THE WEAKNESS OF ALL VIRTUE SPRINGING ONLY FROM THE FEELINGS.
It was the evening before Godolphin left Rome. As he was entering his
palazzo he descried, in the darkness, and at a little distance, a figure
wrapped in a mantle, that reminded him of Lucilla;--ere he could certify
himself, it was gone.
On entering his rooms, he looked eagerly over the papers and notes on
his table: he seemed disappointed with the result, and sat himself down
in moody and discontented thought. He had written to Lucilla the day
before, a long, a kind, nay, a noble outpouring of his thoughts and
feelings. As far as he was able to one so simple in her experience, yet
so wild in her fancy, he explained to her the nature of his struggles
and his self-sacrifice. He did not disguise from her that, till the
moment of her confession, he had never examined the state of his heart
towards her; nor that, with that confession, a new and ardent train of
sentiment had been kindled within him. He knew enough of women to be
aware, that the last avowal would be the sweetest consolation both to
her vanity and her heart. He assured her of the promises he had received
from her relations to grant her the liberty and the indulgence that her
early and unrestrained habits required; and, in the most delicate and
respectful terms, he inclosed an order for a sum of money sufficient
at any time to command the regard of those with whom she lived, or to
enable her to choose, should she so desire (though he advised her not
to adopt such a measure, save for the most urgent reasons), another
residence. “Send me in return,” he said, as he concluded, “a lock of
your hair. I want nothing to remind me of your beauty; but I want some
token of the heart of whose affection I am so mournfully proud. I will
wear it as a charm against the contamination of that world of which you
are so happily ignorant--as a memento of one nature beyond the thought
of self--as a surety that, in finding within this base and selfish
quarter of earth, one soul so warm, so pure as yours, I did not deceive
myself, and dream. If we ever meet again, may you have then found some
one happier than I am, and in his tenderness have forgotten all of me
save one kind remembrance.--Beautiful and dear Lucilla, adieu! If I have
not given way to the luxury of being beloved by you, it is because your
generous self-abandonment has awakened within a heart too selfish to
others a real love for yourself.”
To this letter Godolphin had, hour after hour, expected a reply. He
received none--not even the lock of hair for which he had pressed. He
was disappointed--angry, with Lucilla--dissatisfied with himself. “How
bitterly,” thought he, “the wise Saville would smile at my folly! I have
renounced the bliss of possessing this singular and beautiful being; for
what?--a scruple which she cannot even comprehend, and at which, in
her friendless and forlorn state, the most starched of her dissolute
countrywomen would smile as a ridiculous punctilio. And, in truth, had
I fled hence with her, should I not have made her throughout life
happier--far happier, than she will be now? Nor would she, in that
happiness, have felt, like an English girl, any pang of shame. _Here,_
the tie would have never been regarded as a degradation; nor does she,
recurring to the simple laws of nature, imagine than any one _could_
so regard it. Besides, inexperienced as she is--the creature of
impulse--will she not fall a victim to some more artful and less
generous lover?--to some one who in her innocence will see only
forwardness; and who, far from protecting her as I should have done,
will regard her but as the plaything of an hour, and cast her forth the
moment his passion is sated!--Sated! O bitter thought, that the head
of another should rest upon that bosom now so wholly mine! After all, I
have, in vainly adopting a seeming and sounding virtue, merely renounced
my own happiness to leave her to the chances of being permanently
rendered unhappy, and abandoned to want, shame, destitution, by
another!”
These disagreeable and regretful thoughts were, in turn, but weakly
combated by the occasional self-congratulation that belongs to a just or
generous act, and were varied by a thousand conjectures--now of anxiety,
now of anger--as to the silence of Lucilla. Sometimes he thought---but
the thought only glanced partially across him, and was not distinctly
acknowledged--that she might seek an interview with him ere he departed;
and in this hope he did not retire to rest till the dawn broke over the
ruins of the mighty and breathless city. He then flung himself on a
sofa without undressing, but could not sleep, save in short and broken
intervals.
The next day, he put off his departure till noon, still in the hope of
hearing from Lucilla, but in vain. He could not flatter himself with the
hope that Lucilla did not know the exact time for his journey--he had
expressly stated it. Sometimes he conceived the notion of seeking her
again; but he knew too well the weakness of his generous resolution;
and, though infirm of thought, was yet virtuous enough in act not to
hazard it to certain defeat. At length in a momentary desperation, and
muttering reproaches on Lucilla for her fickleness and inability to
appreciate the magnanimity of his conduct, he threw himself into his
carriage, and bade adieu to Rome.
