Her virtue, like our own, was built
Too much on that indignant fuss,
Hypocrite pride stirs up in us,
To bully out another's guilt.
SHELLEY.
The fifth day after Lord Lodore's departure brought Cornelia a letter from
him. She had spent the interval at Twickenham, surrendering her sorrows
and their consolation to her mother's care; and inspired by her with
deep resentment and angry disdain. The letter she received was dated
Havre: the substance of it was as follows.
"Believe me I am actuated by no selfish considerations, when I ask you
once again to reflect before the Atlantic divides us--probably for ever.
It is for your own sake, your own happiness only, that I ask you to
hesitate. I will not urge your duty to me; the dishonour that has fallen
on me I am most ready to bear alone; mine towards you, as far as present
circumstances permit, I am desirous to fulfil, and this feeling dictates
my present address.
"Consider the solitary years you will pass alone, even though in a
crowd, divided from your husband and your child--your home
desolate--calumny and ill-nature at watch around you--not one protecting
arm stretched over you. Your mother's presence, it is true, will suffice
to prevent your position from being in the least equivocal; but the time
will soon come when you will discover your mistake in her, and find how
unworthy she is of your exclusive affection. I will not urge the
temptations and dangers that will beset you; your pride will, I doubt
not, preserve you from these, yet they will be near you in their worst
shape: you will feel their approaches; you will shudder at their
menaces, you will desire my death, and the faith pledged to me at the
altar will become a chain and a torture to you.
"I can only offer such affection as your sacrifice will deserve to adorn
a lonely and obscure home; rank, society, flatterers, the luxuries of
civilization--all these blessings you must forego. Your lot will be cast
in solitude. The wide forest, the uninhabited plain, will shelter us.
Your husband, your child; in us alone you must view the sum and aim of
your life. I will not use the language of persuasion, but in inviting
you to share my privations, I renew, yet more solemnly, the vows we once
interchanged; and it shall be my care to endeavour to fulfil mine with
more satisfaction to both of us than has until now been the case.
"It is useless to attempt to veil the truth, that hitherto our hearts
have been alienated from each other. The cause is not in ourselves, and
must never again be permitted to influence either of us. If amidst the
avocations of society, the presence of a third person has been
sufficient to place division between us;--if, on the flowery path of our
prosperous life, one fatal interference has strewn thorns and burning
ashes beneath our feet, how much more keenly would this intervention be
felt in the retirement in which we are hereafter to spend our days.--In
the lonely spot to which it will be necessary to contract all our
thoughts and hopes, love must alone reign; or hell itself would be but
pastime in comparison to our ever-renewing and sleepless torments. The
spirit of worldliness, of discord, of paltry pride, must not enter the
paling which is to surround our simple dwelling. Come, attended by
affection, by open-hearted confidence;--come to me--to your child!--you
will find with us peace and mutual love, the true secret of life. All
that can make your mother happy in England, shall be provided with no
niggard hand:--but come alone, Cornelia, my wife!--come, to take
possession of the hearts that are truly yours, and to learn a new
lesson, in a new world, from him who will dedicate himself entirely to
you.
"Alas! I fear that I speak an unknown language, and one that you will
never deign to understand. Still I again implore you to reflect before
you decide. On one point I am firm--I feel that I am in the right--that
every thing depends upon it. Our daughter's guileless heart shall never
be tainted by all that I abhor and despise. For her sake, for yours,
more than for my own, I am as rock upon one question. Do not strive to
move me--it will be useless! Come alone! and ten thousand welcomes and
blessings shall hail your arrival!
"A vessel, in which I have engaged a passage, sails for New York, from
this place, in five days time. You must not delay your decision; but
hasten, if such be your gracious resolve, to join me here.
"If you decide to sacrifice yourself to one who will never repay that
sacrifice, and to the world,--that dreary, pain-haunted jungle,--at
least you shall receive from me all that can render your situation there
prosperous. You shall not complain of want of generosity on my part. I
shall, in my new course of life, require little myself; the remainder of
my fortune shall be at your disposal.
