The Project Gutenberg EBook of Falkland, Complete, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Falkland, Complete Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton Release Date: March 16, 2009 [EBook #7761] Last Updated: August 28, 2016 Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FALKLAND, COMPLETE *** Produced by David Widger
* Quid aegrotus unquam somniavit quod philosophorum aliquis non dixerit?—LACTANTIUS.FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. You ask me to give you some sketch of my life, and of that bel mondo which wearied me so soon. Men seldom reject an opportunity to talk of themselves; and I am not unwilling to re-examine the past, to re-connect it with the present, and to gather from a consideration of each what hopes and expectations are still left to me for the future. But my detail must be rather of thought than of action; most of those whose fate has been connected with mine are now living, and I would not, even to you, break that tacit confidence which much of my history would require. After all, you will have no loss. The actions of another may interest—but, for the most part, it is only his reflections which come home to us; for few have acted, nearly all of us have thought. My own vanity too would be unwilling to enter upon incidents which had their origin either in folly or in error. It is true that those follies and errors have ceased, but their effects remain. With years our faults diminish, but our vices increase. You know that my mother was Spanish, and that my father was one of that old race of which so few scions remain, who, living in a distant country, have been little influenced by the changes of fashion, and, priding themselves on the antiquity of their names, have looked with contempt upon the modern distinctions and the mushroom nobles which have sprung up to discountenance and eclipse the plainness of more venerable and solid respectability. In his youth my father had served in the army. He had known much of men and more of books; but his knowledge, instead of rooting out, had rather been engrafted on his prejudices. He was one of that class (and I say it with a private reverence, though a public regret), who, with the best intentions, have made the worst citizens, and who think it a duty to perpetuate whatever is pernicious by having learnt to consider it as sacred. He was a great country gentleman, a great sportsman, and a great Tory; perhaps the three worst enemies which a country can have. Though beneficent to the poor, he gave but a cold reception to the rich; for he was too refined to associate with his inferiors, and too proud to like the competition of his equals. One ball and two dinners a-year constituted all the aristocratic portion of our hospitality, and at the age of twelve, the noblest and youngest companions that I possessed were a large Danish dog and a wild mountain pony, as unbroken and as lawless as myself. It is only in later years that we can perceive the immeasurable importance of the early scenes and circumstances which surrounded us. It was in the loneliness of my unchecked wanderings that my early affection for my own thoughts was conceived. In the seclusion of nature—in whatever court she presided—the education of my mind was begun; and, even at that early age, I rejoiced (like the wild heart the Grecian poet [Eurip. Bambae, 1. 874.] has described) in the stillness of the great woods, and the solitudes unbroken by human footstep. The first change in my life was under melancholy auspices; my father fell suddenly ill, and died; and my mother, whose very existence seemed only held in his presence, followed him in three months. I remember that, a few hours before her death, she called me to her: she reminded me that, through her, I was of Spanish extraction; that in her country, I received my birth, and that, not the less for its degradation and distress, I might hereafter find in the relations which I held to it a remembrance to value, or even a duty to fulfil. On her tenderness to me at that hour, on the impression it made upon my mind, and on the keen and enduring sorrow which I felt for months after her death, it would be useless to dwell. My uncle became my guardian. He is, you know, a member of parliament of some reputation; very sensible and very dull; very much respected by men, very much disliked by women; and inspiring all children, of either sex, with the same unmitigated aversion which he feels for them himself. I did not remain long under his immediate care. I was soon sent to school—that preparatory world, where the great primal principles of human nature, in the aggression of the strong and the meanness of the weak, constitute the earliest lesson of importance that we are taught; and where the forced primitiae of that less universal knowledge which is useless to the many who in after life, neglect, and bitter to the few who improve it, are the first motives for which our minds are to be broken to terror, and our hearts initiated into tears. Bold and resolute by temper, I soon carved myself a sort of career among my associates. A hatred to all oppression, and a haughty and unyielding character, made me at once the fear and aversion of the greater powers and principalities of the school; while my agility at all boyish games, and my ready assistance or protection to every one who required it, made me proportionally popular with, and courted by, the humbler multitude of the subordinate classes. I was constantly surrounded by the most lawless and mischievous followers whom the school could afford; all eager for my commands, and all pledged to their execution. In good truth, I was a worthy Rowland of such a gang; though I excelled in, I cared little for the ordinary amusements of the school: I was fonder of engaging in marauding expeditions contrary to our legislative restrictions, and I valued myself equally upon my boldness in planning our exploits, and my dexterity in eluding their discovery. But exactly in proportion as our school terms connected me with those of my own years, did our vacations unfit me for any intimate companionship but that which I already began to discover in myself. Twice in the year, when I went home, it was to that wild and romantic part of the country where my former childhood had been spent. There, alone and unchecked, I was thrown utterly upon my own resources. I wandered by day over the rude scenes which surrounded us; and at evening I pored, with an unwearied delight, over the ancient legends which made those scenes sacred to my imagination. I grew by degrees of a more thoughtful and visionary nature. My temper imbibed the romance of my studies; and whether, in winter, basking by the large hearth of our old hall, or stretched, in the indolent voluptuousness of summer, by the rushing streams which formed the chief characteristic of the country around us, my hours were equally wasted in those dim and luxurious dreams, which constituted, perhaps, the essence of that poetry I had not the genius to embody. It was then, by that alternate restlessness of action and idleness of reflection, into which my young years were divided, that the impress of my character was stamped: that fitfulness of temper, that affection for extremes, has accompanied me through life. Hence, not only all intermediums of emotion appear to me as tame, but even the most overwrought excitation can bring neither novelty nor zest. I have, as it were, feasted upon the passions; I have made that my daily food, which, in its strength and excess, would have been poison to others; I have rendered my mind unable to enjoy the ordinary aliments of nature; and I have wasted, by a premature indulgence, my resources and my powers, till I have left my heart, without a remedy or a hope, to whatever disorders its own intemperance has engendered. FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. When I left Dr. ——-’s, I was sent to a private tutor in D——-e. Here I continued for about two years. It was during that time that—but what then befell me is for no living ear! The characters of that history are engraven on my heart in letters of fire; but it is a language that none but myself have the authority to read. It is enough for the purpose of my confessions that the events of that period were connected with the first awakening of the most powerful of human passions, and that, whatever their commencement, their end was despair! and she—the object of that love—the only being in the world who ever possessed the secret and the spell of my nature—her life was the bitterness and the fever of a troubled heart,—her rest is the grave—
Non la conobbe il mondo mentre l’ebbe
Con ibill’io, ch’a pianger qui rimasi.
That attachment was not so much a single event, as the first link in a
long chain which was coiled around my heart. It were a tedious and bitter
history, even were it permitted, to tell you of all the sins and
misfortunes to which in afterlife that passion was connected. I will only
speak of the more hidden but general effect it had upon my mind; though,
indeed, naturally inclined to a morbid and melancholy philosophy, it is
more than probable, but for that occurrence, that it would never have
found matter for excitement. Thrown early among mankind, I should early
have imbibed their feelings, and grown like them by the influence of
custom. I should not have carried within the one unceasing remembrance,
which was to teach me, like Faustus, to find nothing in knowledge but its
inutility, or in hope but its deceit; and to bear like him, through the
blessings of youth and the allurements of pleasure, the curse and the
presence of a fiend.
FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
It was after the first violent grief produced by that train of
circumstances to which I must necessarily so darkly allude, that I began
to apply with earnestness to books. Night and day I devoted myself
unceasingly to study, and from this fit I was only recovered by the long
and dangerous illness it produced. Alas! there is no fool like him who
wishes for knowledge! It is only through woe that we are taught to
reflect, and we gather the honey of worldly wisdom, not from flowers, but
thorns.
“Une grande passion malheureuse est un grand moyen de sagesse.” From the
moment in which the buoyancy of my spirit was first broken by real
anguish, the losses of the heart were repaired by the experience of the
mind. I passed at once, like Melmoth, from youth to age. What were any
longer to me the ordinary avocations of my contemporaries? I had exhausted
years in moments—I had wasted, like the Eastern Queen, my richest
jewel in a draught. I ceased to hope, to feel, to act, to burn; such are
the impulses of the young! I learned to doubt, to reason, to analyse: such
are the habits of the old! From that time, if I have not avoided the
pleasures of life, I have not enjoyed them. Women, wine, the society of
the gay, the commune of the wise, the lonely pursuit of knowledge, the
daring visions of ambition, all have occupied me in turn, and all alike
have deceived me; but, like the Widow in the story of Voltaire, I have
built at last a temple to “Time, the Comforter:” I have grown calm and
unrepining with years; and, if I am now shrinking from men, I have derived
at least this advantage from the loneliness first made habitual by regret;
that while I feel increased benevolence to others, I have learned to look
for happiness only in myself.
They alone are independent of Fortune who have made themselves a separate
existence from the world.
FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
I went to the University with a great fund of general reading, and habits
of constant application. My uncle, who, having no children of his own,
began to be ambitious for me, formed great expectations of my career at
Oxford. I staid there three years, and did nothing! I did not gain a
single prize, nor did I attempt anything above the ordinary degree. The
fact is, that nothing seemed to me worth the labour of success. I
conversed with those who had obtained the highest academical reputation,
and I smiled with a consciousness of superiority at the boundlessness of
their vanity, and the narrowness of their views. The limits of the
distinction they had gained seemed to them as wide as the most extended
renown; and the little knowledge their youth had acquired only appeared to
them an excuse for the ignorance and the indolence of maturer years. Was
it to equal these that I was to labour? I felt that I already surpassed
them! Was it to gain their good opinion, or, still worse, that of their
admirers? Alas! I had too long learned to live for myself to find any
happiness in the respect of the idlers I despised.
I left Oxford at the age of twenty-one. I succeeded to the large estates
of my inheritance, and for the first time I felt the vanity so natural to
youth when I went up to London to enjoy the resources of the Capital, and
to display the powers I possessed to revel in whatever those resources
could yield. I found society like the Jewish temple: any one is admitted
into its threshold; none but the chiefs of the institution into its
recesses.
Young, rich, of an ancient and honourable name, pursuing pleasure rather
as a necessary excitement than an occasional occupation, and agreeable to
the associates I drew around me because my profusion contributed to their
enjoyment, and my temper to their amusement—I found myself courted
by many, and avoided by none. I soon discovered that all civility is but
the mask of design. I smiled at the kindness of the fathers who, hearing
that I was talented, and knowing that I was rich, looked to my support in
whatever political side they had espoused. I saw in the notes of the
mothers their anxiety for the establishment of their daughters, and their
respect for my acres; and in the cordiality of the sons who had horses to
sell and rouge-et-noir debts to pay, I detected all that veneration for my
money which implied such contempt for its possessor. By nature observant,
and by misfortune sarcastic, I looked upon the various colourings of
society with a searching and philosophic eye: I unravelled the intricacies
which knit servility with arrogance and meanness with ostentation; and I
traced to its sources that universal vulgarity of inward sentiment and
external manner, which, in all classes, appears to me to constitute the
only unvarying characteristic of our countrymen. In proportion as I
increased my knowledge of others, I shrunk with a deeper disappointment
and dejection into my own resources. The first moment of real happiness
which I experienced for a whole year was when I found myself about to
seek, beneath the influence of other skies, that more extended
acquaintance with my species which might either draw me to them with a
closer connection, or at last reconcile me to the ties which already
existed.
I will not dwell upon my adventures abroad: there is little to interest
others in a recital which awakens no interest in one’s self. I sought for
wisdom, and I acquired but knowledge. I thirsted for the truth, the
tenderness of love, and I found but its fever and its falsehood. Like the
two Florimels of Spenser, I mistook, in my delirium, the delusive
fabrication of the senses for the divine reality of the heart; and I only
awoke from my deceit when the phantom I had worshipped melted into snow.
Whatever I pursued partook of the energy, yet fitfulness of my nature;
mingling to-day in the tumults of the city, and to-morrow alone with my
own heart in the solitude of unpeopled nature; now revelling in the
wildest excesses, and now tracing, with a painful and unwearied search,
the intricacies of science; alternately governing others, and subdued by
the tyranny which my own passions imposed—I passed through the
ordeal unshrinking yet unscathed. “The education of life,” says De Stael,
“perfects the thinking mind, but depraves the frivolous.” I do not
inquire, Monkton, to which of these classes I belong; but I feel too well,
that though my mind has not been depraved, it has found no perfection but
in misfortune; and that whatever be the acquirements of later years, they
have nothing which can compensate for the losses of our youth.
FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
I returned to England. I entered again upon the theatre of its world; but
I mixed now more in its greater than its lesser pursuits. I looked rather
at the mass than the leaven of mankind; and while I felt aversion for the
few whom I knew, I glowed with philanthropy for the crowd which I knew
not.
It is in contemplating men at a distance that we become benevolent. When
we mix with them, we suffer by the contact, and grow, if not malicious
from the injury, at least selfish from the circumspection which our safety
imposes but when, while we feel our relationship, we are not galled by the
tie; when neither jealousy, nor envy, nor resentment are excited, we have
nothing to interfere with those more complacent and kindliest sentiments
which our earliest impressions have rendered natural to our hearts. We may
fly men in hatred because they have galled us, but the feeling ceases with
the cause: none will willingly feed long upon bitter thoughts. It is thus
that, while in the narrow circle in which we move we suffer daily from
those who approach us, we can, in spite of our resentment to them, glow
with a general benevolence to the wider relations from which we are
remote; that while smarting beneath the treachery of friendship, the
stinging of ingratitude, the faithfulness of love, we would almost
sacrifice our lives to realise some idolised theory of legislation; and
that, distrustful, calculating, selfish in private, there are thousands
who would, with a credulous fanaticism, fling themselves as victims before
that unrecompensing Moloch which they term the Public.
Living, then, much by myself, but reflecting much upon the world, I
learned to love mankind. Philanthropy brought ambition; for I was
ambitious, not for my own aggrandisement, but for the service of others—for
the poor—the toiling—the degraded; these constituted that part
of my fellow-beings which I the most loved, for these were bound to me by
the most engaging of all human ties—misfortune! I began to enter
into the intrigues of the state; I extended my observation and inquiry
from individuals to nations; I examined into the mysteries of the science
which has arisen in these later days to give the lie to the wisdom of the
past, to reduce into the simplicity of problems the intricacies of
political knowledge, to teach us the fallacy of the system which had
governed by restriction, and imagined that the happiness of nations
depended upon the perpetual interference of its rulers, and to prove to us
that the only unerring policy of art is to leave a free and unobstructed
progress to the hidden energies and province of Nature. But it was not
only the theoretical investigation of the state which employed me. I
mixed, though in secret, with the agents of its springs. While I seemed
only intent upon pleasure, I locked in my heart the consciousness and
vanity of power. In the levity of the lip I disguised the workings and the
knowledge of the brain; and I looked, as with a gifted eye, upon the
mysteries of the hidden depths, while I seemed to float an idler, with the
herd, only on the surface of the stream.
