GODOLPHIN AT ROME.--THE CURE FOR A MORBID IDEALISM.--HIS EMBARRASSMENT IN
REGARD TO LUCILLA.--THE RENCONTRE WITH AN OLD FRIEND.--THE COLOSSEUM.--A
SURPRISE.
Godolphin arrived at Rome: it was thronged with English. Among them were
some whom he remembered with esteem in England. He had grown a little
weary of his long solitude, and he entered with eagerness into the society
of those who courted him. He was still an object of great interest to the
idle; and as men grow older they become less able to dispense with
attention.
He was pleased to find his own importance, and he tasted the sweets of
companionship with more gust than he had yet done. His talents, buried
in obscurity, and uncalled for by the society of Lucilla, were now
perpetually tempted into action, and stimulated by reward. It had never
before appeared to him so charming a thing to shine; for, before, he had
been sated with even that pleasure. Now, from long relaxation, it had
become new; vanity had recovered its nice perception. He was no longer so
absorbed as he had been by visionary images. He had given his fancy food
in his long solitude, and with its wild co-mate; and being somewhat
disappointed in the result, the living world became to him a fairer
prospect than it had seemed while the world of imagination was untried.
Nothing more confirms the health of the mind than indulging its favourite
infirmity to its own cure. So Goethe, in his memoirs, speaking of
Werther, remarks, that "the composition of that extravagant work cured his
character of extravagance."
Godolphin thought often of Lucilla; but perhaps, if the truth of his heart
were known even to himself, a certain sentiment of pain and humiliation
was associated with the tenderness of his remembrance. With her he had
led a life, romantic, it is true, but somewhat effeminate; and he thought
now, surrounded by the gay and freshening tide of the world, somewhat
mawkish in its romance. He did not experience a desire to return to the
still lake and the gloomy pines;--he felt that Lucilla did not suffice to
make his world. He would have wished to bring her to Rome; to live with
her more in public than he had hitherto done; to conjoin, in short, her
society, with the more recreative dissipation of the world: but there were
many obstacles to this plan in his fastidious imagination. So new to the
world, its ways, its fashions, so strange and infantine in all things, as
Lucilla was, he trembled to expose her inexperience to the dangers that
would beset it. He knew that his "friends" would pay very little respect
to her reserve; and that for one so lovely and unhackneyed, the snares of
the wildest and most subtle adepts of intrigue would be set. Godolphin
did not undervalue Lucilla's pure and devoted heart; but he knew that the
only sure antidote against the dangers of the world is the knowledge of
the world. There was nothing in Lucilla that ever promised to attain that
knowledge; her very nature seemed to depend on her ignorance of the nature
of others. Joined to this fear and a confused sentiment of delicacy
towards her, a certain remorseful feeling in himself made him dislike
bringing their connexion immediately before the curious and malignant
world: so much had circumstance, and Lucilla's own self-willed temper and
uncalculating love, contributed to drive the poor girl into his arms,--and
so truly had he chosen the generous not the selfish part, until passion
and nature were exposed to a temptation that could have been withstood by
none but the adherent to sterner principles than he (the creature of
indolence and feeling) had ever clung to--that Godolphin, viewing his
habits--his education--his whole bias and frame of mind--the estimates and
customs of the world--may not, perhaps be very rigidly judged for the
nature of his tie to Lucilla. But I do not seek to excuse it, nor did he
wholly excuse it to himself. The image of Volktman often occurred to him,
and always in reproach. Living with Lucilla in a spot only trod by
Italians, so indulgent to love, and where the whisper of shame could never
reach her ear, or awaken his remorse, her state did not, however, seem to
her or himself degraded, and the purity of her girlish mind almost forbade
the intrusion of the idea. But to bring her into public--among his own
countrymen--and to feel that the generous and devoted girl, now so
unconscious of sin, would be rated by English eyes with the basest and
most abandoned of the sex,--with the glorifiers in vice or the hypocrites
for money,--this was a thought which he could not contemplate, and which
he felt he would rather pass his life in solitude than endure. But this
very feeling gave an embarrassment to his situation with Lucilla, and yet
more fixedly combined her image with that of a wearisome seclusion and an
eternal ennui.
From the thought of Lucilla, coupled with its many embarrassments,
Godolphin turned with avidity to the easy enjoyments of life--enjoyments
that ask no care and dispense with the trouble of reflection.
But among the visitors to Rome, the one whose sight gave to Godolphin the
greatest pleasure was his old friend Augustus Saville. A decaying
constitution, and a pulmonary attack in especial, had driven the
accomplished voluptuary to a warmer climate. The meeting of the two
friends was quite characteristic: it was at a soiree at an English house.
Saville had managed to get up a whist-table.
"Look, Saville, there is Godolphin, your old friend!" cried the host, who
was looking on the game, and waiting to cut in.
"Hist!" said Saville; "don't direct his attention to me until after the
odd trick!"
Notwithstanding this coolness when a point was in question, Saville was
extremely glad to meet his former pupil. They retired into a corner of
the room, and talked over the world. Godolphin hastened to turn the
conversation on Lady Erpingham.
"Ah!" said Saville, "I see from your questions, and yet more your tone of
voice, that although it is now several years since you met, you still
preserve the sentiment--the weakness--Ah!--bah!"
"Pshaw!" said Godolphin; "I owe her revenge, not love. But Erpingham?
Does she love him? He is handsome."
"Erpingham? What--you have not heard----"
"Heard what?"
"Oh, nothing: but, pardon me, they wait for me at the card-table. I
should like to stay with you, but you know one must not be selfish; the
table would be broken up without me. No virtue without
self-sacrifice--eh?"
