AMBITION VINDICATED.--THE HOME OF GODOLPHIN AND LUCILLA.--LUCILLA’S
MIND.--THE EFFECT OF HAPPY LOVE ON FEMALE TALENT.--THE EVE OF FAREWELL.
LUCILLA ALONE.--TEST OF A WOMAN’S AFFECTION.
0 much-abused and highly-slandered passion!--passion rather of the
soul than the heart: hateful to the pseudo-moralist, but viewed with
favouring, though not undiscriminating eyes by the true philosopher:
bright-winged and august ambition! It is well for fools to revile
thee, because thou art liable, like other utilities, to abuse! The wind
uproots the oak--but for every oak it uproots it scatters a thousand
acorns. Ixion embraced the cloud, but from the embrace sprang a hero.
Thou, too, hast thy fits of violence and storm; but without thee, life
would stagnate:---thou, too, embracest thy clouds; but even thy clouds
have the demigods for their offspring!
It was the great and prevailing misfortune of Godolphin’s life, that
he had early taught himself to be superior to exertion. His talents,
therefore, only preyed on himself; and instead of the vigorous and
daring actor of the world, he was alternately the indolent sensualist or
the solitary dreamer. He did not view the stir of the great Babel as a
man with a wholesome mind should do; and thus from his infirmities we
draw a moral. The moral is not the worse, in that it opposes the trite
moralities of those who would take from action its motive: the men of
genius, who are not also men of ambition, are either humourists, or
visionaries, or hypochondriacs.
By the side of one of the Italian lakes, Godolphin and Lucilla fixed
their abode; and here the young idealist for some time imagined himself
happy. Never until now so fond of nature as of cities, he gave himself
up to the enchantment of the Eden around him. He spent the long sunny
hours of noon on the smooth lake, or among the sheltering trees by which
it was encircled. The scenes he had witnessed in the world became to
him the food of quiet meditation, and for the first time in his life,
thought did not weary him with its sameness.
When his steps turned homeward, the anxious form of Lucilla waited for
him: her eye brightened at his approach, her spirit escaped restraint
and bounded into joy: and Godolphin, touched by her delight, became
eager to witness it: he felt the magnet of a Home. Yet as the first
enthusiasm of passion died away, he could not but be sensible that
Lucilla was scarcely a companion. Her fancy was indeed lively, and her
capacity acute; but experience had set a confined limit to her ideas.
She had nothing save love, and a fitful temperament, upon which she
could draw for conversation. Those whose education debars them from
deriving instruction from things, have in general the power to extract
amusement from persons:--they can talk of the ridiculous Mrs. So-and-so,
or the absurd Mr. Blank. But our lovers saw no society: and thus their
commune was thrown entirely on their internal resources.
There was always that in the peculiar mind of Godolphin which was
inclined towards ideas too refined and subtle even for persons of
cultivated intellect. If Constance could scarcely comprehend the tone of
his character, we may believe that to Lucilla he was wholly a
mystery. This, perhaps, enhanced her love, but the consciousness of it
disappointed his. He felt that what he considered the noblest faculties
he possessed were unappreciated. He was sometimes angry with Lucilla
that she loved only those qualities in his character which he shared
with the rest of mankind. His speculative and Hamlet-like temper--(let
us here take Goethe’s view of Hamlet, and combine a certain weakness
with finer traits of the royal dreamer)--perpetually deserted the
solid world, and flew to aerial creations. He could not appreciate the
present. Had Godolphin loved Lucilla as he once thought that he should
love her, the beauties of her character would have blinded him to its
defects; but its passion had been too sudden to be thoroughly grounded.
It had arisen from the knowledge of her affection---not grown step by
step from the natural bias of his own. Between the interval of liking
and possession, love (to be durable) should pass through many stages.
The doubt, the fear, the first pressure of the hand, the first kiss,
each should be an epoch for remembrance to cling to. In moments of after
coolness or anger, the mind should fly from the sated present to the
million tender and freshening associations of the past. With these
associations the affection renews its youth. How vast a store of melting
reflections, how countless an accumulation of the spells that preserve
constancy, does that love forfeit, in which the memory only commences
with possession!
And the more delicate and thoughtful our nature, the more powerful
are these associations. Do they not constitute the immense difference
between the love and the intrigue? All things that savour of youth make
our most exquisite sensations, whether to experience, or recall:--thus,
in the seasons of the year, we prize the spring; and in the effusions of
the heart, the courtship.
Beautiful, too, and tender--wild and fresh in her tenderness--as
Lucilla was, there was that in her character, in addition to her want of
education, which did not wholly accord with Godolphin’s preconception
of the being his fancy had conjured up. His calm and profound nature
desired one in whom he could not only confide, but, as it were, repose.
