RETROSPECT.
THERE IS A PLACE AT WHICH THREE ROADS MEET, SACRED TO THAT
MYSTERIOUS GODDESS CALLED DIANA ON EARTH, LUNA, OR THE MOON, IN
HEAVEN, OR HECATE IN THE INFERNAL REGIONS. AT THIS PLACE PAUSE THE
VIRGINS PERMITTED TO TAKE THEIR CHOICE OF THE THREE ROADS. FEW GIVE
THEIR PREFERENCE TO THAT WHICH IS VOWED TO THE GODDESS IN HER NAME
OF DIANA: THAT ROAD, COLD AND BARREN, IS CLOTHED BY NO ROSES AND
MYRTLES. ROSES AND MYRTLES VEIL THE ENTRANCE TO BOTH THE OTHERS,
AND IN BOTH THE OTHERS HYMEN HAS MUCH THE SAME GAY-LOOKING TEMPLES.
BUT WHICH OF THOSE TWO LEADS TO THE CELESTIAL LUNA, OR WHICH OF THEM
CONDUCTS TO THE INFERNAL HECATE, NOT ONE NYMPH IN FIFTY DIVINES. IF
THY HEART SHOULD MISGIVE THEE, O NYMPH!--IF, THOUGH CLOUD VEIL THE
PATH TO THE MOON, AND SUNSHINE GILD THAT TO PALE HECATETHINE
INSTINCT RECOILS FROM THE SUNSHINE, WHILE THOU DAREST NOT ADVENTURE
THE CLOUD--THOU HAST STILL A CHOICE LEFT--THOU HAST STILL THE SAFE
ROAD OF DIANA. HECATE, O NYMPH, IS THE GODDESS OF GHOSTS. IF THOU
TAKEST HER PATH, LOOK NOT BACK, FOR THE GHOSTS ARE BEHIND THEE. ..
When we slowly recover from the tumult and passion of some violent
distress, a peculiar stillness falls upon the Mind, and the atmosphere
around it becomes in that stillness appallingly clear. We knew not,
while wrestling with our woe, the extent of its ravages. As a land the
day after a flood, as a field the day after a battle, is the sight of our
own sorrow, when we no longer have to steer its raging, but to endure the
destruction it has made. Distinct before Caroline Montfort's vision
stretched the waste of her misery--the Past, the Present, the Future, all
seemed to blend in one single Desolation. A strange thing it is how all
time will converge itself, as it were, into the burning-glass of a
moment! There runs a popular superstition that it is thus, in the
instant of death; that our whole existence crowds itself on the glazing
eye--a panorama of all we have done on earth just as the soul restores to
the earth its garment. Certes, there are hours in our being, long before
the last and dreaded one, when this phenomenon comes to warn us that, if
memory were always active, time would be never gone. Rose before this
woman--who, whatever the justice of Darrell's bitter reproaches, had a
nature lovely enough to justify his anguish at her loss--the image of
herself at that turning point of life, when the morning mists are dimmed
on our way, yet when a path chosen is a fate decided. Yes; she had
excuses, not urged to the judge who sentenced, nor estimated to their
full extent by the stern equity with which, amidst suffering and wrath,
he had desired to weigh her cause.
Caroline's mother, Mrs. Lindsay, was one of those parents who acquire an
extraordinary influence over their children by the union of caressing
manners with obstinate resolves. She never lost control of her temper
nor hold on her object. A slight, delicate, languid creature too, who
would be sure to go into a consumption if unkindly crossed. With much
strong common sense, much knowledge of human nature, egotistical,
worldly, scheming, heartless, but withal so pleasing, so gentle, so
bewitchingly despotic, that it was like living with an electrobiologist,
who unnerves you by a look to knock you down with a feather. In only
one great purpose of her life had Mrs. Lyndsay failed. When Darrell,
rich by the rewards of his profession and the bequest of his namesake,
had entered Parliament, and risen into that repute which confers solid
and brilliant station, Mrs. Lyndsay conceived the idea of appropriating
to herself his honours and his wealth by a second Hymen. Having so long
been domesticated in his house during the life of Mrs. Darrell, an
intimacy as of near relations had been established between them. Her
soft manners attached to her his children; and after Mrs. Darrell's death
rendered it necessary that she should find a home of her own, she had an
excuse, in Matilda's affection for her and for Caroline, to be more
frequently before Darrell's eyes, and consulted by him yet more
frequently, than when actually a resident in his house. To her Darrell
confided the proposal which had been made to him by the old Marchioness
of Montfort, for an alliance between her young grandson and his sole
surviving child. Wealthy as was the House of Vipont, it was amongst its
traditional maxims that wealth wastes if not perpetually recruited.