"I need not recommend secrecy to you as to the real motive of my
exile--your own sense of delicacy will dictate reserve and silence. This
letter will be delivered to you by Fenton: he will attend you back here,
or bring me your negative--the seal, I feel assured, of your future
misery. God grant that you choose wisely and well! Adieu."
The heart of Lady Lodore burnt within her bosom as she read these lines.
Haughty and proud, was she to be dictated to thus? and to follow, an
obedient slave, the master that deigned to recall her to his presence,
after he had (so she termed his abrupt departure) deserted her? Her
mother sate by, looking at her with an anxious and inquiring glance, as
she read the letter. She saw the changes of her countenance, as it
expressed anger, scorn, and bitter indignation. She finished--she was
still silent;--how could she show this insulting address to her parent?
Again she seemed to study its contents--to ponder.
Lady Santerre rose--gently she was taking the paper from Cornelia's
hand. "You must not read it," she cried;--"and yet you must;--and thus
one other wrong is heaped upon the many."
Lady Santerre read the letter; silently she perused it--folded
it--placed it on the table. Cornelia looked up at her. "I do not fear
your decision," she said; "you will not abandon a parent, who has
devoted herself to you from your cradle--who lives but for you."
The unhappy girl, unable to resist her mother's appeal, threw herself
into her arms. Even the cold Lady Santerre was moved--tears flowed from
her eyes:--"My dear child!" she exclaimed.
"My dear child!"--the words found an echo in Lady Lodore's bosom;--"I am
never to see my child more!"
"Such is his threat," said her mother, "knowing thus the power he has
over you; but do not fear that it will be accomplished. Lord Lodore's
conduct is guided by no principle--by no deference to the opinion of the
world--by no just or sober motives. He is as full of passion as a
madman, and more vacillating. This is his fancy now--to quit England for
the wilderness, and to torture you into following him. You are as lost
as he, if you yield. A little patience, and all will be right again. He
will soon grow tired of playing the tragic hero on a stage surrounded by
no spectators; he will discover the folly of his conduct; he will
return, and plead for forgiveness, and feel that he is too fortunate in
a wife, who has preserved her own conduct free from censure and remark,
while he has made himself a laughing stock to all. Do not permit
yourself, dear Cornelia, to be baffled in this war of passion with
reason; of jealousy, selfishness, and tyranny, with natural affection, a
child's duty, and the respect you owe to yourself. Even if he remain
away, he will quickly become weary of being accompanied by an infant and
its nurse, and too glad to find that you will still be willing to act
the mother towards his child. Firmness and discretion are the arms you
must use against folly and violence. Yield, and you are the victim of a
despotism without parallel, the slave of a task-master, whose first
commands are gentle, soft, and easy injunctions to desert your mother:
to exile yourself from your country, and to bury yourself alive in some
unheard-of desert, whose name even he does not deign to communicate. All
this would be only too silly and too wild, were it not too wicked and
too cruel. Believe me, my love, trust yourself to my guidance, and all
will be well; Lodore himself will thank, if such thanks be of value, the
prudence and generosity you will display."
Cornelia listened, and was persuaded. Above all, Lady Santerre tried to
impress upon her mind, that Lodore, finding her firm, would give up his
rash schemes, and remain in Europe; that even he had, probably, never
really contemplated crossing the Atlantic. At all events, that she must not
be guided by the resolves, changeable as the moon, of a man governed by no
sane purpose; but that, by showing herself determined, he would be
brought to bend to her will. In this spirit Lady Lodore replied to her
husband's letter. Fenton, Lord Lodore's valet, who had been the bearer,
had left it, and proceeded to London. He returned the day following, to
receive his lady's orders. Cornelia saw him and questioned him. She
heard that Lord Lodore was to dismiss him and all his English servants
before embarking for America, with the exception of the child's nurse,
whom he had promised to send back on his arrival at New York. He had
engaged his passage, and fitted up cabins for his convenience, so that
there could be no doubt of his having finally resolved to emigrate. This
was all he knew; Cornelia gave him her letter, and he departed on the
instant for Southampton.
