THE FULL RENEWAL OF LOVE.--HAPPINESS PRODUCES FEAR, “AND IN TO-DAY
ALREADY WALKS TOMORROW.”
Oh, First Love! well sang the gay minstrel of France, that we return
again and again to thee. As the earth returns to its spring, and is
green once more, we go back to the life of life and forget the seasons
that have rolled between! Whether it was--perhaps so--that in the minds
of both was a feeling that their present state was not fated to endure;
whether they felt, in the deep calm they enjoyed, that the storm was
already at hand; whether this was the truth I know not; but certain
it is, that during the short time they remained at Godolphin Priory,
previous to their earthly separation, Constance and Godolphin were
rather like lovers for the first time united, than like those who have
dragged on the chain for years. Their perfect solitude, the absence of
all intrusion, so unlike the life they had long passed, renewed all that
charm, that rapture in each other’s society, which belong to the first
youth of love. True, that this could not have endured long; but Fate
suffered it to endure to the last of that tether which remained to their
union. Constance was not again doomed to the severe and grating shock
which the sense of estrangement brings to a woman’s heart; she was
sensible that Godolphin was never so entirely, so passionately her own,
as towards the close of their mortal connection. Every thing around
them breathed of their first love. This was that home of Godolphin’s to
which, from the splendid halls of Wendover, the young soul of the proud
orphan had so often and so mournfully flown with a yearning and wistful
interest: this was that spot in which he, awaking from the fever of the
world, had fed his first dreams of her. The scene, the solitude, was as
a bath to their love: it braced, it freshened, it revived its tone. They
wandered, they read, they thought together; the air of the spot was an
intoxication. The world around and without was agitated; they felt
it not: the breakers of the great deep died in murmurs on their ear.
Ambition lulled its voice to Constance; Godolphin had realised his
visions of the ideal. Time had dimmed their young beauty, but their eyes
saw it not; they were young, they were all beautiful, to each other.
And Constance hung on the steps of her lover--still let that name be
his! She could not bear to lose him for a moment: a vague indistinctness
of fear seized her if she saw him not. Again and again, in the slumbers
of the night, she stretched forth her arms to feel that he was near;
all her pride, her coldness seemed gone, as by a spell; she loved as the
softest, the fondest, love. Are we, 0 Ruler of the future! imbued with
the half-felt spirit of prophecy as the hour of evil approaches--the
great, the fierce, the irremediable evil of a life? In this depth
and intensity of their renewed passion, was there not something
preternatural? Did they not tremble as they loved? They were on a spot
to which the dark waters were slowly gathering; they clung to the Hour,
for eternity was lowering round.
It was one evening that a foreboding emotion of this kind weighed
heavily on Constance. She pressed Godolphin’s hand in hers, and when
he returned the pressure, she threw herself on his neck, and burst
into tears. Godolphin was alarmed; he covered her cheek with kisses, he
sought the cause of her emotion.
“There is no cause,” answered Constance, recovering herself, but
speaking in a faltering voice, “only I feel the impossibility that this
happiness can last; its excess makes me shudder.”
As she spoke, the wind rose and swept mourningly over the large leaves
of the chestnut-tree beneath which they stood: the serene stillness of
the evening seemed gone; an unquiet and melancholy spirit was loosened
abroad, and the chill of the sudden change which is so frequent to
our climate, came piercingly upon them. Godolphin was silent for some
moments, for the thought found a sympathy in his own.
“And is it truly so?” he said at last; “is there really to be no
permanent happiness for us below? Is pain always to tread the heels of
pleasure? Are we never to say the harbour is reached, and we are
safe? No, my Constance,” he added, warming into the sanguine vein that
traversed even his most desponding moods, “no! let us not cherish this
dark belief; there is no experience for the future; one hour lies to the
next; if what has been seem thus chequered, it is no type of what may
be. We have discovered in each other that world that was long lost to
our eyes; we cannot lose it again; death only can separate us!”
“Ah, death!” said Constance, shuddering.
“Do not recoil at that word, my Constance, for we are yet in the noon of
life; why bring, like the Egyptian, the spectre to the feast? And, after
all, if death come while we thus love, it is better than change and
time--better than custom which palls--better than age which chills. Oh!”
continued Godolphin, passionately, “oh! if this narrow shoal and sand of
time be but a breathing-spot in the great heritage of immortality,
why cheat ourselves with words so vague as life and death? What is the
difference? At most, the entrance in and the departure from one scene
in our wide career. How many scenes are left to us! We do but hasten our
journey, not close it. Let us believe this, Constance, and cast from us
all fear of our disunion.”
As he spoke, Constance’s eyes were fixed upon his face, and the deep
calm that reigned there sank into her soul, and silenced its murmurs.
The thought of futurity is that which Godolphin (because it is so with
all idealists) must have revolved with the most frequent fervour; but it
was a thought which he so rarely touched upon, that it was the first and
only time Constance ever heard it breathed from his lips.
They turned into the house; and the mark is still in that page of the
volume which they read, where the melodious accents of Godolphin died
upon the heart of Constance. Can she ever turn to it again?