"Idem velle, et idem nolle, ea demum firma amicitia est."*
SALLUST.
*To will the same thing and not to will the same thing, that at length
is firm friendship.
"/Carlos./ That letter.
/Princess Eboli./ Oh, I shall die. Return it instantly."
SCHILLER: /Don Carlos/.
IT seemed as if the compact Maltravers and Lady Florence had entered
into removed whatever embarrassment and reserve had previously existed.
They now conversed with an ease and freedom not common in persons of
different sexes before they have passed their grand climacteric.
Ernest, in ordinary life, like most men of warm emotions and strong
imagination, if not taciturn, was at least guarded. It was as if a
weight were taken from his breast, when he found one person who could
understand him best when he was most candid. His eloquence--his
poetry--his intense and concentrated enthusiasm found a voice. He could
talk to an individual as he would have written to the public--a rare
happiness to the men of books.
Florence seemed to recover her health and spirits as by a miracle; yet
she was more gentle, more subdued, than of old--there was less effort to
shine, less indifference whether she shocked. Persons who had not met
her before, wondered why she was dreaded in society. But at times a
great natural irritability of temper--a quick suspicion of the motives
of those around her--an imperious and obstinate vehemence of will, were
visible to Maltravers, and served, perhaps, to keep him heart-whole. He
regarded her through the eyes of the intellect, not those of the
passions--he thought not of her as a woman--her very talents, her very
grandeur of idea and power of purpose, while they delighted him in
conversation, diverted his imagination from dwelling on her beauty. He
looked on her as something apart from her sex;--a glorious creature
spoilt by being a woman. He once told her so, laughing, and Florence
considered it a compliment. Poor Florence, her scorn of her sex avenged
her sex, and robbed her of her proper destiny!
Cleveland silently observed their intimacy, and listened with a quiet
smile to the gossips who pointed out /tetes-a-tetes/ by the terrace, and
loiterings by the lawn, and predicted what would come of it all. Lord
Saxingham was blind. But his daughter was of age, in possession of her
princely fortune, and had long made him sensible of her independence of
temper. His lordship, however, thoroughly misunderstood the character
of her pride, and felt fully convinced she would marry no one less than
a duke; as for flirtations, he thought them natural and innocent
amusements. Besides, he was very little at Temple Grove. He went to
London every morning, after breakfasting in his own room--came back to
dine, play at whist, and talk good-humoured nonsense to Florence in his
dressing-room, for the three minutes that took place between his sipping
his wine-and-water and the appearance of his valet. As for the other
guests, it was not their business to do more than gossip with each
other; and so Florence and Maltravers went on their way unmolested,
though not unobserved. Maltravers, not being himself in love, never
fancied that Lady Florence loved him, or that she would be in any danger
of doing so. This is a mistake a man often commits--a woman never. A
woman always knows when she is loved, though she often imagines she is
loved when she is not. Florence was not happy, for happiness is a calm
feeling. But she was excited with a vague, wild, intoxicating emotion.
She had learned from Maltravers that she had been misinformed by
Ferrers, and that no other claimed empire over his heart; and whether or
not he loved her, still for the present they seemed all in all to each
other; she lived but for the present day, she would not think of the
morrow.
Since that severe illness which had tended so much to alter Ernest's
mode of life, he had not come before the public as an author. Latterly,
however, the old habit had broken out again. With the comparative
idleness of recent years, the ideas and feelings which crowd so fast on
the poetical temperament, once indulged, had accumulated within him to
an excess that demanded vent. For with some, to write is not a vague
desire, but an imperious destiny. The fire is kindled and must break
forth; the wings are fledged, and the birds must leave their nest. The
communication of thought to man is implanted as an instinct in those
breasts to which Heaven has intrusted the solemn agencies of genius. In
the work which Maltravers now composed he consulted Florence: his
confidence delighted her--it was a compliment she could appreciate.
Wild, fervid, impassioned, was that work--a brief and holiday
creation--the youngest and most beloved of the children of his brain.
And as day by day the bright design grew into shape, and thought and
imagination found themselves "local habitations," Florence felt as if
she were admitted into the palace of the genii, and made acquainted with
the mechanism of those spells and charms with which the preternatural
powers of mind design the witchery of the world. Ah, how different in
depth and majesty were those intercommunications of idea between Ernest
Maltravers and a woman scarcely inferior to himself in capacity and
acquirement, from that bridge of shadowy and dim sympathies which the
enthusiastic boy had once built up between his own poetry of knowledge
and Alice's poetry of love!
It was one late afternoon in September, when the sun was slowly going
down its western way, that Lady Florence, who had been all that morning
in her own room, paying off, as she said, the dull arrears of
correspondence, rather on Lord Saxingham's account than her own; for he
punctiliously exacted from her the most scrupulous attention to cousins
fifty times removed, provided they were rich, clever, well off, or in
any way of consequence:--it was one afternoon that, relieved from these
avocations, Lady Florence strolled through the grounds with Cleveland.
