THE FEELINGS OF CONSTANCE AND GODOLPHIN TOWARDS EACH OTHER.--THE
DISTINCTION IN THEIR CHARACTERS.--REMARKS ON THE EFFECTS PRODUCED BY THE
WORLD UPON GODOLPHIN.--THE HIDE.--RURAL DESCRIPTIONS.--OMENS.--THE FIRST
INDISTINCT CONFESSION.
Every day, at the hour in which Constance was visible, Godolphin had
loaded the keeper, and had returned to attend upon her movements. They
walked and rode together; and in the evening, Godolphin hung over her
chair, and listened to her songs; for though, as I have before said,
she had but little science in instrumental music, her voice was rich and
soft beyond the pathos of ordinary singers.
Lady Erpingham saw, with secret delight, what she believed to be a
growing attachment. She loved Constance for herself, and Godolphin for
his father’s memory. She thought again and again what a charming couple
they would make--so handsome--so gifted: and if Prudence whispered
also--so poor, the kind Countess remembered, that she herself had saved
from her ample jointure a sum which she had always designed as a dowry
for Constance, and which, should Godolphin be the bridegroom, she felt
she should have a tenfold pleasure in bestowing. With this fortune,
which would place them, at least, in independence, she united in her
kindly imagination the importance which she imagined Godolphin’s talents
must ultimately acquire; and for which, in her aristocratic estimation,
she conceived the senate the only legitimate sphere. She said, she
hinted, nothing to Constance; but she suffered nature, youth, and
companionship to exercise their sway.
And the complexion of Godolphin’s feelings for Constance Vernon did
indeed resemble love--was love itself, though rather love in its romance
than its reality. What were those of Constance for him? She knew
not herself at that time. Had she been of a character one shade less
ambitious, or less powerful, they would have been love, and love of
no common character. But within her musing, and self-possessed, and
singularly constituted mind, there was, as yet, a limit to every
sentiment, a chain to the wings of every thought, save those of one
order; and that order was not of love. There was a marked difference,
in all respects, between the characters of the two; and it was singular
enough, that that of the woman was the less romantic, and composed of
the simpler materials.
A volume of Wordsworth’s most exquisite poetry had then just appeared.
“Is not this wonderful?” said Godolphin, reciting some of those lofty,
but refining thoughts which characterise the Pastor of modern poets.
Constance shook her head.
“What! you do not admire it?”
“I do not understand it.”
“What poetry do you admire?”
“This.”
It was Pope’s translation of the Iliad.
“Yes, yes, to be sure,” said Godolphin, a little vexed; “we all admire
this in its way: but what else?”
Constance pointed to a passage in the Palamon and Arcite of Dryden.
Godolphin threw down his Wordsworth. “You take an ungenerous advantage
of me,” said he. “Tell me something you admire, which, at least, I may
have the privilege of disputing,--something that you think generally
neglected.”
“I admire few things that are generally neglected,” answered Constance,
with her bright and proud smile. “Fame gives its stamp to all metal that
is of intrinsic value.”
This answer was quite characteristic of Constance: she worshipped fame
far more than the genius which won it. “Well, then,” said Godolphin,
“let us see now if we can come to a compromise of sentiment;” and he
took up the Comus of Milton.
No one read poetry so beautifully: his voice was so deep and flexible;
and his countenance answered so well to every modulation of his voice.
Constance was touched by the reader, but not by the verse. Godolphin had
great penetration; he perceived it, and turned to the speeches of Satan
in Paradise Lost. The noble countenance before him grew luminous at
once: the lip quivered, the eye sparkled; the enthusiasm of Godolphin
was not comparable to that of Constance. The fact was, that the broad
and common emotions of the intellectual character struck upon the
right key. Courage, defiance, ambition, these she comprehended to their
fullest extent; but the rich subtleties of thought which mark the cold
and bright page of the Comus; the noble Platonism--the high and rare
love for what is abstractedly good, these were not “sonorous and
trumpet-speaking” enough for the heart of one meant by Nature for a
heroine or a queen, not a poetess or a philosopher.