Why was I disgusted, when I had but to put forth my hand and grasp
whatever object my ambition might desire? Alas! there was in my heart
always something too soft for the aims and cravings of my mind. I felt
that I was wasting the young years of my life in a barren and wearisome
pursuit. What to me, who had outlived vanity, would have been the
admiration of the crowd! I sighed for the sympathy of the one! and I
shrunk in sadness from the prospect of renown to ask my heart for the
reality of love! For what purpose, too, had I devoted myself to the
service of men? As I grew more sensible of the labour of pursuing, I saw
more of the inutility of accomplishing, individual measures. There is one
great and moving order of events which we may retard, but we cannot
arrest, and to which, if we endeavour to hasten them, we only give a
dangerous and unnatural impetus. Often, when in the fever of the midnight,
I have paused from my unshared and unsoftened studies, to listen to the
deadly pulsation of my heart,—[Falkland suffered much, from very
early youth, from a complaint in his heart]—when I have felt in its
painful and tumultuous beating the very life waning and wasting within me,
I have sickened to my inmost soul to remember that, amongst all those whom
I was exhausting the health and enjoyment of youth to benefit, there was
not one for whom my life had an interest, or by whom my death would be
honoured by a tear. There is a beautiful passage in Chalmers on the want
of sympathy we experience in the world. From my earliest childhood I had
one deep, engrossing, yearning desire,—and that was to love and to
be loved. I found, too young, the realisation of that dream—it
passed! and I have never known it again. The experience of long and bitter
years teaches me to look with suspicion on that far recollection of the
past, and to doubt if this earth could indeed produce a living form to
satisfy the visions of one who has dwelt among the boyish creations of
fancy—who has shaped out in his heart an imaginary idol, arrayed it
in whatever is most beautiful in nature, and breathed into the image the
pure but burning spirit of that innate love from which it sprung! It is
true that my manhood has been the undeceiver of my youth, and that the
meditation upon the facts has disenthralled me from the visionary
broodings over fiction; but what remuneration have I found in reality? If
the line of the satirist be not true, “Souvent de tous nos maux la raison
est le pire,” [Boileau]—at least, like the madman of whom he speaks,
I owe but little gratitude to the act which, “in drawing me from my error,
has robbed me also of a paradise.”
I am approaching the conclusion of my confessions. Men who have no ties in
the world, and who have been accustomed to solitude, find, with every
disappointment in the former, a greater yearning for the enjoyments which
the latter can afford. Day by day I relapsed more into myself; “man
delighted me not, nor women either.” In my ambition, it was not in the
means, but the end, that I was disappointed. In my friends, I complained
not of treachery, but insipidity; and it was not because I was deserted,
but wearied by more tender connections, that I ceased to find either
excitement in seeking, or triumph in obtaining, their love. It was not,
then, in a momentary disgust, but rather in the calm of satiety, that I
formed that resolution of retirement which I have adopted now.
Shrinking from my kind, but too young to live wholly for myself, I have
made a new tie with nature; I have come to cement it here. I am like a
bird which has wandered, afar, but has returned home to its nest at last.
But there is one feeling which had its origin in the world, and which
accompanies me still; which consecrates my recollections of the past;
which contributes to take its gloom from the solitude of the present:-Do
you ask me its nature, Monkton? It is my friendship for you.
FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
I wish that I could convey to you, dear Monkton, the faintest idea of the
pleasures of indolence. You belong to that class which is of all the most
busy, though the least active. Men of pleasure never have time for
anything. No lawyer, no statesman, no bustling, hurrying, restless
underling of the counter or the Exchange, is so eternally occupied as a
lounger “about town.” He is linked to labour by a series of undefinable
nothings. His independence and idleness only serve to fetter and engross
him, and his leisure seems held upon the condition of never having a
moment to himself. Would that you could see me at this instant in the
luxury of my summer retreat, surrounded by the trees, the waters, the wild
birds, and the hum, the glow, the exultation which teem visibly and
audibly through creation in the noon of a summer’s day! I am undisturbed
by a single intruder. I am unoccupied by a single pursuit. I suffer one
moment to glide into another, without the remembrance that the next must
be filled up by some laborious pleasure, or some wearisome enjoyment. It
is here that I feel all the powers, and gather together all the resources,
of my mind. I recall my recollections of men; and, unbiassed by the
passions and prejudices which we do not experience alone, because their
very existence depends upon others, I endeavour to perfect my knowledge of
the human heart. He who would acquire that better science must arrange and
analyse in private the experience he has collected in the crowd. Alas,
Monkton, when you have expressed surprise at the gloom which is so
habitual to my temper, did it never occur to you that my acquaintance—with
the world would alone be sufficient to account for it?—that
knowledge is neither for the good nor the happy. Who can touch pitch, and
not be defiled? Who can look upon the workings of grief and rejoice, or
associate with guilt and be pure? It has been by mingling with men, not
only in their haunts but their emotions, that I have learned to know them.
I have descended into the receptacles of vice; I have taken lessons from
the brothel and the hell; I have watched feeling in its unguarded sallies,
and drawn from the impulse of the moment conclusions which gave the lie to
the previous conduct of years. But all knowledge brings us disappointment,
and this knowledge the most—the satiety of good, the suspicion of
evil, the decay of our young dreams, the premature iciness of age, the
reckless, aimless, joyless indifference which follows an overwrought and
feverish excitation—These constitute the lot of men who have
renounced hope in the acquisition of thought, and who, in
learning the motives of human actions, learn only to despise the persons
and the things which enchanted them like divinities before.
FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
I told you, dear Monkton, in my first letter, of my favorite retreat in
Mr. Mandeville’s grounds. I have grown so attached to it, that I spend the
greater part of the day there.
I am not one of those persons who always perambulate with a book in their
hands, as if neither nature nor their own reflections could afford them
any rational amusement. I go there more frequently en paresseux
than en savant: a small brooklet which runs through the grounds
broadens at last into a deep, clear, transparent lake. Here fir and elm
and oak fling their branches over the margin and beneath their shade I
pass all the hours of noon-day in the luxuries of a dreamer’s reverie. It
is true, however, that I am never less idle than when I appear the most
so. I am like Prospero in his desert island, and surround myself with
spirits. A spell trembles upon the leaves; every wave comes fraught to me
with its peculiar music: and an Ariel seems to whisper the secrets of
every breeze, which comes to my forehead laden with the perfumes of the
West. But do not think, Mounton, that it is only good spirits which haunt
the recesses of my solitude. To push the metaphor to exaggeration—Memory
is my Sycorax, and Gloom is the Caliban she conceives. But let me digress
from myself to my less idle occupations;—I have of late diverted my
thoughts in some measure by a recurrence to a study to which I once was
particularly devoted—history. Have you ever remarked, that people
who live the most by themselves reflect the most upon others; and that he
who lives surrounded by the million never thinks of any but the one
individual—himself?
Philosophers—moralists-historians, whose thoughts, labours, lives,
have been devoted to the consideration of mankind, or the analysis of
public events, have usually been remarkably attached to solitude and
seclusion. We are indeed so linked to our fellow-beings, that, where we
are not chained to them by action, we are carried to and connected with
them by thought.
I have just quitted the observations of my favourite Bolingbroke upon
history. I cannot agree with him as to its utility. The more I consider,
the more I am convinced that its study has been upon the whole pernicious
to mankind. It is by those details, which are always as unfair in their
inference as they must evidently be doubtful in their facts, that party
animosity and general prejudice are supported and sustained. There is not
one abuse—one intolerance—one remnant of ancient barbarity and
ignorance existing at the present day, which is not advocated, and
actually confirmed, by some vague deduction from the bigotry of an
illiterate chronicler, or the obscurity of an uncertain legend. It is
through the constant appeal to our ancestors that we transmit wretchedness
and wrong to our posterity: we should require, to corroborate an evil
originating in the present day, the clearest and most satisfactory proof;
but the minutest defence is sufficient for an evil handed down to us by
the barbarism of antiquity. We reason from what even in old tunes was
dubious, as if we were adducing what was certain in those in which we
live. And thus we have made no sanction to abuses so powerful as history,
and no enemy to the present like the past.
My boy, my own, my beautiful companion, is with me. I wish you could see how fast he can run, and how sensibly he can talk. “What a fine figure he has for his age!” said I to Mr. Mandeville the other day. “Figure! age!” said his father; “in the House of Commons he shall make a figure to every age.” I know that in writing to you, you will not be contented if I do not say a great deal about myself. I shall therefore proceed to tell you, that I feel already much better from the air and exercise! the journey, from the conversation of my two guests, and, above all, from the constant society of my dear boy. He was three last birthday. I think that at the age of twenty-one, I am the least childish of the two. Pray remember me to all in town who have not quite forgotten me. Beg Lady——— to send Elizabeth a subscription ticket for Almack’s, an talking of Almack’s, I think my boy’s eyes are even more blue and beautiful than Lady C——-’s.Adieu, my dear Julia, Ever, &c. E. M. Lady Emily Mandeville was the daughter of the Duke of Lindvale. She married, at the age of sixteen, a man of large fortune, and some parliamentary reputation. Neither in person nor in character was he much beneath or above the ordinary standard of men. He was one of Nature’s Macadamised achievements. His great fault was his equality; and you longed for a hill though it were to climb, or a stone though it were in your way. Love attaches itself to something prominent, even if that something be what others would hate. One can scarce feel extremes for mediocrity. The few years Lady Emily had been married had but little altered her character. Quick in feeling, though regulated in temper; gay less from levity, than from that first spring-tide of a heart which has never yet known occasion to be sad; beautiful and pure, as an enthusiast’s dream of heaven, yet bearing within the latent and powerful passion and tenderness of earth: she mixed with all a simplicity and innocence which the extreme earliness of her marriage, and the ascetic temper of her husband, had tendered less to diminish than increase. She had much of what is termed genius—its warmth of emotion—its vividness of conception—its admiration for the grand—its affection for the good, and that dangerous contempt for whatever is mean and worthless, the very indulgence of which is an offence against the habits of the world. Her tastes were, however, too feminine and chaste ever to render her eccentric: they were rather calculated to conceal than to publish the deeper recesses of her nature; and it was beneath that polished surface of manner common to those with whom she mixed, that she hid the treasures of a mine which no human eye had beheld. Her health, naturally delicate, had lately suffered much from the dissipation of London, and it was by the advice of physicians that she had now come to spend the summer at E———. Lady Margaret Leslie, who was old enough to be tired with the caprices of society, and Mrs. Dalton, who, having just lost her husband, was forbidden at present to partake of its amusements, had agreed to accompany her to her retreat. Neither of them was perhaps much suited to Emily’s temper, but youth and spirits make almost any one congenial to us: it is from the years which confirm our habits, and the reflections which refine our taste, that it becomes easy to revolt us, and difficult to please. On the third day after Emily’s arrival at E———, she was sitting after breakfast with Lady Margaret and Mrs. Dalton. “Pray,” said the former, “did you ever meet my relation, Mr. Falkland? he is in your immediate neighbourhood.” “Never; though I have a great curiosity: that fine old ruin beyond the village belongs to him, I believe.” “It does. You ought to know him: you would like him so!” “Like him!” repeated Mrs. Dalton, who was one of those persons of ton who, though everything collectively, are nothing individually: “like him? impossible!” “Why?” said Lady Margaret, indignantly—“he has every requisite to please—youth, talent, fascination of manner, and great knowledge of the world.” “Well,” said Mrs. Dalton, “I cannot say I discovered his perfections. He seemed to me conceited and satirical, and—and—in short, very disagreeable; but then, to be sure, I have only seen him once.” “I have heard many accounts of him,” said Emily, “all differing from each other: I think, however, that the generality of people rather incline to Mrs. Dalton’s opinion than to yours, Lady Margaret.” “I can easily believe it. It is very seldom that he takes the trouble to please; but when he does, he is irresistible. Very little, however, is generally known respecting him. Since he came of age, he has been much abroad; and when in England, he never entered with eagerness into society. He is supposed to possess very extraordinary powers, which, added to his large fortune and ancient name, have procured him a consideration and rank rarely enjoyed by one so young. He had refused repeated offers to enter into public life; but he is very intimate with one of the ministers, who, it is said, has had the address to profit much by his abilities. All other particulars concerning him are extremely uncertain. Of his person and manners you had better judge yourself; for I am sure, Emily, that my petition for inviting him here is already granted.” “By all means,” said Emily: “you cannot be more anxious to see him than I am.” And so the conversation dropped. Lady Margaret went to the library; Mrs. Dalton seated herself on the ottoman, dividing her attention between the last novel and her Italian greyhound; and Emily left the room in order to revisit her former and favourite haunts. Her young son was her companion, and she was not sorry that he was her only one. To be the instructress of an infant, a mother should be its playmate; and Emily was, perhaps, wiser than she imagined, when she ran with a laughing eye and a light foot over the grass, occupying herself almost with the same earnestness as her child in the same infantine amusements. As they passed the wood which led to the lake at the bottom of the grounds, the boy, who was before Emily, suddenly stopped. She came hastily up to him; and scarcely two paces before, though half hid by the steep bank of the lake beneath which he reclined, she saw a man apparently asleep. A volume of; Shakespeare lay beside him: the child had seized it. As she took it from him in order to replace it, her eyes rested upon the passage the boy had accidentally opened. How often in after days was that passage recalled as an omen! It was the following:
Ah me! for aught that ever I could read,
Could ever hear by tale or history
The course of true love never did run smooth!
Midsummer Night’s Dream.
As she laid the book gently down she caught a glimpse of the countenance
of the sleeper: never did she forget the expression which it wore,—stern,
proud, mournful even in repose!
She did not wait for him to wake. She hurried home through the trees. All
that day she was silent and abstracted; the face haunted her like a dream.
Strange as it may seem, she spoke neither to Lady Margaret nor to Mrs.
Dalton of her adventure. Why? Is there in our hearts any prescience of
their misfortunes?
On the next day, Falkland, who had received and accepted Lady Margaret’s
invitation, was expected to dinner. Emily felt a strong yet excusable
curiosity to see one of whom she had heard so many and such contradictory
reports. She was alone in the saloon when he entered. At the first glance
she recognised the person she had met by the lake on the day before, and
she blushed deeply as she replied to his salutation. To her great relief
Lady Margaret and Mrs. Dalton entered in a few minutes, and the
conversation grew general.
Falkland had but little of what is called animation in manner; but his
wit, though it rarely led to mirth, was sarcastic, yet refined, and the
vividness of his imagination threw a brilliancy and originality over
remarks which in others might have been commonplace and tame.
