THE LAST CONVERSATION BETWEEN GODOLPHIN AND CONSTANCE.--HIS THOUGHTS AND
SOLITARY WALK AMIDST THE SCENES OF HIS YOUTH.--THE LETTER.--THE DEPARTURE.
They had denied themselves to all the visitors who had attacked the
Priory; but on their first arrival, they had deemed it necessary to
conciliate their neighbours by concentrating into one formal act of
hospitality all those social courtesies which they could not persuade
themselves to relinquish their solitude in order singly to perform.
Accordingly, a day had been fixed for one grand fete at the Priory; it was
to follow close on the election, and be considered as in honour of that
event. The evening for this gala succeeded that which I have recorded in
the last chapter. It was with great reluctance that they prepared
themselves to greet this sole interruption of their seclusion; and they
laughed, although they did not laugh cordially, at the serious annoyance
which the giving a ball was for the first time to occasion to persons who
had been giving balls for a succession of years.
The day was remarkably still and close; the sun had not once pierced
through the dull atmosphere, which was charged with the yet silent but
gathering thunder; and as the evening came on, the sullen tokens of an
approaching storm became more and more loweringly pronounced.
"We shall not, I fear, have propitious weather for our festival to-night,"
said Godolphin; "but after a general election, people's nerves are
tolerably hardened: what are the petty fret and tumult of nature, lasting
but an hour, to the angry and everlasting passions of men?"
"A profound deduction from a wet night, dear Percy," said Constance,
smiling.
"Like our friend C----," rejoined Godolphin, in the same vein; "I can
philosophise on the putting on one's gloves, you know:" and therewith
their conversation flowed into a vein singularly contrasted with the
character of the coming events. Time fled on as they were thus engaged
until Constance started up, surprised at the lateness of the hour, to
attend the duties of the toilette.
"Wear this, dearest," said Godolphin, taking a rose from a flower-stand by
the window, "in memory of that ball at Wendover Castle, which although
itself passed bitterly enough for me, has yet left so many happy
recollections." Constance put the rose into her bosom; its leaves were
then all fresh and brilliant--so were her prospects for the future. He
kissed her forehead as they parted;--they parted for the last time.
Godolphin, left alone, turned to the window, which, opening to the ground,
invited him forth among the flowers that studded the grass-plots which
sloped away to the dark and unwavering trees that girded the lawn. That
pause of nature which precedes a storm ever had a peculiar attraction to
his mind; and instinctively he sauntered from the house, wrapped in the
dreaming, half-developed thought which belonged to his temperament.
Mechanically he strayed on until he found himself beside the still lake
which the hollows of the dismantled park embedded. There he paused,
gazing unconsciously on the gloomy shadows which fell from the arches of
the Priory and the tall trees around. Not a ripple stirred the broad
expanse of waters; the birds had gone to rest; no sound, save the voice of
the distant brook that fed the lake beside which, on the first night of
his return to his ancestral home, he had wandered with Constance, broke
the universal silence. That voice was never mute. All else might be
dumb; but that living stream, rushing through its rocky bed, stilled not
its repining music. Like the soul of the landscape is the gush of a fresh
stream; it knows no sleep, no pause; it works for ever--the life, the
cause of life to all around. The great frame of nature may repose, but
the spirit of the waters rests not for a moment. As the soul of the
landscape is the soul of man, in our deepest slumbers its course glides
on, and works unsilent, unslumbering, through its destined channel.
With slow step and folded arms Godolphin moved along. The well-remembered
scenes of his childhood were all before him; the wild verdure of the fern,
the broken ground, with its thousand mimic mounts and valleys, the deep
dell overgrown with matted shrubs and dark as a wizard's cave; the remains
of many a stately vista, where the tender green of the lime showed forth,
even in that dusky light, beneath the richer leaves of the chestnut; all
was familiar and home-breathing to his mind. Fragments of boyish verse,
forgotten for years, rose hauntingly to his remembrance, telling of wild
thoughts, unsatisfied dreams, disappointed hopes.
