For it so falls out
That what we have we prize not to the worth,
Whiles we enjoy it; but, being lacked and lost,
Why then we rack the value.
SHAKSPEARE.
Whilst I remember
Her and her virtues, I cannot forget
My blemishes in them, and so still think of
The wrong I did myself.
This mode of life had continued for many more days than either of
them would retrospectively have imagined to have elapsed since its
commencement. And in the course of it many topics which should have
been altogether avoided, had every day imperceptibly been approached
more nearly, and with greater effort evaded.
One day Lady Gayland, principally from a desire to fix her attention
upon some extraneous and indifferent subject, had requested to be
allowed in their next ride to mount Castleton’s own horse, instead
of the more docile creature procured for Lucy, which she pronounced
too sluggish. Castleton was at first rather afraid to assent, as
his beautiful animal, though perfectly tractable under his skilful
management, had only lately exchanged the turf for the road. But as
the groom reported that the essay of the petticoat had been perfectly
satisfactory, and as Lady Gayland was a most fearless horse-woman,
the exchange, at her repeated request, was made on their next
excursion.
They had, in consequence of the novelty of the experiment, started
with the intention, at Castleton’s desire, of riding more quietly
and carefully; and as they strolled slowly onwards, insensibly their
attention had been transferred from the horse to their discourse,
which was much the more animated of the two, as no animal is more
sleepy than a spirited horse will sometimes be, when left to himself,
with the reins upon his neck.
The origin of this, as of many other interesting conversations, was
common place. We need not, perhaps, travel even so far back as when,
in reply to some disclaimer on Lady Gayland’s part, Castleton said,
“You know what Byron sings--
‘No friend like to a woman earth discovers.’”
“Ay, but remember,” interrupted Lady Gayland, “the proviso he adds:
‘So that they have not been, nor will be----’
what?--what is the word whose indispensable presence at the point of
the stanza alone, excuses such a botching rhyme as _discovers_?”
“_Lovers_,” answered Castleton. “To be sure he says they should never
have been, but then I think it was his own negative experience,
limiting his opinion of the social qualities of poor human nature
which warped his judgment. In introducing my quotation I should have
said _even_ Byron sings--for I think he never had, nor I think was it
in his nature to have, a female friend.”
“His sister--”
“He was a kind and a grateful brother to a fond and an indulgent
sister, that was all.”
“Poor Byron! who so philosophic a guide for others? who so practical
a blunderer for himself in search of the sources of happiness?”
“Others without his talent to commemorate their wayward
inconsistencies, may have thought as deeply and mistaken as
thoroughly,” answered Castleton, in a tone of bitterness.
“A female friend! ’tis almost an impossibility,” continued Lady
Gayland, still generalizing the conversation; “at what stage of our
existence could such a feeling take its date? As a girl? No! You men
generally treat girls either as flirts or fools, and wilfully shut
your eyes to the study of that character of which a special licence
is to be the diploma. So mankind to girls are divided into the
marrying and non-marrying classes. With the first, friendship would
appear forward; with the latter, lost time. As a wife?--Possibly some
men might. But I think you, for instance, would not like your wife to
maintain a perfect and unreserved friendship with another man? No; in
neither case would it do.”
“But yourself,” interrupted Castleton, “you need not be restrained by
any of the embarrassments of either of the stations you mention?”
“No; and at fifty perhaps I may think about it; but let us if
possible avoid to speak individually. There is only one relation in
life in which a woman may be peerless and perfect, and luckily that
is as a wife. A mistress’s present career is made up of regret for
the past and fear for the future; a female friend content to be no
more, is an anomaly rarely found. A wife may unite all that is most
estimable in friendship, with so much more than that cold feeling can
ever know, that it would be the veriest bathos to degrade a wife to
the title of friend.”
“Yet some wives can never be friends, and now, alas! some friends can
never become wives.”
“A woman’s part in courtship is, you must recollect, a passive one;
we must ever wait till we are asked.”
“Yet who but a fool or a coxcomb would ever venture a proposal unless
pretty certain that his suit would not be displeasing; and does not
that render it equivalent to a refusal, when a woman tortures by
indications of indifference? What would I now give that you had never
misled me!”