The conversation turned chiefly upon society; and though Lady Margaret had
told her he had entered but little into its ordinary routine, Emily was
struck alike by his accurate acquaintance with men, and the justice of his
reflections upon manners. There also mingled with his satire an occasional
melancholy of feeling, which appeared to Emily the more touching because
it was always unexpected and unassumed. It was after one of these remarks,
that for the first time she ventured to examine into the charm and
peculiarity of the countenance of the speaker. There was spread over it
that expression of mingled energy and languor, which betokens that much,
whether of thought, sorrow, passion, or action, has been undergone, but
resisted: has wearied, but not subdued. In the broad and noble brow, in
the chiselled lip, and the melancholy depths of the calm and thoughtful
eye, there sat a resolution and a power, which, though mournful, were not
without their pride; which, if they had borne the worst, had also defied
it. Notwithstanding his mother’s country, his complexion was fair and
pale; and his hair, of a light chestnut, fell in large antique curls over
his forehead. That forehead, indeed, constituted the principal feature of
his countenance. It was neither in its height nor expansion alone that its
remarkable beauty consisted; but if ever thought to conceive and courage
to execute high designs were embodied and visible, they were imprinted
there.
Falkland did not stay long after dinner; but to Lady Margaret he promised
all that she required of future length and frequency in his visits. When
he left the room, Lady Emily went instinctively to the window to watch him
depart; and all that night his low soft voice rung in her ear, like the
music of an indistinct and half-remembered dream.
FROM MR. MANDEVILLE TO LADY EMILY.
DEAR, EMILY,—Business of great importance to the country has,
prevented my writing to you before. I hope you have continued well since I
heard from you last, and that you do all you can to preserve that
retrenchment of unnecessary expenses, and observe that attention to a
prudent economy, which is no less incumbent upon individuals than nations.
Thinking that you must be dull at E———, and ever anxious
both to entertain and to improve you, I send you an excellent publication
by Mr. Tooke, together with my own two last speeches, corrected by myself.
Trusting to hear from you soon, I am, with best love to Henry,
Very affectionately yours,
JOHN MANDEVILLE. FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO THE HON. FREDERICK
MONKTON.
Well, Monkton, I have been to E——-; that important event in my
monastic life has been concluded. Lady Margaret was as talkative as usual;
and a Mrs. Dalton, who, I find, is an acquaintance of yours, asked very
tenderly after your poodle and yourself. But Lady Emily! Ay, Monkton, I
know not well how to describe her to you. Her beauty interests not less
than it dazzles. There is that deep and eloquent softness in her every
word and action, which, of all charms, is the most dangerous. Yet she is
rather of a playful than of the melancholy and pensive nature which
generally accompanies such gentleness of manner; but there is no levity in
her character; nor is that playfulness of spirit ever carried into the
exhilaration of what we call “mirth.” She seems, if I may use the
antithesis, at once too feeling to be gay, and too innocent to be sad. I
remember having frequently met her husband. Cold and pompous, without
anything to interest the imagination, or engage the affections, I am not
able to conceive a person less congenial to his beautiful and romantic
wife. But she must have been exceedingly young when she married him; and
she, probably, knows not yet that she is to be pitied, because she has not
yet learned that she can love.
Le veggio in fronte amor come in suo seggio
Sul crin, negli occhi—su le labra amore
Sol d’intorno al suo cuore amor non veggio.
I have been twice to her house since my first admission there. I love to
listen to that soft and enchanting voice, and to escape from the gloom of
my own reflections to the brightness, yet simplicity, of hers. In my
earlier days this comfort would have been attended with danger; but we
grow callous from the excess of feeling. We cannot re-illumine ashes! I
can gaze upon her dream-like beauty, and not experience a single desire
which can sully the purity of my worship. I listen to her voice when it
melts in endearment over her birds, her flowers, or, in a deeper devotion,
over her child; but my heart does not thrill at the tenderness of the
sound. I touch her hand, and the pulses of my own are as calm as before.
Satiety of the past is our best safeguard from the temptations of the
future; and the perils of youth are over when it has acquired that dulness
and apathy of affection which should belong only to the insensibility of
age.
Such were Falkland’s opinions at the time he wrote. Ah! what is so
delusive as our affections? Our security is our danger—our defiance
our defeat! Day after day he went to E———-. He passed
the mornings in making excursions with Emily over that wild and romantic
country by which they were surrounded; and in the dangerous but delicious
stillness of the summer twilights, they listened to the first whispers of
their hearts.
In his relationship to Lady Margaret, Falkland found his excuse for the
frequency of his visits: and even Mrs. Dalton was so charmed with the
fascination of his manner, that (in spite of her previous dislike) she
forgot to inquire how far his intimacy at E——— was at
variance with the proprieties of the world she worshipped, or in what
proportion it was connected with herself.
It is needless for me to trace through all its windings the formation of
that affection, the subsequent records of which I am about to relate. What
is so unearthly, so beautiful, as the first birth of a woman’s love? The
air of heaven is not purer in its wanderings—its sunshine not more
holy in its warmth. Oh! why should it deteriorate in its nature, even
while it increases in its degree? Why should the step which prints, sully
also the snow? How often, when Falkland met that guiltless yet thrilling
eye, which revealed to him those internal secrets that Emily was yet
awhile too happy to discover; when, like a fountain among flowers, the
goodness of her heart flowed over the softness of her manner to those
around her, and the benevolence of her actions to those beneath; how often
he turned away with a veneration too deep for the selfishness of human
passion, and a tenderness too sacred for its desires! It was in this
temper (the earliest and the most fruitless prognostic of real love) that
the following letter was written.
FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO THE HON. FREDERICK MONKTON.
I have had two or three admonitory letters from my uncle. “The summer (he
says) is advancing, yet you remain stationary in your indolence. There is
still a great part of Europe which you have not seen; and since you will
neither enter society for a wife, nor the House of Commons for fame, spend
your life, at least while it is yet free and unshackled, in those active
pursuits which will render idleness hereafter more sweet; or in that
observation and enjoyment among others, which will increase your resources
in yourself.” All this sounds well; but I have already acquired more
knowledge than will be of use either to others or myself, and I am not
willing to lose tranquillity here for the chance of obtaining pleasure
elsewhere. Pleasure is indeed a holiday sensation which does not occur in
ordinary life. We lose the peace of years when we hunt after the rapture
of moments.
I do not know if you ever felt that existence was ebbing away without
being put to its full value: as for me, I am never conscious of life
without being also conscious that it is not enjoyed to the utmost. This is
a bitter feeling, and its worst bitterness is our ignorance how to remove
it. My indolence I neither seek nor wish to defend, yet it is rather from
necessity than choice: it seems to me that there is nothing in the world
to arouse me. I only ask for action, but I can find no motive sufficient
to excite it: let me then, in my indolence, not, like the world, be idle,
yet dependent on others; but at least dignify the failing by some
appearance of that freedom which retirement only can bestow.
My seclusion is no longer solitude; yet I do not value it the less. I
spend a great portion of my time at E———. Loneliness is
attractive to men of reflection, nor so much because they like their own
thoughts, as because they dis like the thoughts of others. Solitude ceases
to charm the moment we can find a single being whose ideas are more
agreeable to us than our own. I have not, I think, yet described to you
the person of Lady Emily. She is tall, and slightly, yet beautifully,
formed. The ill health which obliged her to leave London for E———,
in the height of the season, has given her cheek a more delicate hue than
I should think it naturally wore. Her eyes are light, but their lashes are
long and dark; her hair is black and luxuriant, and worn in a fashion
peculiar to herself; but her manners, Monkton! how can I convey to you
their fascination! so simple, and therefore so faultless—so modest,
and yet so tender—she seems, in acquiring the intelligence of the
woman, to have only perfected the purity of the child; and now, after all
that I have said, I am only more deeply sensible of the truth of Bacon’s
observation, that “the best part of beauty is that which no picture can
express.” I am loth to finish this description, because it seems to me
scarcely begun; I am unwilling to continue it, because every word seems to
show me more clearly those recesses of my heart, which I would have hidden
even from myself. I do not yet love, it is true, for the time is past when
I was lightly moved to passion; but I will not incur that danger, the
probability of which I am seer enough to foresee. Never shall that pure
and innocent heart be sullied by one who would die to shield it from the
lightest misfortune. I find in myself a powerful seconder to my uncle’s
wishes. I shall be in London next week; till then, fare well. E. F.
When the proverb said, that “Jove laughs at lovers’ vows,” it meant not
(as in the ordinary construction) a sarcasm on their insincerity, but
inconsistency. We deceive others far less than we deceive ourselves. What
to Falkland were resolutions which a word, a glance, could over throw? In
the world he might have dissipated his thoughts in loneliness he
concentred them; for the passions are like the sounds of Nature, only
heard in her solitude! He lulled his soul to the reproaches of his
conscience; he surrendered himself to the intoxication of so golden a
dream; and amidst those beautiful scenes there arose, as an offering to
the summer heaven, the incense of two hearts which had, through those very
fires so guilty in themselves, purified and ennobled every other emotion
they had conceived,
God made the country, and man made the town.
says the hackneyed quotation; and the feeling awakened in each, differ
with the genius of the place. Who can compare the frittered and divided
affections formed in cities with that which crowds cannot distract by
opposing temptations, or dissipation infect with its frivolities?
I have often thought that had the execution of Atala equalled its design,
no human work could have surpassed it in its grandeur. What picture is
more simple, though more sublime, than the vast solitude of an unpeopled
wilderness, the woods, the mountains, the face of Nature, cast in the
fresh yet giant mould of a new and unpolluted world; and, amidst those
most silent and mighty temples of THE GREAT GOD, the lone spirit of Love
reigning and brightening over all?
“Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.”—TACITUS.
“They make a solitude, and call it peace.”—BYRON.
“In flying the herd, I have not escaped from myself; like the wounded
deer, the barb was within me, and that I could not fly!” With these
thoughts he turned from his reverie, and once more endeavoured to charm
his own reflections by those which ought to speak to us of quiet, for they
are graven on the pages of the dead; but his attempts were as idle as
before. His thoughts were still wandering and confused, and could neither
be quieted nor collected: he read, but he scarcely distinguished one page
from another: he wrote—the ideas refused to flow at his call; and
the only effort at connecting his feelings which even partially succeeded,
was in the verses which I am about to place before the reader. It is a
common property of poetry, however imperfectly the gift be possessed, to
speak to the hearts of others in proportion as the sentiments it would
express are felt in our own; and I subjoin the lines which bear the date
of that evening, in the hope that, more than many pages, they will show
the morbid yet original character of the writer, and the particular
sources of feeling from which they took the bitterness that pervades them.
KNOWLEDGE.
Ergo hominum genus incassum frustraque laborat
Semper, et in curis consumit inanibus aevum.—Lucret.
‘Tis midnight! Round the lamp which o’er
My chamber sheds its lonely beam,
Is wisely spread the varied lore
Which feeds in youth our feverish dream
The dream—the thirst—the wild desire,
Delirious yet divine-to know;
Around to roam—above aspire
And drink the breath of Heaven below!
From Ocean-Earth-the Stars-the Sky
To lift mysterious Nature’s pall;
And bare before the kindling eye
In MAN the darkest mist of all—
Alas! what boots the midnight oil?
The madness of the struggling mind?
Oh, vague the hope, and vain the toil,
Which only leave us doubly blind!
What learn we from the Past? the same
Dull course of glory, guilt, and gloom—
I ask’d the Future, and there came
No voice from its unfathom’d womb.
The Sun was silent, and the wave;
The air but answer’d with its breath
But Earth was kind; and from the grave
Arose the eternal answer—Death!
And this was all! We need no sage
To teach us Nature’s only truth!
O fools! o’er Wisdom’s idle page
To waste the hours of golden youth!
In Science wildly do we seek
What only withering years should bring
The languid pulse—the feverish cheek
The spirits drooping on their wing!
To think—is but to learn to groan
To scorn what all beside adore
To feel amid the world alone,
An alien on a desert shore;
To lose the only ties which seem
To idler gaze in mercy given!
To find love, faith, and hope, a dream,
And turn to dark despair from heaven!
I pass on to a wilder period of my history. The passion, as yet only
revealed by the eye, was now to be recorded by the lip; and the scene
which witnessed the first confession of the lovers was worthy of the last
conclusion of their loves!
E——— was about twelve miles from a celebrated cliff on
the seashore, and Lady Margaret had long proposed an excursion to a spot,
curious alike for its natural scenery and the legends attached to it. A
day was at length fixed for accomplishing this plan. Falkland was of the
party. In searching for something in the pockets of the carriage, his hand
met Emily’s, and involuntarily pressed it. She withdrew it hastily, but he
felt it tremble. He did not dare to look up: that single contact had given
him a new life: intoxicated with the most delicious sensations, he leaned
back in silence. A fever had entered his veins—the thrill of the
touch had gone like fire into his system—all his frame seemed one
nerve.
Lady Margaret talked of the weather and the prospect, wondered how far
they had got, and animadverted on the roads, till at last, like a child,
she talked herself to rest. Mrs. Dalton read “Guy Mannering;” but neither
Emily nor her lover had any occupation or thought in common with their
companions: silent and absorbed, they were only alive to the vivid
existence of the present. Constantly engaged, as we are, in looking behind
us or before, if there be one hour in which we feel only the time being—in
which we feel sensibly that we live, and that those moments of the present
are full of the enjoyment, the rapture of existence—it is when we
are with the one person whose life and spirits have become the great part
and principle of our own. They reached their destination—a small inn
close by the shore. They rested there a short time, and then strolled
along the sands towards the cliff. Since Falkland had known Emily, her
character was much altered. Six weeks before the time I write of, and in
playfulness and lightness of spirits she was almost a child: now those
indications of an unawakened heart had mellowed into a tenderness full of
that melancholy so touching and holy, even amid the voluptuous softness
which it breathes and inspires. But this day, whether from that coquetry
so common to all women, or from some cause more natural to her, she seemed
gayer than Falkland ever remembered to have seen her. She ran over the
sands, picking up shells, and tempting the waves with her small and fairy
feet, not daring to look at him, and yet speaking to him at times with a
quick tone of levity which hurt and offended him, even though he knew the
depth of those feelings she could not disguise either from him or from
herself. By degrees his answers and remarks grew cold and sarcastic. Emily
affected pique; and when it was discovered that the cliff was still nearly
two miles off, she refused to proceed any farther. Lady Margaret talked
her at last into consent, and they walked on as sullenly as an English
party of pleasure possibly could do, till they were within three quarters
of a mile of the place, when Emily declared she was so tired that she
really could not go on. Falkland looked at her, perhaps, with no very
amiable expression of countenance, when he perceived that she seemed
really pale and fatigued; and when she caught his eyes, tears rushed into
her own.