"But I am happy at last," said he aloud; "yes, happy. I have passed that
bridge of life which divides us from the follies of youth; and better
prospects, and nobler desires, extend before me. What a world of wisdom
in that one saying of Radclyffe's, 'Benevolence is the sole cure to
idealism;' to live for others draws us from demanding miracles for
ourselves. What duty as yet have I fulfilled? I renounced ambition as
unwise, and with it I renounced wisdom itself. I lived for pleasure--I
lived the life of disappointment. Without one vicious disposition, I have
fallen into a hundred vices; I have never been actively selfish, yet
always selfish. I nursed high thoughts--for what end? A poet in heart, a
voluptuary in life. If mine own interest came into clear collision with
that of another, mine I would have sacrificed, but I never asked if the
whole course of my existence was not that of a war with the universal
interest. Too thoughtful to be without a leading principle in life, the
one principle I adopted has been one error. I have tasted all that
imagination can give to earthly possession: youth, health, liberty,
knowledge, love, luxury, pomp. Woman was my first passion,--what woman
have I wooed in vain? I imagined that my career hung upon Constance's
breath--Constance loved and refused me. I attributed my errors to that
refusal; Constance became mine--how have I retrieved them? A vague, a
dim, an unconfessed remorse has pursued me in the memory of Lucilla; yet,
why not have redeemed that fault to her by good to others? What is
penitence not put into action, but the great fallacy in morals? A sin to
one, if irremediable, can only be compensated by a virtue to some one
else. Yet was I to blame in my conduct to Lucilla? Why should conscience
so haunt me at that name? Did I not fly her? Was it not herself who
compelled our union? Did I not cherish, respect, honour, forbear with
her, more than I have since with my wedded Constance? Did I not resolve
to renounce Constance herself, when most loved, for Lucilla's sake alone?
Who prevented that sacrifice--who deserted me--who carved out her own
separate life?--Lucilla herself. No, so far, my sin is light. But ought
I not to have left all things to follow her, to discover her, to force
upon her an independence from want, or possibly from crime? Ah, there was
my sin, and the sin of my nature; the sin, too, of the children of the
world--passive sin. I could sacrifice my happiness, but not my indolence;
I was not ungenerous, I was inert. But is it too late? Can I not yet
search, discover her, and remove from my mind the anxious burthen which
her remembrance imposes on it? For, oh, one thought of remorse linked
with the being who has loved us, is more intolerable to the conscience
than the gravest crime!"
Muttering such thoughts, Godolphin strayed on until the deepening night
suddenly recalled his attention to the lateness of the hour. He turned to
the house and entered his own apartment. Several of the guests had
already come. Godolphin was yet dressing, when a servant knocked at the
door and presented him with a note.
"Lay it on the table," said he to the valet; "it is probably some excuse
about the ball."
"Sir," said the servant, "a lad has just brought it from S----," naming a
village about four miles distant; "and says he is to wait for an answer.
He was ordered to ride as fast as possible."
With some impatience Godolphin took up the note; but the moment his eye
rested on the writing, it fell from his hands; his cheek, his lips, grew
as white as death; his heart seemed to refuse its functions; it was
literally as if life stood still for a moment, as by the force of a sudden
poison. With a strong effort he recovered himself, tore open the note,
and read as follows:
"Percy Godolphin, the hour has arrived-once more we shall meet. I summon
you, fair love, to that meeting--the bed of death. Come! Lucilla
Volktman."
"Don't alarm the countess," said Godolphin to his servant, in a very low,
calm voice; "bring my horse to the postern, and send the bearer of this
note to me."
The messenger appeared--a rough country lad, of about eighteen or twenty.
"You brought this note?"
"I did, your honour."
"From whom?"
"Why, a sort of a strange lady as is lying at the 'Chequers,' and not
expected to live. She be mortal bad, sir, and do run on awesome."
Godolphin pressed his hands convulsively together.
"And how long has she been there?"
"She only came about two hours since, sir; she came in a chaise, sir, and
was taken so ill, that we sent for the doctor directly. He says she can't
get over the night."
Godolphin walked to and fro, without trusting himself to speak, for some
minutes. The boy stood by the door, pulling about his hat, and wondering,
and staring, and thoroughly stupid.
"Did she come alone?"
"Eh, your honour?"
"Was no one with her?"
"Oh, yes! a little nigger girl: she it was sent me with the letter."
"The horse is ready, sir," said the servant; "but had you not better have
the carriage brought out? It looks very black; it must rain shortly, sir;
and the ford between this and S---- is dangerous to cross in so dark a
night."
"Peace!" cried Godolphin, with flashing eyes, and a low convulsive laugh.
"Shall I ride to that death-bed at my ease and leisure?"
He strode rapidly down the stairs, and reached the small postern door: it
was a part of the old building: one of the grooms held his impatient
horse--the swiftest in his splendid stud; and the dim but flaring light,
held by another of the servitors, streamed against the dull heavens and
the imperfectly seen and frowning ruins of the ancient pile.
Godolphin, unconscious of all around, and muttering to himself, leaped on
his steed: the fire glinted from the coursers hoofs; and thus the last
lord of that knightly race bade farewell to his father's halls. Those
words which he had muttered, and which his favourite servant caught and
superstitiously remembered, were the words in Lucilla's note--"The hour
has arrived!"
