What are fears, but voices airy
Whisp'ring harm, where harm is not?
And deluding the unwary.
Till the fatal bolt is shot?
WORDSWORTH.
Lord Lodore was disgusted at the very threshold of his new purpose. His
long residence abroad prevented his ever acquiring the habit of public
speaking; nor had he the respect for human nature, nor the enthusiasm
for a party or a cause, which is necessary for one who would make a
figure as a statesman. His sensitive disposition, his pride, which, when
excited, verged into arrogance; his uncompromising integrity, his
disdain of most of his associates, his incapacity of yielding obedience,
rendered his short political career one of struggle and mortification.
"And this is life!" he said; "abroad, to mingle with the senseless and
the vulgar; and at home, to find a--wife, who prefers the admiration of
fools, to the love of an honest heart!"
Within a year after her marriage, Lady Lodore gave birth to a daughter.
This circumstance, which naturally tends to draw the parents nearer,
unfortunately in this instance set them further apart. Lady Santerre had
been near, with so many restrictions and so much interference, which
though probably necessary, considering Cornelia's extreme youth, yet
seemed vexatious and impertinent to Lodore. All things appeared to be
permitted, except those which he proposed. A drive, a ride, even a walk
with him, was to be considered fatal; while, at the same time, Lady
Lodore was spending whole nights in heated rooms, and even dancing. Her
confinement was followed by a long illness; the child was nursed by a
stranger, secluded in a distant part of the house; and during her slow
recovery, the young mother seemed scarcely to remember that it existed.
The love for children is a passion often developed most fully in the
second stage of life. Lodore idolized his little offspring, and felt
hurt and angry when his wife, after it had been in her room a minute or
two, on the first approach it made to a squall, ordered it to be taken
away. At the time, in truth, she was reduced to the lowest ebb of
weakness; but Lodore, as men are apt to do, was slow to discern her
physical suffering, while his cheeks burnt with indignation, as she
peevishly repeated the command that his child should go.
When she grew better this was not mended. She was ordered into the
country for air, at a time when the little girl was suffering from some
infantine disorder, and could not be moved. It was left with its nurses,
but Lodore remained also, and rather suffered his wife to travel without
him, so to demonstrate openly, that he thought her treatment of her baby
unmotherly; not that he expressed this sentiment, nor did Lady Lodore
guess at it; she saw only his usual spirit of contradiction and neglect,
in his desertion of her at this period.
The mother pressed with careless lips the downy cheek of the little
cherub, and departed; while Lodore passed most of his time in the child's
apartment, or, turning his library into a nursery, it was continually
with him there. "Here," he thought, "I have something to live for,
something to love. And even though I am not loved in return, my heart's
sacrifice will not be repaid with insolence and contempt." But when the
infant began to show tokens of recognition and affection, when it smiled
and stretched out its little hands on seeing him, and crowed with
innocent pleasure; and still more, when the lisped paternal name fell
from its roseate lips--the father repeated more emphatically, "Here is
something that makes it worth while to have been born--to live!" An
illness of the child overwhelmed him with anxiety and despair. She
recovered; and he thanked God, with a lively emotion of joy, to which he
had long been a stranger.
His affection for his child augmented the annoyance which he derived
from his domestic circle. He had been hitherto sullenly yielding on any
contest; but whatever whim, or whatever plan, he formed with regard to
his daughter, he abided by unmoved, and took pleasure in manifesting his
partiality for her. Lodore was by nature a man of violent and dangerous
passions, add to which, his temper was susceptible to irritability. He
disdained to cope with the undue influence exercised by Lady Santerre
over his wife. He beheld in the latter, a frivolous, childish puppet,
endowed with the usual feminine infirmities--
"The love of pleasure, and the love of sway;"
and destitute of that tact and tenderness of nature which should teach
her where to yield and how to reign. He left her therefore to her own
devices, resolved only that he would not give up a single point relative
to his child, and consequently, according to the weakness of human
nature, ever ready to find fault with and prohibit all her wishes on the
subject.