As every grove that the traveller passes on that road was guarded once
by a nymph, so now it is hallowed by a memory. In vain the air, heavy
with death, creeps over the wood, the rivulet, and the shattered
tower;--the mind will not recur to the risk of its ignoble tenement; it
flies back; it is with the Past! A subtle and speechless rapture fills
and exalts the spirit. There--far to the West--spreads that purple sea,
haunted by a million reminiscences of glory; there the mountains, with
their sharp and snowy crests, rise into the bosom of the heavens; on
that plain, the pilgrim yet hails the traditional tomb of the Curiatii
and those immortal Twins who left to their brother the glory of
conquest, and the shame by which it was succeeded: around the Lake of
Nemi yet bloom the sacred groves by which Diana raised Hippolytus
again into life. Poetry, Fable, History, watch over the land: it is a
sepulchre; Death is within and around it; Decay writes defeature upon
every stone; but the Past sits by the tomb as a mourning angel; a soul
breathes through the desolation; a voice calls amidst the silence. Every
age that bath passed away bath left a ghost behind it; and the beautiful
land seems like that imagined clime beneath the earth in which man,
glorious though it be, may not breathe and live--but which is populous
with holy phantoms and illustrious shades.
On, on sped Godolphin. Night broke over him as he traversed the Pontine
Marshes. There, the malaria broods over its rankest venom: solitude hath
lost the soul that belonged to it: all life, save the deadly fertility
of corruption, seems to have rotted away: the spirit falls stricken into
gloom; a nightmare weighs upon the breast of Nature; and over the wrecks
of Time, Silence sits motionless in the arms of Death.
He arrived at Terracina, and retired to rest. His sleep was filled with
fearful dreams; he woke, late at noon, languid and dejected. As his
servant, who had lived with him some years, attended him in rising,
Godolphin observed on his countenance that expression common to persons
of his class when they have something which they wish to communicate,
and are watching their opportunity.
“Well, Malden!” said he, “you look important this morning: what has
happened?”
“E--hem! Did not you observe, sir, a carriage behind us as we crossed
the marshes? Sometimes you might just see it at a distance, in the
moonlight.”
“How the deuce should I, being within the carriage, see behind me? No; I
know nothing of the carriage: what of it?”
“A person arrived in it, sir, a little after you--would not retire to
bed--and waits you in your sitting-room.”
“A person! what person!”
“A lady, sir,--a young lady;” said the servant, suppressing a smile.
“Good heavens!” ejaculated Godolphin: “leave me.” The valet obeyed.
Godolphin, not for a moment doubting that it was Lucilla who had thus
followed him, was struck to the heart by this proof of her resolute and
reckless attachment. In any other woman, so bold a measure would, it is
true, have revolted his fastidious and somewhat English taste. But in
Lucilla, all that might have seemed immodest arose, in reality, from
that pure and spotless ignorance which, of all species of modesty, is
the most enchanting, the most dangerous to its possessor. The daughter
of loneliness and seclusion--estranged wholly from all familiar or
female intercourse--rather bewildered than in any way enlightened by
the few books of poetry, or the lighter letters, she had by accident
read--the sense of impropriety was in her so vague a sentiment, that
every impulse of her wild and impassioned character effaced and swept it
away. Ignorant of what is due to the reserve of the sex, and even of
the opinions of the world--lax as the Italian world is on matters of
love--she only saw occasion to glory in her tenderness, her devotion,
to one so elevated in her fancy as the English stranger. Nor did
there--however unconsciously to herself--mingle a single more derogatory
or less pure emotion with her fanatical worship.
For my own part, I think that few men understand the real nature of a
girl’s love. Arising so vividly as it does from the imagination, nothing
that the mind of the libertine would impute to it ever (or at least in
most rare in stances) sullies its weakness or debases its folly. I
do not say the love is better for being thus solely the creature of
imagination: I say only, so it is in ninety-nine out of a hundred
instances of girlish infatuation. In later life, it is different: in the
experienced woman, forwardness is always depravity.
With trembling steps and palpitating heart, Godolphin sought the
apartment in which he expected to find Lucilla. There, in one corner of
the room, her face covered with her mantle, he beheld her: he hastened
to that spot; he threw himself on his knees before her; with a timid
hand he removed the covering from her face; and through tears, and
paleness, and agitation, his heart was touched to the quick by its soft
and loving expression.