“Lord Castleton, I will not say how much I regret that you should
have introduced a subject which may interrupt our intercourse. For
that your society is agreeable to me, I wonder you should ever have
doubted; but it does not _now_ become me to make either professions
or disclaimers on that subject. It is only to excuse, not to revive,
the past, that I now speak. This is the last time that former days
must ever be mentioned between us. How did I then mislead you?”
“I know that I ought not to have recurred to this topic, nor, believe
me, had I any previous intention of doing so; but now it is as well
that I should explain, in doing which I own there may be more to
excuse in myself than to blame in you. But you knew me thoroughly--my
over sensitive fastidious nature; why then did you torture me with an
apparent preference of Frank Melmoth? I knew that he was every way
unworthy of you, but I construed your whole conduct into an internal
struggle between your judgment, which still held out on my side, and
your heart, which had already yielded to him.”
“Would any man but yourself have so interpreted it? Do you believe
even Frank Melmoth, with all his coxcombry, so read it?”
“Perhaps not; but still he was indefatigable in persuading me
that such was the construction all parties must put upon your
conduct. Trifles light as air are, you know, sometimes--I need
not particularize--the earliest violets which I had promised, and
procured for you, were boastfully displayed in his button-hole at
the ball, the same evening. Eager for an explanation, you refused
the request I therefore made to be set down at home by you, yet
afterwards you consented to convey him. The next night at the opera
was my last, and served to convince me, that your preference upon
all indifferent points was decidedly his, and that if there was still
a doubt upon your mind, it was my position, not my personal merits,
which maintained it.”
“And if the first part of your supposition had been well founded,
think not your position would have maintained that doubt a moment.
But, first, to answer your last instance; had I conveyed you home,
who had a carriage of your own in attendance, it would have been a
measure--and how much I might be aware that you were anxious for an
explanation--it was not my business so pointedly to facilitate it.
When afterwards the poor, needy, half-drowned creature begged for
a lift, it would have been positive cruelty to have sent him under
the spouts in such a deluge as was then pouring down. Besides, do
you not know, with us women there is no such universal patentee of
exclusive privileges as indifference. As to your other accusation,
the transfer of your flowers, in that, too, I was perfectly
innocent. They were left by you upon my table. You know how easy the
entrance into apartments at an hotel abroad always is. Frank Melmoth
volunteered a visit--I was in my own room. My spirits, so far as
society is concerned, seldom fail me; but I own I did then feel quite
unequal to receive him. A long time has elapsed, and too many changes
occurred since then, for it to be expected that I should recollect
exactly what the reflections were which then overpowered me; but as
if it were but yesterday, the feelings which then so unnerved me, are
even now as then fresh before me--but I have strength to drive them
hence. One word in concluding my explanation: I sent an excuse to
Melmoth, declining to see him: in revenge, he carried off my violets,
leaving me instead a few doggrel couplets, which I own I do not
recollect so well as the other parts of the transaction; but,” added
she, forcing a smile, “I know there was a string of rhymes, something
about flowers--hours--powers.--I have done----
‘The very head and front of my offending
Hath this extent. No more.’”--
“Fool! dolt! idiot that I am!” exclaimed Castleton. “For this, then,
and no more, have I, with all my boasted superior discrimination,
cast aside my happiness for ever.”
“Nay,” said Lady Gayland, “I must not even now permit you to speak
thus: nor ever allow myself to touch on these topics again. And now
let us turn our own and our horses’ heads homewards. You have a home,
and to that ’tis time we bend both our thoughts and our course.”
So saying, and anxious at once to close the conversation, her
impatience as a woman got the better of her usual discretion as an
equestrian. Turning her horse round, she at the same time struck him
smartly with her whip. Thus unexpectedly roused from that torpor, in
which perhaps he had been indulging visions of former triumphs on the
turf, and fancying that the same exertions were required of him, the
fiery animal started eagerly forward. She checked him firmly with the
curb; but, unused to the severity of that bit, this only made him
plunge so violently, as to require all her presence of mind and skill
in riding to maintain her seat.
“For heaven’s sake let me take hold of his head, and change with me
again!” anxiously exclaimed Castleton, jumping off for that purpose.