Every third generation, at farthest, it was the duty of that house to
marry an heiress. Darrell's daughter, just seventeen, not yet brought
out, would be an heiress, if he pleased to make her so, second to none
whom the research of the Marchioness had detected within the drawing-
rooms and nurseries of the three kingdoms. The proposal of the venerable
peeress was at first very naturally gratifying to Darrell. It was an
euthanasia for the old knightly race to die into a House that was an
institution in the empire, and revive phoenix-like in a line of peers,
who might perpetuate the name of the heiress whose quarterings they would
annex to their own, and sign themselves "Darrell Montfort." Said Darrell
inly, "On the whole, such a marriage would have pleased my poor father."
It did not please Mrs. Lyndsay. The bulk of Darrell's fortune thus
settled away, he himself would be a very different match for Mrs.
Lyndsay; nor was it to her convenience that Matilda should be thus
hastily disposed of, and the strongest link of connection between Fulham
and Carlton Gardens severed. Mrs. Lyndsay had one golden rule, which I
respectfully point out to ladies who covet popularity and power: she
never spoke ill of any one whom she wished to injure. She did not,
therefore, speak ill of the Marquess to Darrell, but she so praised him
that her praise alarmed. She ought to know the young peer well; she was
a good deal with the Marchioness, who liked her pretty manners. Till
then, Darrell had only noticed this green Head of the Viponts as a neat-
looking Head, too modest to open its lips. But he now examined the Head
with anxious deliberation, and finding it of the poorest possible kind of
wood, with a heart to match, Guy Darrell had the audacity to reject,
though with great courtesy, the idea of grafting the last plant of his
line on a stem so pithless. Though, like men who are at once very
affectionate and very busy, he saw few faults in his children, or indeed
in any one he really loved, till the fault was forced on him, he could
not but be aware that Matilda's sole chance of becoming a happy and safe
wife was in uniting herself with such a husband as would at once win her
confidence and command her respect. He trembled when he thought of her
as the wife of a man whose rank would expose her to all fashionable
temptations, and whose character would leave her without a guide or
protector.
The Marquess, who obeyed his grandmother from habit, and who had
lethargically sanctioned her proposals to Darrell, evinced the liveliest
emotion he had ever yet betrayed when he learned that his hand was
rejected. And if it were possible for him to carry so small a sentiment
aspique into so large a passion as hate, from that moment he aggrandised
his nature into hatred. He would have given half his lands to have
spited Guy Darrell. Mrs. Lyndsay took care to be at hand to console him,
and the Marchioness was grateful to her for taking that trouble some task
upon herself. And in the course of their conversation Mrs. Lyndsay
contrived to drop into his mind the egg of a project which she took a
later occasion to hatch under her plumes of down. "There is but one kind
of wife, my dear Montfort, who could increase your importance: you should
marry a beauty; next to royalty ranks beauty." The Head nodded, and
seemed to ruminate for some moments, and then /apropos des bottes/, it
let fall this mysterious monosyllable, "Shoes." By what process of
ratiocination the Head had thus arrived at the feet, it is not for me to
conjecture. All I know is that, from that moment, Mrs. Lyndsay bestowed
as much thought upon Caroline's chaussure as if, like Cinderella,
Caroline's whole destiny in this world hung upon her slipper. With the
feelings and the schemes that have been thus intimated, this sensible
lady's mortification may well be conceived when she was startled by
Darrell's proposal, not to herself, but to her daughter. Her egotism was
profoundly shocked, her worldliness cruelly thwarted. With Guy Darrell
for her own spouse, the Marquess of Montfort for her daughter's, Mrs.
