Amid two seas, on one small point of land,
Wearied, uncertain, and amazed, we stand;
On either side our thoughts incessant turn,
Forward we dread, and looking back we mourn.
PRIOR.
Accustomed to obey the more obvious laws of necessity, those whose
situation in life obliges them to earn their daily bread, are already
broken in to the yoke of fate. But the rich and great are vanquished
more slowly. Their time is their own; as fancy bids them, they can go
east, west, north, or south; they wish, and accomplish their wishes; and
cloyed by the too easy attainment of the necessaries, and even of the
pleasures of life, they fly to the tortures of passion, and to the
labour of overcoming the obstacles that stand in the way of their
forbidden desires, as resources against ennui and satiety. Reason is
lost in the appetite for excitement, and a kind of unnatural pleasure
springs from their severest pains, because thus alone are they roused to
a full sense of their faculties; thus alone is existence and its
purposes brought home to them.
In the midst of this, their thoughtless career, the eternal law which
links ill to ill, is at hand to rebuke and tame the rebel spirit; and
such a tissue of pain and evil is woven from their holiday pastime, as
checks them midcourse, and makes them feel that they are slaves. The
young are scarcely aware of this; they delight to contend with Fate, and
laugh as she clanks their chains. But there is a period--sooner or later
comes to all--when the links envelop them, the bolts are shot, the
rivets fixed, the iron enters the flesh, the soul is subdued, and they
fly to religion or proud philosophy, to seek for an alleviation, which
the crushed spirit can no longer draw from its own resources.
This hour! this fatal hour! How many can point to the shadow on the
dial, and say, "Then it was that I felt the whole weight of my humanity,
and knew myself to be the subject of an unvanquishable power!" This dark
moment had arrived for Lodore. He had spent his youth in passion, and
exhausted his better nature in a struggle for, and in the enjoyment of,
pleasure. He found disappointment, and desired change. It came at his
beck. He married. He was not satisfied; but still he felt that it was
because he did not rouse himself, that the bonds sate so heavily upon
him. He was enervated. He sickened at the idea of the struggle it would
require to cast off his fetters, and he preferred adapting his nature to
endure their weight. But he believed that it was only because he did not
raise his hand, nor determine on one true effort, that he was thus
enslaved. And now his hand was raised--the effort made; but no change
ensued; and he felt that there was no escape from the inextricable bonds
that fastened him to misery.
He had believed that he did right in introducing his wife to the
Countess Lyzinski. He felt that he could not neglect this lady; and such
was her rank, that any affectation of a separate acquaintance would
invite those observations which he deprecated. It was, after all, matter
of trivial import that he should be the person to bring them acquainted.
Moving in the same circles, they must meet--they might clash: it was
better that they should be on friendly terms. He did not foresee the
intimacy that ensued; and still less, that his own violent passions
would be called into action. That they were so, was, to the end, a
mystery even to himself. He no longer loved the Countess; and, in the
solitude of his chamber, he often felt his heart yearn towards the noble
youth, her son; but when they met--when Cornelia spent her blandest
smiles upon him, and when the exquisitely beautiful countenance of
Casimir became lighted up with gladness and gratitude, a fire of rage
was kindled in his heart, and he could no more command himself, than can
the soaring flames of a conflagration bend earthward. He felt ashamed;
but new fury sprung from this very sensation. For worlds, he would not
have his frenzy pried into by another; and yet he had no power to
controul its manifestation. His wife expostulated with him concerning
Casimir, and laughed his rebuke to scorn. But she did not read the
tumult of unutterable jealousy and hate, that slept within his breast,
like an earthquake beneath the soil, the day before a city falls.
All tended to add fuel to this unnatural flame. His own exertions to
subdue its fierceness but kindled it anew. Often he entered the same
room with the young Count, believing that he had given his suspicions to
the winds--that he could love him as a son, and rejoice with a father's
pride in the graces of his figure and the noble qualities of his mind.
For a few seconds the fiction endured: he felt a pang--it was
nothing--gone; it would not return again:--another! was he for ever to
be thus tortured? And then a word a look, an appearance of slighting him
on the part of Casimir, an indiscreet smile on Cornelia's lips, would at
once set a-light the whole devastating blaze. The Countess alone had any
power over him; but though he yielded to her influence, he was the more
enraged that she should behold his weakness; and that while he succeeded
in maintaining an elevated impassibility with regard to herself, his
heart, with all its flaws and poverty of purpose, should, through the
ill-timed interference of this boy, be placed once more naked in her
hand.