“Indeed, indeed, Mr. Falkland,” she said, eagerly, “this is not
affectation. I am very tired; but rather than prevent your amusement, I
will endeavour to go on.” “Nonsense, child,” said Lady Margaret, “you do
seem tired. Mrs. Dalton and Falkland shall go to the rock, and I will stay
here with you.” This proposition, however, Lady Emily (who knew Lady
Margaret’s wish to see the rock) would not hear of; she insisted upon
staying by herself. “Nobody will run away with me; and I can very easily
amuse myself with picking up shells till you comeback.” After along
remonstrance, which produced no effect, this plan was at last acceded to.
With great reluctance Falkland set off with his two companions; but after
the first step, he turned to look back. He caught her eye, and felt from
that moment that their reconciliation was sealed. They arrived, at last,
at the cliff. Its height, its excavations, the romantic interest which the
traditions respecting it had inspired, fully repaid the two women for the
fatigue of their walk. As for Falkland, he was unconscious of everything
around him; he was full of “sweet and bitter thoughts.” In vain the man
whom they found loitering there, in order to serve as a guide, kept
dinning in his ear stories of the marvellous, and exclamations of the
sublime. The first words which aroused him were these; “It’s lucky, please
your Honour, that you have just saved the tide. It is but last week that
three poor people were drowned in attempting to come here; as it is, you
will have to go home round the cliff.” Falkland started: he felt his heart
stand still. “Good God!” cried Lady Margaret, “what will become of Emily?”
They were—at that instant in one of the caverns, where they had
already been loitering too long. Falkland rushed out to the sands. The
tide was hurrying in with a deep sound, which came on his soul like a
knell. He looked back towards the way they had come: not one hundred yards
distant, and the waters had already covered the path! An eternity would
scarcely atone for the horror of that moment! One great characteristic of
Falkland was his presence of mind. He turned to the man who stood beside
him—he gave him a cool and exact description of the spot where he
had left Emily. He told him to repair with all possible speed to his home—to
launch his boat—to row it to the place he had described. “Be quick,”
he added, “and you must be in time: if you are, you shall never know
poverty again.” The next moment he was already several yards from the
spot. He ran, or rather flew, till he was stopped by the waters. He rushed
in; they were over a hollow between two rocks—they were already up
to his chest. “There is yet hope,” thought he, when he had passed the
spot, and saw the smooth sand before him. For some minutes he was scarcely
sensible of existence; and then he found himself breathless at her feet.
Beyond, towards T——- (the small inn I spoke of), the waves had
already reached the foot of the rocks, and precluded all hope of return.
Their only chance was the possibility that the waters had not yet rendered
impassable the hollow through which Falkland had just waded. He scarcely
spoke; at least he was totally unconscious of what he said. He hurried her
on breathless and trembling, with the sound of the booming waters ringing
in his ear, and their billows advancing to his very feet. They arrived at
the hollow: a single glance sufficed to show him that their solitary hope
was past! The waters, before up to his chest, had swelled considerably: he
could not swim. He saw in that instant that they were girt with a
hastening and terrible death. Can it be believed that with that certainty
ceased his fear? He looked in the pale but calm countenance of her who
clung to him, and a strange tranquillity, even mingled with joy, possessed
him. Her breath was on his cheek—her form was reclining on his own—his
hand clasped hers; if they were to die, it was thus. What would life
afford to him more dear? “It is in this moment,” said he, and he knelt as
he spoke, “that I dare tell you what otherwise my lips never should have
revealed. I love—I adore you! Turn not away from me thus. In life
our persons were severed; if our hearts are united in death, then death
will be sweet.” She turned—her cheek was no longer pale! He rose—he
clasped her to his bosom: his lips pressed hers. Oh! that long, deep,
burning pressure!—youth, love, life, soul, all concentrated in that
one kiss! Yet the same cause which occasioned the avowal hallowed also the
madness of his heart. What had the passion, declared only at the approach
of death, with the more earthly desires of life? They looked to heaven—it
was calm and unclouded: the evening lay there in its balm and perfume, and
the air was less agitated than their sighs. They turned towards the
beautiful sea which was to be their grave: the wild birds flew over it
exultingly: the far vessels seemed “rejoicing to run their course.” All
was full of the breath, the glory, the life of nature; and in how many
minutes was all to be as nothing! Their existence would resemble the ships
that have gone down at sea in the very smile of the element that destroyed
them. They looked into each other’s eyes, and they drew still nearer
together. Their hearts, in safety apart, mingled in peril and became one.
Minutes rolled on, and the great waves came dashing round them. They stood
on the loftiest eminence they could reach. The spray broke over their
feet: the billows rose—rose—they were speechless. He thought
he heard her heart beat, but her lip trembled not. A speck—a boat!
“Look up, Emily! look up! See how it cuts the waters. Nearer—nearer!
but a little longer, and we are safe. It is but a few yards off;—it
approaches—it touches the rock!” Ah! what to them henceforth was the
value of life, when the moment of discovering its charm became also the
date of its misfortunes, and when the death they had escaped was the only
method of cementing their—union without consummating their guilt?
FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO THE HON. FREDERICK MONKTON.
I will write to you at length to-morrow. Events have occurred to alter,
perhaps, the whole complexion of the future. I am now going to Emily to
propose to her to fly. We are not les gens du monde, who are ruined
by the loss of public opinion. She has felt that I can be to her far more
than the world; and as for me, what would I not forfeit for one touch of
her hand?
EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE.
Friday.—Since I wrote yesterday in these pages the narrative of our
escape, I have done nothing but think over those moments, too dangerous
because too dear; but at last I have steeled my heart—I have yielded
to my own weakness too long—I shudder at the abyss from which I have
escaped. I can yet fly. He will come here to-day—he shall receive my
farewell.
Saturday morning, four o’clock.—I have sat in this room alone since
eleven o’clock. I cannot give vent to my feelings; they seem as if crushed
by some load from which it is impossible to rise. “He is gone, and for
ever!” I sit repeating those words to myself, scarcely conscious of their
meaning. Alas! when to-morrow comes, and the next day, and the next, and
yet I see him not, I shall awaken, indeed, to all the agony of my loss! He
came here—he saw me alone—he implored me to fly. I did not
dare to meet his eyes; I hardened my heart against his voice. I knew the
part I was to take—I have adopted it; but what struggles, what
misery, has it not occasioned me! Who could have thought it had been so
hard to be virtuous! His eloquence drove me from one defence to another,
and then I had none but his mercy. I opened my heart—I showed him
its weakness—I implored his forbearance. My tears, my anguish,
convinced him of my sincerity. We have parted in bitterness, but, thank
Heaven, not in guilt! He has entreated permission to write to me. How
could I refuse him? Yet I may not—cannot-write to him again! How
could, I indeed, suffer my heart to pour forth one of its feelings in
reply? for would there be one word of regret, or one term of endearment,
which my inmost soul would not echo?
Sunday.—Yes, that day—but I must not think of this; my very
religion I dare not indulge. Oh God! how wretched I am! His visit was
always the great aera in the clay; it employed all my hopes till he came,
and all my memory when he was gone. I sit now and look at the place he
used to fill, till I feel the tears rolling silently down my cheek: they
come without an effort—they depart without relief.
Monday.—Henry asked me where Mr. Falkland was gone; I stooped down
to hide my confusion. When shall I hear from him? To-morrow? Oh that it
were come! I have placed the clock before me, and I actually count the
minutes. He left a book here; it is a volume of “Melmoth.” I have read
over every word of it, and whenever I have come to a pencil-mark by him, I
have paused to dream over that varying and eloquent countenance, the low
soft tone of that tender voice, till the book has fallen from my hands,
and I have started to find the utterness of my desolation!
FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE. ———
Hotel, London.
For the first time in my life I write to you! How my hand trembles—how
my cheek flushes! a thousand, thousand thoughts rush upon me, and almost
suffocate me with the variety and confusion of the emotions they awaken! I
am agitated alike with the rapture of writing to you, and with the
impossibility of expressing the feelings which I cannot distinctly unravel
even to myself. You love me, Emily, and yet I have fled from you, and at
your command; but the thought that, though absent, I am not forgotten,
supports me through all.
It was with a feverish sense of weariness and pain that I found myself
entering this vast reservoir of human vices. I became at once sensible of
the sterility of that polluted soil so incapable of nurturing affection,
and I clasped your image the closer to my heart. It is you, who, when I
was most weary of existence, gifted me with a new life. You breathed into
me a part of your own spirit; my soul feels that influence, and becomes
more sacred. I have shut myself from the idlers who would molest me: I
have built a temple in my heart: I have set within it a divinity; and the
vanities of the world shall not profane the spot which has been
consecrated to you. Our parting, Emily,—do you recall it? Your hand
clasped in mine; your cheek resting, though but for an instant, on my
bosom; and the tears which love called forth, but which virtue purified
even at their source. Never were hearts so near, yet so divided; never was
there an hour so tender, yet so unaccompanied with danger. Passion, grief,
madness, all sank beneath your voice, and lay hushed like a deep sea
within my soul! “Tu abbia veduto il leone ammansarsi alla sola tua voce.”
‘Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis.
I tore myself from you; I hurried through the wood; I stood by the lake,
on whose banks I had so often wandered with you: I bared my breast to the
winds; I bathed my temples with the waters. Fool that I was! the fever,
the fever was within! But it is not thus, my adored and beautiful friend,
that I should console and support you. Even as I write, passion melts into
tenderness, and pours itself in softness over your remembrance. The virtue
so gentle, yet so strong; the feelings so kind, yet so holy; the tears
which wept over the decision your lips proclaimed—these are the
recollections which come over me like dew. Let your own heart, my Emily,
be your reward; and know that your lover only forgets that he adores, to
remember that he respects you.
FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. ————— Park.
I could not bear the tumult and noise of London. I sighed for solitude,
that I might muse over your remembrance undisturbed. I came here
yesterday. It is the home of my childhood. I am surrounded on all sides by
the scenes and images consecrated by the fresh recollections of my
unsullied years. They are not changed. The seasons which come and depart
renew in them the havoc which they make. If the December destroys, the
April revives; but man has but one spring, and the desolation of the heart
but one winter! In this very room have I sat and brooded over dreams and
hopes which—but no matter—those dreams could never show me a
vision to equal you, or those hopes hold out to me a blessing so precious
as your love.
Do you remember, or rather can you ever forget, that moment in which the
great depths of our souls were revealed? Ah! not in the scene in which
such vows should have been whispered to your ear and your tenderness have
blushed its reply. The passion concealed in darkness was revealed in
danger; and the love, which in life was forbidden, was our comfort amidst
the terrors of death! And that long and holy kiss, the first, the only
moment in which our lips shared the union of our souls!—do not tell
me that it is wrong to recall it!—do not tell me that I sin, when I
own to you the hours I sit alone, and nurse the delirium of that
voluptuous remembrance. The feelings you have excited may render me
wretched, but not guilty; for the love of you can only hallow the heart—it
is a fire which consecrates the altar on which it burns. I feel, even from
the hour that I loved, that my soul has become more pure. I could not
believe that I was capable of so unearthly an affection, or that the love
of woman could possess that divinity of virtue which I worship in yours.
The world is no fosterer of our young visions of purity and passion:
embarked in its pursuits, and acquainted with its pleasures, while the
latter sated me with what is evil, the former made me incredulous to what
is pure. I considered your sex as a problem which my experience had
already solved. Like the French philosophers, who lose truth by
endeavouring to condense it, and who forfeit the moral from their regard
to the maxim, I concentrated my knowledge of women into aphorism and
antitheses; and I did not dream of the exceptions, if I did not find
myself deceived in the general conclusion. I confess that I erred; I
renounce from this moment the colder reflections of my manhood,—the
fruits of a bitter experience,—the wisdom of an inquiring yet
agitated life. I return with transport to my earliest visions of beauty
and love; and I dedicate them upon the altar of my soul to you, who have
embodied, and concentrated, and breathed them into life!
EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE.
Monday.—This is the most joyless day in the whole week; for it can
bring me no letter from him. I rise listlessly, and read over again and
again the last letter I received from him—useless task! it is graven
on my heart! I long only for the day to be over, because to-morrow I may,
perhaps, hear from him again. When I wake at night from my disturbed and
broken sleep, I look if the morning is near; not because it gives light
and life, but because it may bring tidings of him. When his letter is
brought to me, I keep it for minutes unopened—I feed my eyes on the
handwriting—I examine the seal—I press it with my kisses,
before I indulge myself in the luxury of reading it. I then place it in my
bosom, and take it thence only to read it again and again,—to
moisten it with my tears of gratitude and love, and, alas! of penitence
and remorse! What can be the end of this affection? I dare neither to hope
that it may continue or that it may cease; in either case I am wretched
for ever!
Monday night, twelve o’clock.—They observe my paleness; the tears
which tremble in my eyes; the listlessness and dejection of my manner. I
think Mrs. Dalton guesses the cause. Humbled and debased in my own mind, I
fly, Falkland, for refuge to you! Your affection cannot raise me to my
former state, but it can reconcile—no—not reconcile, but
support me in my present. This dear letter, I kiss it again—oh! that
to-morrow were come!
Tuesday.—Another letter, so kind, so tender, so encouraging: would
that I deserved his praises! alas! I sin even in reading them. I know that
I ought to struggle more against my feelings—once I attempted it; I
prayed to Heaven to support me; I put away from me everything that could
recall him to my mind—for three days I would not open his letters. I
could then resist no longer; and my weakness became the more confirmed
from the feebleness of the struggle. I remember one day that he told us of
a beautiful passage in one of the ancients, in which the bitterest curse
against the wicked is, that they may see virtue, but not be able to obtain
it; [Persius]—that punishment is mine!
Wednesday.—My boy has been with me: I see him now from the windows
gathering the field-flowers, and running after every butterfly which comes
across him. Formerly he made all my delight and occupation; now he is even
dearer to me than ever; but he no longer engrosses all my thoughts. I turn
over the leaves of this journal; once it noted down the little occurrences
of the day; it marks nothing now but the monotony of sadness. He is not
here—he cannot come. What event then could I notice?
FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE.