Lyndsay would have been indeed a considerable personage in the world.
But to lose Darrell for herself, and the Marquess altogether--the idea
was intolerable! Yet, since to have refused at once for her portionless
daughter a man in so high a position, and to whom her own obligations
were so great, was impossible, she adopted a policy, admirable for the
craft of its conception and the dexterity of its execution. In exacting
the condition of a year's delay, she made her motives appear so loftily
disinterested, so magnanimously friendly! She could never forgive
herself if he--he--the greatest, the best of men, was again rendered
unhappy in marriage by her imprudence (hers, who owed to him her all!)
--yes, imprudent indeed, to have thrown right in his way a pretty
coquettish girl ("for Caroline is coquettish, Mr. Darrell; most girls so
pretty are at that silly age"). In short, she carried her point against
all the eloquence Darrell could employ, and covered her designs by the
semblance of the most delicate scruples, and the sacrifice of worldly
advantages to the prudence which belongs to high principle and
affectionate caution.
And what were Caroline's real sentiments for Guy Darrell? She understood
them-now on looking back. She saw herself as she was then--as she had
stood under the beech-tree, when the heavenly pity that was at the core
of her nature--when the venerating, grateful affection that had grown
with her growth made her yearn to be a solace and a joy to that grand and
solitary life. Love him! Oh certainly she loved him, devotedly, fondly;
but it was with the love of a child. She had not awakened then to the
love of woman. Removed from his presence, suddenly thrown into the great
world--yes, Darrell had sketched the picture with a stern, but not
altogether an untruthful hand. He had not, however, fairly estimated the
inevitable influence which a mother such as Mrs. Lyndsay would exercise
over a girl so wholly inexperienced--so guileless, so unsuspecting, and
so filially devoted. He could not appreciate--no man can--the mightiness
of female cunning. He could not see how mesh upon mesh the soft Mrs.
Lyndsay (pretty woman with pretty manners) wove her web round the
"cousins," until Caroline, who at first had thought of the silent fair-
haired young man only as the Head of her House, pleased with attentions
that kept aloof admirers of whom she thought Guy Darrell might be more
reasonably jealous, was appalled to hear her mother tell her that she was
either the most heartless of coquettes, or poor Montfort was the most
ill-used of men. But at this time Jasper Losely, under his name of
Hammond, brought his wife from the French town at which they had been
residing, since their marriage, to see Mrs. Lyndsay and Caroline at
Paris, and implore their influence to obtain a reconciliation with her
father. Matilda soon learned from Mrs. Lyndsay, who affected the most
enchanting candour, the nature of the engagement between Caroline and
Darrell. She communicated the information to Jasper, who viewed it with
very natural alarm. By reconciliation with Guy Darrell, Jasper
understood something solid and practical--not a mere sentimental pardon,
added to that paltry stipend of L700 a-year which he had just obtained--
but the restoration to all her rights and expectancies of the heiress he
had supposed himself to marry. He had by no means relinquished the
belief that sooner or later Darrell would listen to the Voice of Nature,
and settle all his fortune on his only child. But then for the Voice of
Nature to have fair play, it was clear that there should be no other
child to plead for. And if Darrell were to marry again and to have sons,
what a dreadful dilemma it would be for the Voice of Nature! Jasper was
not long in discovering that Caroline's engagement was not less unwelcome
to Mrs. Lyndsay than to himself, and that she was disposed to connive at
any means by which it might be annulled. Matilda was first employed to
weaken the bond it was so desirable to sever. Matilda did not reproach,
but she wept. She was sure now that she should he an outcast--her
children beggars. Mrs. Lyndsay worked up this complaint with adroitest
skill. Was Caroline sure that it was not most dishonourable--most
treacherous--to rob her own earliest friend of the patrimony that would
otherwise return to Matilda with Darrell's pardon? This idea became
exquisitely painful to the high-spirited Caroline, but it could not
counterpoise the conviction of the greater pain she should occasion to
the breast that so confided in her faith, if that faith were broken.