Thus one great charm that had attracted him to Constance was the
evenness and smoothness of her temper. But the self-formed mind of
Lucilla was ever in a bright, and to him a wearying, agitation;--tears
and smiles perpetually chased each other. Not comprehending his
character, but thinking only and wholly of him, she distracted herself
with conjectures and suspicions, which she was too ingenious and too
impassioned to conceal. After watching him for hours, she would weep
that he did not turn from his books or his reverie to search also for
her, with eyes equally yearning and tender as her own. The fear in
absence, the absorbed devotion when present, that absolutely made her
existence--she was wretched because he did not reciprocate with the same
intensity of soul. She could conceive nothing of love but that which she
felt herself; and she saw, daily and hourly, that in that love he did
not sympathise; and therefore she embittered her life by thinking that
he did not return her affection.
“You wrong us both,” said he in answer to her tearful accusations; “but
our sex love differently from yours.”
“Ah,” she replied, “I feel that love has no varieties: there is but one
love, but there may be many counterfeits.”
Godolphin smiled to think how the untutored daughter of nature had
unconsciously uttered the sparkling aphorism of the most artificial of
maxim-makers.(1) Lucilla saw the smile, and her tears flowed instantly.
“Thou mockest me.”
“Thou art a little fool,” said Godolphin, kindly, and he kissed away the
storm.
And this was ever an easy matter. There was nothing unfeminine or sullen
in Lucilla’s irregulated moods; a kind word--a kind caress--allayed them
in an instant, and turned the transient sorrow into sparkling delight.
But they who know how irksome is the perpetual trouble of conciliation
to a man meditative and indolent like Godolphin, will appreciate the
pain that even her tenderness occasioned him.
There in one thing very noticeable in women when they have once obtained
the object of their life--the sudden check that is given to the impulses
of their genius!--Content to have found the realisation of their chief
hope, they do not look beyond to other but lesser objects, as they
had been wont to do before. Hence we see so many who, before marriage,
strike us with admiration, from the vividness of their talents, and
after marriage settle down into the mere machine. We wonder that we ever
feared, while we praised, the brilliancy of an intellect that seems
now never to wander from the limits of house and hearth. So with poor
Lucilla; her restless mind and ardent genius had once seized on every
object within their reach:--she had taught herself music; she had
learned the colourings and lines of art; not a book came in her way,
but she would have sought to extract from it a new idea. But she was now
with Godolphin, and all other occupations for thought were gone; she
had nothing beyond his love to wish for, nothing beyond his character
to learn. He was the circle of hope, and her heart its centre; all lines
were equal to that heart, so that they touched him. It is clear that
this devotion prevented her, however, from fitting herself to be his
companion; she did not seek to accomplish herself, but to study him:
thus in her extreme love was another reason why that love was not
adequately returned.
But Godolphin felt all the responsibility that he had taken on himself.
He felt how utterly the happiness of this poor and solitary child--for
a child she was in character, and almost in years--depended upon him. He
roused himself, therefore, from his ordinary selfishness, and rarely,
if ever, gave way to the irritation which she unknowingly but constantly
kept alive. The balmy and delicious climate, the liquid serenity of the
air, the majestic repose with which Nature invested the loveliness that
surrounded their home, contributed to soften and calm his mind. And
he had persuaded Lucilla to look without despair upon his occasional
although short absences. Sometimes he passed two or three weeks at Rome,
sometimes at Naples or Florence. He knew so well how necessary such
intervals of absence are to the preservation of love, to the defeat of
that satiety which creeps over us with custom, that he had resolutely
enforced it as a necessity, although always under the excuse of
business--a plea that Lucilla could understand and not resist; for the
word business seemed to her like destiny--a call that, however odious,
we cannot disobey. At first, indeed, she was disconsolate at the absence
only of two days; but when she saw how eagerly her lover returned to
her, with what a fresh charm he listened to her voice or her song, she
began to confess that even in the evil might be good.
By degrees he accustomed her to longer intervals; and Lucilla relieved
the dreariness of the time by the thousand little plans and surprises
with which women delight in receiving the beloved wanderer after
absence. His departure was a signal for a change in the house, the
gardens, the arbour; and when she was tired with these occupations,
she was not forbidden at least to write to him and receive his letters.
Daily intoxication! and men’s words are so much kinder when written,
than they are when uttered! Fortunately for Lucilla, her early
habits, and her strange qualities of mind, rendered her independent of
companionship, and fond of solitude.
Often Godolphin, who could not conceive how persons without education
could entertain themselves, taking pity on her loneliness and seclusion,
would say,
“But how, Lucilla, have you passed this long day that I have spent away
from you?--among the woods or on the lake?”
And Lucilla, delighted to recount to him the history of her hours, would
go over each incident, and body forth every thought that had occurred to
her, with a grave and serious minuteness that evinced her capabilities
of dispensing with the world.