But all that in literature was delicate, and half-seen, and abstruse,
had its peculiar charm for Godolphin. Of a reflective and refining
mind, he had early learned to despise the common emotions of men: glory
touched him not, and to ambition he had shut his heart. Love, with
him--even though he had been deemed, not unjustly, a man of gallantry
and pleasure--love was not compounded of the ordinary elements of the
passions. Full of dreams, and refinements, and intense abstractions, it
was a love that seemed not homely enough for endurance, and of too rare
a nature to hope for sympathy in return.
And so it was in his intercourse with Constance, both were continually
disappointed. “You do not feel this,” said Constance. “She cannot
understand me,” sighed Godolphin.
But we must not suppose--despite his refinements, and his reveries,
and his love for the intellectual and the pure--that Godolphin was of a
stainless character or mind. He was one who, naturally full of decided
and marked qualities, was, by the peculiar elements of our society,
rendered a doubtful, motley, and indistinct character, tinctured by the
frailties that leave us in a wavering state between vice and virtue.
The energies that had marked his boyhood were dulled and crippled in
the indolent life of the world. His wandering habits for the last few
years--the soft and poetical existence of the South--had fed his
natural romance, and nourished that passion for contemplation which
the intellectual man of pleasure so commonly forms; for pleasure has
a philosophy of its own--a sad, a fanciful, yet deep persuasion of the
vanity of all things--a craving after the bright ideal--
“The desire of the moth for the star.”
Solomon’s thirst for pleasure was the companion of his wisdom: satiety
was the offspring of the one--discontent of the other. But this
philosophy, though seductive, is of no wholesome nor useful character;
it is the philosophy of feelings, not principles--of the heart, not
head. So with Godolphin: he was too refined in his moralising to cling
to what was moral. The simply good and the simply bad he left for us
plain folks to discover. He was unattracted by the doctrines of right
and wrong which serve for all men; but he had some obscure and shadowy
standard in his own mind by which he compared the actions of others.
He had imagination, genius, even heart; was brilliant always, sometimes
profound; graceful in society, yet seldom social: a lonely man, yet a
man of the world; generous to individuals, selfish to the mass. How many
fine qualities worse than thrown away!
Who will not allow that he has met many such men?--and who will not
follow this man to his end?
One day (it was the last of Godolphin’s protracted visit) as the sun
was waning to its close, and the time was unusually soft and tranquil,
Constance and Godolphin were returning slowly home from their customary
ride. They passed by a small inn, bearing the common sign of the
“Chequers,” round which a crowd of peasants were assembled, listening to
the rude music which a wandering Italian boy drew from his guitar. The
scene was rustic and picturesque; and as Godolphin reined in his
horse and gazed on the group, he little dreamed of the fierce and dark
emotions with which, at a far distant period, he was destined to revisit
that spot.
“Our peasants,” said he, as they rode on, “require some humanising
relaxation like that we have witnessed. The music and the morris-dance
have gone from England; and instead of providing, as formerly, for the
amusement of the grinded labourer, our legislators now regard with the
most watchful jealousy his most distant approach to festivity. They
cannot bear the rustic to be merry: disorder and amusement are words for
the same offence.”
“I doubt,” said the earnest Constance, “whether the legislators are
not right. For men given to amusement are easily enslaved. All noble
thoughts are grave.”
Thus talking, they passed a shallow ford in the stream. “We are not
far from the Priory,” said Godolphin, pointing to its ruins, that rose
greyly in the evening skies from the green woods around it.
Constance sighed involuntarily. She felt pain in being reminded of
the slender fortunes of her companion. Ascending the gentle hill that
swelled from the stream, she now, to turn the current of her thoughts,
pointed admiringly to the blue course of the waters, as they wound
through their shagged banks. And deep, dark, rushing, even at that still
hour, went the stream through the boughs that swept over its surface.