CHAPTER THE LAST.
A DREAD MEETING.--THE STORM.--THE CATASTROPHE.
On the humble pallet of the village inn lay the broken form of the
astrologer's expiring daughter. The surgeon of the place sat by the
bedside, dismayed and terrified, despite his hardened vocation, by the
wild words and ghastly shrieks that ever and anon burst from the lips of
the dying woman. The words were, indeed, uttered in a foreign tongue
unfamiliar to the leech, a language not ordinarily suited to inspire
terror; the language of love, and poetry, and music, the language of the
sweet South. But, uttered in that voice where the passions of the soul
still wrestled against the gathering weakness of the frame, the soft
syllables sounded harsh and fearful; and the dishevelled locks of the
sufferer--the wandering fire of the sunken eyes--the distorted gestures of
the thin, transparent arms, gave fierce effect to the unknown words, and
betrayed the dark strength of the delirium which raged upon her.
One wretched light on the rude table opposite the bed broke the gloom of
the mean chamber; and across the window flashed the first lightnings of
the storm about to break. By the other side of the bed sat, mute,
watchful, tearless, the Moorish girl, who was Lucilla's sole
attendant--her eyes fixed on the sufferer with faithful, unwearying love;
her ears listening, with all the quick sense of her race, to catch, amidst
the growing noises of the storm, and the tread of hurrying steps below,
the expected sound of the hoofs that should herald Godolphin's approach.
Suddenly, as if exhausted by the paroxysm of her disease, Lucilla's voice
sank into silence; and she lay so still, so motionless, that, but for the
faint and wavering pulse of the hand, which the surgeon was now suffered
to hold, they might have believed the tortured spirit was already
released. This torpor lasted for some minutes, when, raising herself up,
as a bright gleam of intelligence stole over the hollow cheeks, Lucilla
put her finger to her lips, smiled, and said, in a low, clear voice,
"Hark! he comes!"
The Moor crept across the chamber, and opening the door, stood there in a
listening attitude. She, as yet, heard not the tread of the speeding
charger;--a moment, and it smote her ear; a moment more it halted by the
inn door: the snort of the panting horse--the rush of steps--Percy
Godolphin was in the room--was by the bedside--the poor sufferer was in
his arms; and softened, thrilled, overpowered, Lucilla resigned herself to
that dear caress; she drank in the sobs of his choked voice; she felt
still, as in happier days, burning into her heart, the magic of his
kisses. One instant of youth, of love, of hope, broke into that desolate
and fearful hour, and silent and scarcely conscious tears gushed from her
aching eyes, and laved, as it were, the burthen and the agony from her
heart.
The Moor traversed the room, and, laying one hand on the surgeon's
shoulder, pointed to the door. Lucilla and Godolphin were alone.
"Oh!" said he, at last finding voice, "is it thus--thus we meet? But say
not that you are dying, Lucilla! have mercy, mercy upon your betrayer,
your----"
Here he could utter no more; he sank beside her, covering his face with
his hands, and sobbing bitterly.
The momentary lucid interval for Lucilla had passed away; the maniac
rapture returned, although in a wild and solemn shape.
"Blame not yourself," said she, earnestly; "the remorseless stars are the
sole betrayers: yet, bright and lovely as they once seemed when they
assured me of a bond between thee and me, I could not dream that their
still and shining lore could forebode such gloomy truths. Oh, Percy!
since we parted, the earth has not been as the earth to me: the Natural
has left my life; a weird and roving spirit has entered my breast, and
filled my brain, and possessed my thoughts, and moved every spring of my
existence: the sun and the air, the green herb, the freshness and glory of
the world, have been covered with a mist in which only dim shapes of dread
were shadowed forth. But thou, my love, on whose breast I have dreamed
such blessed dreams, wert not to blame. No! the power that crushes we
cannot accuse: the heavens are above the reach of our reproach; they smile
upon our agony; they bid the seasons roll on, unmoved and unsympathising,
above our broken hearts. And what has been my course since your last kiss
on these dying lips? Godolphin,"--and here Lucilla drew herself apart
from him, and writhed, as with some bitter memory,--"these lips have felt
other kisses, and these ears have drunk unhallowed sounds, and wild
revelry and wilder passion have made me laugh over the sepulchre of my
soul. But I am a poor creature; pour, poor--mad, Percy--mad--they tell me
so!" Then, in the sudden changes incident to her disease, Lucilla
continued--"I saw your bride, Percy, when your bore her from Rome, and the
wheels of your bridal carriage swept over me, for I flung myself in their
way; but they scratched me not; the bright demons above ordained
otherwise, and I wandered over the world; but you shall know not," added
Lucilla, with a laugh of dreadful levity, "whither or with whom, for we
must have concealments, my love, as you will confess; and I strove to
forget you, and my brain sank in the effort. I felt my frame withering,
and they told me my doom was fixed, and I resolved to come to England, and
look on my first love once more; so I came, and I saw you, Godolphin; and
I knew, by the wrinkles in your brow, and the musing thought in your eye,
that your proud lot had not brought you content. And then there came to
me a stately shape, and I knew it for her for whom you had deserted me:
she told me, as you tell me, to live, to forget the past. Mockery,
mockery! But my heart is proud as hers, Percy, and I would not stoop to
the kindness of a triumphant rival; and I fled, what matters it whither?