The gentlemen were still in the stubble-fields, the ladies were out in
barouches and pony phaetons, and Cleveland and Lady Florence were alone.
Apropos of Florence's epistolary employment, their conversation fell
upon that most charming species of literature, which joins with the
interest of a novel the truth of a history--the French memoir and
letter-writers. It was a part of literature in which Cleveland was
thoroughly at home.
"Those agreeable and polished gossips," said he, "how well they
contrived to introduce nature into art! Everything artificial seemed so
natural to them. They even feel by a kind of clockwork, which seems to
go better than the heart itself. Those pretty sentiments, those
delicate gallantries, of Madame de Sevigne to her daughter, how amiable
they are; but, somehow or other, I can never fancy them the least
motherly. What an ending for a maternal epistle is that elegant
compliment--'Songez que de tons les coeurs ou vous regnez, il n'y en a
aucun ou votre empire soit si bien etabli que dans le mien.'* I can
scarcely fancy Lord Saxingham writing so to you, Lady Florence."
* Think that of all the hearts over which you reign, there is not one in
which your empire can be so well established as in mine.
"No, indeed," replied Lady Florence, smiling. "Neither papas nor mammas
in England are much addicted to compliment; but I confess I like
preserving a sort of gallantry even in our most familiar
connections--why should we not carry the imagination into all the
affections?"
"I can scarce answer the why," returned Cleveland; "but I think it would
destroy the reality. I am rather of the old school. If I had a
daughter, and asked her to get my slippers, I am afraid I should think
it a little wearisome if I had, in receiving them, to make /des belles
phrases/ in return."
While they were thus talking, and Lady Florence continued to press her
side of the question, they passed through a little grove that conducted
to an arm of the stream which ornamented the grounds, and by its quiet
and shadowy gloom was meant to give a contrast to the livelier features
of the domain. Here they came suddenly upon Maltravers. He was walking
by the side of the brook, and evidently absorbed in thought.
It was the trembling of Lady Florence's hand as it lay on Cleveland's
arm, that induced him to stop short in an animated commentary on
Rochefoucauld's character of Cardinal de Retz, and look round.
"Ha, most meditative Jacques!" said he; "and what new moral hast thou
been conning in our Forest of Ardennes?"
"Oh, I am glad to see you; I wished to consult you, Cleveland. But
first, Lady Florence, to convince you and our host that my rambles have
not been wholly fruitless, and that I could not walk from Dan to
Beersheba and find all barren, accept my offering--a wild rose that I
discovered in the thickest part of the wood. It is not a civilised
rose. Now, Cleveland, a word with you."
"And now, Mr. Maltravers, I am /de trop/," said Lady Florence.
"Pardon me, I have no secrets from you in this matter--or rather these
matters; for there are two to be discussed. In the first place, Lady
Florence, that poor Cesarini,--you know and like him--nay, no blushes."
"Did I blush?--then it was in recollection of an old reproach of yours."
"At its justice?--well, no matter. He is one for whom I always felt a
lively interest. His very morbidity of temperament only increases my
anxiety for his future fate. I have received a letter from De
Montaigne, his brother-in-law, who seems seriously uneasy about
Castruccio. He wishes him to leave England at once, as the sole means
of restoring his broken fortunes. De Montaigne has the opportunity of
procuring him a diplomatic situation, which may not again
occur--and--but you know the man--what shall we do? I am sure he will
not listen to me; he looks on me as an interested rival for fame."
"Do you think I have any subtler eloquence?" said Cleveland. "No, I am
an author, too. Come, I think your ladyship must be the
arch-negotiator."
"He has genius, he has merit," said Maltravers, pleadingly; "he wants
nothing but time and experience to wean him from his foibles. /Will/
you try to save him, Lady Florence?"
"Why? nay, I must not be obdurate; I will see him when I go to town. It
is like you, Mr. Maltravers, to feel this interest in one--"
"Who does not like me, you would say; but he will some day or other.
Besides, I owe him deep gratitude. In his weaker qualities I have seen
many which all literary men might incur, without strict watch over
themselves; and let me add, also, that his family have great claims on
me."
"You believe in the soundness of his heart, and in the integrity of his
honour?" said Cleveland, inquiringly.
"Indeed I do; these are, these must be, the redeeming qualities of
poets."
Maltravers spoke warmly; and such at that time was his influence over
Florence, that his words formed--alas, too fatally!--her estimate of
Castruccio's character, which had at first been high, but which his own
presumption had latterly shaken. She had seen him three or four times
in the interval between the receipt of his apologetic letter and her
visit to Cleveland, and he had seemed to her rather sullen than humbled.
But she felt for the vanity she herself had wounded.