In this manner they passed somewhat more than two years: and in spite of
the human alloy, it was perhaps the happiest period of Godolphin’s life,
and the one that the least disappointed his too exacting imagination.
Lucilla had had one daughter, but she died a few weeks after birth. She
wept over the perished flower, but was not inconsolable; for, before
its loss, she had taught herself to think no affliction could be
irremediable that did not happen to Godolphin. Perhaps Godolphin was the
more grieved of the two; men of his character are fond of the occupation
of watching the growth of minds; they put in practice their chimeras of
education. Happy child, to have escaped an experiment!
It was the eve before one of Godolphin’s periodical excursions, and it
was Rome that he proposed to visit; Godolphin had lingered about the
lake until the sun had set; and Lucilla, grown impatient, went forth to
seek him. The day had been sultry, and now a sombre and breathless calm
hung over the deepening eve. The pines, those gloomy children of the
forest, which shed something of melancholy and somewhat of sternness
over the brighter features of an Italian landscape, drooped heavily in
the breezeless air. As she came on the border of the lake, its waves
lay dark and voiceless; only, at intervals, the surf, fretting along the
pebbles made a low and dreary sound, or from the trees some lingering
songster sent forth a shrill and momentary note, and then again all
became
“An atmosphere without a breath, A silence sleeping there.”
There was a spot where the trees, receding in a ring, left some bare
and huge fragments of stone uncovered by verdure. It was the only spot
around that rich and luxuriant scene that was not in harmony with the
soft spirit of the place: might I indulge a fanciful comparison, I
should say that it was like one desolate and grey remembrance in the
midst of a career of pleasure. On this spot Godolphin now stood alone,
looking along the still and purple waters that lay before him. Lucilla,
with a light step, climbed the rugged stones, and, touching his
shoulder, reproached him with a tender playfulness for his truancy.
“Lucilla,” said he, when peace was restored, “what impressions does
this dreary and prophetic pause of nature before the upgathering of the
storm, create in you? Does it inspire you with melancholy, or thought,
or fear?”
“I see my star,” answered Lucilla, pointing to a far and solitary orb,
which hung islanded in a sea of cloud, that swept slowly and blackly
onward:--“I see my star, and I think more of that little light than of
the darkness around it.”
“But it will presently be buried among the clouds,” said Godolphin,
smiling at that superstition which Lucilla had borrowed from her father.
“But the clouds pass away, and the star endures.”
“You are of a sanguine nature, my Lucilla.” Lucilla sighed.
“Why that sigh, dearest?”
“Because I am thinking how little even those who love us most know
of us! I never tell my disquiet and sorrow. There are times when thou
wouldst not think me too warmly addicted to hope!”
“And what, poor idler, have you to fear?”
“Hast thou never felt it possible that thou couldst love me less?”
“Never!”
Lucilla raised her large searching eyes, and gazed eagerly on his face;
but in its calm features and placid brow she saw no ground for augury,
whether propitious or evil. She turned away.
“I cannot think, Lucilla,” said Godolphin, “that you ever direct those
thoughts of yours, wandering though they be, to the future. Do they ever
extend to the space of some ten or twenty years?”
“No. But one year may contain the whole history of my future.”
As she spoke, the clouds gathered round the solitary star to which
Lucilla had pointed. The storm was at hand; they felt its approach, and
turned homeward.
There is something more than ordinarily fearful in the tempests that
visit those soft and garden climes. The unfrequency of such violent
changes in the mood of nature serves to appal us as with an omen; it is
like a sudden affliction in the midst of happiness--or a wound from the
hand of one we love. For the stroke for which we are not prepared we
have rather despondency than resistance.
As they reached their home, the heavy rain-drops began to fall. They
stood for some minutes at the casement, watching the coruscations of
the lightning as it played over the black and heavy waters of the lake.
Lucilla, whom the influences of nature always strangely and mysteriously
affected, clung pale and almost trembling to Godolphin; but even in her
fear there was delight in being so near to him in whose love alone she
thought there was protection. Oh what luxury so dear to a woman as is
the sense of dependence! Poor Lucilla! it was the last evening she ever
spent with one whom she worshipped so entirely.
Godolphin remained up longer than Lucilla. When he joined her in her
room, the storm had ceased; and he found her standing by the open
window, and gazing on the skies that were now bright and serene. Far in
the deep stillness of midnight crept the waters of the lake, hushed once
more into silence, and reflecting the solemn and unfathomable stars.
That chain of hills, which but to name, awakens countless memories of
romance, stretched behind--their blue and dim summits melting into the
skies, and over one higher than the rest, paused the new risen moon,
silvering the first beneath, and farther down, breaking with one long
and yet mellower track of light over the waters of the lake.