Step by step the intrigue against the absent one proceeded. Mrs. Lyndsay
thoroughly understood the art of insinuating doubts. Guy Darrell, a man
of the world, a cold-blooded lawyer, a busy politician, he break his
heart for a girl! No, it was only the young, and especially the young
when not remarkably clever, who broke their hearts for such trifles.
Montfort, indeed--there was a man whose heart could be broken!--whose
happiness could be blasted! Dear Guy Darrell had been only moved, in his
proposals, by generosity. "Something, my dear child, in your own artless
words and manner, that made him fancy he had won your affections unknown
to yourself!--an idea that he was bound as a gentleman to speak out!
Just like him. He has that spirit of chivalry. But my belief is, that
he is quite aware by this time how foolish such a marriage would be, and
would thank you heartily if, at the year's end, he found himself free,
and you happily disposed of elsewhere," &c., &c. The drama advanced.
Mrs. Lyndsay evinced decided pulmonary symptoms. Her hectic cough
returned; she could not sleep; her days were numbered--a secret grief.
Caroline implored frankness, and, clasped to her mother's bosom, and
compassionately bedewed with tears, those hints were dropped into her ear
which, though so worded as to show the most indulgent forbearance to
Darrell, and rather as if in compassion for his weakness than in
abhorrence of his perfidy, made Caroline start with the indignation of
revolted purity and outraged pride. "Were this true, all would be indeed
at an end between us! But it is not true. Let it be proved."
"But, my dear, dear child, I could not stir in a matter so delicate.
I could not aid in breaking off a marriage so much to your worldly
advantage, unless you could promise that, in rejecting Mr. Darrell, you
would accept your cousin. In my wretched state of health, the anxious
thought of leaving you in the world literally penniless would kill me at
once."
"Oh, if Guy Darrell be false (but that is impossible)! do with me all you
will; to obey and please you would be the only comfort left to me."
Thus was all prepared for the final denouement. Mrs. Lyndsay had not
gone so far without a reliance on the means to accomplish her object, and
for these means she had stooped to be indebted to the more practical
villany of Matilda's husband.
Jasper, in this visit to Paris, had first formed the connection which
completed the wickedness of his perverted nature, with that dark
adventuress who has flitted shadow-like through part of this varying
narrative. Gabrielle Desmarets was then in her youth, notorious only for
the ruin she had inflicted on admiring victims, and the superb luxury
with which she rioted on their plunder. Captivated by the personal
advantages for which Jasper then was preeminently conspicuous, she
willingly associated her fortunes with his own. Gabrielle was one of
those incarnations of evil which no city but Paris can accomplish with
the same epicurean refinement, and vitiate into the same cynical
corruption. She was exceedingly witty, sharply astute, capable of acting
any part, carrying out any plot; and when it pleased her to simulate the
decorous and immaculate gentlewoman, she might have deceived the most
experienced roue. Jasper presented this Artiste to his unsuspecting wife
as a widow of rank, who was about to visit London, and who might be
enabled to see Mr. Darrell, and intercede on their behalf. Matilda fell
readily into the snare; the Frenchwoman went to London, with assumed name
and title, and with servants completely in her confidence. And such (as
the reader knows already) was that eloquent baroness who had pleaded to
Darrell the cause of his penitent daughter! No doubt the wily Parisienne
had calculated on the effect of her arts and her charms, to decoy him
into at least a passing forgetfulness of his faith to another. But if
she could not succeed there, it might equally achieve the object in view
to obtain the credit of that success. Accordingly, she wrote to one of
her friends at Paris letters stating that she had found a very rich
admirer in a celebrated English statesman, to whom she was indebted for
her establishment, &c.; and alluding, in very witty and satirical terms,
to his matrimonial engagement with the young English beauty at Paris, who
was then creating such a sensation--an engagement of which she
represented her admirer to be heartily sick, and extremely repentant.