"And now," continued Maltravers, "for my second subject of consultation.
But that is political; will it weary Lady Florence?"
"Oh, no; to politics I am never indifferent: they always inspire me with
contempt or admiration, according to the motives of those who bring the
science into action. Pray say on."
"Well," said Cleveland, "one confidant at a time; you will forgive me,
for I see my guests coming across the lawn, and I may as well make a
diversion in your favour. Ernest can consult /me/ at any time."
Cleveland walked away; but the intimacy between Maltravers and Florence
was of so frank a nature that there was nothing embarrassing in the
thought of a /tete-a-tete/.
"Lady Florence," said Ernest, "there is no one in the world with whom I
can confer so cheerfully as with you. I am almost glad of Cleveland's
absence, for, with all his amiable and fine qualities, 'the world is too
much with him,' and we do not argue from the same data. Pardon my
prelude--now to my position. I have received a letter from Mr. ------.
That statesman, whom none but those acquainted with the chivalrous
beauty of his nature can understand or appreciate, sees before him the
most brilliant career that ever opened in this country to a public man
not born an aristocrat. He has asked me to form one of the new
administration that he is about to create: the place offered to me is
above my merits, nor suited to what I have yet done, though, perhaps, it
be suited to what I may yet do. I make that qualification, for you
know," added Ernest, with a proud smile, "that I am sanguine and
self-confident."
"You accept the proposal?"
"Nay,--should I not reject it? Our politics are the same only for the
moment, our ultimate objects are widely different. To serve with Mr.
------, I must make an unequal compromise--abandon nine opinions to
promote one. Is not this a capitulation of that great citadel, one's
own conscience? No man will call me inconsistent, for, in public life,
to agree with another on a party question is all that is required; the
thousand questions not yet ripened, and lying dark and concealed in the
future, are not inquired into and divined; but I own I shall deem myself
worse than inconsistent. For this is my dilemma,--if I use this noble
spirit merely to advance one object, and then desert him where he halts,
I am treacherous to him; if I halt with him, but one of my objects
effected, I am treacherous to myself. Such are my views. It is with
pain I arrive at them, for, at first, my heart beat with a selfish
ambition."
"You are right, you are right," exclaimed Florence, with glowing cheeks;
"how could I doubt you? I comprehend the sacrifice you make; for a
proud thing is it to soar above the predictions of foes in that palpable
road to honour which the world's hard eyes can see, and the world's cold
heart can measure; but prouder is it to feel that you have never
advanced one step to the goal, which remembrance would retract. No, my
friend, wait your time, confident that it must come, when conscience and
ambition can go hand-in-hand--when the broad objects of a luminous and
enlarged policy lie before you like a chart, and you can calculate every
step of the way without peril of being lost. Ah, let them still call
loftiness of purpose and whiteness of soul the dreams of a
theorist,--even if they be so, the Ideal in this case is better than the
Practical. Meanwhile your position is not one to forfeit lightly.
Before you is that throne in literature which it requires no doubtful
step to win, if you have, as I believe, the mental power to attain it.
An ambition that may indeed be relinquished, if a more troubled career
can better achieve those public purposes at which both letters and
policy should aim, but which is not to be surrendered for the rewards of
a place-man, or the advancement of a courtier."
It was while uttering these noble and inspiring sentiments, that
Florence Lascelles suddenly acquired in Ernest's eyes a loveliness with
which they had not before invested her.
"Oh," he said, as, with a sudden impulse, he lifted her hand to his
lips, "blessed be the hour in which you gave me your friendship! These
are the thoughts I have longed to hear from living lips, when I have
been tempted to believe patriotism a delusion, and virtue but a name."
Lady Florence heard, and her whole form seemed changed,--she was no
longer the majestic sibyl, but the attached, timorous, delighted woman.
It so happened that in her confusion she dropped from her hand the
flower Maltravers had given her, and involuntarily glad of a pretext to
conceal her countenance, she stooped to take it from the ground. In so
doing, a letter fell from her bosom--and Maltravers, as he bent forwards
to forestall her own movement, saw that the direction was to himself,
and in the handwriting of his unknown correspondent. He seized the
letter, and gazed in flattered and entranced astonishment, first on the
writing, next on the detected writer. Florence grew deadly pale, and
covering her face with her hands, burst into tears.
"O fool that I was," cried Ernest, in the passion of the moment, "not to
know--not to have felt that there were not two Florences in the world!
But if the thought had crossed me, I would not have dared to harbour
it."
"Go, go," sobbed Florence; "leave me, in mercy leave me!"
"Not till you bid me rise," said Ernest, in emotion scarcely less deep
than hers, as he sank on his knee at her feet.
Need I go on?--When they left that spot, a soft confession had been
made--deep vows interchanged, and Ernest Maltravers was the accepted
suitor of Florence Lascelles.