As Godolphin approached he did so, unconsciously, with a hushed and
noiseless step. There is something in the quiet of nature like worship;
it is as if, from the breathless heart of Things, went up a prayer or
a homage to the Arch-Creator. One feels subdued by a stillness so utter
and so august; it extends itself to our own sensations, and deepens into
an awe.
Both, then, looked on in silence, indulging it may be different
thoughts. At length, Lucilla said softly:--“Tell me, hast thou really no
faith in my father’s creed? Are the stars quite dumb? Is there no truth
in their movements, no prophecy in their lustre?”
“My Lucilla, reason and experience tell us that the astrologers nurse a
dream that has no reality.”
“Reason! well!--Experience!--why, did not thy father’s mortal illness
hurry thee from home at the very time in which mine foretold thy
departure and its cause? I was then but a child; yet I shall never
forget the paleness of thy cheek when my father uttered his prediction.”
“I, too, was almost a child then, Lucilla.”
“But that prediction was verified?”
“It was so; but how many did Volktman utter that were never verified? In
true science there are no chances--no uncertainties.”
“And my father,” said Lucilla, unheeding the answer, “always foretold
that thy lot and mine were to be entwined.”
“And the prophecy, perhaps, disposed you to the fact. You might never
have loved me, Lucilla, if your thoughts had not been driven to dwell
upon me by the prediction.”
“Nay; I thought of thee before I heard the prophecy.”
“But your father foretold me, dearest--cross and disappointment in my
love--was he not wrong? am I not blest with you?”
Lucilla threw herself into her lover’s arms, and, as she kissed him,
murmured, “Ah, if I could make thee happy!” The next day Godolphin
departed for Rome. Lucilla was more dejected at his departure than
she had been even in his earliest absence. The winter was now slowly
approaching, and the weather was cold and dreary. That year it was
unusually rainy and tempestuous, and as the wild gusts howled around her
solitary home--how solitary now!--or she heard the big drops hurrying
down on the agitated lake, she shuddered at her own despondent thoughts,
and dreaded the gloom and loneliness of the lengthened night. For
the first time since she had lived with Godolphin she turned, but
disconsolately, to the company of books.
Works of all sorts filled their home, but the spell that once spoke to
her from the page was broken. If the book was not of love, it possessed
no interest;--if of love, she thought the description both tame and
false. No one ever painted love so as fully to satisfy another:--to some
it is too florid--to some too commonplace; the god, like other gods, has
no likeness on earth, and every wave on which the star of passion beams,
breaks the lustre into different refractions of light.
As one day she was turning listlessly over some books that had been put
aside by Godolphin in a closet, and hoping to find one that contained,
as sometimes happened, his comments or at least his marks--she
was somewhat startled to find among them several volumes which she
remembered to have belonged to her father. Godolphin had bought them
after Volktman’s death, and put them by as relics of his singular
friend, and as samples of the laborious and selfwilled aberration of the
human intellect.
Few among these works could Lucilla comprehend, for they were chiefly in
other tongues than the only two with which she was acquainted. But some,
among which were manuscripts by her father, beautifully written, and
curiously ornamented (some of the chief works on the vainer sciences
are only to be found in manuscript), she could contrive to decipher by
a little assistance from her memory, in recalling the signs and
hieroglyphics which her father had often explained to her, and, indeed,
caused her to copy out for him in his calculations. Always possessing an
untaxed and unquestioned belief in the astral powers, she now took some
interest in reading of their mysteries. Her father, secretly, perhaps,
hoping to bequeath his name to the gratitude of some future Hermes,
had in his manuscripts reduced into a system many scattered theories of
others, and many dogmas of his own. Over these, for they were simpler
and easier than the crabbed and mystical speculations in the printed
books, she more especially pored; and she was not sorry at finding fresh
reasons for her untutored adoration of the stars and apparitions of the
heavens.
Still, however, these bewildering researches made but a small part,
comparatively speaking, of the occupation of her thoughts. To write to,
and hear from, Godolphin had become to her more necessary than ever, and
her letters were fuller and more minute in their details of love than
even in the period of their first passion. Wouldst thou know if the
woman thou lovest still loves thee, trust not her spoken words, her
present smiles; examine her letters in absence, see if she dwells, as
she once did, upon trifles--but trifles relating to thee. The things
which the indifferent forget are among the most treasured meditations of
love.
But Lucilla was not satisfied with the letters--frequent as they
were--that she received in answer; they were kind, affectionate, but the
something was wanting. “The best part of beauty is that which no picture
can express.” That which the heart most asks is that which no words can
convey. Honesty--patriotism--religion--these have had their hypocrites
for life;--but passion permits only momentary dissemblers.
(1) Rochefoucauld.