But listen, Percy, listen; my woes have made me wise in that science which
is not of heart, and I knew that you and I must meet once more, and that
that meeting would be in this hour; and I counted, minute by minute, with
a savage gladness, the days that were to bring on this interview and my
death!" Then raising her voice into a wild shriek--"Beware, beware,
Percy!-the rush of waters is on my ear-the splash, the gurgle!--Beware!--
your last hour, also; is at hand!"
From the moment in which she uttered these words, Lucilla relapsed into
her former frantic paroxysms. Shriek followed shriek; she appeared to
know none around her, not even Godolphin. With throes and agony the soul
seemed to wrench itself from the frame. The hours swept on--midnight
came--clear and distinct the voice of the clock below reached that
chamber.
"Hush!" cried Lucilla, starting. "Hush!" and just at that moment,
through the window opposite, the huge clouds, breaking in one spot,
discovered high and far above them a solitary star.
"Thine, thine, Godolphin!" she shrieked forth, pointing to the lonely orb;
"it summons thee;--farewell, but not for long!"
* * * * *
* * * * *
* * * * *
The Moor rushed forward with a loud cry; she placed her hand on Lucilla's
bosom; the heart was still, the breath was gone, the fire had vanished
from the ashes: that strange unearthly spirit was perhaps with the stars
for whose mysteries it had so vainly yearned.
Down fell the black rain in torrents; and far from the mountains you might
hear the rushing of the swollen streams, as they poured into the bosom of
the valleys. The sullen, continued mass of cloud was broken, and the
vapours hurried fast and louring over the heavens, leaving now and then a
star to glitter forth ere again "the jaws of darkness did devour it up."
At the lower verge of the horizon, the lightning flashed fierce, but at
lingering intervals; the trees rocked and groaned beneath the rain and
storm; and, immediately above the bowed head of a solitary horseman, broke
the thunder that, amidst the whirl of his own emotions, he scarcely heard.
Beside a stream, which the rains had already swelled, was a gipsy
encampment; and as some of the dusky itinerants, waiting perhaps the
return of a part of their band from a predatory excursion, cowered over
the flickering fires in their tent, they perceived the horseman rapidly
approaching the stream.
"See to yon gentry cove," cried one of the band; "'tis the same we saw in
the forenight crossing the ford above. He has taken a short cut, the
buzzard! and will have to go round again to the ford; a precious time to
be gallivanting about!"
"Pish!" said an old hag; "I love to see the proud ones tasting the bitter
wind and rain as we bear alway; 'tis but a mile longer round to the ford.
I wish it was twenty."
"Hallo!" cried the first speaker; "the fool takes to the water. He'll be
drowned; the banks are too high and rough to land man or horse yonder.
Hallo!" and with that painful sympathy which the hardest feel at the
imminent peril of another when immediately subjected to their eyes, the
gipsy ran forth into the pelting storm, shouting to the traveller to halt.
For one moment Godolphin's steed still shrunk back from the rushing tide:
deep darkness was over the water; and the horseman saw not the height of
the opposite banks. The shout of the gipsy sounded to his ear like the
cry of the dead whom he had left: he dashed his heels into the sides of
the reluctant horse, and was in the stream.
"Light--light the torches!" cried the gipsy; and in a few moments the
banks were illumined with many a brand from the fire, which the rain
however almost instantly extinguished; yet, by that momentary light, they
saw the noble animal breasting the waters, and perceived that Godolphin,
discovering by the depth his mistake, had already turned the horse's head
in the direction of the ford: they could see no more, but they shouted to
Godolphin to turn back to the place from which he had plunged; and, in a
few minutes afterwards, they heard, several yards above, the horse
clambering up the rugged banks, which there were steep and high, and
crushing the boughs that clothed the ascent. They thought, at the same
time, that they distinguished also the splash of a heavy substance in the
waves; but they fancied it some detached fragment of earth or stone, and
turned to their tent, in the belief that the daring rider had escaped the
peril he had so madly incurred. That night the riderless steed of
Godolphin arrived at the porch of the Priory, where Constance, alarmed,
pale, breathless, stood exposed to the storm, awaiting the return of
Godolphin, or the messengers she had despatched in search of him.
