THE MARRIED STATE OF CONSTANCE.
Constance, Countess of Erpingham, was young, rich, lovely as a dream,
worshipped as a goddess. Was she happy? and was her whole heart occupied
with the trifles that surrounded her?
Deep within her memory was buried one fatal image that she could not
exorcise. The reproaching and mournful countenance of Godolphin rose
before her at all times and seasons. The charm of his presence no other
human being could renew. His eloquent and noble features, living,
and glorious with genius and with passion, his sweet deep voice, his
conversation, so rich with mind and knowledge, and the subtle delicacy
with which he applied its graces to some sentiment dedicated to
her, (delicious flattery, of all flatteries the most attractive to a
sensitive and intellectual woman!)--these occurred to her again and
again, and rendered all she saw around her flat, wearisome, insipid. Nor
was this deep-seated and tender weakness the only serpent--if I may use
so confused a metaphor--in the roses of her lot.
And here I invoke the reader’s graver attention. The fate of women in
all the more polished circles of society is eminently unnatural and
unhappy. The peasant and his dame are on terms of equality--equality
even of ambition: no career is open to one and shut to the
other;--equality even of hardship, and hardship is employment: no labour
occupies the whole energies of the man, but leaves those of the woman
unemployed. Is this the case with the wives in a higher station?--the
wives of the lawyer, the merchant, the senator, the noble? There, the
men have their occupations; and the women (unless, like poor Fanny,
work-bags and parrots can employ them) none. They are idle. They employ
the imagination and the heart. They fall in love and are wretched; or
they remain virtuous, and are either wearied by an eternal monotony
or they fritter away intellect, mind, character, in the minutest
frivolities--frivolities being their only refuge from stagnation. Yes!
there is one very curious curse for the sex which men don’t consider!
Once married, the more aspiring of them have no real scope for ambition:
the ambition gnaws away their content, and never find elsewhere
wherewithal to feed on.
This was Constance’s especial misfortune. Her lofty, and restless, and
soaring spirit pined for a sphere of action, and ballrooms and boudoirs
met it on every side. One hope she did indeed cherish; that hope was the
source of her intriguings and schemes, of her care for seeming trifles,
the waste of her energies on seeming frivolities. This hope, this
object, was to diminish--to crush, not only the party which had forsaken
her father, but the power of that order to which she belonged herself;
which she had entered only to humble. But this hope was a distant and
chill vision. She was too rational to anticipate an early and effectual
change in our social state, and too rich in the treasures of mind to be
the creature of one idea. Satiety--the common curse of the great;--crept
over her day by day. The powers within her lay stagnant--the keen
intellect rusted in its sheath.
“How is it,” said she to the beautiful Countess of ----, “that you
seem always so gay and so animated; that with all your vivacity and
tenderness, you are never at a loss for occupation? You never seem
weary--ennuyee--why is this?”
“I will tell you,” said the pretty countess, archly; “I change my lovers
every month.” Constance blushed, and asked no more.
Many women in her state, influenced by contagious example, wearied by a
life in which the heart had no share; without children, without a guide;
assailed and wooed on all sides, in all shapes;--many women might
have ventured, if not into love, at least into coquetry. But Constance
remained as bright and cold as ever--“the unsunned snow!” It might be,
indeed, that the memory of Godolphin preserved her safe from all lesser
dangers. The asbestos once conquered by fire can never be consumed by
it; but there was also another cause in Constance’s very nature--it was
pride!
Oh! if men could but dream of what a proud woman endures in those
caresses which humble her, they would not wonder why proud women are so
difficult to subdue. This is a matter on which we all ponder much,
but we dare not write honestly upon it. But imagine a young, haughty,
guileless beauty, married to a man whom she neither loves nor honours;
and so far from that want of love rendering her likely to fall
hereafter, it is more probable that it will make her recoil from the
very name of love.
About this time the Dowager Lady Erpingham died; an event sincerely
mourned by Constance, and which broke the strongest tie that united the
young countess to her lord. Lord Erpingham and Constance, indeed, now
saw but little of each other. Like most men six feet high, with large
black whiskers, the earl was vain of his person; and, like most rich
noblemen, he found plenty of ladies who assured him he was irresistible.
He had soon grown angry at the unadmiring and calm urbanity of
Constance; and, living a great deal with single men, he formed liaisons
of the same order as they do. He was, however, sensible that he had been
fortunate in the choice of a wife. His political importance the wisdom
of Constance had quadrupled; at the least; his house she had rendered
the most brilliant in London, and his name the most courted in the lists
of the peerage. Though munificent, she was not extravagant; though a
beauty, she did not intrigue; neither, though his inconstancy was open,
did she appear jealous; nor, whatever the errors of his conduct, did
she ever disregard his interest, disobey his wishes, or waver from
the smooth and continuous sweetness of her temper. Of such a wife Lord
Erpingham could not complain: he esteemed her, praised her, asked her
advice, and stood a little in awe of her.
Ah, Constance! had you been the daughter of a noble or a peasant--had
you been the daughter of any man but John Vernon--what a treasure beyond
price, without parallel, would that heart, that beauty, that genius have
been!