In giving his wife so short an interval in which to form her
determination, Lodore conceived that her first impulse would be to join her
child, that she would act upon it, and at least come as far as Havre,
though perhaps her mother would accompany her, to claim her daughter,
even if she did not besides foster a hope of changing his resolves.
Lodore had an unacknowledged reserve in his own mind, that if she would
give up her mother, and for a time the world, he would leave the choice
of their exile to her, and relinquish the dreary scheme of emigrating to
America. With these thoughts in his mind, he anxiously awaited each day
the arrival of the packets from England. Each day he hoped to see
Cornelia disembark from one of them; and even though accompanied by Lady
Santerre, he felt that his heart would welcome her. During this
interval, his thoughts had recurred to his home; and imagination had
already begun to paint the memory of that home, in brighter colours than
the reality. Lady Lodore had not been all coldness and alienation; in
spite of dissension, she had been his; her form, graceful as a nymph's,
had met his eyes each morning; her smile, her voice, her light cheering
laugh, had animated and embellished, how many hours during the long
days, grown vacant without her. Cherishing a hope of seeing her again,
he forgot her petulance--her self-will--her love of pleasure; and
remembering only her beauty and her grace, he began, in a lover-like
fashion, to impart to this charming image, a soul in accordance to his
wishes, rather than to the reality. Each day he attended less carefully
to the preparations of his long voyage. Each day he expected her; a
chill came over his heart at each evening's still recurring
disappointment, till hope awoke on the ensuing morning. More than once
he had been on the eve of sailing to England to meet and escort her; a
thousand times he reproached himself for not having made Southampton the
place of meeting, and he was withheld from proceeding thither only by
the fear of missing her. Giving way to these sentiments, the tide of
affection, swelling into passion, rose in his breast. He doubted not
that, ere long, she would arrive, and taxed himself for modes to show
his gratitude and love.
The American vessel was on the point of sailing--it might have gone
without him, he cared not; when on the sixth day Fenton arrived, and put
into his hand Cornelia's letter. This then was the end of his
expectation, this little paper coldly closed in the destruction of his
hopes; yet might it not merely contain a request for delay? There was
something in the servant's manner, that looked not like that; but still,
as soon as the idea crossed him, he tore open the seal. The words were
few, they were conceived in all the spirit of resentment.
"You add insult to cruelty," it said, "but I scorn to complain. The very
condition you make displays the hollowness and deceit of your
proceeding. You well know that I cannot, that I will not, desert my
mother; but by calling on me for this dereliction of all duty and
virtuous affection, you contrive to throw on me the odium of refusing to
accompany you; this is a worthy design, and it is successful.
"I demand my child--restore her to me. It is cruelty beyond compare, to
separate one so young from maternal tenderness and fosterage. By what
right--through what plea, do you rob me of her? The tyranny and dark
jealousy of your vindictive nature display themselves in this act of
unprincipled violence, as well as in your insulting treatment of my
mother. You alone must reign, be feared, be thought of; all others are
to be sacrificed, living victims, at the shrine of your self-love. What
have you done to merit so much devotion? Ask your heart--if it be not
turned to stone, ask it what you have done to compare with the long
years of affection, kindness, and never-ceasing care that my beloved
parent has bestowed on me. I am your wife, Lodore; I bear your name; I will
be true to the vows I have made you, nor will I number the tears you force
me to shed; but my mother's are sacred, and not one falls in vain for
me.
"Give me my child--let the rest be yours--depart in peace! If Heaven
have blessings for the coldly egotistical, the unfeeling despot, may
these blessings be yours; but do not dare to interfere with emotions too
pure, too disinterested for you ever to understand. Give me my child,
and fear neither my interference nor resentment. I am content to be as
dead to you--quite content never to see you more."