At daybreak his corpse was found by the shallows of the ford; and the mark
of violence across the temples, as of some blow, led them to guess that in
scaling the banks his head had struck against one of the tossing boughs
that overhung them, and the blow had precipitated him into the waters.
LETTER FROM CONSTANCE, COUNTESS OF ERPINGHAM, TO * * * .
August, 1832.
"I have read the work you have so kindly compiled from the papers
transmitted to your care, and from your own intimate knowledge of those to
whom they relate;--you have in much fulfilled my wishes with singular
success. On the one hand, I have been anxious that a History should be
given to the world, from which lessons so deep and, I firmly believe,
salutary, may be generally derived: on the other hand, I have been anxious
that it should be clothed in such disguises, that the names of the real
actors in the drama should be for ever a secret. Both these objects you
have attained. It is impossible I think, for any one to read the book
about to be published, without being impressed with the truth of the moral
it is intended to convey, and without seeing, by a thousand infallible
signs, that its spring and its general course have flowed from reality and
not fiction. Yet have you, by a few light alterations and addition,
managed to effect that concealment of names and persons, which is due no
less to the living than to the memory of the dead.
"So far I thank you from my heart: but in one point yon have utterly
failed. You have done no justice to the noble character you meant to
delineate under the name of Godolphin; you have drawn his likeness with a
harsh and cruel pencil; you have enlarged on the few weaknesses he might
have possessed, until you have made them the foreground of the portrait;
and his vivid generosity, his high honour, his brilliant intellect, the
extraordinary stores of his mind, you have left in shadow. Oh, God! that
for such a being such a destiny was reserved! and in the prime of life,
just when his mind had awakened to a sense of its own powers and their
legitimate objects! What a fatal system of things, that could for
thirty-seven years have led away, by the pursuits and dissipations of a
life suited but to the beings be despised, a genius of such an order, a
heart of such tender emotions![1] But on this subject I cannot, cannot
write. I must lay down the pen: to-morrow I will try and force myself to
resume it.
"Well, then, I say, you have not done justice to him. I beseech you to
remodel that character, and atone to the memory of one, whom none ever saw
but to admire, or knew but to love.
"Of me,--of me, the vain, the scheming, the proud, the unfeminine
cherishes of bitter thoughts, of stern designs,--of me, on the other
hand, how flattering is the picture you have drawn! In that flattery is
my sure disguise; therefore, I will not ask you to shade it into the poor
and unlovely truth. But while, with agony and shame, I feel that you have
rightly described that seeming neglectfulness of one no more, which sprang
from the pride that believed itself neglected, you have not said
enough--no, not one millionth part enough--of the real love that I
constantly bore to him: the only soft and redeeming portion of my nature.
But who can know, who can describe what another feels? Even I knew not
what I felt, until death taught it me.
"Since I have read the whole book, one thought constantly haunts me--the
strangeness that I should survive his loss; that the stubborn strings of
my heart have not been broken long since; that I live, and live, too,
amidst the world! Ay, but not one of the world; with that consciousness I
sustain myself in the petty and sterile career of life. Shut out
henceforth and for ever, from all the tenderer feelings that belong to my
sex; without mother, husband, child, or friend; unloved and unloving, I
support myself by the belief that I have done the little suffered to my
sex in expediting the great change which is advancing on the world; and I
cheer myself by the firm assurance that, sooner or later, a time must
come, when those vast disparities in life which have been fatal, not to
myself alone, but to all I have admired and loved; which render the great
heartless, and the lowly servile; which make genius either an enemy to
mankind or the victim to itself; which debase the energetic purpose; which
fritter away the ennobling sentiment; which cool the heart and fetter the
capacities, and are favorable only to the general development of the
Mediocre and the Lukewarm, shall, if never utterly removed, at least be
smoothed away into more genial and unobstructed elements of society.
Alas! it is with an aching eye that we look abroad for the only solace,
the only occupation of life,--Solitude at home, and Memory at our hearth."
THE END.
[1] The reader will acquit me of the charge of injustice to Godolphin's
character when he arrives at this sentence; it conveys exactly the
impression that my delineation, faithful to truth, is intended to
convey--the influences of our actual world on the ideal and imaginative
order of mind, when that mind is without the stimulus of pursuits at once
practical and ennobling.