But in violently shaking his head, in impatience at the sharpness
of the bit, Lady Gayland’s horse had detached the curb-chain from
the hook: this dangling loose, only maddened him the more; he became
perfectly unmanageable, and after plunging three or four times, more
furiously than ever, though without unseating, or even agitating her,
whose courage rose with the emergency, he at length brought down his
head, and bearing upon the now powerless bit with a dead, determined
pull, he bounded irresistibly onwards at full speed over the echoing
turf.
What state of mental suspense could equal, in agony, that of
Castleton during these dreadful moments? What, compared to his
feelings, are those of the patient whilst the surgeon is sharpening
his knife? or of the self-conscious criminal, when the death-bearing
verdict is about to be pronounced? For let us do poor human nature
the justice to own, that the fear-fraught sensations of such a moment
far surpass in intensity those which any merely selfish sufferings
could produce. This might still have been the case had he been only
the friend he professed himself: but he was never so well aware how
much dearer she was to him than he would have owned to himself, as
when even the recently-acquired conviction, that by his folly he
had lost her heart, was superseded by the all-engrossing fear, that
by his indiscretion he had endangered her life. And in his anguish
he felt that there was no earthly sacrifice at which he would not
purchase her precious safety.
At the time Lady Gayland’s horse broke away, he had already
dismounted, which caused a moment’s delay in following her. His
first impulse was digging his spurs into his own more sluggish beast
to attempt to come up with her. But he was too well aware of the
comparative speed of the two animals, which had before been tried on
other fields, not to know that this was impracticable, as long as
the fleetest and the foremost spurned from beneath him the ground he
hardly seemed to touch. Therefore, with eyes constantly fixed on the
object of all his anxieties, and a countenance as haggard as if the
dreaded calamity had already happened, he had only to follow as best
he might, pressing to the utmost his own panting steed.
There were various extensive grass-rides between avenues in the
wide-spreading domains of Somersby Park; but as these intersected the
open space of turf, and as Lady Gayland’s horse, in its self-directed
course, had either to cross or break into these between the trees,
each was a fresh source of alarm to Castleton. But as yet, his
undaunted rider still maintaining her self-possession, had succeeded
so far in guiding him as to steer him clear of any of these dangers.
At last he rushed into the long avenue which conducted straight to
the front of the house. Thus, therefore, many perils were now past,
but the worst Castleton anticipated was still to be feared, from
the concussion with which, sooner or later, his speed must meet a
sudden check; and this dread increased as he marked how, without
the slightest symptom of tiring, he still pursued his passionate
career. What would not Castleton have given at that moment for wings,
to dart over the short but still increasing space between them? so
disgusted was he with the inadequate efforts of his own flagging and
jaded animal, that he even madly meditated throwing himself off, and
endeavouring by his own exertions to reach her.
Within a hundred yards of the front of the house, the flying steed
had now arrived in safety, and Lady Gayland was already collecting
all her remaining strength to pull him up with one last attempt,
without recollecting that at that point a by-path conducted through
a shrubbery, at right-angles to the stables. For this the horse made,
with a sudden spring sideways. Lady Gayland, little prepared for so
unexpected a turn, lost her balance, and as the jerk she had at the
same time given caused him to flounder in the same direction, she
had not opportunity to recover herself, and was thrown with violence
against the shrubs on one side of the road.
Castleton, from the angle that the road had taken, and the thickness
of the shrubbery, had not actually seen the accident, but arriving a
few seconds afterwards, with horror he beheld her lying apparently
lifeless on the spot where she had fallen.
Throwing himself from his own horse, and rushing to her, he raised
her gently in his arms, and laying her head on his shoulder whilst
he supported her waist with his trembling hand, he gazed anxiously
in her face, to mark the least symptom of returning animation, but
as yet she lay there with the stiffness of a corpse; her eyes were
completely closed, and their long dark lashes seemed to press upon
her cheek. “She’s dead,--she’s dead, and I have killed her!” he
wildly cried. As he said this, her eyes for an instant opened, though
only with a dull unconscious stare; and the hand he held, grasped
his convulsively. “Look up once again!--For my sake live, my best
beloved, my own adored Geraldine!” He paused in vain, hoping that
these passionate exclamations might again wake her into life. A deep
drawn breath from behind was the only sound which in reply struck
upon his ear. He turned round in the direction from whence that sound
proceeded, and within two paces of him--colourless and motionless as
a statue--beheld the figure of his wife!