[Most of the letters from Falkland to Lady E. Mandeville I have thought it expedient to suppress.] ————- Park.If you knew how I long, how I thirst, for one word from you—one word to say you are well, and have not forgotten me!—but I will not distress you. You will guess my feelings, and do justice to the restraint I impose on them, when I make no effort to alter your resolution not to write. I know that it is just, and I bow to my sentence; but can you blame me if I am restless and if I repine? It is past twelve; I always write to you at night. It is then, my own love, that my imagination can be the more readily transport me to you: it is then that my spirit holds with you a more tender and undivided commune. In the day the world can force itself upon my thoughts, and its trifles usurp the place which “I love to keep for only thee and Heaven;” but in the night all things recall you the more vividly: the stillness of the gentle skies,—the blandness of the unbroken air,—the stars, so holy in their loveliness, all speak and breathe to me of you. I think your hand is clasped in mine; and I again drink the low music of your voice, and imbibe again in the air the breath which has been perfumed by your lips. You seem to stand in my lonely chamber in the light and stillness of a spirit, who has wandered on earth to teach us the love which is felt in Heaven. I cannot, believe me, I cannot endure this separation long; it must be more or less. You must be mine for ever, or our parting must be without a mitigation, which is rather a cruelty than a relief. If you will not accompany me, I will leave this country alone. I must not wean myself from your image by degrees, but break from the enchantment at once. And when Emily, I am once more upon the world, when no tidings of my fate shall reach your ear, and all its power of alienation be left to the progress of time—then, when you will at last have forgotten me, when your peace of mind will be restored, and, having no struggles of conscience to undergo, you will have no remorse to endure; then, Emily, when we are indeed divided, let the scene which has witnessed our passion, the letters which have recorded my vow, the evil we have suffered, and the temptation we have overcome; let these in our old age be remembered, and in declaring to Heaven that we were innocent, add also—that, we loved. FROM DON ALPHONSO D’AQUILAR TO DON ————. London. Our cause gains ground daily. The great, indeed the only ostensible object of my mission is nearly fulfilled; but I have another charge and attraction which I am now about to explain to you. You know that my acquaintance with the English language and country arose from my sister’s marriage with Mr. Falkland. After the birth of their only child I accompanied them to England: I remained with them for three years, and I still consider those days among the whitest in my restless and agitated career. I returned to Spain; I became engaged in the troubles and dissensions which distracted my unhappy country. Years rolled on, how I need not mention to you. One night they put a letter into my hands; it was from my sister; it was written on her death-bed. Her husband had died suddenly. She loved him as a Spanish woman loves, and she could not survive his loss. Her letter to me spoke of her country and her son. Amid the new ties she had formed in England, she had never forgotten the land of her fathers. “I have already,” she said, “taught my boy to remember that he has two countries; that the one, prosperous and free; may afford him his pleasures; that the other, struggling and debased, demands from him his duties. If, when he has attained the age in which you can judge of his character, he is respectable only from his rank, and valuable only from his wealth; if neither his head nor his heart will make him useful to our cause, suffer him to remain undisturbed in his prosperity here: but if, as I presage, he becomes worthy of the blood which he bears in his veins, then I conjure you, my brother, to remind him that he has been sworn by me on my death-bed to the most sacred of earthly altars.” Some months since, when I arrived in England; before I ventured to find him out in person, I resolved to inquire into his character. Had he been as the young and the rich generally are—had dissipation become habitual to him, and frivolity grown around him as a second nature, then I should have acquiesced in the former injunction of my sister much more willingly than I shall now obey the latter. I find that he is perfectly acquainted with our language, that he has placed a large sum in our funds, and that from the general liberality of his sentiments he is as likely to espouse, as (in that case) he would be certain, from his high reputation for talent, to serve our cause. I am, therefore, upon the eve of seeking him out. I understand that he is living in perfect retirement in the county of ———-, in the immediate neighbourhood of Mr. Mandeville, an Englishman of considerable fortune, and warmly attached to our cause. Mr. Mandeville has invited me to accompany him down to his estate for some days, and I am too anxious to see my nephew not to accept eagerly of the invitation. If I can persuade Falkland to aid us, it will be by the influence of his name, his talents, and his wealth. It is not of him that we can ask the stern and laborious devotion to which we have consecrated ourselves. The perfidy of friends, the vigilance of foes, the rashness of the bold, the cowardice of the wavering; strife in the closet, treachery in the senate, death in the field; these constitute the fate we have pledged ourselves to bear. Little can any, who do not endure it, imagine of the life to which those who share the contests of an agitated and distracted country are doomed; but if they know not our griefs, neither can they dream of our consolation. We move like the delineation of Faith, over a barren and desert soil; the rock, and the thorn, and the stings of the adder, are round our feet; but we clasp a crucifix to our hearts for our comfort, and we fix our eyes upon the heavens for our hope! EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF LADY EMILY MANDE VILLE. Wednesday.—His letters have taken a different tone: instead of soothing, they add to my distress; but I deserve all—all that can be inflicted upon me. I have had a letter from Mr. Mandeville. He is coming down here for a few days, and intends bringing some friends with him: he mentions particularly a Spaniard—the uncle of Mr Falkland, whom he asks if I have seen. The Spaniard is particularly anxious to meet his nephew—he does not then know that Falkland is gone. It will be some relief to see Mr. Mandeville alone; but even then how shall I meet him? What shall I say when he observes my paleness and alteration? I feel bowed to the very dust. Thursday evening.—Mr. Mandeville has arrived: fortunately, it was late in the evening before he came, and the darkness prevented his observing my confusion and alteration. He was kinder than usual. Oh! how bitterly my heart avenged him! He brought with him the Spaniard, Don Alphonso d’Aguilar; I think there is a faint family likeness between him and Falkland. Mr. Mandeville brought also a letter from Julia. She will be here the day after to-morrow. The letter is short, but kind: she does not allude to him; it is some days since I heard from him. FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO THE HON. FREDERICK MONKTON. I have resolved, Monkton, to go to her again! I am sure that it will be better for both of us to meet once more; perhaps, to unite for ever! None who have once loved me can easily forget me. I do not say this from vanity, because I owe it not to my being superior to, but different from, others. I am sure that the remorse and affliction she feels now are far greater than she would experience, even were she more guilty, and with me. Then, at least, she would have some one to soothe and sympathise in whatever she might endure. To one so pure as Emily, the full crime is already incurred. It is not the innocent who insist upon that nice line of morality between the thought and the action: such distinctions require reflection, experience, deliberation, prudence of head, or coldness of heart; these are the traits, not of the guileless, but of the worldly. It is the reflections, not the person, of a virtuous woman, which it is difficult to obtain: that difficulty is the safeguard to her chastity; that difficulty I have, in this instance, overcome. I have endeavoured to live without Emily, but in vain. Every moment of absence only taught me the impossibility. In twenty-four hours I shall see her again. I feel my pulse rise into fever at the very thought. Farewell, Monkton. My next letter, I hope, will record my triumph.
SONG.
1.
Ah, let us love while yet we may,
Our summer is decaying;
And woe to hearts which, in their gray
December, go a-maying.
2.
Ah, let us love, while of the fire
Time hath not yet bereft us
With years our warmer thoughts expire,
Till only ice is left us!
3.
We’ll fly the bleak world’s bitter air
A brighter home shall win us;
And if our hearts grow weary there,
We’ll find a world within us.
4.
They preach that passion fades each hour,
That nought will pall like pleasure;
My bee, if Love’s so frail a flower,
Oh, haste to hive its treasure.
5.
Wait not the hour, when all the mind
Shall to the crowd be given;
For links, which to the million bind,
Shall from the one be riven.
6.
But let us love while yet we may
Our summer is decaying;
And woe to hearts which, in their gray
December, go a-maying.
The next day Emily rose ill and feverish. In the absence of Falkland, her
mind always awoke to the full sense of the guilt she had incurred. She had
been brought up in the strictest, even the most fastidious, principles;
and her nature was so pure, that merely to err appeared like a change in
existence—like an entrance into some new and unknown world, from
which she shrank back, in terror, to herself.
Judge, then, if she easily habituated her mind to its present degradation.
She sat, that morning, pale and listless; her book lay unopened before
her; her eyes were fixed upon the ground, heavy with suppressed tears.
Mrs. St. John entered: no one else was in the room. She sat by her, and
took her hand. Her countenance was scarcely less colourless than Emily’s,
but its expression was more calm and composed. “It is not too late,
Emily,” she said; “you have done much that you should repent—nothing
to render repentance unavailing. Forgive me, if I speak to you on this
subject. It is time—in a few days your fate will be decided. I have
looked on, though hitherto I have been silent: I have witnessed that eye
when it dwelt upon you; I have heard that voice when it spoke to your
heart. None ever resisted their influence long: do you imagine that you
are the first who have found the power? Pardon me, pardon me, I beseech
you, my dearest friend, if I pain you. I have known you from your
childhood, and I only wish to preserve you spotless to your old age.”
Emily wept, without replying. Mrs. St. John continued to argue and
expostulate. What is so wavering as passion? When, at last, Mrs. St. John
ceased, and Emily shed upon her bosom the hot tears of her anguish and
repentance, she imagined that her resolution was taken, and that she could
almost have vowed an eternal separation from her lover; Falkland came that
evening, and she loved him more madly than before.
Mrs. St. John was not in the saloon when Falkland entered. Lady Margaret
was reading the well-known story of Lady T——- and the Duchess
of —-, in which an agreement had been made and kept, that the one
who died first should return once more to the survivor. As Lady Margaret
spoke laughingly of the anecdote, Emily, who was watching Falkland’s
countenance, was struck with the dark and sudden shade which fell over it.
He moved in silence towards the window where Emily was sitting. “Do you
believe,” she said, with a faint smile, “in the possibility of such an
event?” “I believe—though I reject—nothing!” replied Falkland,
“but I would give worlds for such a proof that death does not destroy.”
“Surely,” said Emily, “you do not deny that evidence of our immortality
which we gather from the Scriptures?—are they not all that a voice
from the dead could be?” Falkland was silent for a few moments: he did not
seem to hear the question; his eyes dwelt upon vacancy; and when he at
last spoke, it was rather in commune with himself than in answer to her.
“I have watched,” said he, in a low internal tone, “over the tomb: I have
called, in the agony of my heart, unto her—who slept beneath; I
would have dissolved my very soul into a spell, could it have summoned
before me for one, one moment the being who had once been the spirit of my
life! I have been, as it were, entranced with the intensity of my own
adjuration; I have gazed upon the empty air, and worked upon my mind to
fill it with imaginings; I have called aloud unto the winds and tasked my
soul to waken their silence to reply. All was a waste—a stillness—an
infinity—without a wanderer or a voice! The dead answered me not,
when I invoked them; and in the vigils of the still night I looked from
the rank grass and the mouldering stones to the Eternal Heavens, as man
looks from decay to immortality! Oh! that awful magnificence of repose—that
living sleep—that breathing yet unrevealing divinity, spread over
those still worlds! To them also I poured my thoughts—but in a
whisper. I did not dare to breathe aloud the unhallowed anguish of my mind
to the majesty of the unsympathising stars! In the vast order of creation—in
the midst of the stupendous system of universal life, my doubt and inquiry
were murmured forth—a voice crying in the wilderness and returning
without an echo unanswered unto myself!”
The deep light of the summer moon shone over Falkland’s countenance, which
Emily gazed on, as she listened, almost tremblingly, to his words. His
brow was knit and hueless, and the large drops gathered slowly over it, as
if wrung from the strained yet impotent tension of the thoughts within.
Emily drew nearer to him—she laid her hand upon his own. “Listen to
me,” she said: “if a herald from the grave could satisfy your doubt, I
would gladly die that I might return to you!” “Beware,” said Falkland,
with an agitated but solemn voice; “the words, now so lightly spoken, may
be registered on high.” “Be it so!” replied Emily firmly, and she felt
what she said. Her love penetrated beyond the tomb, and she would have
forfeited all here for their union hereafter.
“In my earliest youth,” said Falkland, more calmly than he had yet spoken,
“I found in the present and the past of this world enough to direct my
attention to the futurity of another: if I did not credit all with the
enthusiast, I had no sympathies with the scorner: I sat myself down to
examine and reflect: I pored alike over the pages of the philosopher and
the theologian; I was neither baffled by the subtleties nor deterred by
the contradictions of either. As men first ascertained the geography of
the earth by observing the signs of the heavens, I did homage to the
Unknown God, and sought from that worship to inquire into the reasonings
of mankind. I did not confine myself to books—all things breathing
or inanimate constituted my study. From death itself I endeavoured to
extract its secret; and whole nights I have sat in the crowded asylums of
the dying, watching the last spark flutter and decay. Men die away as in
sleep, without effort, or struggle, or emotion. I have looked on their
countenances a moment before death, and the serenity of repose was upon
them, waxing only more deep as it approached that slumber which, is never
broken: the breath grew gentler and gentler, till the lips it came from
fell from each other, and all was hushed; the light had departed from the
cloud, but the cloud itself, gray, cold, altered as it seemed, was as
before. They died and made no sign. They had left the labyrinth without
bequeathing us its clew. It is in vain that I have sent my spirit into the
land of shadows—it has borne back no witnesses of its inquiry. As
Newton said of himself, ‘I picked up a few shells by the seashore, but the
great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me.’”
There was a long pause. Lady Margaret had sat down to chess with the
Spaniard. No look was upon the lovers: their eyes met, and with that one
glance the whole current of their thoughts was changed. The blood, which a
moment before had left Falkland’s cheek so colourless, rushed back to it
again. The love which had so penetrated and pervaded his whole system, and
which abstruser and colder reflection had just calmed, thrilled through
his frame with redoubled power. As if by an involuntary and mutual
impulse, their lips met: he threw his arm round her; he strained her to
his bosom. “Dark as my thoughts are,” he whispered, “evil as has been my
life, will you not yet soothe the one, and guide the other? My Emily! my
love! the Heaven to the tumultuous ocean of my heart—will you not be
mine—mine only—wholly—and for ever?” She did not answer—she
did not turn from his embrace. Her cheek flushed as his breath stole over
it, and her bosom heaved beneath the arm which encircled that empire so
devoted to him. “Speak one word, only one word,” he continued to whisper:
“will you not be mine? Are you not mine at heart even at this moment?” Her
head sank upon his bosom. Those deep and eloquent eyes looked up to his
through their dark lashes. “I will be yours,” she murmured: “I am at your
mercy; I have no longer any existence but in you. My only fear is, that I
shall cease to be worthy of your love!”
Falkland pressed his lips once more to her own: it was his only answer,
and the last seal to their compact. As they stood before the open lattice,
the still and unconscious moon looked down upon that record of guilt.
There was not a cloud in the heaven to dim her purity: the very winds of
night had hushed themselves to do her homage: all was silent but their
hearts. They stood beneath the calm and holy skies, a guilty and devoted
pair—a fearful contrast of the sin and turbulence of this unquiet
earth to the passionless serenity of the eternal heaven. The same stars,
that for thousands of unfathomed years had looked upon the changes of this
nether world, gleamed pale, and pure, and steadfast upon their burning but
transitory vow. In a few years what of the condemnation or the recorders
of that vow would remain? From other lips, on that spot, other oaths might
be plighted; new pledges of unchangeable fidelity exchanged: and, year
after year, in each succession of scene and time, the same stars will look
from the mystery of their untracked and impenetrable home, to mock, as
now, with their immutability, the variations and shadows of mankind!
FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE.