Here and there the banks suddenly shelved down, mingling with the waves;
then abruptly they rose, overspread with thick and tangled umbrage,
several feet above the level of the river.
“How strange it is,” said Godolphin, “that at times a feeling comes over
us, as we gaze upon certain places, which associates the scene either
with some dim-remembered and dream-like images of the Past, or with
a prophetic and fearful omen of the Future! As I gaze now upon this
spot--those banks--that whirling river--it seems as if my destiny
claimed a mysterious sympathy with the scene: when--how-wherefore--I
know not--guess not: only this shadowy and chilling sentiment
unaccountably creeps over me. Every one has known a similar strange,
indistinct, feeling at certain times and places, and with a similar
inability to trace the cause. And yet, is it not singular that in
poetry, which wears most feelings to an echo, I leave never met with any
attempt to describe it?”
“Because poetry,” said Constance, “is, after all, but a hackneyed
imitation of the most common thoughts, giving them merely a gloss by the
brilliancy of verse. And yet how little poets _know!_ They _imagine,_
and they _imitate;_--behold all their secrets!”
“Perhaps you are right,” said Godolphin, musingly; “and I, who have
often vainly fancied I had the poetical temperament, have been so
chilled and sickened by the characteristics of the tribe, that I have
checked its impulses with a sort of disdain; and thus the Ideal, having
no vent in me, preys within, creating a thousand undefined dreams and
unwilling superstitions, making me enamoured of the Shadowy and Unknown,
and dissatisfying me with the petty ambitions of the world.”
“You will awake hereafter,” said Constance, earnestly.
Godolphin shook his head, and replied not.
Their way now lay along a green lane that gradually wound round a hill
commanding a view of great richness and beauty. Cottages, and spires,
and groves, gave life--but it was scattered and remote life--to the
scene; and the broad stream, whose waves, softened in the distance, did
not seem to break the even surface of the tide, flowed onward, glowing
in the sunlight, till it was lost among dark and luxuriant woods.
Both once more arrested their horses by a common impulse, and both
became suddenly silent as they gazed. Godolphin was the first to speak:
it brought to his memory a scene in that delicious land, whose Southern
loveliness Claude has transfused to the canvas, and De Stael to the
page. With his own impassioned and earnest language, he spoke to
Constance of that scene and that country. Every tree before him
furnished matter for his illustration or his contrast; and, as she heard
that magic voice, and speaking, too, of a country dedicated to
love, Constance listened with glistening eyes, and a cheek which
he,--consummate master of the secrets of womanhood--perceived was
eloquent with thoughts which she knew not, but which _he_ interpreted to
the letter.
“And in such a spot,” said he, continuing, and fixing his deep and
animated gaze on her,--“in such a spot I could have stayed for ever but
for one recollection, one feeling--_I should have been too much alone!_
In a wild or a grand, or even a barren country, we may live in solitude,
and find fit food for thought; but not in one so soft, so subduing, as
that which I saw and see. Love comes over us then in spite of ourselves;
and I feel--I feel now”--his voice trembled as he spoke--“that any
secret we may before have nursed, though hitherto unacknowledged, makes
itself at length a voice. We are oppressed with the desire to be loved;
we long for the courage to say we love.”
Never before had Godolphin, though constantly verging into sentiment,
spoken to Constance in so plain a language. Eye, voice, cheek--all
spoke. She felt that he had confessed he loved her! And was she not
happy at that thought? She was: it was her happiest moment. But, in that
sort of vague and indistinct shrinking from the subject with which a
woman who loves hears a disclosure of love from him on whose lips it is
most sweet, she muttered some confused attempt to change the subject,
and quickened her horse’s pace. Godolphin did not renew the topic so
interesting and so dangerous, only, as with the winding of the road the
landscape gradually faded from their view, he said, in a low voice, as
if to himself,--“How long, how fondly, shall I remember this day!”