"But one moment. What is the matter with the Erpinghams? have they
quarrelled?"
"Quarrelled?--bah! Quarrelled--no; I dare say she likes him better now
than ever she did before." And Saville limped away to the table.
Godolphin remained for some time abstracted and thoughtful. At length,
just as he was going away, Saville, who, having an unplayable hand and a
bad partner, had somewhat lost his interest in the game, looked up and
beckoned to him.
"Godolphin, my clear fellow, I am to escort a lady to see the lions
to-morrow; a widow--a rich widow; handsome, too. Do, for charity's sake,
accompany us, or meet us at the Colosseum. How well that sounds--eh?
About two."
Godolphin refused at first, but being pressed, assented.
Not surrounded by the lesser glories of modern Rome, but girt with the
mighty desolation of the old city of Romulus, stands the most wonderful
monument, perhaps, in the world, of imperial magnificence--the Flavian
Amphitheatre, to which, it has been believed, the colossal statue of the
worst of emperors gave that name (the Colosseum), allied with the least
ennobling remembrances yet giving food to the loftiest thoughts. The
least ennobling remembrances; for what can be more degrading than the
amusements of a degraded people, who reserved meekness for their tyrants,
and lavished ferocity on their shows? From that of the wild beast to that
of the Christian martyr, blood has been the only sanctification of this
temple to the Arts. The history of the Past broods like an air over those
mighty arches; but Memory can find no reminiscence worthy of the spot.
The amphitheatre was not built until history had become a record of the
vice and debasement of the human race. The Faun and the Dryad had
deserted the earth, no sweet superstition, the faith of the grotto and the
green hill, could stamp with a delicate and undying spell the labours of
man. Nor could the ruder but august virtues of the heroic age give to the
tradition of the arch and column some stirring remembrance or exalting
thought. Not only the warmth of fancy, but the greatness of soul was
gone; the only triumph left to genius was to fix on its page the gloomy
vices which made the annals of the world. Tacitus is the Historian of the
Colosseum. But the very darkness of the past gives to the thoughts
excited within that immense pile a lofty but mournful character. A sense
of vastness--for which, as we gaze, we cannot find words, but which
bequeaths thoughts that our higher faculties would not willingly
forego--creeps within us as we gaze on this Titan relic of gigantic crimes
for ever passed away from the world.
And not only within the scene, but around the scene, what voices of old
float upon the air? Yonder the triumphal arch of Constantine, its
Corinthian arcades, and the history of Trajan sculptured upon its marble;
the dark and gloomy verdure of the Palatine; the ruins of the palace of
the Caesars; the mount of Fable, of Fame, of Luxury (the Three Epochs of
Nations); the habitation of Saturn; the home of Tully; the sight of the
Golden House of Nero! Look at your feet,--look around; the waving weed,
the broken column--Time's witness, and the Earthquake's. In that contrast
between grandeur and decay,--in the unutterable and awful solemnity that,
while rife with the records of past ages, is sad also with their ravage,
you have felt the nature of eternity!
Through this vast amphitheatre, and giving way to such meditations,
Godolphin passed on alone, the day after his meeting with Saville; and at
the hour he had promised the latter to seek him, he mounted the wooden
staircase which conducts the stranger to the wonders above the arena, and
by one of the arches that looked over the still pines that slept afar off
in the sun of noon, he saw a female in deep mourning, whom Saville
appeared to be addressing. He joined them; the female turned round, and
he beheld, pale and saddened, but how glorious still, the face of
Constance! To him the interview was unexpected, by her foreseen. The
colour flushed over her cheek, the voice sank inaudible within. But
Godolphin's emotion was more powerful and uncontrolled: violent tremblings
literally shook him as he stood; he gasped for breath: the sight of the
dead returned to earth would have affected him less.
In this immense ruin--in the spot where, most of earth, man feels the
significance of an individual life, or of the rapid years over which it
extends, he had encountered, suddenly, the being who had coloured all his
existence. He was reminded at once of the grand epoch of his life and of
its utter unimportance. But these are the thoughts that would occur
rather to us than him. Thought at that moment was an intolerable flash
that burst on him for an instant, and then left all in darkness. He clung
to the shattered corridor for support. Constance seemed touched and
surprised by so overwhelming an emotion, and the habitual hypocrisy in
which women are reared, and by which they learn to conceal the sentiments
they experience, and affect those they do not, came to her assistance and
his own.
"It is many years, Mr. Godolphin," said she in a collected but soft voice,
"since we met."
"Years!" repeated Godolphin, vaguely; and approaching her with a slow and
faltering step. "Years! you have not numbered them!"
Saville had retired a few steps on Godolphin's arrival, and had watched
with a sardonic yet indifferent smile the proof of his friend's weakness.
He joined Godolphin, and said,--
"You must forgive me, my dear Godolphin, for not apprising you before of
Lady Erpingham's arrival at Rome. But a delight is perhaps the greater
for being sudden."
The word Erpingham thrilled displeasingly through Godolphin's veins; in
some measure it restored him to himself. He bowed coldly, and muttered a
few ceremonious words; and while he was yet speaking, some stragglers that
had belonged to Lady Erpingham's party came up. Fortunately, perhaps, for
the self-possession of both, they, the once lovers, were separated from
each other. But whenever Constance turned her glance to Godolphin, she
saw those large, searching, melancholy eyes, whose power she well
recalled, fixed unmovingly on her, as seeking to read in her cheek the
history of the years which had ripened its beauties--for another.