At length, then, you are to be mine—you have consented to fly with
me. In three days we shall leave this country, and have no home—no
world but in each other. We will go, my Emily, to those golden lands where
Nature, the only companion we will suffer, woos us, like a mother, to find
our asylum in her breast; where the breezes are languid beneath the
passion of the voluptuous skies; and where the purple light that invests
all things with its glory is only less tender and consecrating than the
spirit which we bring. Is there not, my Emily, in the external nature
which reigns over creation, and that human nature centred in ourselves,
some secret and undefinable intelligence and attraction? Are not the
impressions of the former as spells over the passions of the later? and in
gazing upon the loveliness around us, do we not gather, as it were, and
store within our hearts, an increase of the yearning and desire of love?
What can we demand from earth but its solitudes—what from heaven but
its unpolluted air? All that others would ask from either, we can find in
ourselves. Wealth—honour—happiness—every object of
ambition or desire, exist not for us without the circle of our arms! But
the bower that surrounds us shall not be unworthy of your beauty or our
love. Amidst the myrtle and the vine, and the valleys where the summer
sleeps and “the rivers that murmur the memories and the legends of old
amidst the hills and the glossy glades,” and the silver fountains, still
as beautiful as if the Nymph and Spirit yet held and decorated an earthly
home; amidst these we will make the couch of our bridals, and the moon of
Italian skies shall keep watch on our repose.
Emily!—Emily!—how I love to repeat and to linger over that
beautiful name! If to see, to address, and, more than all, to touch you,
has been a rapture, what word can I find in the vocabulary of happiness to
express the realisation of that hope which now burns within me—to
mingle our youth together into one stream, wheresoever it flows; to
respire the same breath; to be almost blent in the same existence; to
grow, as it were, on one stem, and knit into a single life the feelings,
the wishes, the being of both!
To-night I shall see you again: let one day more intervene, and—I
cannot conclude the sentence. As I have written, the tumultuous happiness
of hope has come over me to confuse and overwhelm everything else. At this
moment my pulse riots with fever; the room swims before my eyes;
everything is indistinct and jarring—a chaos of emotions. Oh! that
happiness should ever have such excess!
When Emily received and laid this letter to her heart, she felt nothing in
common with the spirit which it breathed. With that quick transition and
inconstancy of feeling common in women, and which is as frequently their
safety as their peril, her mind had already repented of the weakness of
the last evening, and relapsed into the irresolution and bitterness of her
former remorse. Never had there been in the human breast a stronger
contest between conscience and passion;—if, indeed, the extreme
softness (notwithstanding its power) of Emily’s attachment could be called
passion it was rather a love that had refined by the increase of its own
strength; it contained nothing but the primary guilt of conceiving it,
which that order of angels, whose nature is love, would have sought to
purify away. To see him, to live with him, to count the variations of his
countenance and voice, to touch his hand at moments when waking, and watch
over his slumbers when he slept—this was the essence of her wishes,
and constituted the limit to her desires. Against the temptations of the
present was opposed the whole history of the past. Her mind wandered from
each to each, wavering and wretched, as the impulse of the moment impelled
it. Hers was not, indeed, a strong character; her education and habits had
weakened, while they rendered more feminine and delicate, a nature
originally too soft. Every recollection of former purity called to her
with the loud voice of duty, as a warning from the great guilt she was
about to incur; and whenever she thought of her child—that centre of
fond and sinless sensations, where once she had so wholly garnered up her
heart—her feelings melted at once from the object which had so
wildly held them riveted as by a spell, to dissolve and lose themselves in
the great and sacred fountain of a mother’s love.
When Falkland came that evening, she was sitting at a corner of the
saloon, apparently occupied in reading, but her eyes were fixed upon her
boy, whom Mrs. St. John was endeavouring at the opposite end of the room
to amuse. The child, who was fond of Falkland, came up to him as he
entered: Falkland stooped to kiss him; and Mrs. St. John said, in a low
voice which just reached his ear, “Judas, too, kissed before he betrayed.”
Falkland’s colour changed: he felt the sting the words were intended to
convey. On that child, now so innocently caressing him, he was indeed
about to inflict a disgrace and injury the most sensible and irremediable
in his power. But who ever indulges reflection in passion? He banished the
remorse from his mind as instantaneously as it arose; and, seating himself
by Emily, endeavoured to inspire her with a portion of the joy and hope
which animated himself. Mrs. St. John watched them with a jealous and
anxious eye: she had already seen how useless had been her former attempt
to arm Emily’s conscience effectually against her lover; but she resolved
at least to renew the impression she had then made. The danger was
imminent, and any remedy must be prompt; and it was something to protract,
even if she could not finally break off, an union against which were
arrayed all the angry feelings of jealousy, as well as the better
affections of the friend. Emily’s eye was already brightening beneath the
words that Falkland whispered in her ear, when Mrs. St. John approached
her. She placed herself on a chair beside them, and unmindful of
Falkland’s bent and angry brow, attempted to create a general and
commonplace conversation. Lady Margaret had invited two or three people in
the neighbourhood; and when these came in, music and cards were resorted
to immediately, with that English politesse, which takes the earliest
opportunity to show that the conversation of our friends is the last thing
for which we have invited them. But Mrs. St. John never left the lovers;
and at last, when Falkland, in despair at her obstinacy, arose to join the
card-table, she said, “Pray, Mr. Falkland, were you not intimate at one
time with * * * *, who eloped with Lady * * *?” “I knew him but slightly,”
said Falkland; and then added, with a sneer, “the only times I ever met
him were at your house.” Mrs. St. John, without noticing the sarcasm,
continued:—“What an unfortunate affair that proved! They were very
much attached to one another in early life—the only excuse, perhaps
for a woman’s breaking her subsequent vows. They eloped. The remainder of
their history is briefly told: it is that of all who forfeit everything
for passion, and forget that of everything it is the briefest in duration.
He who had sacrificed his honour for her, sacrificed her also as lightly
for another. She could not bear his infidelity; and how could she reproach
him? In the very act of yielding to, she had become unworthy of, his love.
She did not reproach him—she died of a broken heart! I saw her just
before her death, for I was distantly related to her, and I could not
forsake her utterly even in her sin. She then spoke to me only of the
child by her former marriage, whom she had left in the years when it most
needed her care: she questioned me of its health—its education—its
very growth: the minutest thing was not beneath her inquiry. His tidings
were all that brought back to her mind ‘the redolence of joy and spring.’
I brought that child to her one day: he at least had never forgotten her.
How bitterly both wept when they were separated! and she—poor, poor
Ellen—an hour after their separation was no more!” There was a pause
for a few minutes. Emily was deeply affected. Mrs. St. John had
anticipated the effect she had produced, and concerted the method to
increase it. “It is singular,” she resumed, “that, the evening before her
elopement, some verses were sent to her anonymously—I do not think,
Emily, that you have ever seen them. Shall I sing them to you now?” and,
without waiting for a reply, she placed herself at the piano; and with a
low but sweet voice, greatly aided in effect by the extreme feeling of her
manner, she sang the following verses:
1.
And wilt thou leave that happy home,
Where once it was so sweet to live?
Ah! think, before thou seek’st to roam,
What safer shelter Guilt can give!
2.
The Bird may rove, and still regain
With spotless wings, her wonted rest,
But home, once lost, is ne’er again
Restored to Woman’s erring breast!
3.
If wandering o’er a world of flowers,
The heart at times would ask repose;
But thou wouldst lose the only bowers
Of rest amid a world of woes.
4.
Recall thy youth’s unsullied vow
The past which on thee smile so fair;
Then turn from thence to picture now
The frowns thy future fate must wear!
5.
No hour, no hope, can bring relief
To her who hides a blighted name;
For hearts unbow’d by stormiest grief
Will break beneath one breeze of shame!
6.
And when thy child’s deserted years
Amid life’s early woes are thrown,
Shall menial bosoms soothe the tears
That should be shed on thine alone?
7.
When on thy name his lips shall call,
(That tender name, the earliest taught!)
Thou wouldst not Shame and Sin were all
The memories link’d around its thought!
8.
If Sickness haunt his infant bed,
Ah! what could then replace thy care?
Could hireling steps as gently tread
As if a Mother’s soul was there?
9.
Enough! ‘tis not too late to shun
The bitter draught thyself wouldst fill;
The latest link is not undone
Thy bark is in the haven still.
10.
If doom’d to grief through life thou art,
‘Tis thine at least unstain’d to die!
Oh! better break at once thy heart
Than rend it from its holiest tie!
It were vain to attempt describing Emily’s feelings when the song ceased.
The scene floated before her eyes indistinct and dark. The violence of the
emotions she attempted to conceal pressed upon her almost to choking. She
rose, looked at Falkland with one look of such anguish and despair that it
froze his very heart, and left the room without uttering a word. A moment
more—they heard a noise—a fall. They rushed out—Emily
was stretched on the ground, apparently lifeless. She had broken a
blood-vessel.
That ocean to the rivers of her soul.
They sat down beneath an oak: Falkland stooped to kiss the cold and pale
cheek that still rested upon his breast. His kisses were like lava: the
turbulent and stormy elements of sin and desire were aroused even to
madness within him. He clasped her still nearer to his bosom: her lips
answered to his own: they caught perhaps something of the spirit which
they received: her eyes were half-closed; the bosom heaved wildly that was
pressed to his beating and burning heart. The skies grew darker and darker
as the night stole over them: one low roll of thunder broke upon the
curtained and heavy air—they did not hear it; and yet it was the
knell of peace—virtue—hope—lost, lost for ever to their
souls!
They separated as they had never done before. In Emily’s bosom there was a
dreary void—a vast blank-over which there went a low deep voice like
a Spirit’s—a sound indistinct and strange, that spoke a language she
knew not; but felt that it told of woe-guilt-doom. Her senses were
stunned: the vitality of her feelings was numbed and torpid: the first
herald of despair is insensibility. “Tomorrow then,” said Falkland—and
his voice for the first time seemed strange and harsh to her—“we
will fly hence for ever: meet me at daybreak—the carriage shall be
in attendance—we cannot now unite too soon—would that at this
very moment we were prepared!”—“To-morrow!” repeated Emily, “at
daybreak!” and as she clung to him, he felt her shudder:
“to-morrow-ay-to-morrow!—” one kiss—one embrace—one word—farewell—and
they parted.
Falkland returned to L———, a gloomy foreboding rested
upon his mind: that dim and indescribable fear, which no earthly or human
cause can explain—that shrinking within self—that vague terror
of the future—that grappling, as it were, with some unknown shade—that
wandering of the spirit—whither?—that cold, cold creeping
dread—of what? As he entered the house, he met his confidential
servant. He gave him orders respecting the flight of the morrow, and then
retired into the chamber where he slept. It was an antique and large room:
the wainscot was of oak; and one broad and high window looked over the
expanse of country which stretched beneath. He sat himself by the casement
in silence—he opened it: the dull air came over his forehead, not
with a sense of freshness, but, like the parching atmosphere of the east,
charged with a weight and fever that sank heavy into his soul. He turned:—he
threw himself upon the bed, and placed his hands over his face. His
thoughts were scattered into a thousand indistinct forms, but over all,
there was one rapturous remembrance; and that was, that the morrow was to
unite him for ever to her whose possession had only rendered her more
dear. Meanwhile, the hours rolled on; and as he lay thus silent and still,
the clock of the distant church struck with a distinct and solemn sound
upon his ear. It was the half-hour after midnight. At that moment an icy
thrill ran, slow and curdling, through his veins. His heart, as if with a
presentiment of what was to follow, beat violently, and then stopped; life
itself seemed ebbing away; cold drops stood upon his forehead; his eyelids
trembled, and the balls reeled and glazed, like those of a dying man; a
deadly fear gathered over him, so that his flesh quivered, and every hair
in his head seemed instinct with a separate life, the very marrow of his
bones crept, and his blood waxed thick and thick, as if stagnating into an
ebbless and frozen substance. He started in a wild and unutterable terror.
There stood, at the far end of the room, a dim and thin shape like
moonlight, without outline or form; still, and indistinct, and shadowy. He
gazed on, speechless and motionless; his faculties and senses seemed
locked in an unnatural trance. By degrees the shape became clearer and
clearer to his fixed and dilating eye. He saw, as through a floating and
mist-like veil, the features of Emily; but how changed!—sunken and
hueless, and set in death. The dropping lip, from which there seemed to
trickle a deep red stain like blood; the lead-like and lifeless eye; the
calm, awful, mysterious repose which broods over the aspect of the dead;—all
grew, as it were, from the hazy cloud that encircled them for one, one
brief, agonising moment, and then as suddenly faded away. The spell passed
from his senses. He sprang from the bed with a loud cry. All was quiet.
There was not a trace of what he had witnessed. The feeble light of the
skies rested upon the spot where the apparition had stood; upon that spot
he stood also. He stamped upon the floor—it was firm beneath his
footing. He passed his hands over his body—he was awake—he was
unchanged: earth, air, heaven, were around him as before. What had thus
gone over his soul to awe and overcome it to such weakness? To these
questions his reason could return no answer. Bold by nature, and sceptical
by philosophy, his mind gradually recovered its original tone: he did not
give way to conjecture; he endeavoured to discard it; he sought by natural
causes to account for the apparition he had seen or imagined; and, as he
felt the blood again circulating in its accustomed courses, and the night
air coming chill over his feverish frame, he smiled with a stern and
scornful bitterness at the terror which had so shaken, and the fancy which
had so deluded, his mind.
Are there not “more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our
philosophy”? A Spirit may hover in the air that we breathe: the depth of
our most secret solitudes may be peopled by the invisible; our uprisings
and our downsittings may be marked by a witness from the grave. In our
walks the dead may be behind us; in our banquets they may sit at the
board; and the chill breath of the night wind that stirs the curtains of
our bed may bear a message our senses receive not, from lips that once
have pressed kisses on our own! Why is it that at moments there creeps
over us an awe, a terror, overpowering, but undefined? Why is it that we
shudder without a cause, and feel the warm life-blood stand still in its
courses? Are the dead too near? Do unearthly wings touch us as they flit
around? Has our soul any intercourse which the body shares not, though it
feels, with the supernatural world—mysterious revealings—unimaginable
communion—a language of dread and power, shaking to its centre the
fleshly barrier that divides the spirit from its race?
How fearful is the very life which we hold! We have our being beneath a
cloud, and are a marvel even to ourselves. There is not a single thought
which has its affixed limits. Like circles in the water, our researches
weaken as they extend, and vanish at last into the immeasurable and
unfathomable space of the vast unknown. We are like children in the dark;
we tremble in a shadowy and terrible void, peopled with our fancies! Life
is our real night, and the first gleam of the morning, which brings us
certainty, is death.
