And so farewell; for we will henceforth be
As we had never seen, ne'er more shall see.
HEYWOOD.
Lodore had passed many days upon the sea, on his voyage to America, before
he could in the least calm the bitter emotions to which Cornelia's violent
letter had given birth. He was on the wide Atlantic; the turbid ocean
swelled and roared around him, and heaven, the mansion of the winds,
showed on its horizon an extent of water only. He was cut off from
England, from Europe, for ever; and the vast continents he quitted
dwindled into a span; but still the images of those he left behind dwelt
in his soul, engrossing and filling it. They could no longer personally
taunt nor injure him; but the thought of them, of all that they might
say or do, haunted his mind; it was like an unreal strife of gigantic
shadows beneath dark night, which, when you approach, dwindles into thin
air, but which, contemplated at a distance, fills the hemisphere with
star-reaching heads, and steps that scale mountains. There was a
sleepless tumult in Lodore's heart; it was a waking dream of the most
painful description. Again and again Cornelia assailed him with
reproaches, and Lady Santerre poured out curses upon him; his fancy lent
them words and looks full of menace, hate, and violence. Sometimes the
sighing of the breeze in the shrouds assumed a tone that mocked their
voices; his sleep was disturbed by dreams more painful than his daylight
fancies; and the sense which they imparted of suffering and oppression,
was prolonged throughout the day.
He occasionally felt that he might become mad, and at such moments, the
presence of his child brought consolation and calm; her caresses, her
lisped expressions of affection, her playfulness, her smiles, were
spells to drive away the fantastic reveries that tortured him. He looked
upon her cherub face, and the world, late so full of wretchedness and
ill, assumed brighter hues; the storm was allayed, the dark clouds fled,
sunshine poured forth its beams; by degrees, tender and gentle
sensations crept over his heart; he forgot the angry contentions in
which, in imagination, he had been engaged, and he felt, that alone on
the sea, with this earthly angel of peace near him, he was divided from
every evil, to dwell with tranquillity and love.
To part with her had become impossible. She was all that rendered him
human--that plucked the thorn from his pillow, and poured one mitigating
drop into the bitter draught administered to him.
Cornelia, Casimir, Theodora, his mother-in-law, these were all various
names and shapes of the spirit of evil, sent upon earth to torture him:
but this heavenly sprite could set at nought their machinations and
restore him to the calm and hopes of childhood. Extreme in all things,
Lodore began more than ever to doat upon her and to bind up his life in
her. Yet sometimes his heart softened at the recollection of his wife, of
her extreme youth, and of the natural pang she must feel at being deprived
of her daughter. He figured her pining, and in tears--he remembered that
he had vowed to protect and love her for ever; and that deprived of him,
never more could the soft attentions and sweet language of love soothe
her heart or meet her ear, unattended with a sense of guilt and
degradation. He knew that hereafter she might feel this--hereafter, when
passion might be roused, and he could afford no remedy. Influenced by
such ideas, he wrote to her; many letters he wrote during his voyage,
destroying them one after another, dictated by the varying feelings that
alternately ruled him. Reason and persuasion, authority and tenderness,
reigned by turns in these epistles; they were written with all the
fervour of his ardent soul, and breathed irresistible power. Had some of
these papers met Cornelia's eye, she had assuredly been vanquished; but
fate ordained it otherwise: fate that blindly weaves our web of life,
culling her materials at will, and often wholly refusing to make use of
our own desires and intentions, as forming a part of our destiny.
Lodore arrived at New York, and found, by some chance, letters already
waiting for him there. He had concluded one to his wife full of affection
and kindness, when a letter with the superscription written by Lady
Santerre was delivered to him. It spoke of law proceedings, of eternal
separation, and announced her daughter's resolve to receive no
communication, to read no address, that was not prefaced by the
restoration of her child; it referred him to a solicitor as the medium
of future intercourse. With a bitter laugh Lodore tore to pieces the
eloquent and heart-felt appeal he had been on the point of sending; he
gave up his thoughts to business only; he wrote to his agent, he
arranged for his intended journey; in less than a month he was on his
road to the Illinois.
Thus ended all hope of reconciliation, and Lady Santerre won the day.
She had worked on the least amiable of her daughter's feelings, and
exalted anger into hatred, disapprobation into contempt and aversion.
Soon after Cornelia had dismissed the servant, she felt that she had
acted with too little reflection. Her heart died within her at the idea,
that too truly Lodore might sail away with her child, and leave her widowed
and solitary for ever. Her proud heart knew, on this account, no relenting
towards her husband, the author of these painful feelings, but she
formed the resolve not to lose all without a struggle. She announced her
intention of proceeding to Havre to obtain her daughter. Lady Santerre
could not oppose so natural a proceeding, especially as her
companionship was solicited as in the highest degree necessary. They
arrived at Southampton; the day was tempestuous, the wind contrary. Lady
Santerre was afraid of the water, and their voyage was deferred. On the
evening of the following day, Fenton arrived from Havre. Lord Lodore had
sailed, the stormy waves of the Atlantic were between him and the shores
of England; pursuit were vain; it would be an acknowledgment of defeat
to follow him to America. Cornelia returned to Twickenham, maternal
sorrow contending in her heart with mortified pride, and a keen
resentful sense of injury.
