peace was restored, "what impressions does this
dreary and prophetic pause of nature before the upgathering of the storm,
create in you? Does it inspire you with melancholy, or thought, or fear?"
"I see my star," answered Lucilla, pointing to a far and solitary orb,
which hung islanded in a sea of cloud, that swept slowly and blackly
onward:--"I see my star, and I think more of that little light than of the
darkness around it."
"But it will presently be buried among the clouds," said Godolphin,
smiling at that superstition which Lucilla had borrowed from her father.
"But the clouds pass away, and the star endures."
"You are of a sanguine nature, my Lucilla." Lucilla sighed.
"Why that sigh, dearest?"
"Because I am thinking how little even those who love us most know of us!
I never tell my disquiet and sorrow. There are times when thou wouldst
not think me too warmly addicted to hope!"
"And what, poor idler, have you to fear?"
"Hast thou never felt it possible that thou couldst love me less?"
"Never!"
Lucilla raised her large searching eyes, and gazed eagerly on his face;
but in its calm features and placid brow she saw no ground for augury,
whether propitious or evil. She turned away.
"I cannot think, Lucilla," said Godolphin, "that you ever direct those
thoughts of yours, wandering though they be, to the future. Do they ever
extend to the space of some ten or twenty years?"
"No. But one year may contain the whole history of my future."
As she spoke, the clouds gathered round the solitary star to which Lucilla
had pointed. The storm was at hand; they felt its approach, and turned
homeward.
There is something more than ordinarily fearful in the tempests that visit
those soft and garden climes. The unfrequency of such violent changes in
the mood of nature serves to appal us as with an omen; it is like a sudden
affliction in the midst of happiness--or a wound from the hand of one we
love. For the stroke for which we are not prepared we have rather
despondency than resistance.
As they reached their home, the heavy rain-drops began to fall. They
stood for some minutes at the casement, watching the coruscations of the
lightning as it played over the black and heavy waters of the lake.
Lucilla, whom the influences of nature always strangely and mysteriously
affected, clung pale and almost trembling to Godolphin; but even in her
fear there was delight in being so near to him in whose love alone she
thought there was protection. Oh what luxury so dear to a woman as is the
sense of dependence! Poor Lucilla! it was the last evening she ever
spent with one whom she worshipped so entirely.
Godolphin remained up longer than Lucilla. When he joined her in her
room, the storm had ceased; and he found her standing by the open window,
and gazing on the skies that were now bright and serene. Far in the deep
stillness of midnight crept the waters of the lake, hushed once more into
silence, and reflecting the solemn and unfathomable stars. That chain of
hills, which but to name, awakens countless memories of romance, stretched
behind--their blue and dim summits melting into the skies, and over one
higher than the rest, paused the new risen moon, silvering the first
beneath, and farther down, breaking with one long and yet mellower track
of light over the waters of the lake.
As Godolphin approached he did so, unconsciously, with a hushed and
noiseless step. There is something in the quiet of nature like worship;
it is as if, from the breathless heart of Things, went up a prayer or a
homage to the Arch-Creator. One feels subdued by a stillness so utter and
so august; it extends itself to our own sensations, and deepens into an
awe.
Both, then, looked on in silence, indulging it may be different thoughts.
At length, Lucilla said softly:--"Tell me, hast thou really no faith in my
father's creed? Are the stars quite dumb? Is there no truth in their
movements, no prophecy in their lustre?"
"My Lucilla, reason and experience tell us that the astrologers nurse a
dream that has no reality."
"Reason! well!--Experience!--why, did not thy father's mortal illness
hurry thee from home at the very time in which mine foretold thy departure
and its cause? I was then but a child; yet I shall never forget the
paleness of thy cheek when my father uttered his prediction."
"I, too, was almost a child then, Lucilla."
"But that prediction was verified?"
"It was so; but how many did Volktman utter that were never verified? In
true science there are no chances--no uncertainties."
"And my father," said Lucilla, unheeding the answer, "always foretold that
thy lot and mine were to be entwined."
"And the prophecy, perhaps, disposed you to the fact. You might never
have loved me, Lucilla, if your thoughts had not been driven to dwell upon
me by the prediction."
"Nay; I thought of thee before I heard the prophecy."
"But your father foretold me, dearest--cross and disappointment in my
love--was he not wrong? am I not blest with you?"
Lucilla threw herself into her lover's arms, and, as she kissed him,
murmured, "Ah, if I could make thee happy!" The next day Godolphin
departed for Rome. Lucilla was more dejected at his departure than she
had been even in his earliest absence. The winter was now slowly
approaching, and the weather was cold and dreary. That year it was
unusually rainy and tempestuous, and as the wild gusts howled around her
solitary home--how solitary now!--or she heard the big drops hurrying down
on the agitated lake, she shuddered at her own despondent thoughts, and
dreaded the gloom and loneliness of the lengthened night. For the first
time since she had lived with Godolphin she turned, but disconsolately, to
the company of books.
Works of all sorts filled their home, but the spell that once spoke to her
from the page was broken. If the book was not of love, it possessed no
interest;--if of love, she thought the description both tame and false.
No one ever painted love so as fully to satisfy another:--to some it is
too florid--to some too commonplace; the god, like other gods, has no
likeness on earth, and every wave on which the star of passion beams,
breaks the lustre into different refractions of light.
As one day she was turning listlessly over some books that had been put
aside by Godolphin in a closet, and hoping to find one that contained, as
sometimes happened, his comments or at least his marks--she was somewhat
startled to find among them several volumes which she remembered to have
belonged to her father. Godolphin had bought them after Volktman's death,
and put them by as relics of his singular friend, and as samples of the
laborious and selfwilled aberration of the human intellect.
Few among these works could Lucilla comprehend, for they were chiefly in
other tongues than the only two with which she was acquainted. But some,
among which were manuscripts by her father, beautifully written, and
curiously ornamented (some of the chief works on the vainer sciences are
only to be found in manuscript), she could contrive to decipher by a
little assistance from her memory, in recalling the signs and
hieroglyphics which her father had often explained to her, and, indeed,
caused her to copy out for him in his calculations. Always possessing an
untaxed and unquestioned belief in the astral powers, she now took some
interest in reading of their mysteries. Her father, secretly, perhaps,
hoping to bequeath his name to the gratitude of some future Hermes, had in
his manuscripts reduced into a system many scattered theories of others,
and many dogmas of his own. Over these, for they were simpler and easier
than the crabbed and mystical speculations in the printed books, she more
especially pored; and she was not sorry at finding fresh reasons for her
untutored adoration of the stars and apparitions of the heavens.
Still, however, these bewildering researches made but a small part,
comparatively speaking, of the occupation of her thoughts. To write to,
and hear from, Godolphin had become to her more necessary than ever, and
her letters were fuller and more minute in their details of love than even
in the period of their first passion. Wouldst thou know if the woman thou
lovest still loves thee, trust not her spoken words, her present smiles;
examine her letters in absence, see if she dwells, as she once did, upon
trifles--but trifles relating to thee. The things which the indifferent
forget are among the most treasured meditations of love.
But Lucilla was not satisfied with the letters--frequent as they
were--that she received in answer; they were kind, affectionate, but the
something was wanting. "The best part of beauty is that which no picture
can express." That which the heart most asks is that which no words
can convey. Honesty--patriotism--religion--these have had their
hypocrites for life;--but passion permits only momentary dissemblers.
[1] Rochefoucauld.