Cornelia, accustomed to be guided by her mother's watchful artifices,
and to submit to a tyranny which assumed the guise of servitude, felt
only with the feelings implanted by her parent. She was not, like Lady
Santerre, heartless; but cherished pride, the effect of perpetual
misrepresentation, painted her as such. She looked on her husband as a
man essentially selfish--one who, worn out by passion, had married her
to beguile his hours during a visitation of _ennui_, and incapable of the
softness of love or the kindness of friendship. On occasion of his new
conduct with regard to her child, her haughty soul was in arms against
him, and something almost akin to hatred sprung up within her. She
resented his interference; she believed that his object was to deprive
her of the consolation of her daughter's love, and that his chief aim
was to annoy and insult her. She was jealous of her daughter with her
husband, of her husband with her daughter. If by some chance a word or
look passed that might have softened the mutual sentiment of distrust,
the evil genius of the scene was there to freeze again the genial
current; and any approach to kindness, by an inexplicable but certain
result, only tended to place them further apart than before.
Three winters had passed since their marriage, and the third spring was
merging into summer, while they continued in this state of warlike
neutrality. Any slight incident might have destroyed the fictitious
barriers erected by ill-will and guile between them; or, so precarious
was their state, any new event might change petty disagreements into
violent resentment, and prevent their ever entertaining towards each
other those feelings which, but for one fatal influence, would naturally
have had root between them. The third summer was come. They were
spending the commencement of it in London, when circumstances occurred,
unanticipated by either, which changed materially the course of their
domestic arrangements.
Lord Lodore returned home one evening at a little after eleven, from a
dinner-party, and found, as usual, his drawing-room deserted--Lady
Lodore had gone to a ball. He had returned in that humour to moralize,
which we so often bring from society into solitude; and he paced the
empty apartments with impatient step. "Home!--yes, this is my home! I
had hoped that gentle peace and smiling love would be its inmates, that
returning as now, from those who excite my spleen and contempt, one eye
would have lighted up to welcome me, a dear voice have thanked me for my
return. Home! a Tartar beneath his tent--a wild Indian in his hut, may
speak of home--I have none. Where shall I spend the rest of this dull,
deserted evening?"--for it may be supposed that, sharing London habits,
eleven o'clock was to him but an evening hour.
He went into his dressing-room, and casting his eyes on the table, a
revulsion came over him, a sudden shock--for there lay a vision, which
made his breath come thick, and caused the blood to recede to his
heart--a like vision has had the same effect on many, though it took but
the unobtrusive form of a little note--a note, whose fold, whose seal,
whose superscription, were all once so familiar, and now so strange.
Time sensibly rolled back; each event of the last few years was broken
off, as it were, from his life, leaving it as it had been ten years ago.
He seized the note, and then threw it from him. "It is a mere mistake,"
he said aloud, while he felt, even to the marrow of his bones, the
thrill and shudder as of an occurrence beyond the bounds of nature. Yet
still the note lay there, and half as if to undeceive himself, and to
set witchcraft at nought, he again took it up--this time in a less
agitated mood, so that when the well-known impression of a little
foreign coronet on the seal met his eye, he became aware that however
unexpected such a sight might be, it was in the moral course of things,
and he hastily tore open the epistle: it was written in French, and was
very concise. "I arrived in town last night," the writer said; "I and my
son are about to join my husband in Paris. I hear that you are married;
I hope to see you and your lady before I leave London."
After reading these few lines, Lord Lodore remained for a considerable time
lost in thought. He tried to consider what he should do, but his ideas
wandered, as they sadly traced the past, and pictured to him the
present. Never did life appear so vain, so contemptible, so odious a
thing as now, that he was reminded of the passions and sufferings of
former days, which, strewed at his feet like broken glass, might still
wound him, though their charm and their delight could never be renewed.
He did not go out that night; indeed it seemed as if but a minute had
passed, when, lo! morning was pouring her golden summer beams into his
room--when Lady Lodore's carriage drove up; and early sounds in the
streets told him that night was gone and the morrow come.