Without mentioning names, her descriptions were unmistakable. Jasper, of
course, presented to Mrs. Lyndsay those letters (which, he said, the
person to whom they were addressed had communicated to one of her own gay
friends), and suggested that their evidence against Darrell would be
complete in Miss Lyndsay's eyes if some one, whose veracity Caroline
could not dispute, could corroborate the assertions of the letters; it
would be quite enough to do so if Mr. Darrell were even seen entering or
leaving the house of a person whose mode of life was so notorious. Mrs.
Lyndsay, who, with her consummate craft, saved her dignity by affected
blindness to the artifices at which she connived, declared that, in a
matter of inquiry which involved the private character of a man so
eminent, and to whom she owed so much, she would not trust his name to
the gossip of others. She herself would go to London. She knew that
odious, but too fascinating, Gabrielle by sight (as every one did who
went to the opera or drove in the Bois de Boulogne). Jasper undertook
that the Parisienne should show herself at her balcony at a certain day
at a certain hour, and that at that hour Darrell should call and be
admitted; and Mrs. Lyndsay allowed that that evidence would suffice.
Sensible of the power over Caroline that she would derive if, with her
habits of languor and her delicate health, she could say that she had
undertaken such a journey to be convinced with her own eyes of a charge
which, if true, would influence her daughter's conduct and destiny--Mrs.
Lyndsay did go to London--did see Gabrielle Desmarets at her balcony--did
see Darrell enter the house; and on her return to Paris did, armed with
this testimony, and with the letters that led to it, so work upon her
daughter's mind, that the next day the Marquess of Montfort was accepted.
But the year of Darrell's probation was nearly expired; all delay would
be dangerous--all explanations would be fatal, and must be forestalled.
Nor could a long courtship be kept secret; Darrell might hear of it, and
come over at once; and the Marquess's ambitious kinsfolk would not fail
to interfere if the news of his intended marriage with a portionless
cousin reached their ears. Lord Montfort, who was awed by Carr, and
extremely afraid of his grandmother, was not less anxious for secrecy
and expedition than Mrs. Lyndsay herself.
Thus, then, Mrs. Lyndsay triumphed, and while her daughter was still
under the influence of an excitement which clouded her judgment, and
stung her into rashness of action as an escape from the torment of
reflection--thus were solemnised Caroline's unhappy and splendid
nuptials. The Marquess hired a villa in the delightful precincts of
Fontainebleau for his honeymoon; that moon was still young when the
Marquess said to himself, "I don't find that it produces honey." When he
had first been attracted towards Caroline, she was all life and joy--too
much of a child to pine for Darrell's absence, while credulously
confident of their future union--her spirits naturally wild and lively,
and the world, opening at her feet, so novel and so brilliant. This
fresh gaiety had amused the Marquess--he felt cheated when he found it
gone. Caroline might be gentle, docile, submissive; but those virtues,
though of higher quality than glad animal spirits, are not so
entertaining. His own exceeding sterility of mind and feeling was not
apparent till in the /tetes-a-tetes/ of conjugal life. A good-looking
young man, with a thoroughbred air, who rides well, dances well, and
holds his tongue, may, in all mixed societies, pass for a shy youth of
sensitive genius! But when he is your companion for life, and all to
yourself, and you find that, when he does talk, he has neither an idea
nor a sentiment--alas! alas for you, young bride, if you have ever known
the charm of intellect, or the sweetness of sympathy. But it was not for
Caroline to complain; struggling against her own weight of sorrow, she
had no immediate perception of her companion's vapidity. It was he, poor
man, who complained. He just detected enough of her superiority of
intelligence to suspect that he was humiliated, while sure that he was
bored. An incident converted his growing indifference into permanent
dislike not many days after their marriage.
