"Notitiam primosque gradus vicinia fecit."*--OVID.
* Neighbourhood caused the acquaintance and first introduction.
CLEVELAND'S villa /was/ full, and of persons usually called agreeable.
Amongst the rest was Lady Florence Lascelles. The wise old man had ever
counselled Maltravers not to marry too young; but neither did he wish
him to put off that momentous epoch of life till all the bloom of heart
and emotion was passed away. He thought, with the old lawgivers, that
thirty was the happy age for forming a connection, in the choice of
which, with the reason of manhood, ought, perhaps, to be blended the
passion of youth. And he saw that few men were more capable than
Maltravers of the true enjoyments of domestic life. He had long
thought, also, that none were more calculated to sympathise with
Ernest's views, and appreciate his peculiar character, than the gifted
and brilliant Florence Lascelles. Cleveland looked with toleration on
her many eccentricities of thought and conduct,--eccentricities which he
imagined would rapidly melt away beneath the influence of that
attachment which usually operates so great a change in women; and, where
it is strongly and intensely felt, moulds even those of the most
obstinate character into compliance or similitude with the sentiments or
habits of its object.
The stately self-control of Maltravers was, he conceived, precisely that
quality that gives to men an unconscious command over the very thoughts
of the woman whose affection they win: while, on the other hand, he
hoped that the fancy and enthusiasm of Florence would tend to render
sharper and more practical an ambition, which seemed to the sober man of
the world too apt to refine upon the means, and to /cui bono/ the
objects of worldly distinction. Besides, Cleveland was one who
thoroughly appreciated the advantages of wealth and station; and the
rank and the dower of Florence were such as would force Maltravers into
a position in social life, which could not fail to make new exactions
upon talents which Cleveland fancied were precisely those adapted rather
to command than to serve. In Ferrers he recognised a man to /get/ into
power--in Maltravers one by whom power, if ever attained, would be
wielded with dignity, and exerted for great uses. Something, therefore,
higher than mere covetousness for the vulgar interests of Maltravers
made Cleveland desire to secure to him the heart and hand of the great
heiress; and he fancied that, whatever might be the obstacle, it would
not be in the will of Lady Florence herself. He prudently resolved,
however, to leave matters to their natural course. He hinted nothing to
one party or the other. No place for falling in love like a large
country house, and no time for it, amongst the indolent well-born, like
the close of a London season, when, jaded by small cares, and sickened
of hollow intimacies, even the coldest may well yearn for the tones of
affection--the excitement of an honest emotion.
Somehow or other it happened that Florence and Ernest, after the first
day or two, were constantly thrown together. She rode on horseback, and
Maltravers was by her side--they made excursions on the river, and they
sat on the same bench in the gliding pleasure-boat. In the evenings,
the younger guests, with the assistance of the neighbouring families,
often got up a dance in a temporary pavilion built out of the
dining-room. Ernest never danced. Florence did at first. But once, as
she was conversing with Maltravers, when a gay guardsman came to claim
her promised hand in the waltz, she seemed struck by a grave change in
Ernest's face.
"Do you never waltz?" she asked, while the guardsman was searching for a
corner wherein safely to deposit his hat.
"No," said he; "yet there is no impropriety in /my/ waltzing."
"And you mean that there is in mine?"
"Pardon me--I did not say so."
"But you think it."
"Nay, on consideration, I am glad, perhaps, that you do waltz."
"You are mysterious."
"Well then, I mean, that you are precisely the woman I would never fall
in love with. And I feel the danger is lessened, when I see you destroy
any one of my illusions, or, I ought to say, attack any one of my
prejudices."
Lady Florence coloured; but the guardsman and the music left her no time
for reply. However, after that night she waltzed no more. She was
unwell--she declared she was ordered not to dance, and so quadrilles
were relinquished as well as the waltz.
Maltravers could not but be touched and flattered by this regard for his
opinion; but Florence contrived to testify it so as to forbid
acknowledgment, since another motive had been found for it. The second
evening after that commemorated by Ernest's candid rudeness, they
chanced to meet in the conservatory, which was connected with the
ball-room; and Ernest, pausing to inquire after her health, was struck
by the listless and dejected sadness which spoke in her tone and
countenance as she replied to him.
"Dear Lady Florence," said he, "I fear you are worse than you will
confess. You should shun these draughts. You owe it to your friends to
be more careful of yourself."
"Friends!" said Lady Florence, bitterly--"I have no friends!--even my
poor father would not absent himself from a cabinet dinner a week after
I was dead. But that is the condition of public life--its hot and
searing blaze puts out the lights of all lesser but not unholier
affections.--Friends! Fate, that made Florence Lascelles the envied
heiress, denied her brothers, sisters; and the hour of her birth lost
her even the love of a mother! Friends! where shall I find them?"
As she ceased, she turned to the open casement, and stepped out into the
verandah, and by the trembling of her voice Ernest felt that she had
done so to hide or to suppress her tears.
