AFFECTION: ITS GODLIKE NATURE.--THE CONVERSATION BETWEEN ARAM
AND MADELINE.--THE FATALIST FORGETS FATE.
Hope is a lover's staff; walk hence with that,
And manage it against despairing thoughts.
--Two Gentlemen of Verona.
If there be any thing thoroughly lovely in the human heart, it is
Affection! All that makes hope elevated, or fear generous, belongs to the
capacity of loving. For my own part, I do not wonder, in looking over the
thousand creeds and sects of men, that so many religionists have traced
their theology,--that so many moralists have wrought their system from--
Love. The errors thus originated have something in them that charms us
even while we smile at the theology, or while we neglect the system. What
a beautiful fabric would be human nature--what a divine guide would be
human reason--if Love were indeed the stratum of the one, and the
inspiration of the other! What a world of reasonings, not immediately
obvious, did the sage of old open to our inquiry, when he said the
pathetic was the truest part of the sublime. Aristides, the painter,
created a picture in which an infant is represented sucking a mother
wounded to the death, who, even in that agony, strives to prevent the
child from injuring itself by imbibing the blood mingled with the milk.
[Note: Intelligitur sentire mater et timere, ne mortuo lacte sanguinem
lambat.] How many emotions, that might have made us permanently wiser and
better, have we lost in losing that picture!
Certainly, Love assumes a more touching and earnest semblance, when we
find it in some retired and sequestered hollow of the world; when it is
not mixed up with the daily frivolities and petty emotions of which a
life passed in cities is so necessarily composed: we cannot but believe
it a deeper and a more absorbing passion: perhaps we are not always right
in the belief.
Had one of that order of angels to whom a knowledge of the future, or the
seraphic penetration into the hidden heart of man is forbidden, stayed
his wings over the lovely valley in which the main scene of our history
has been cast, no spectacle might have seemed to him more appropriate to
that lovely spot, or more elevated in the character of its tenderness
above the fierce and short-lived passions of the ordinary world, than the
love that existed between Madeline and her betrothed. Their natures
seemed so suited to each other! the solemn and undiurnal mood of the one
was reflected back in hues so gentle, and yet so faithful, from the
purer, but scarce less thoughtful character of the other! Their
sympathies ran through the same channel, and mingled in a common fount;
and whatever was dark and troubled in the breast of Aram, was now
suffered not to appear. Since his return, his mood was brighter and more
tranquil; and he seemed better fitted to appreciate and respond to the
peculiar tenderness of Madeline's affection. There are some stars which,
viewed by the naked eye, seem one, but in reality are two separate orbs
revolving round each other, and drinking, each from each, a separate yet
united existence: such stars seemed a type of them.
Had anything been wanting to complete Madeline's happiness, the change in
Aram supplied the want. The sudden starts, the abrupt changes of mood and
countenance, that had formerly characterized him, were now scarcely, if
ever, visible. He seemed to have resigned himself with confidence to the
prospects of the future, and to have forsworn the haggard recollections
of the past; he moved, and looked, and smiled like other men; he was
alive to the little circumstances around him, and no longer absorbed in
the contemplation of a separate and strange existence within himself.
Some scattered fragments of his poetry bear the date of this time: they
are chiefly addressed to Madeline, and, amidst the vows of love, a
spirit, sometimes of a wild and bursting--sometimes of a profound and
collected happiness, are visible. There is great beauty in many of these
fragments, and they bear a stronger impress of heart--they breathe more
of nature and truth, than the poetry that belongs of right to that time.
And thus day rolled on day, till it was now the eve before their bridals.
Aram had deemed it prudent to tell Lester, that he had sold his annuity,
and that he had applied to the Earl for the pension which we have seen he
had been promised. As to his supposed relation--the illness he had
created he suffered now to cease; and indeed the approaching ceremony
gave him a graceful excuse for turning the conversation away form any
topics that did not relate to Madeline, or to that event.
It was the eve before their marriage; Aram and Madeline were walking
along the valley that led to the house of the former.
"How fortunate it is!" said Madeline, "that our future residence will be
so near my father's. I cannot tell you with what delight he looks forward
to the pleasant circle we shall make. Indeed, I think he would scarce
have consented to our wedding, if it had separated us from him."
Aram stopped, and plucked a flower.
"Ah! indeed, indeed, Madeline! Yet in the course of the various changes
of life, how more than probable it is that we shall be divided from him--
that we shall leave this spot."
"It is possible, certainly; but not probable, is it, Eugene?"
"Would it grieve thee irremediably, dearest, were it so?" rejoined Aram,
evasively.
"Irremediably! What could grieve me irremediably, that did not happen to
you?"
"Should, then, circumstances occur to induce us to leave this part of the
country, for one yet more remote, you could submit cheerfully to the
change?"
"I should weep for my father--I should weep for Ellinor; but--"
"But what?"
"I should comfort myself in thinking that you would then be yet more to
me than ever!"
"Dearest!"
"But why do you speak thus; only to try me? Ah! that is needless."
"No, my Madeline; I have no doubt of your affection. When you loved such
as me, I knew at once how blind, how devoted must be that love. You were
not won through the usual avenues to a woman's heart; neither wit nor
gaiety, nor youth nor beauty, did you behold in me. Whatever attracted
you towards me, that which must have been sufficiently powerful to make
you overlook these ordinary allurements, will be also sufficiently
enduring to resist all ordinary changes. But listen, Madeline. Do not yet
ask me wherefore; but I fear, that a certain fatality will constrain us
to leave this spot, very shortly after our wedding."
"How disappointed my poor father will be!" said Madeline, sighing.
"Do not, on any account, mention this conversation to him, or to Ellinor;
'sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.'"
Madeline wondered, but said no more. There was a pause for some minutes.
"Do you remember," observed Madeline, "that it was about here we met that
strange man whom you had formerly known?"
"Ha! was it?--Here, was it?"
"What has become of him?"
"He is abroad, I hope," said Aram, calmly. "Yes, let me think; by this
time he must be in France. Dearest, let us rest here on this dry mossy
bank for a little while;" and Aram drew his arm round her waist, and, his
countenance brightening as if with some thought of increasing joy, he
poured out anew those protestations of love, and those anticipations of
the future, which befitted the eve of a morrow so full of auspicious
promise.
The heaven of their fate seemed calm and glowing, and Aram did not dream
that the one small cloud of fear which was set within it, and which he
alone beheld afar, and unprophetic of the storm, was charged with the
thunderbolt of a doom, he had protracted, not escaped.