“Wilt thou forgive me?” she faltered; “it was thine own letter that
brought me hither. Now leave me, if thou canst!”
“Never, never!” cried Godolphin, clasping her to his heart. “It is
fated, and I resist no more. Love, tend, cherish thee, I will to my last
hour. I will be all to thee that human ties can afford--father,
brother, lover--all but----” He paused; “all but husband,” whispered his
conscience, but he silenced its voice.
“I may go with thee!” said Lucilla, in wild ecstasy: that was _her_ only
thought.
As, when the notion of escape occurs to the insane, their insanity
appears to cease; courage, prudence, caution, invention (faculties which
they knew not in sounder health), flash upon and support them as by an
inspiration; so, a new genius had seemed breathed into Lucilla by the
idea of rejoining Godolphin. She imagined--not without justice--that,
could she throw in the way of her return home an obstacle of that
worldly nature which he seemed to dread she should encounter, his chief
reason for resisting her attachment would be removed. Encouraged by
this thought, and more than ever transported by her love since he had
expressed a congenial sentiment: excited into emulation by the generous
tone of his letter, and softened into yet deeper weakness by its
tenderness;--she had resolved upon the bold step she adopted. A
vetturino lived near the gate of St. Sebastian: she had sought him;
and at sight of the money which Godolphin had sent her, the vetturino
willingly agreed to transport her to whatever point on the road to
Naples she might desire--nay, even to keep pace with the more rapid
method of travelling which Godolphin pursued. Early on the morning of
his departure, she had sought her station within sight of Godolphin’s
palazzo; and ten minutes after his departure the vetturino bore her,
delighted but trembling, on the same road.
The Italians are ordinarily good-natured, especially when they are paid
for it; and courteous to females, especially if they have any suspicion
of the influence of the belle passion. The vetturino’s foresight had
supplied the deficiencies of her inexperience: he had reminded her of
the necessity of procuring her passport; and he undertook that all other
difficulties should solely devolve on him. And thus Lucilla was now
under the same roof with one for whom, indeed, she was unaware of the
sacrifice she made, but whom, despite of all that clouded and separated
their after-lot, she loved to the last, with a love as reckless and
strong as then--a love passing the love of woman, and defying the common
ordinances of time.
* * * * * *
* * * * * *
* * * * * *
On the blue waters that break with a deep and far voice along the rocks
of that delicious shore, above which the mountain that rises behind
Terracina scatters to the air the odours of the citron and the
orange--on that sounding and immemorial sea the stars, like the hopes of
a brighter world upon the darkness and unrest of life, shone down with
a solemn but tender light. On that shore stood Lucilla and he--the
wandering stranger--in whom she had hoarded the peace and the hopes
of earth. Hers was the first and purple flush of the love which has
attained its object; that sweet and quiet fulness of content--that
heavenly, all-subduing and subdued delight, with which the heart
slumbers in the excess of its own rapture. Care--the forethought of
change--even the shadowy and vague mournfulness of passion--are felt not
in those voluptuous but tranquil moments. Like the waters that rolled,
deep and eloquent, before her, every feeling within was but the mirror
of an all-gentle and cloudless heaven. Her head half-declined upon the
breast of her young lover, she caught the beating of his heart, and in
it heard all the sounds of what was now become to her the world.
And still and solitary deepened around them the mystic and lovely night.
How divine was that sense and consciousness of solitude! how, as it
thrilled within them, they clung closer to each other! Theirs as yet was
that blissful and unsated time when the touch of their hands, clasped
together, was in itself a happiness of emotion too deep for words. And
ever, as his eyes sought hers, the tears which the sensitiveness of
her frame, in the very luxury of her overflowing heart, called forth,
glittered in the tranquil stars a moment and were kissed away. “Do not
look up to heaven, my love,” whispered Godolphin, “lest thou shouldst
think of any world but this!”
Poor Lucilla! will any one who idly glances over this page sympathise
one moment with the springs of thy brief joys and thy bitter sorrow?
The page on which, in stamping a record of thee, I would fain retain
thy memory from oblivion; that page is an emblem of thyself;--a short
existence; confounded with the herd to which it has no resemblance, and
then, amidst the rush and tumult of the world, forgotten and cast away
for ever!