"Yet," said he, following her, "there is one class of more distant
friends, whose interest Lady Florence Lascelles cannot fail to secure,
however she may disdain it. Among the humblest of that class, suffer me
to rank myself. Come, I assume the privilege of advice--the night air
is a luxury you must not indulge."
"No, no, it refreshes me--it soothes. You misunderstand me, I have no
illness that still skies and sleeping flowers can increase."
Maltravers, as is evident, was not in love with Florence, but he could
not fail, brought, as he had lately been, under the direct influence of
her rare and prodigal gifts, mental and personal, to feel for her a
strong and even affectionate interest--the very frankness with which he
was accustomed to speak to her, and the many links of communion there
necessarily were between himself and a mind so naturally powerful and so
richly cultivated, had already established their acquaintance upon an
intimate footing.
"I cannot restrain you, Lady Florence," said he, half smiling, "but my
conscience will not let me be an accomplice. I will turn king's
evidence, and hunt out Lord Saxingham to send him to you."
Lady Florence, whose face was averted from his, did not appear to hear
him.
"And you, Mr. Maltravers," turning quickly round--"you--have you
friends? Do you feel that there are, I do not say public, but private
affections and duties, for which life is made less a possession than a
trust?"
"Lady Florence--no!--I have friends, it is true, and Cleveland is of the
nearest; but the life within life--the second self, in whom we vest the
right and mastery over our own being--I know it not. But is it," he
added, after a pause, "a rare privation? Perhaps it is a happy one. I
have learned to lean on my own soul, and not look elsewhere for the
reeds that a wind can break."
"Ah, it is a cold philosophy--you may reconcile yourself to its wisdom
in the world, in the hum and shock of men; but in solitude, with
Nature--ah, no! While the mind alone is occupied, you may be contented
with the pride of stoicism; but there are moments when the /heart/
wakens as from a sleep--wakens like a frightened child--to feel itself
alone and in the dark."
Ernest was silent, and Florence continued, in an altered voice: "This is
a strange conversation--and you must think me indeed a wild,
romance-reading person, as the world is apt to call me. But if I
live--I--pshaw!--life denies ambition to women."
"If a woman like you, Lady Florence, should ever love, it will be one in
whose career you may perhaps find that noblest of all ambitions--the
ambition women only feel--the ambition for another!"
"Ah! but I shall never love," said Lady Florence, and her cheek grew
pale as the starlight shone on it; "still, perhaps," she added quickly,
"I may at least know the blessing of friendship. Why now," and here,
approaching Maltravers, she laid her hand with a winning frankness on
his arm--" why now, should not we be to each other as if love, as you
call it, were not a thing for earth--and friendship supplied its
place?--there is no danger of our falling in love with each other! You
are not vain enough to expect it in me, and I, you know, am a coquette;
let us be friends, confidants--at least till you marry, or I give
another the right to control my friendships and monopolise my secrets."
Maltravers was startled--the sentiment Florence addressed to him, he, in
words not dissimilar, had once addressed to Valerie.
"The world," said he, kissing the hand that yet lay on his arm, "the
world will--"
"Oh, you men!--the world, the world!--Everything gentle, everything
pure, everything noble, high-wrought and holy--is to be squared, and
cribbed, and maimed to the rule and measure of the world! The
world--are you, too, its slave? Do you not despise its hollow cant--its
methodical hypocrisy?"
"Heartily!" said Ernest Maltravers, almost with fierceness. "No man ever
so scorned its false gods and its miserable creeds--its war upon the
weak--its fawning upon the great--its ingratitude to benefactors--its
sordid league with mediocrity against excellence. Yes, in proportion as
I love mankind, I despise and detest that worse than Venetian oligarchy
which mankind set over them and call 'THE WORLD.'"
And then it was, warmed by the excitement of released feelings,
long and carefully shrouded, that this man, ordinarily so calm and
self-possessed, poured burningly and passionately forth all those
tumultuous and almost tremendous thoughts, which, however much we
may regulate, control, or disguise them, lurk deep within the souls
of all of us, the seeds of the eternal war between the natural man
and the artificial; between our wilder genius and our social
conventionalities;--thoughts that from time to time break forth into the
harbingers of vain and fruitless revolutions, impotent struggles against
destiny;--thoughts that good and wise men would be slow to promulge and
propagate, for they are of a fire which burns as well as brightens, and
which spreads from heart to heart--as a spark spreads amidst
flax;--thoughts which are rifest where natures are most high, but belong
to truths that virtue dare not tell aloud. And as Maltravers spoke,
with his eyes flashing almost intolerable light--his breast heaving, his
form dilated, never to the eyes of Florence Lascelles did he seem so
great: the chains that bound the strong limbs of his spirit seemed
snapped asunder, and all his soul was visible and towering, as a thing
that has escaped slavery, and lifts its crest to heaven, and feels that
it is free.
That evening saw a new bond of alliance between these two
persons,--young, handsome, and of opposite sexes, they agreed to be
friends, and nothing more. Fools!