Falkland sat the remainder of that night by the window watching the clouds
become gray as the dawn rose, and its earliest breeze awoke. He heard the
trampling of the horses beneath: he drew his cloak round him, and
descended. It was on a turning of the road beyond the lodge that he
directed the carriage to wait, and he then proceeded to the place
appointed. Emily was not yet there. He walked to and fro with an agitated
and hurried step. The impression of the night had in a great measure been
effaced from his mind, and he gave himself up without reserve to the warm
and sanguine hopes which he had so much reason to conceive. He thought
too, at moments, of those bright climates beneath which he designed their
asylum, where the very air is music, and the light is like the colourings
of love; and he associated the sighs of a mutual rapture with the
fragrance of myrtles, and the breath of a Tuscan heaven. Time glided on.
The hour was long past, yet Emily came not! The sun rose, and Falkland
turned in dark and angry discontent from its beams. With every moment his
impatience increased, and at last he could restrain himself no longer. He
proceeded towards the house. He stood for some time at a distance; but as
all seemed still hushed in repose, he drew nearer and nearer till he
reached the door: to his astonishment it was open. He saw forms passing
rapidly through the hall. He heard a confused and indistinct murmur. At
length he caught a glimpse of Mrs. St. John. He could command himself no
more. He sprang forwards—entered the door—the hall—and
caught her by a part of her dress. He could not speak, but his countenance
said all which his lips refused. Mrs. St. John burst into tears when she
saw him. “Good God!” she said, “why are you here? Is it possible you have
yet learned—” Her voice failed her. Falkland had by this time
recovered himself. He turned to the servants who gathered around him.
“Speak,” he said calmly. “What has occurred?” “My lady—my lady!”
burst at once from several tongues. “What of her:” said Falkland, with a
blanched cheek, but unchanging voice. There was a pause. At that instant a
man, whom Falkland recognised as the physician of the neighbourhood,
passed at the opposite end of the hall. A light, a scorching and
intolerable light, broke upon him. “She is dying—she is dead,
perhaps,” he said, in a low sepulchral tone, turning his eye around till
it had rested upon every one present. Not one answered. He paused a
moment, as if stunned by a sudden shock, and then sprang up the stairs. He
passed the boudoir, and entered the room where Emily slept. The shutters
were only partially closed a faint light broke through, and rested on the
bed: beside it bent two women. Them he neither heeded nor saw. He drew
aside the curtains. He beheld—the same as he had seen it in his
vision of the night before—the changed and lifeless countenance of
Emily Mandeville! That face, still so tenderly beautiful, was partially
turned towards him. Some dark stains upon the lip and neck told how she
had died—the blood-vessel she had broken before had burst again. The
bland and soft eyes, which for him never had but one expression, were
closed; and the long and disheveled tresses half hid, while they
contrasted, that bosom, which had but the night before first learned to
thrill beneath his own. Happier in her fate than she deserved, she passed
from this bitter life ere the punishment of her guilt had begun. She was
not doomed to wither beneath the blight of shame, nor the coldness of
estranged affection. From him whom she had so worshipped, she was not
condemned to bear wrong nor change. She died while his passion was yet in
its spring—before a blossom, a leaf, had faded; and she sank to
repose while his kiss was yet warm upon her lip, and her last breath
almost mingled with his sigh. For the woman who has erred, life has no
exchange for such a death. Falkland stood mute and motionless: not one
word of grief or horror escaped his lips. At length he bent down. He took
the hand which lay outside the bed; he pressed it; it replied not to the
pressure, but fell cold and heavy from his own. He put his cheek to her
lips; not the faintest breath came from them; and then for the first time
a change passed over his countenance: he pressed upon those lips one long
and last kiss, and, without word, or sign, or tear, he turned from the
chamber. Two hours afterwards he was found senseless upon the ground; it
was upon the spot where he had met Emily the night before.
For weeks he knew nothing of this earth—he was encompassed with the
spectres of a terrible dream. All was confusion, darkness, horror—a
series and a change of torture! At one time he was hurried through the
heavens in the womb of a fiery star, girt above and below and around with
unextinguishable but unconsuming flames. Wherever he trod, as he wandered
through his vast and blazing prison, the molten fire was his footing, and
the breath of fire was his air. Flowers, and trees, and hills were in that
world as in ours, but wrought from one lurid and intolerable light; and,
scattered around, rose gigantic palaces and domes of the living flame,
like the mansions of the city of Hell. With every moment there passed to
and fro shadowy forms, on whose countenances was engraven unutterable
anguish; but not a shriek, not a groan, rung through the red air; for the
doomed, who fed and inhabited the flames, were forbidden the consolation
of voice. Above there sat, fixed and black, a solid and impenetrable
cloud-Night frozen into substance; and from the midst there hung a banner
of a pale and sickly flame, on which was written “For Ever.” A river
rushed rapidly beside him. He stooped to slake the agony of his thirst—the
waves were waves of fire; and, as he started from the burning draught, he
longed to shriek aloud, and could not. Then he cast his despairing eyes
above for mercy; and saw on the livid and motionless banner “For Ever.”
A change came o’er the spirit of his dream
He was suddenly borne up on the winds and storms to the oceans of an
eternal winter. He fell stunned and unstruggling upon the ebbless and
sluggish waves. Slowly and heavily they rose over him as he sank: then
came the lengthened and suffocating torture of that drowning death—the
impotent and convulsive contest with the closing waters—the gurgle,
the choking, the bursting of the pent breath, the flutter of the heart,
its agony, and its stillness. He recovered. He was a thousand fathoms
beneath the sea, chained to a rock round which the heavy waters rose as a
wall. He felt his own flesh rot and decay, perishing from his limbs piece
by piece; and he saw the coral banks, which it requires a thousand ages to
form, rise slowly from their slimy bed; and spread atom by atom, till they
became a shelter for the leviathan: their growth, was his only record of
eternity; and ever and ever, around and above him, came vast and misshapen
things—the wonders of the secret deeps; and the sea-serpent, the
huge chimera of the north, made its resting-place by his side, glaring
upon him with a livid and death-like eye, wan, yet burning as an expiring
seta. But over all, in every change, in every moment of that immortality,
there was present one pale and motionless countenance, never turning from
his own. The fiends of hell, the monsters of the hidden ocean, had no
horror so awful as the human face of the dead whom he had loved.
The word of his sentence was gone forth. Alike through that delirium and
its more fearful awakening, through the past, through the future, through
the vigils of the joyless day, and the broken dreams of the night, there
was a charm upon his soul—a hell within himself; and the curse of
his sentence was—never to forget!
When, Lady Emily returned home on that guilty and eventful night, she
stole at once to her room: she dismissed her servant, and threw herself
upon the ground in that deep despair which on this earth can never again
know hope. She lay there without the power to weep, or the courage to pray—how
long, she knew not. Like the period before creation, her mind was a chaos
of jarring elements, and knew neither the method of reflection nor the
division of time.
As she rose, she heard a slight knock at the door, and her husband
entered. Her heart misgave her; and when she saw him close the door
carefully before he approached her, she felt as if she could have sunk
into the earth, alike from her internal shame, and her fear of its
detection.
Mr. Mandeville was a weak, commonplace character; indifferent in ordinary
matters, but, like most imbecile minds, violent and furious when aroused.
“Is this, Madam, addressed to you?” he cried, in a voice of thunder, as he
placed a letter before her (it was one of Falkland’s); “and this, and
this, Madam?” said he, in a still louder tone, as he flung them out one
after another from her own escritoire, which he had broken open.
Emily sank back, and gasped for breath. Mandeville rose, and, laughing
fiercely, seized her by the arm. He grasped it with all his force. She
uttered a faint scream of terror: he did not heed it; he flung her from
him, and as she fell upon the ground, the blood gushed in torrents from
her lips. In the sudden change of feeling which alarm created, he raised
her in his arms. She was a corpse! At that instant the clock struck upon
his ear with a startling and solemn sound: it was the half-hour after
midnight.
The grave is now closed upon that soft and erring heart, with its
guiltiest secret unrevealed. She went to that last home with a blest and
unblighted name; for her guilt was unknown, and her virtues are yet
recorded in the memories of the Poor.
They laid her in the stately vaults of her ancient line, and her bier was
honoured with tears from hearts not less stricken, because their sorrow,
if violent, was brief. For the dead there are many mourners, but only one
monument—the bosom which loved them best. The spot where the hearse
rested, the green turf beneath, the surrounding trees, the gray tower of
the village church, and the proud halls rising beyond,—all had
witnessed the childhood, the youth, the bridal-day of the being whose last
rites and solemnities they were to witness now. The very bell which rang
for her birth had rung also for the marriage peal; it now tolled for her
death. But a little while, and she had gone forth from that home of her
young and unclouded years, amidst the acclamations and blessings of all, a
bride, with the insignia of bridal pomp—in the first bloom of her
girlish beauty—in the first innocence of her unawakened heart,
weeping, not for the future she was entering, but for the past she was
about to leave, and smiling through her tears, as if innocence had no
business with grief. On the same spot, where he had then waved his
farewell, stood the father now. On the grass which they had then covered,
flocked the peasants whose wants her childhood had relieved; by the same
priest who had blessed her bridals, bent the bridegroom who had plighted
its vow. There was not a tree, not a blade of grass withered. The day
itself was bright and glorious; such was it when it smiled upon her
nuptials. And size—she-but four little years, and all youth’s
innocence darkened, and earth’s beauty come to dust! Alas! not for her,
but the mourner whom she left! In death even love is forgotten; but in
life there is no bitterness so utter as to feel everything is unchanged,
except the One Being who was the soul of all—to know the world is
the same, but that its sunshine is departed.
The noon was still and sultry. Along the narrow street of the small
village of Lodar poured the wearied but yet unconquered band, which
embodied in that district of Spain the last hope and energy of freedom.
The countenances of the soldiers were haggard and dejected; they displayed
even less of the vanity than their accoutrements exhibited of the pomp and
circumstances of war. Yet their garments were such as even the peasants
had disdained: covered with blood and dust, and tattered into a thousand
rags, they betokened nothing of chivalry but its endurance of hardship;
even the rent and sullied banners drooped sullenly along their staves, as
if the winds themselves had become the minions of fortune, and disdained
to swell the insignia of those whom she had deserted. The glorious music
of battle was still. An air of dispirited and defeated enterprise hung
over the whole army. “Thank Heaven,” said the chief, who closed the last
file as it marched—on to its scanty refreshment and brief repose;
“thank Heaven, we are at least out of the reach of pursuit; and the
mountains, those last retreats of liberty, are before us!” “True, Don
Rafael,” replied the youngest of two officers who rode by the side of the
commander; “and if we can cut our passage to Mina, we may yet plant the
standard of the Constitution in Madrid.” “Ay,” added the elder officer,
“and I sing Riego’s hymn in the place of the Escurial!” “Our sons may!”
said the chief, who was indeed Riego himself, “but for us—all hope
is over! Were we united, we could scarcely make head against the armies of
France; and divided as we are, the wonder is that we have escaped so long.
Hemmed in by invasion, our great enemy has been ourselves. Such has been
the hostility faction has created between Spaniard and Spaniard, that we
seem to have none left to waste upon Frenchmen. We cannot establish
freedom if men are willing to be slaves. We have no hope, Don Alphonso—no
hope—but that of death!” As Riego concluded this desponding answer,
so contrary to his general enthusiasm, the younger officer rode on among
the soldiers, cheering them with words of congratulation and comfort;
ordering their several divisions; cautioning them to be prepared at a
moment’s notice; and impressing on their remembrance those small but
essential points of discipline, which a Spanish troop might well be
supposed to disregard. When Riego and his companion entered the small and
miserable hovel which constituted the headquarters of the place, this man
still remained without; and it was not till he had slackened the girths of
his Andalusian horse, and placed before it the undainty provender which
the ecurie afforded that he thought of rebinding more firmly the
bandages wound around a deep and painful sabre cut in the left arm, which
for several hours had been wholly neglected. The officer, whom Riego had
addressed by the name of Alphonso, came out of the hut just as his comrade
was vainly endeavouring, with his teeth and one hand, to replace the
ligature. As he assisted him, he said, “You know not, my dear Falkland,
how bitterly I reproach myself for having ever persuaded you to a cause
where contest seems to have no hope, and danger no glory.” Falkland smiled
bitterly. “Do not deceive yourself, my dear uncle,” said he; “your
persuasions would have been unavailing but for the suggestions of my own
wishes. I am not one of those enthusiasts who entered on your cause with
high hopes and chivalrous designs: I asked but forgetfulness and
excitement—I have found them! I would not exchange a single pain I
have endured for what would have constituted the pleasures of other men:—but
enough of this. What time, think you, have we for repose?” “Till the
evening,” answered Alphonso; “our route will then most probably be
directed to the Sierre Morena. The General is extremely weak and
exhausted, and needs a longer rest than we shall gain. It is singular that
with such weak health he should endure so great an excess of hardship and
fatigue.” During this conversation they entered the hut. Riego was already
asleep. As they seated themselves to the wretched provision of the place,
a distant and indistinct noise was heard. It came first on their ears like
the birth of the mountain wind-low, and hoarse, and deep: gradually it
grew loud and louder, and mingled with other sounds which they defined too
well—the hum, the murmur, the trampling of steeds, the ringing
echoes of the rapid march of armed men! They heard and knew the foe was
upon them!—a moment more, and the drum beat to arms. “By St.
Pelagio,” cried Riego, who had sprung from his light sleep at the first
sound of the approaching danger, unwilling to believe his fears, “it
cannot be: the French are far behind:” and then, as the drum beat, his
voice suddenly changed, “the enemy? the enemy! D’Aguilar, to horse!” and
with those words he rushed out of the hut. The soldiers, who had scarcely
begun to disperse, were soon re-collected. In the mean while the French
commander, D’Argout, taking advantage of the surprise he had occasioned,
poured on his troops, which consisted solely of cavalry, undaunted and
undelayed by the fire of the posts. On, on they drove like a swift cloud
charged with thunder, and gathering wrath as it hurried by, before it
burst in tempest on the beholders. They did not pause till they reached
the farther extremity of the village: there the Spanish infantry were
already formed into two squares. “Halt!” cried the French commander: the
troop suddenly stopped confronting the nearer square. There was one brief
pause-the moment before the storm. “Charge!” said D’ Argout, and the word
rang throughout the line up to the clear and placid sky. Up flashed the
steel like lightning; on went the troop like the clash of a thousand waves
when the sun is upon them; and before the breath of the riders was thrice
drawn, came the crash—the shock—the slaughter of battle. The
Spaniards made but a faint resistance to the impetuosity of the onset:
they broke on every side beneath the force of the charge, like the weak
barriers of a rapid and swollen stream; and the French troops, after a
brief but bloody victory (joined by a second squadron from the rear),
advanced immediately upon the Spanish cavalry. Falkland was by the side of
Riego. As the troop advanced, it would have been curious to notice the
contrast of expression in the face of each; the Spaniard’s features
lighted up with the daring enthusiasm of his nature; every trace of their
usual languor and exhaustion vanished beneath the unconquerable soul that
blazed out the brighter for the debility of the frame; the brow knit; the
eye flashing; the lip quivering:—and close beside, the calm, stern;
passionless repose that brooded over the severe yet noble beauty of
Falkland’s countenance. To him danger brought scorn, not enthusiasm: he
rather despised than defied it. “The dastards! they waver,” said Riego, in
an accent of despair, as his troop faltered beneath the charge of the
French: and so saying, he spurred his steed on to the foremost line. The
contest was longer, but not less decisive, than the one just concluded.