Such a state of feeling, where passion combated passion, while reason
was forgotten in the strife, was necessarily pregnant with ruin. The only
safety was in flight;--and Lodore would have flown--he would have absented
himself until the cause of his sufferings had departed--but that, more
and more, jealousy entered into his feelings--a jealousy, wound up by
the peculiarity of his situation, into a sensitiveness that bordered on
insanity, which saw guilt in a smile, and overwhelming, hopeless ruin,
in the simplest expression of kindness. Cornelia herself was disinclined
to quit London, and tenacious pride rendered him averse to proposing it,
since he could frame no plausible pretext for his change of purpose, and
it had been previously arranged that they should remain till the end of
July. The presence of the Countess Lyzinski was a tie to keep her; and
to have pleaded his feelings with regard to Casimir, could he have
brought himself so to do, would probably have roused her at once into
rebellion. There was no resource; he must bear, and also he must
forbear;--but the last was beyond his power, and his attempt at the
first brought with it destruction. In the last instance, at the Russian
Ambassador's, irritated by Cornelia's tone of defiance, and subsequent
levity, he levelled a scornful remark at the guiltless and unconscious
offender. Casimir had endured his arrogance and injustice long. He knew
of no tie, no respect due, beyond that which youth owes to maturer
years; yet the natural sweetness of his disposition inclined him to
forbearance, until now, that surrounded by his own countrymen and by
Russians, it became necessary that he should assert himself. He replied
with haughtiness; Lodore rejoined with added insult;--and when again
Casimir retorted, he struck him. The young noble's eyes flashed fire:
several gentlemen interposed between them;--and yielding to the
expediency of the moment, the Pole, with admirable temper, withdrew.
Humiliated and dismayed, but still burning with fury, Lodore saw at once
the consequences of his angry transport. With all the impetuosity of his
fiery spirit, he resolved to quit at once the scene in which he had
played his part so ill. There was no other alternative. The most
frightful crimes blocked up every other outlet: this was his sole
escape, and he must seize on it without delay. Lady Lodore had not even
deigned to answer his request that she should accompany him; and her
mother's note appeared the very refinement of insolence. They abandoned
him. They left the roof from which he was about to exile himself, even
before he had quitted it, as if in fear of contamination during his
brief delay. Thus he construed their retreat; and worked up, as he was,
almost to madness, he considered their departure as the commencement of
that universal ban, which for ever, hereafter, was to accompany his
name. It opened anew the wound his honour had sustained; and he poured
forth a vow never more to ally himself in bonds of love or amity with
one among his kind.
His purpose was settled, and he did not postpone its execution.
Post-horses were ordered, and hasty preparations made, for his
departure. Alone, abandoned, disgraced, in another hour he was to quit
his home, his wife, all that endears existence, for ever: yet the short
interval that preceded his departure hung like a long-drawn day upon him;
and time seemed to make a full stop, at a period when he would have
rejoiced had it leaped many years to come. The heart's prayer in agony
did not avail: he was still kept lingering, when a knocking at the door
announced a visitor, who, at that late hour, could come for one purpose
only. Lord Lodore ordered himself to be denied, and Count Casimir's second
departed to seek him elsewhere. Cold dew-drops stood on Lodore's brow as
he heard this gentleman parley in a foreign accent with the servant;
trying, doubtless, to make out where it was likely that he should meet
with him: the door closed at last, and he listened to the departing
steps of his visitor, who could scarcely have left the square, before
his travelling chariot drove up. And now, while final arrangements were
making, with a heart heavy from bitter self-condemnation, he visited the
couch of his sleeping daughter, once more to gaze on her sweet face, and
for the last time to bestow a father's blessing on her. The early summer
morning was abroad in the sky; and as he opened her curtains, the first
sun-beam played upon her features. He stooped to kiss her little rosy
lips:--"And I leave this spotless being to the blighting influence of
that woman!" His murmurs disturbed the child's slumbers: she woke, and
smiled to see her father; and then insisted upon rising, as he was up,
and it was day.
"But I am come to say good-bye, sweet," he said; "I am going a long
journey."
"O take me with you!" cried the little girl, springing up, and fastening
her arms round his neck. He felt her soft cheek prest to his; her hands
trying to hold fast, and to resist his endeavours to disengage them. His
heart warmed within him. "For a short distance I may indulge myself," he
said, and he thought how her prattle would solace his darker cares,
during his road to Southampton. So, causing her attendant to make speedy
preparation, he took her in the carriage with him; and her infantine
delight so occupied him, that he scarcely remembered his situation, or
what exactly he was doing, as he drove for the last time through the
lightsome and deserted streets of the metropolis.
And now he had quitted these; and the country, in all its summer beauty,
opened around him--meadows and fields with their hedge-rows, tufted
groves crowning the uplands, and "the blue sky bent over all." "From
these they cannot banish me," he thought; "in spite of dishonour and
infamy, the loveliness of nature, and the freedom of my will, still are
mine:--and is this all?"--his child had sunk to sleep, nestled close in
his arms; "Ah! what will these be to me, when I have lost this treasure,
dearest of all?--yet why lose her?" This question, when it first
presented itself to him, he put aside as one that answered itself--to
deprive a mother of her child were barbarity beyond that of
savages;--but again and again it came across him, and he began to reason
with it, and to convince himself that he should be unjust towards
himself in relinquishing this last remaining blessing. His arguments
were false, his conclusions rash and selfish; but of this he was not
aware. Our several minds, in reflecting to our judgments the occurrences
of life, are like mirrors of various shapes and hues, so that we none of
us perceive passing objects with exactly similar optics; and while all
pretend to regulate themselves by the quadrant of justice, the deceptive
medium through which the reality is viewed, causes our ideas of it to be
at once various and false. This is the case in immaterial points; how
much more so, when self-love magnifies, and passion obscures, the glass
through which we look upon others and ourselves. The chief task of the
philosopher is to purify and correct the intellectual prism;--but Lodore
was the reverse of a philosopher; and the more he gazed and considered, the
more imperfect and distorted became his perception.