Lord Montfort, sauntering into Caroline's room, found her insensible
on the floor--an open letter by her side. Summoning her maid to her
assistance, he took the marital privilege of reading the letter which had
apparently caused her swoon. It was from Matilda, and written in a state
of maddened excitement. Matilda had little enough of what is called
heart; but she had an intense selfishness, which, in point of suffering,
supplies the place of a heart. It was not because she could not feel for
the wrongs of another that she could not feel anguish for her own.
Arabella was avenged. The cold-blooded snake that had stung her met
the fang of the cobra-capella. Matilda had learned from some anonymous
correspondent (probably a rival of Gabrielle's) of Jasper's liaison with
that adventuress. But half recovered from her confinement, she had risen
from her bed--hurried to Paris (for the pleasures of which her husband
had left her)--seen this wretched Gabrielle--recognised in her the false
baroness to whom Jasper had presented her--to whom, by Jasper's
dictation, she had written such affectionate letters--whom she had
employed to plead her cause to her father;--seen Gabrielle--seen her at
her own luxurious apartment, Jasper at home there--burst into vehement
wrath-roused up the cobra-capella; and on declaring she would separate
from her husband, go back to her father, tell her wrongs, appeal to his
mercy, Gabrielle caimly replied: "Do so, and I will take care that your
father shall know that your plea for his pardon through Madame la Baronne
was a scheme to blacken his name, and to frustrate his marriage. Do not
think that he will suppose you did not connive at a project so sly; he
must know you too well, pretty innocent." No match for Gabrielle
Desmarets, Matilda flung from the house, leaving Jasper whistling an air
from Figaro; returned alone to the French town from which she now wrote
to Caroline, pouring out her wrongs, and, without seeming sensible that
Caroline had been wronged too, expressing her fear that her father might
believe her an accomplice in Jasper's plot, and refuse her the means to
live apart from the wretch; upon whom she heaped every epithet that just
indignation could suggest to a feeble mind. The latter part of the
letter, blurred and blotted, was incoherent, almost raving. In fact
Matilda was then seized by the mortal illness which hurried her to her
grave. To the Marquess much of this letter was extremely uninteresting
--much of it quite incomprehensible. He could not see why it should so
overpoweringly affect his wife. Only those passages which denounced a
scheme to frustrate some marriage meditated by Mr. Darrell made him
somewhat uneasy, and appeared to him to demand an explanation. But
Caroline, in the anguish to which she awakened, forestalled his
inquiries. To her but two thoughts were present--how she had wronged
Darrell--how ungrateful and faithless she must seem to him; and in the
impulse of her remorse, and in the childlike candour of her soul,
artlessly, ingenuously, she poured out her feelings to the husband she
had taken as counsellor and guide, as if seeking to guard all her sorrow
for the past from a sentiment that might render her less loyal to the
responsibilities which linked her future to another's. A man of sense
would have hailed in so noble a confidence (however it might have pained
him for the time) a guarantee for the happiness and security of his whole
existence. He would have seen how distinct from that ardent love which
in Caroline's new relation of life would have bordered upon guilt and
been cautious as guilt against disclosing its secrets, was the infantine,
venerating affection she had felt for a man so far removed from her by
years and the development of intellect--an affection which a young
husband, trusted with every thought, every feeling, might reasonably hope
to eclipse. A little forbearance, a little of delicate and generous
tenderness, at that moment, would have secured to Lord Montfort the warm
devotion of a grateful heart, in which the grief that overflowed was not
for the irreplaceable loss of an earlier lover, but the repentant shame
for wrong and treachery to a confiding friend.