The Spaniards, thrown into confusion by the first shock, never recovered
themselves. Falkland, who, in his anxiety to rally and inspirit the
soldiers, had advanced with two other officers beyond the ranks, was soon
surrounded by a detachment of dragoons: the wound in his left arm scarcely
suffered him to guide his horse: he was in the most imminent danger. At
that moment D’Aguilar, at the head of his own immediate followers, cut his
way into the circle, and covered Falkland’s retreat; another detachment of
the enemy came up, and they were a second time surrounded. In the mean
while, the main body of the Spanish cavalry were flying in all directions,
and Riego’s deep voice was heard at intervals, through the columns of
smoke and dust, calling and exhorting them in vain. D’Aguilar and his
scanty troop, after a desperate skirmish, broke again through the enemy’s
line drawn up against their retreat. The rank closed after them like
waters when the object that pierced them has sunk: Falkland and his two
companions were again environed: he saw his comrades cut to the earth
before him. He pulled up his horse for one moment, clove down with one
desperate blow the dragoon with whom he was engaged, and then setting his
spurs to the very rowels into his horse, dashed at once through the circle
of his foes. His remarkable presence of mind, and the strength and
sagacity of his horse, befriended him. Three sabres flashed before him,
and glanced harmless from his raised sword, like lightning on the water.
The circle was passed! As he galloped towards Riego, his horse started
from a dead body that lay across his path. He reined up for one instant,
for the countenance, which looked upwards, struck him as familiar. What
was his horror, when in that livid and distorted face he recognised his
uncle! The thin grizzled hairs were besprent with gore and brains, and the
blood yet oozed from the spot where the ball had passed through his
temple. Falkland had but a brief interval for grief; the pursuers were
close behind: he heard the snort of the foremost horse before he again put
spurs into his own. Riego was holding a hasty consultation with his
principal officers. As Falkland rode breathless up to them, they had
decided on the conduct expedient to adopt. They led the remaining square
of infantry towards the chain of mountains against which the village, as
it were, leaned; and there the men dispersed in all directions. “For us,”
said Riego to the followers on horseback who gathered around him, “for us
the mountains still promise a shelter. We must ride, gentlemen, for our
lives—Spain will want them yet.”
Wearied and exhausted as they were, that small and devoted troop fled on
into the recesses of the mountains for the remainder of that day—twenty
men out of the two thousand who had halted at Lodar. As the evening stole
over them, they entered into a narrow defile: the tall hills rose on every
side, covered with the glory of the setting sun, as if Nature rejoiced to
grant her bulwarks as a protection to liberty. A small clear stream ran
through the valley, sparkling with the last smile of the departing day;
and ever and anon, from the scattered shrubs and the fragrant herbage,
came the vesper music of the birds, and the hum of the wild bee.
Parched with thirst, and drooping with fatigue, the wanderers sprung
forward with one simultaneous cry of joy to the glassy and refreshing wave
which burst so unexpectedly upon them: and it was resolved that they
should remain for some hours in a spot where all things invited them to
the repose they so imperiously required. They flung themselves at once
upon the grass; and such was their exhaustion, that rest was almost
synonymous with sleep. Falkland alone could not immediately forget himself
in repose: the face of his uncle, ghastly and disfigured, glared upon his
eyes whenever he closed them. Just, however, as he was sinking into an
unquiet and fitful doze, he heard steps approaching: he started up, and
perceived two men, one a peasant, the other in the dress of a hermit. They
were the first human beings the wanderers had met; and when Falkland gave
the alarm to Riego, who slept beside him, it was immediately proposed to
detain them as guides to the town of Carolina, where Riego had hopes of
finding effectual assistance, or the means of ultimate escape. The hermit
and his companion refused, with much vehemence, the office imposed upon
them; but Riego ordered them to be forcibly detained. He had afterwards
reason bitterly to regret this compulsion.
Midnight came on in all the gorgeous beauty of a southern heaven, and
beneath its stars they renewed their march. As Falkland rode by the side
of Riego, the latter said to him in a low voice, “There is yet escape for
you and my followers: none for me: they have set a price on my head, and
the moment I leave these mountains, I enter upon my own destruction.” “No,
Rafael!” replied Falkland; “you can yet fly to England, that asylum of the
free, though ally of the despotic; the abettor of tyranny, but the shelter
of its victims!” Riego answered, with the same faint and dejected tone, “I
care not now what becomes of me! I have lived solely for Freedom; I have
made her my mistress, my hope, my dream: I have no existence but in her.
With the last effort of my country let me perish also! I have lived to
view liberty not only defeated, but derided: I have seen its efforts not
aided, but mocked. In my own country, those only, who wore it, have been
respected who used it as a covering to ambition. In other nations, the
free stood aloof when the charter of their own rights was violated in the
invasion of ours. I cannot forget that the senate of that England, where
you promise me a home, rang with insulting plaudits when her statesman
breathed his ridicule on our weakness, not his sympathy for our cause; and
I—fanatic—dreamer—enthusiast, as I may be called, whose
whole life has been one unremitting struggle for the opinion I have
adopted, am at least not so blinded by my infatuation, but I can see the
mockery it incurs. If I die on the scaffold to-morrow, I shall have
nothing of martyrdom but its doom; not the triumph—the incense—the
immortality of popular applause: I should have no hope to support me at
such a moment, gleaned from the glories of the future—nothing but
one stern and prophetic conviction of the vanity of that tyranny by which
my sentence will be pronounced.” Riego paused for a moment before he
resumed, and his pale and death-like countenance received an awful and
unnatural light from the intensity of the feeling that swelled and burned
within him. His figure was drawn up to its full height, and his voice rang
through the lonely hills with a deep and hollow sound, that had in it a
tone of prophecy, as he resumed “It is in vain that they oppose OPINION;
anything else they may subdue. They may conquer wind, water, nature
itself; but to the progress of that secret, subtle, pervading spirit,
their imagination can devise, their strength can accomplish, no bar: its
votaries they may seize, they may destroy; itself they cannot touch. If
they check it in one place, it invades them in another. They cannot build
a wall across the whole earth; and, even if they could, it would pass over
its summit! Chains cannot bind it, for it is immaterial—dungeons
enclose it, for it is universal. Over the faggot and the scaffold—over
the bleeding bodies of its defenders which they pile against its path, it
sweeps on with a noiseless but unceasing march. Do they levy armies
against it, it presents to them no palpable object to oppose. Its camp is
the universe; its asylum is the bosoms of their own soldiers. Let them
depopulate, destroy as they please, to each extremity of the earth; but as
long as they have a single supporter themselves—as long as they
leave a single individual into whom that spirit can enter—so long
they will have the same labours to encounter, and the same enemy to
subdue.”
As Riego’s voice ceased, Falkland gazed upon him with a mingled pity and
admiration. Sour and ascetic as was the mind of that hopeless and
disappointed man, he felt somewhat of a kindred glow at the pervading and
holy enthusiasm of the patriot to whom he had listened; and though it was
the character of his own philosophy to question the purity of human
motives, and to smile at the more vivid emotions he had ceased to feel, he
bowed his soul in homage to those principles whose sanctity he
acknowledged, and to that devotion of zeal and fervour with which their
defender cherished and enforced them. Falkland had joined the
constitutionalists with respect, but not ardour, for their cause. He
demanded excitation; he cared little where he found it. He stood in this
world a being who mixed in all its changes, performed all its offices,
took, as if by the force of superior mechanical power, a leading share in
its events; but whose thoughts and soul were as offsprings of another
planet, imprisoned in a human form, and longing for their home!
As they rode on, Riego continued to converse with that imprudent unreserve
which the openness and warmth of his nature made natural to him: not one
word escaped the hermit and the peasant (whose name was Lopez Lara) as
they rode on two mules behind Falkland and Riego. “Remember,” whispered
the hermit to his comrade, “the reward!”
“I do,” muttered the peasant.
Throughout the whole of that long and dreary night, the—wanderers
rode on incessantly, and found themselves at daybreak near a farm-house:
this was Lara’s own home. They made the peasant Lara knock; his own
brother opened the door. Fearful as they were of the detection to which so
numerous a party might conduce, only Riego, another officer (Don Luis de
Sylva), and Falkland entered the house. The latter, whom nothing ever
seemed to render weary or forgetful, fixed his cold stern eye upon the two
brothers, and, seeing some signs pass between them, locked the door, and
so prevented their escape. For a few hours they reposed in the stables
with their horses, their drawn swords by their sides. On waking, Riego
found it absolutely necessary that his horse should be shod. Lopez started
up, and offered to lead it to Arguillas for that purpose. “No,” said
Riego, who, though naturally imprudent, partook in this instance of
Falkland’s habitual caution: “your brother shall go and bring hither the
farrier.” Accordingly the brother went: he soon returned. “The farrier,”
he said, “was already on the road.” Riego and his companions, who were
absolutely fainting with hunger, sat down to breakfast; but Falkland, who
had finished first, and who had eyed the man since his return with the
most scrutinising attention, withdrew towards the window, looking out from
time to time with a telescope which they had carried about them, and
urging them impatiently to finish. “Why?” said Riego, “famished men are
good for nothing, either to fight or fly—and we must wait for the
farrier.” “True,” said Falkland, “but—” he stopped abruptly. Sylva
had his eyes on his face at that moment. Falkland’s colour suddenly
changed: he turned round with a loud cry. “Up! up! Riego! Sylva! We are
undone—the soldiers are upon us!” “Arm!” cried Riego, starting up.
At that moment Lopez and his brother seized their own carbines, and
levelled them at the betrayed constitutionalists. “The first who moves,”
cried the former, “is a dead man!” “Fools!” said Falkland, with a calm
bitterness, advancing deliberately towards them. He moved only three steps—Lopez
fired. Falkland staggered a few paces, recovered himself, sprang towards
Lara, clove him at one blow from the skull to the jaw, and fell with his
victim, lifeless upon the floor. “Enough!” said Riego to the remaining
peasant; “we are your prisoners; bind us!” In two minutes more the
soldiers entered, and they were conducted to Carolina. Fortunately
Falkland was known, when at Paris, to a French officer of high rank then
at Carolina. He was removed to the Frenchman’s quarters. Medical aid was
instantly procured. The first examination of his wound was decisive;
recovery was hopeless!
Night came on again, with her pomp of light and shade—the night that
for Falkland had no morrow. One solitary lamp burned in the chamber where
he lay alone with God and his own heart. He had desired his couch to be
placed by the window and requested his attendants to withdraw. The gentle
and balmy air stole over him, as free and bland as if it were to breathe
for him for ever; and the silver moonlight came gleaming through the
lattice and played upon his wan brow, like the tenderness of a bride that
sought to kiss him to repose. “In a few hours,” thought he, as he lay
gazing on the high stars which seemed such silent witnesses of an eternal
and unfathomed mystery, “in a few hours either this feverish and wayward
spirit will be at rest for ever, or it will have commenced a new career in
an untried and unimaginable existence! In a very few hours I may be
amongst the very heavens that I survey—a part of their own glory—a
new link in a new order of beings—breathing amidst the elements of a
more gorgeous world—arrayed myself in the attributes of a purer and
diviner nature—a wanderer among the planets—an associate of
angels—the beholder of the arcana of the great God-redeemed,
regenerate, immortal, or—dust!
“There is no OEdipus to solve the enigma of life. We are—whence came
we? We are not—whither do we go? All things in our existence have
their object: existence has none. We live, move, beget our species, perish—and
for what? We ask the past its moral; we question the gone years of the
reason of our being, and from the clouds of a thousand ages there goes
forth no answer. Is it merely to pant beneath this weary load; to sicken
of the sun; to grow old; to drop like leaves into the grave; and to
bequeath to our heirs the worn garments of toil and labour that we leave
behind? Is it to sail for ever on the same sea, ploughing the ocean of
time with new furrows, and feeding its billows with new wrecks, or—”
and his thoughts paused blinded and bewildered.
No man, in whom the mind has not been broken by the decay of the body, has
approached death in full consciousness as Falkland did that moment, and
not thought intensely on the change he was about to undergo; and yet what
new discoveries upon that subject has any one bequeathed us? There the
wildest imaginations are driven from originality into triteness: there all
minds, the frivolous and the strong, the busy and the idle, are compelled
into the same path and limit of reflection. Upon that unknown and
voiceless gulf of inquiry broods an eternal and impenetrable gloom; no
wind breathes over it—no wave agitates its stillness: over the dead
and solemn calm there is no change propitious to adventure—there
goes forth no vessel of research, which is not driven, baffled and broken,
again upon the shore.
The moon waxed high in her career. Midnight was gathering slowly over the
earth; the beautiful, the mystic hour, blent with a thousand memories,
hallowed by a thousand dreams, made tender to remembrance by the vows our
youth breathed beneath its star, and solemn by the olden legends which are
linked to its majesty and peace—the hour in which, men should die;
the isthmus between two worlds; the climax of the past day; the verge of
that which is to come; wrapping us in sleep after a weary travail, and
promising us a morrow which, since the first birth of Creation has never
failed. As the minutes glided on, Falkland felt himself grow gradually
weaker and weaker. The pain of his wound had ceased, but a deadly sickness
gathered over his heart: the room reeled before his eyes, and the damp
chill mounted from his feet up—up to the breast in which the
life-blood waxed dull and thick.
As the hand of the clock pointed to the half-hour after midnight the
attendants who waited in the adjoining room heard a faint cry. They rushed
hastily into Falkland’s chamber; they found him stretched half out of the
bed. His hand was raised towards the opposite wall; it dropped gradually
as they approached him; and his brow, which was at first stern and bent,
softened, shade by shade, into his usual serenity. But the dim film
gathered fast over his eye, and the last coldness upon his limbs. He
strove to raise himself as if to speak; the effort failed, and he fell
motionless on his face. They stood by the bed for some moments in silence:
at length they raised him. Placed against his heart was an open locket of
dark hair, which one hand still pressed convulsively. They looked upon his
countenance—(a single glance was sufficient)—it was hushed—proud—passionless—the
seal of Death was upon it.
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