GODOLPHIN AT ROME.--THE CURE FOR A MORBID IDEALISM.--HIS EMBARRASSMENT
IN REGARD TO LUCILLA.--THE RENCONTRE WITH AN OLD FRIEND.--THE
COLOSSEUM.--A SURPRISE.
Godolphin arrived at Rome: it was thronged with English. Among them were
some whom he remembered with esteem in England. He had grown a little
weary of his long solitude, and he entered with eagerness into the
society of those who courted him. He was still an object of great
interest to the idle; and as men grow older they become less able to
dispense with attention.
He was pleased to find his own importance, and he tasted the sweets of
companionship with more gust than he had yet done. His talents, buried
in obscurity, and uncalled for by the society of Lucilla, were now
perpetually tempted into action, and stimulated by reward. It had never
before appeared to him so charming a thing to shine; for, before, he had
been sated with even that pleasure. Now, from long relaxation, it had
become new; vanity had recovered its nice perception. He was no longer
so absorbed as he had been by visionary images. He had given his fancy
food in his long solitude, and with its wild co-mate; and being somewhat
disappointed in the result, the living world became to him a fairer
prospect than it had seemed while the world of imagination was untried.
Nothing more confirms the health of the mind than indulging its
favourite infirmity to its own cure. So Goethe, in his memoirs, speaking
of Werther, remarks, that “the composition of that extravagant work
cured his character of extravagance.”
Godolphin thought often of Lucilla; but perhaps, if the truth of his
heart were known even to himself, a certain sentiment of pain and
humiliation was associated with the tenderness of his remembrance. With
her he had led a life, romantic, it is true, but somewhat effeminate;
and he thought now, surrounded by the gay and freshening tide of the
world, somewhat mawkish in its romance. He did not experience a desire
to return to the still lake and the gloomy pines;--he felt that Lucilla
did not suffice to make his world. He would have wished to bring her
to Rome; to live with her more in public than he had hitherto done; to
conjoin, in short, her society, with the more recreative dissipation of
the world: but there were many obstacles to this plan in his fastidious
imagination. So new to the world, its ways, its fashions, so strange
and infantine in all things, as Lucilla was, he trembled to expose
her inexperience to the dangers that would beset it. He knew that his
“friends” would pay very little respect to her reserve; and that for
one so lovely and unhackneyed, the snares of the wildest and most subtle
adepts of intrigue would be set. Godolphin did not undervalue Lucilla’s
pure and devoted heart; but he knew that the only sure antidote against
the dangers of the world is the knowledge of the world. There was
nothing in Lucilla that ever promised to attain that knowledge; her very
nature seemed to depend on her ignorance of the nature of others. Joined
to this fear and a confused sentiment of delicacy towards her, a certain
remorseful feeling in himself made him dislike bringing their connexion
immediately before the curious and malignant world: so much had
circumstance, and Lucilla’s own self-willed temper and uncalculating
love, contributed to drive the poor girl into his arms,--and so truly
had he chosen the generous not the selfish part, until passion and
nature were exposed to a temptation that could have been withstood by
none but the adherent to sterner principles than he (the creature of
indolence and feeling) had ever clung to--that Godolphin, viewing his
habits--his education--his whole bias and frame of mind--the estimates
and customs of the world--may not, perhaps be very rigidly judged for
the nature of his tie to Lucilla. But I do not seek to excuse it, nor
did he wholly excuse it to himself. The image of Volktman often occurred
to him, and always in reproach. Living with Lucilla in a spot only trod
by Italians, so indulgent to love, and where the whisper of shame could
never reach her ear, or awaken his remorse, her state did not, however,
seem to her or himself degraded, and the purity of her girlish mind
almost forbade the intrusion of the idea. But to bring her into
public--among his own countrymen--and to feel that the generous and
devoted girl, now so unconscious of sin, would be rated by English eyes
with the basest and most abandoned of the sex,--with the glorifiers in
vice or the hypocrites for money,--this was a thought which he could not
contemplate, and which he felt he would rather pass his life in
solitude than endure. But this very feeling gave an embarrassment to
his situation with Lucilla, and yet more fixedly combined her image with
that of a wearisome seclusion and an eternal ennui.
From the thought of Lucilla, coupled with its many embarrassments,
Godolphin turned with avidity to the easy enjoyments of life--enjoyments
that ask no care and dispense with the trouble of reflection.
But among the visitors to Rome, the one whose sight gave to Godolphin
the greatest pleasure was his old friend Augustus Saville. A decaying
constitution, and a pulmonary attack in especial, had driven the
accomplished voluptuary to a warmer climate. The meeting of the two
friends was quite characteristic: it was at a soiree at an English
house. Saville had managed to get up a whist-table.
“Look, Saville, there is Godolphin, your old friend!” cried the host,
who was looking on the game, and waiting to cut in.
“Hist!” said Saville; “don’t direct his attention to me until after the
odd trick!”
Notwithstanding this coolness when a point was in question, Saville was
extremely glad to meet his former pupil. They retired into a corner
of the room, and talked over the world. Godolphin hastened to turn the
conversation on Lady Erpingham.
“Ah!” said Saville, “I see from your questions, and yet more your tone
of voice, that although it is now several years since you met, you still
preserve the sentiment--the weakness--Ah!--bah!”
“Pshaw!” said Godolphin; “I owe her revenge, not love. But Erpingham?
Does she love him? He is handsome.”
“Erpingham? What--you have not heard----”
“Heard what?”
“Oh, nothing: but, pardon me, they wait for me at the card-table. I
should like to stay with you, but you know one must not be selfish;
the table would be broken up without me. No virtue without
self-sacrifice--eh?”