But it is in vain to ask from any man that which is not in him! Lord
Montfort listened with sullen, stolid displeasure. That Caroline should
feel the slightest pain at any cause which had cancelled her engagement
to that odious Darrell, and had raised her to the rank of his
Marchioness, was a crime in his eyes never to be expiated. He
considered, not without reason, that Mrs. Lyndsay had shamefully deceived
him; and fully believed that she had been an accomplice with Jasper in
that artifice which he was quite gentleman enough to consider placed
those who had planned it out of the pale of his acquaintance. And when
Caroline, who had been weeping too vehemently to read her lord's
countenance, came to a close, Lord Montfort took up his hat and said:
"I beg never to hear again of this lawyer and his very disreputable
family connections. As you say, you and your mother have behaved very
ill to him; but you don't seem to understand that you have behaved much
worse to me. As to condescending to write to him, and enter into
explanations how you came to be Lady Montfort, it would be so lowering to
me that I would never forgive it--never. I would just as soon that you
run away at once;--sooner. As for Mrs. Lyndsay, I shall forbid her
entering my house. When you have done crying, order your things to be
packed up. I shall return to England to-morrow."
That was perhaps the longest speech Lord Montfort ever addressed to his
wife; perhaps it was also the rudest. From that time he regarded her as
some Spaniard of ancient days might regard a guest on whom he was
compelled to bestow the rights of hospitality--to whom he gave a seat at
his board, a chair at his hearth, but for whom he entertained a profound
aversion, and kept at invincible distance, with all the ceremony of
dignified dislike. Once only during her wedded life Caroline again saw
Darrell. It was immediately on her return to England, and little more
than a month after her marriage. It was the day on which Parliament had
been prorogued preparatory to its dissolution--the last Parliament of
which Guy Darrell was a member. Lady Montfort's carriage was detained in
the throng with which the ceremonial had filled the streets, and Darrell
passed it on horseback. It was but one look in that one moment; and the
look never ceased to haunt her--a look of such stern disdain, but also of
such deep despair. No language can exaggerate the eloquence which there
is in a human countenance, when a great and tortured spirit speaks out
from it accusingly to a soul that comprehends. The crushed heart, the
ravaged existence, were bared before her in that glance, as clearly as to
a wanderer through the night are the rents of the precipice in the flash
of the lightning. So they encountered--so, without a word, they parted.
To him that moment decided the flight from active life to which his
hopeless thoughts had of late been wooing the jaded, weary man. In
safety to his very conscience, he would not risk the certainty thus to
encounter one whom it convulsed his whole being to remember was another's
wife. In that highest and narrowest sphere of the great London world to
which Guy Darrell's political distinction condemned his social life, it
was impossible but that he should be brought frequently into collision
with Lord Montfort, the Head of a House with which Darrell himself was
connected--the most powerful patrician of the party of which Darrell was
so conspicuous a chief. Could he escape Lady Montfort's presence, her
name at least would be continually in his ears. From that fatal beauty
he could no more hide than from the sun.
This thought, and the terror it occasioned him, completed his resolve on
the instant. The next day he was in the groves of Fawley, and amazed the
world by dating from that retreat a farewell address to his constituents.
A few days after, the news of his daughter's death reached him; and as
that event became known it accounted to many for his retirement for a
while from public life.
But to Caroline Montfort, and to her alone, the secret of a career
blasted, a fame renounced, was unmistakably revealed. For a time she was
tortured, in every society she entered, by speculation and gossip which
brought before her the memory of his genius, the accusing sound of his
name. But him who withdraws from the world, the world soon forgets; and
by degrees Darrell became as little spoken of as the dead.
Mrs. Lyndsay had never, during her schemes on Lord Montfort, abandoned
her own original design on Darrell. And when, to her infinite amaze and
mortification, Lord Montfort, before the first month of his marriage
expired, took care, in the fewest possible words, to dispel her dream of
governing the House, and residing in the houses of Vipont, as the lawful
agent during the life-long minority to which she had condemned both the
submissive Caroline and the lethargic Marquess, she hastened by letter to
exculpate herself to Darrell--laid, of course, all the blame on Caroline.
Alas! had not she always warned him that Caroline was not worthy of him?