That same day Lord Lodore requested Cornelia to call with him on a Polish
lady of rank, with whom he had formerly been acquainted, to whom he was
under obligations. They went. And what Lodore felt when he stood with his
lovely wife before her, who for many by-gone years had commanded his
fate, had wound him to her will, through the force of love and woman's
wiles--who he knew could read every latent sentiment of his soul, and
yet towards whom he was resolved now, and for ever in future, to adopt
the reserved manners of a mere acquaintance--what of tremor or pain all
this brought to Lodore's bosom was veiled, at least beyond Cornelia's
penetration, who seldom truly observed him, and who was now occupied by
her new acquaintance.
The lady had passed the bloom of youth, and even mid life; she was
verging on fifty, but she had every appearance of having been
transcendently beautiful. Her dark full oriental eyes still gleamed from
beneath her finely-arched brows, and her black hair, untinged by any
grizzly change, was gathered round her head in such tresses as bespoke
an admirable profusion. Her person was tall and commanding: her manners
were singular, for she mingled so strangely, stateliness and affability,
disdain and sweetness, that she seemed like a princess dispensing the
favour of her smile, or the terror of her frown on her submissive
subjects; her sweetest smiles were for Cornelia, who yet turned from her
to another object, who attracted her more peculiar attention. It was her
son; a youth inheriting all his mother's beauty, added to the
fascination of early manhood, and a frank and ingenuous address, which
his parent could never have possessed.
The party separated, apparently well pleased with each other. Lady Lodore
offered her services, which were frankly accepted; and after an hour
spent together, they appointed to meet again the next day, when the
ladies should drive out together to shop and see sights.
They became not exactly intimate, yet upon familiar terms. There was a
dignity and even a constraint in the Countess Lyzinski's manner that was
a bar to cordiality; but they met daily, and Lady Lodore introduced her new
friend everywhere. The Countess said that motives of curiosity had
induced her to take this country in her way to Paris. Her wealth was
immense, and her rank among the first in her own country. The Russian
ambassador treated her with distinction, so that she gained facile and
agreeable entrance into the highest society. The young Count Casimir was
an universal favourite, but his dearest pleasure was to attend upon Lady
Lodore, who readily offered to school him on his entrance into the
English world. They were pretty exactly the same age; Casimir was
somewhat the junior, yet he looked the elder, while the lady, accustomed
to greater independence, took the lead in their intercourse, and acted
the monitress to her docile scholar.
Lord Lodore looked on, or took a part, in what was passing around him, with
a caprice perfectly unintelligible. With the Countess he was always gentle
and obliging, but reserved. While she treated him with a coldness
resembling disdain, yet whose chiefest demonstration was silence. Lodore
never altered towards her; it was with regard to her son that he
displayed his susceptible temper. He took pains to procure for him every
proper acquaintance; he was forward in directing him; he watched over
his mode of passing his time, he appeared to be interested in every
thing he did, and yet to hate him. His demeanour towards him was morose,
almost insulting. Lodore, usually so forbearing and courteous, would
contradict and silence him, as if he had been a child or a menial. It
required all Casimir's deference for one considerably his senior, to
prevent him from resenting openly this style of treatment; it required
all the fascination of Lady Lodore to persuade him to encounter it a
second time. Once he had complained to her, and she remonstrated with
her husband. His answer was to reprimand her for listening to the
impertinence of the stripling. She coloured angrily, but did not reply.
Cold and polite to each other, the noble pair were not in the habit of
disputing. Lady Santerre guarded against that. Any thing as familiar as
a quarrel might have produced a reconciliation, and with that a better
understanding of each other's real disposition. The disdain that rose in
Cornelia's bosom on this taunt, fostered by conscious innocence, and a
sense of injustice, displayed itself in a scornful smile, and by an
augmentation of kindness towards Casimir. He was now almost domesticated
at her house; he attended her in the morning, hovered round her during
the evening; and she, given up to the desire of pleasing, did not
regard, did not even see, the painful earnestness with which Lord Lodore
regarded them. His apparent jealousy, if she at all remarked it, was but
a new form of selfishness, to which she was not disposed to give
quarter. Yet any unconcerned spectator might have started to observe
how, from an obscure corner of the room, Lodore watched every step they
took, every change of expression of face during their conversation; and
then approaching and interrupting them, endeavoured to carry Count
Casimir away with him; and when thwarted in this, dart glances of such
indignation on the youth, and of scorn upon his wife, as might have
awoke a sense of danger, had either chanced to see the fierce,
lightning-like passions written in those moments on his countenance, as
letters of fire and menace traced upon the prophetic wall.