“But one moment. What is the matter with the Erpinghams? have they
quarrelled?”
“Quarrelled?--bah! Quarrelled--no; I dare say she likes him better now
than ever she did before.” And Saville limped away to the table.
Godolphin remained for some time abstracted and thoughtful. At length,
just as he was going away, Saville, who, having an unplayable hand and
a bad partner, had somewhat lost his interest in the game, looked up and
beckoned to him.
“Godolphin, my clear fellow, I am to escort a lady to see the lions
to-morrow; a widow--a rich widow; handsome, too. Do, for charity’s sake,
accompany us, or meet us at the Colosseum. How well that sounds--eh?
About two.”
Godolphin refused at first, but being pressed, assented.
Not surrounded by the lesser glories of modern Rome, but girt with the
mighty desolation of the old city of Romulus, stands the most wonderful
monument, perhaps, in the world, of imperial magnificence--the Flavian
Amphitheatre, to which, it has been believed, the colossal statue of the
worst of emperors gave that name (the Colosseum), allied with the least
ennobling remembrances yet giving food to the loftiest thoughts. The
least ennobling remembrances; for what can be more degrading than
the amusements of a degraded people, who reserved meekness for their
tyrants, and lavished ferocity on their shows? From that of the
wild beast to that of the Christian martyr, blood has been the only
sanctification of this temple to the Arts. The history of the Past
broods like an air over those mighty arches; but Memory can find no
reminiscence worthy of the spot. The amphitheatre was not built until
history had become a record of the vice and debasement of the
human race. The Faun and the Dryad had deserted the earth, no sweet
superstition, the faith of the grotto and the green hill, could stamp
with a delicate and undying spell the labours of man. Nor could the
ruder but august virtues of the heroic age give to the tradition of the
arch and column some stirring remembrance or exalting thought. Not
only the warmth of fancy, but the greatness of soul was gone; the only
triumph left to genius was to fix on its page the gloomy vices which
made the annals of the world. Tacitus is the Historian of the Colosseum.
But the very darkness of the past gives to the thoughts excited
within that immense pile a lofty but mournful character. A sense
of vastness--for which, as we gaze, we cannot find words, but which
bequeaths thoughts that our higher faculties would not willingly
forego--creeps within us as we gaze on this Titan relic of gigantic
crimes for ever passed away from the world.
And not only within the scene, but around the scene, what voices of
old float upon the air? Yonder the triumphal arch of Constantine,
its Corinthian arcades, and the history of Trajan sculptured upon its
marble; the dark and gloomy verdure of the Palatine; the ruins of the
palace of the Caesars; the mount of Fable, of Fame, of Luxury (the Three
Epochs of Nations); the habitation of Saturn; the home of Tully; the
sight of the Golden House of Nero! Look at your feet,--look around; the
waving weed, the broken column--Time’s witness, and the Earthquake’s. In
that contrast between grandeur and decay,--in the unutterable and awful
solemnity that, while rife with the records of past ages, is sad also
with their ravage, you have felt the nature of eternity!
Through this vast amphitheatre, and giving way to such meditations,
Godolphin passed on alone, the day after his meeting with Saville;
and at the hour he had promised the latter to seek him, he mounted the
wooden staircase which conducts the stranger to the wonders above the
arena, and by one of the arches that looked over the still pines that
slept afar off in the sun of noon, he saw a female in deep mourning,
whom Saville appeared to be addressing. He joined them; the female
turned round, and he beheld, pale and saddened, but how glorious still,
the face of Constance! To him the interview was unexpected, by her
foreseen. The colour flushed over her cheek, the voice sank inaudible
within. But Godolphin’s emotion was more powerful and uncontrolled:
violent tremblings literally shook him as he stood; he gasped for
breath: the sight of the dead returned to earth would have affected him
less.
In this immense ruin--in the spot where, most of earth, man feels the
significance of an individual life, or of the rapid years over which it
extends, he had encountered, suddenly, the being who had coloured all
his existence. He was reminded at once of the grand epoch of his life
and of its utter unimportance. But these are the thoughts that would
occur rather to us than him. Thought at that moment was an intolerable
flash that burst on him for an instant, and then left all in darkness.
He clung to the shattered corridor for support. Constance seemed touched
and surprised by so overwhelming an emotion, and the habitual hypocrisy
in which women are reared, and by which they learn to conceal the
sentiments they experience, and affect those they do not, came to her
assistance and his own.
“It is many years, Mr. Godolphin,” said she in a collected but soft
voice, “since we met.”
“Years!” repeated Godolphin, vaguely; and approaching her with a slow
and faltering step. “Years! you have not numbered them!”
Saville had retired a few steps on Godolphin’s arrival, and had
watched with a sardonic yet indifferent smile the proof of his friend’s
weakness. He joined Godolphin, and said,--
“You must forgive me, my dear Godolphin, for not apprising you before of
Lady Erpingham’s arrival at Rome. But a delight is perhaps the greater
for being sudden.”
The word Erpingham thrilled displeasingly through Godolphin’s veins; in
some measure it restored him to himself. He bowed coldly, and muttered
a few ceremonious words; and while he was yet speaking, some stragglers
that had belonged to Lady Erpingham’s party came up. Fortunately,
perhaps, for the self-possession of both, they, the once lovers, were
separated from each other. But whenever Constance turned her glance to
Godolphin, she saw those large, searching, melancholy eyes, whose power
she well recalled, fixed unmovingly on her, as seeking to read in her
cheek the history of the years which had ripened its beauties--for
another.