--him, the greatest, the best of men, &c., &c. Darrell replied by a
single cut of his trenchant sarcasm--sarcasm which shore through her
cushion of down and her veil of gauze like the sword of Saladin. The old
Marchioness turned her back upon Mrs. Lyndsay. Lady Selina was
crushingly civil. The pretty woman with pretty manners, no better off
for all the misery she had occasioned, went to Rome, caught cold, and
having no one to nurse her as Caroline had done, fell at last into a real
consumption, and faded out of the world elegantly and spitefully, as
fades a rose that still leaves its thorns behind it.
Caroline's nature grew developed and exalted by the responsibilities she
had accepted, and by the purity of her grief. She submitted, as a just
retribution, to the solitude and humiliation of her wedded lot; she
earnestly, virtuously strove to banish from her heart every sentiment
that could recall to her more of Darrell than the remorse of having
darkened a life that had been to her childhood so benignant, and to her
youth so confiding. As we have seen her, at the mention of Darrell's
name--at the allusion to his griefs--fly to the side of her ungenial
lord, though he was to her but as the owner of the name she bore,--so it
was the saving impulse of a delicate, watchful conscience that kept her
as honest in thought as she was irreproachable in conduct. But vainly,
in summoning her intellect to the relief of her heart--vainly had she
sought to find in the world friendships, companionships, that might
eclipse the memory of the mind so lofty in its antique mould--so tender
in its depths of unsuspected sweetness--which had been withdrawn from her
existence before she could fully comprehend its rarity, or appreciate its
worth.
At last she became free once more; and then she had dared thoroughly to
examine into her own heart, and into the nature of that hold which the
image of Darrell still retained on its remembrances. And precisely
because she was convinced that she had succeeded in preserving her old
childish affection for him free from the growth into that warm love which
would have been guilt if so encouraged, she felt the more free to
volunteer the atonement which might permit her to dedicate herself to his
remaining years. Thus, one day, after a conversation with Alban Morley,
in which Alban had spoken of Darrell as the friend, almost the virtual
guardian, of her infancy; and, alluding to a few lines just received from
him, brought vividly before Caroline the picture of Darrell's melancholy
wanderings and blighted life,--thus had she, on the impulse of the
moment, written the letter which had reached Darrell at Malta. In it she
referred but indirectly to the deceit that had been practised on herself
--far too delicate to retail a scandal which she felt to be an insult to
his dignity, in which, too, the deceiving parties were his daughter's
husband and her own mother. No doubt every true woman can understand why
she thus wrote to Darrell, and every true man can equally comprehend why
that letter failed in its object, and was returned to her in scorn. Hers
was the yearning of meek, passionless affection, and his the rebuke of
sensitive, embittered indignant love.
But now, as all her past, with its interior life, glided before her, by a
grief the most intolerable she had yet known, the woman became aware that
it was no longer penitence for the injured friend--it was despair for the
lover she had lost. In that stormy interview, out of all the confused
and struggling elements of her life--long self-reproach, LOVE--the love
of woman--had flashed suddenly, luminously, as the love of youth at first
sight. Strange--but the very disparity of years seemed gone! She, the
matured, sorrowful woman, was so much nearer to the man, still young in
heart and little changed in person, than the gay girl of seventeen had
been to the grave friend of forty! Strange, but those vehement
reproaches had wakened emotions deeper in the core of the wild mortal
breast than all that early chivalrous homage which had exalted her into
the ideal of dreaming poets. Strange, strange, strange! But where there
is nothing strange, THERE--is there ever love?
And with this revelation of her own altered heart, came the clearer and
fresher insight into the nature and character of the man she loved.
Hitherto she had recognised but his virtues--now she beheld his failings!
beholding them as if virtues, loved him more; and, loving him, more
despaired. She recognised that all-pervading indomitable pride, which,
interwoven with his sense of honour, became relentless as it was
unrevengeful. She comprehended now that, the more he loved her, the
less he would forgive; and, recalling the unexpected gentleness of his
farewell words, she felt that in his promised blessing lay the sentence
that annihilated every hope.