The Countess appeared to observe him indeed, and sometimes it seemed as
if she regarded the angry workings of his heart with malicious pleasure.
Once or twice she had drawn near, and said a few words in her native
language, on which he endeavoured to stifle each appearance of passion,
answering with a smile, in a low calm voice, and retiring, left, as it
were, the field to her. Lady Santerre also had remarked his glances of
suspicion or fury; they were interpreted into new sins against her
daughter, and made with her the subject of ridicule or bitter reproach.
Lord Lodore was entirely alone. To no one human being could he speak a word
that in the least expressed the violence of his feelings. Perhaps the
only person with whom he felt the least inclined to overflow in
confidence, was the Countess Lyzinski. But he feared her: he feared the
knowledge she possessed of his character, and the power she had once
exercised to rule him absolutely; the barrier between them must be
insuperable, or the worst results would follow: he redoubled his own
cautious reserve, and bore patiently the proud contempt which she
exhibited, resolved not to yield one inch in the war he waged with his
own heart, with regard to her. But he was alone, and the solitude of
sympathy in which he lived, gave force and keenness to all his feelings.
Had they evaporated in words, half their power to wound had been lost;
as it was, there was danger in his meditations, and each one in
collision with him had occasion to dread that any sudden overflow of
stormy rage would be the more violent for having been repressed so long.
One day the whole party, with the exception of Lady Santerre, dined at the
house of the Russian ambassador. As Lord and Lady Lodore proceeded towards
their destination, he, with pointed sarcasm of manner, requested her to
be less marked in her attentions to Count Casimir. The unfounded
suspicions of a lover may please as a proof of love, but those of a
husband, who thus claims affections which he has ceased to endeavour to
win, are never received except as an impertinence and an insult. Those
of Lord Lodore appeared to his haughty wife but a new form of
cold-hearted despotism, checking her pleasures whencesoever they might
arise. She replied by a bitter smile, and afterwards still more
insultingly, by the display of kindness and partiality towards the
object of her husband's dislike. Her complete sense of innocence, roused
to indignation, by the injury she deemed offered to it, led her thus to
sport with feelings, which, had she deigned to remark, she might have
seen working with volcano-power in the breast of Lodore.
The ladies retired after dinner. They gathered together in groups in the
drawing-room, while Lady Lodore, strange to say, sat apart from all. She
placed herself on a distant sopha, apparently occupied by examining
various specimens of bijouterie, nic-nacs of all kinds, which she took
up one after the other, from the table near her. One hand shaded her
eyes as she continued thus to amuse herself. She was not apt to be so
abstracted; as now, that intent on self-examination, or self-reproach,
or on thoughts that wandered to another, she forgot where she was, and
by whom surrounded. She did not observe the early entrance of several
gentlemen from the dining-room, nor remark a kind of embarrassment which
sat upon their features, spreading a sort of uncomfortable wonder among
the guests. The first words that roused her, were addressed to her by
her husband: "Your carriage waits, Cornelia; will you come?"
"So early?" she asked.
"I particularly wish it," he replied.
"You can go, and send them back for me--and yet it is not worth while,
we shall see most of the people here at Lady C----'s to night."
She glanced round the room, Casimir was not there; as she passed the
Countess Lyzinski, she was about to ask her whether they should meet
again that evening, when she caught the lady's eye fixed on her husband,
meeting and returning a look of his. Alarm and disdain were painted on
her face, and added to this, a trace of feeling so peculiar, so full of
mutual understanding, that Lady Lodore was filled with no agreeable emotion
of surprise. She entered the carriage, and the reiterated "Home!" of Lord
Lodore, prevented her intended directions. Both were silent during their
short drive. She sat absorbed in a variety of thoughts, not one of which
led her to enter into conversation with her companion; they were rather
fixed on her mother, on the observations she should make to, and the
conjectures she should share with, her. She became anxious to reach
home, and resolved at once to seek Lady Santerre's advice and directions
by which to regulate her conduct on this occasion.