To act justly by ourselves and others, is the aim of every
well-conditioned mind: for the sight of pain in our fellow-creatures,
and the sense of self-condemnation within ourselves, is fraught with a
pang from which we would willingly escape; and every heart not formed of
the coarsest materials is keenly alive to such emotions. Lodore resolved to
judge calmly, and he reviewed coolly, and weighed (he believed)
impartially, the various merits of the question. He thought of Lady
Santerre's worldliness, her vulgar ambition, her low-born contempt for
all that is noble and elevating in human nature. He thought of
Cornelia's docility to her mother's lessons, her careless disregard of
the nobler duties of life, of her frivolity and unfeeling nature:--then,
almost against his will, his own many excellencies rose before him;--his
lofty aspirations, his self-sacrifice for the good of others, the
affectionateness of his disposition, his mildness, his desire to be just
and kind to all, his willingness to devote every hour of the day, and
every thought of his mind, to the well-bringing-up of his daughter: a
person must be strangely blind who did not perceive that, as far as the
child was concerned, she would be far better off with him.
And then, in another point of view: Lady Lodore had her mother--and she had
the world. She had not only beauty, rank, and wealth; but she had a taste
for enjoying the advantages yielded by these on the common soil of daily
life. He cared for nothing in the wide world--he loved nothing but this
little child. He would willingly exchange for her the far greater
portion of his fortune, which Lady Lodore should enjoy; reserving for
himself such a pittance merely as would suffice for his own and his
daughter's support. He had neither home, nor friends, nor youth, nor
taintless reputation; nor any of all the blessings of life, of which
Cornelia possessed a superabundance. Her child was as nothing in the
midst of these. She had left her without a sigh, even without a thought;
while but to imagine the moment of parting was a dagger to her father's
heart. What a fool he had been to hesitate so long--to hesitate at all!
There she was, this angel of comfort; her little form was cradled in his
arms, he felt her soft breath upon his hand, and the regular heaving of
her bosom responded to the beatings of his own heart; her golden, glossy
hair, her crimsoned cheek, her soft, round limbs;--all this matchless
"bower of flesh," that held in the budding soul, and already expanding
affections of this earthly cherub, was with him. And had he imagined
that he could part with her? Rather would he return to Lady Lodore, to
dishonour, to scenes of hate and of the world's contempt, so that thus
he preserved her: it could not be required of him; but if Cornelia's
heart was animated by a tithe of the fondness that warmed his, she would
not hesitate in her choice; but, discarding every unworthy feeling,
follow her child into the distant and solitary abode he was about to
select.
Thus pacifying his conscience, Lodore came to the conclusion of making his
daughter the partner of his exile. Soon after mid-day, they arrived at
Southampton; a small vessel was on the point of sailing for Havre, and
on board this he hurried. Before he went he gave one hasty retrospective
view to those he was leaving behind--his wife, his sister, the filial
antagonist from whom he was flying; he could readily address himself to
the first of these, when landed on the opposite coast; but as he wished
to keep his destination a secret from the latter, and to prevent, if
possible, his being followed and defied by him, an event still to be
feared, he employed the few remaining minutes, before quitting his
country for ever, in writing a brief letter to the Countess Lyzinski,
which he gave in charge to a servant whom he dismissed, and sent back to
town. And thus he now addressed her, who, in his early life, had been as
the moon to raise the tide of passion, incapable, alas! of controlling
its waves when at the full.
"It is all over: I have fulfilled my part--the rest remains with you. To
prevent the ruin which my folly has brought down, from crushing any but
myself, I quit country, home, good name--all that is dear to man. I do
not complain, nor will I repine. But let the evil, I entreat you, stop
here. Casimir must not follow me; he must not know whither I am gone;
and while he brands his antagonist with the name of coward, he must not
guess that for his sake I endure this stain. I leave it to your prudence
and sagacity to calm or to mislead him, to prevent his suspecting the
truth, or rashly seeking my life. I sacrifice more, far more, than my
heart's blood on his account--let that satisfy even your vengeance.
"I would not write harshly. The dream of life has long been over for me;
it matters not how or where the last sands flow out. I do not blame you
even for this ill-omened journey to England, which could avail you
nothing. Once before we parted for ever, Theodora; but that separation
was as the pastime of children in comparison with the tragic scene we
now enact. A thousand dangers yawn between us, and we shall neither dare
to repass the gulf that divides us. Forget me;--be happy, and forget me!
May Casimir be a blessing to you, and while you glory in his perfections
and prosperity, cast into oblivion every thought of him, who now bids
you an eternal adieu."