Lady Lodore was nineteen; an age when youth is most arrogant, and most
heedless of the feelings of others. Her beauty and the admiration it
acquired, sate her on the throne of the world, and, to her own imagination,
she looked down like an eastern princess, upon slaves only: her sway she
had believed to be absolute; it was happiness for others to obey. Exalted
by adulation, it was natural that all that lowered her elevation in her own
eyes, should appear impertinent and hateful. She had not learned to feel
with or for others. To act in contradiction to her wishes was a crime
beyond compare, and her soul was in arms to resent the insolence which
thus assailed her majesty of will. The act of Lodore, stepping beyond
common-place opposition into injury and wrong, found no mitigating
excuses in her heart. No gentle return of love, no compassion for the
unhappy exile--no generous desire to diminish the sufferings of one, who
was the victim of the wildest and most tormenting passions, softened her
bosom. She was injured, insulted, despised, and her swelling soul was
incapable of any second emotion to the scorn and hate with which she
visited the author of her degradation. She was to become the theme of
the world's discourse, of its ill-natured censure or mortifying pity. In
whatever light she viewed her present position, it was full of annoyance
and humiliation; her path was traced through a maze of pointed angles,
that pained her at every turn, and her reflections magnifying the
imprudence of which she accused herself, suggested no excuse for her
husband, but caused her wounds to fester and burn. Cornelia was not of a
lachrymose disposition; she was a woman who in Sparta had formed an
heroine; who in periods of war and revolution, would unflinchingly have
met calamity, sustaining and leading her own sex. But through the bad
education she had received, and her extreme youth, elevation of feeling
degenerated into mere personal pride, and heroism was turned into
obstinacy; she had been capable of the most admirable self-sacrifice,
had she been taught the right shrine at which to devote herself; but her
mind was narrowed by the mode of her bringing up, and her loftiest ideas
were centered in worldly advantages the most worthless and pitiable. To
defraud her of these, was to deprive her of all that rendered life worth
preserving.
Lady Santerre soothed, flattered, and directed her. She poured the balm
of gratified vanity upon injured pride. She bade her expect speedy
repentance from her husband, and impressed her with the idea, that if
she were firm, he must yield. His present blustering prognosticated a
speedy calm, when he would regret all that he had done, and seek, by
entire submission, to win back his wife. Any appearance of concession on
her part would spoil all. Cornelia's eyes flashed fire at the word.
Concession! and to whom? To him who had wronged and insulted her? She
readily gave into her mother's hands the management of all future
intercourse with him, reserving alone, for her own satisfaction, an
absolute resolve never to forgive.
The correspondence that ensued, carried on across the Atlantic, and soon
with many miles of continent added to the space, only produced an
interchange of letters written with cool insolence on one side, with
heart-burning and impatience on the other. Each served to widen the
breach. When Cornelia was not awakened to resent for herself, she took up
arms on her mother's account. When Lodore blamed her for being the puppet
of one incapable of any generous feeling, one dedicated to the vulgar
worship of Mammon, she repelled the taunt, and denied the servitude of
soul of which she was accused; she declared that every virtue was
enlisted on her mother's side, and that she would abide by her for ever.
In truth, she loved her the more for Lodore's hatred, and Lady Santerre
spared no pains to impress her with the belief, that she was wholly
devoted to her.
Thus years passed away. At first Lady Lodore had lived in some degree of
retirement, but persuaded again to emerge, she soon entered into the
very thickest maze of society. Her fortune was sufficient to command a
respectable station, her beauty gained her partizans, her untainted
reputation secured her position in the world. Attractive as she was, she
was so entirely and proudly correct, that even the women were not afraid
of her. All her intimate associates were people whose rank gave weight
and brilliancy to her situation, but who were conspicuous for their
domestic virtues. She was looked upon as an injured and deserted wife,
whose propriety of conduct was the more admirable from the difficulties
with which she was surrounded; she became more than ever the fashion,
and years glided on, as from season to season she shone a bright star
among many luminaries, improving in charms and grace, as knowledge of
the world and the desire of pleasing were added to her natural
attractions.
The stories at first in circulation on Lodore's departure, all sufficiently
wide from the truth, were half forgotten, and served merely as an
obscure substratum for Cornelia's bright reputation. He was gone: he
could no longer injure nor benefit any, and was therefore no longer an
object of fear or love. The most charitable construction put upon his
conduct was, that he was mad, and it was piously observed, that his
removal from this world would be a blessing. Lady Santerre triumphed.
Withering away in unhonoured age, still she appeared in the halls of the
great, and played the part of Cerberus in her daughter's drawing-room.
Lady Lodore, beautiful and admired, intoxicated with this sort of
prosperity, untouched by passion, unharmed by the temptations that
surrounded her, believed that life was spent most worthily in following
the routine observed by those about her, and securing the privilege of
being exclusive. She was the glass of fashion--the imitated by a vast
sect of imitators. The deprivation of her child was the sole cloud that
came between her and the sun. In despite of herself, she never saw a
little cherub with rosy cheeks and golden hair, but her heart was
visited by a pang; and in her dreams she often beheld, instead of the
image of the gay saloons in which she spent her evenings, a desert
wild--a solitary home--and tiny footsteps on the dewy grass, guiding her
to her baby daughter, whose soft cooings, remembered during absence,
were agonizing to her. She awoke, and vowed her soul to hatred of the
author of her sufferings--the cruel-hearted, insolent Lodore; and then
fled to pleasure as the means of banishing these sad and disturbing
emotions. She never again saw Casimir. Long before she re-appeared in
the world, he and his mother had quitted England. Taught by the slight
tinge of weakness that had mingled with her intercourse with him, she
sedulously avoided like trials in future; and placing her happiness in
universal applause, love saw her set his power at nought, and pride
become a more impenetrable shield than wisdom.