CHAPTER XV.
THE FEELINGS OF CONSTANCE AND GODOLPHIN TOWARDS EACH OTHER.--THE
DISTINCTION IN THEIR CHARACTERS.--REMARKS ON THE EFFECTS PRODUCED BY THE
WORLD UPON GODOLPHIN.--THE HIDE.--RURAL DESCRIPTIONS.--OMENS.--THE FIRST
INDISTINCT CONFESSION.
Every day, at the hour in which Constance was visible, Godolphin had
loaded the keeper, and had returned to attend upon her movements. They
walked and rode together; and in the evening, Godolphin hung over her
chair, and listened to her songs; for though, as I have before said, she
had but little science in instrumental music, her voice was rich and soft
beyond the pathos of ordinary singers.
Lady Erpingham saw, with secret delight, what she believed to be a growing
attachment. She loved Constance for herself, and Godolphin for his
father's memory. She thought again and again what a charming couple they
would make--so handsome--so gifted: and if Prudence whispered also--so
poor, the kind Countess remembered, that she herself had saved from her
ample jointure a sum which she had always designed as a dowry for
Constance, and which, should Godolphin be the bridegroom, she felt she
should have a tenfold pleasure in bestowing. With this fortune, which
would place them, at least, in independence, she united in her kindly
imagination the importance which she imagined Godolphin's talents must
ultimately acquire; and for which, in her aristocratic estimation, she
conceived the senate the only legitimate sphere. She said, she hinted,
nothing to Constance; but she suffered nature, youth, and companionship to
exercise their sway.
And the complexion of Godolphin's feelings for Constance Vernon did indeed
resemble love--was love itself, though rather love in its romance than its
reality. What were those of Constance for him? She knew not herself at
that time. Had she been of a character one shade less ambitious, or less
powerful, they would have been love, and love of no common character. But
within her musing, and self-possessed, and singularly constituted mind,
there was, as yet, a limit to every sentiment, a chain to the wings of
every thought, save those of one order; and that order was not of love.
There was a marked difference, in all respects, between the characters of
the two; and it was singular enough, that that of the woman was the less
romantic, and composed of the simpler materials.
A volume of Wordsworth's most exquisite poetry had then just appeared.
"Is not this wonderful?" said Godolphin, reciting some of those lofty,
but refining thoughts which characterise the Pastor of modern poets.
Constance shook her head.
"What! you do not admire it?"
"I do not understand it."
"What poetry do you admire?"
"This."
It was Pope's translation of the Iliad.
"Yes, yes, to be sure," said Godolphin, a little vexed; "we all admire
this in its way: but what else?"
Constance pointed to a passage in the Palamon and Arcite of Dryden.
Godolphin threw down his Wordsworth. "You take an ungenerous advantage of
me," said he. "Tell me something you admire, which, at least, I may have
the privilege of disputing,--something that you think generally
neglected."
"I admire few things that are generally neglected," answered Constance,
with her bright and proud smile. "Fame gives its stamp to all metal that
is of intrinsic value."
This answer was quite characteristic of Constance: she worshipped fame far
more than the genius which won it. "Well, then," said Godolphin, "let us
see now if we can come to a compromise of sentiment;" and be took up the
Comus of Milton.
No one read poetry so beautifully: his voice was so deep and flexible; and
his countenance answered so well to every modulation of his voice.
Constance was touched by the reader, but not by the verse. Godolphin had
great penetration; he perceived it, and turned to the speeches of Satan in
Paradise Lost. The noble countenance before him grew luminous at once:
the lip quivered, the eye sparkled; the enthusiasm of Godolphin was not
comparable to that of Constance. The fact was, that the broad and common
emotions of the intellectual character struck upon the right key.
Courage, defiance, ambition, these she comprehended to their fullest
extent; but the rich subtleties of thought which mark the cold and bright
page of the Comus; the noble Platonism--the high and rare love for what is
abstractedly good, these were not "sonorous and trumpet-speaking" enough
for the heart of one meant by Nature for a heroine or a queen, not a
poetess or a philosopher.
But all that in literature was delicate, and half-seen, and abstruse, had
its peculiar charm for Godolphin. Of a reflective and refining mind, he
had early learned to despise the common emotions of men: glory touched him
not, and to ambition he had shut his heart. Love, with him--even though
he had been deemed, not unjustly, a man of gallantry and pleasure--love
was not compounded of the ordinary elements of the passions. Full of
dreams, and refinements, and intense abstractions, it was a love that
seemed not homely enough for endurance, and of too rare a nature to hope
for sympathy in return.
And so it was in his intercourse with Constance, both were continually
disappointed. "You do not feel this," said Constance. "She cannot
understand me," sighed Godolphin.
But we must not suppose--despite his refinements, and his reveries, and
his love for the intellectual and the pure--that Godolphin was of a
stainless character or mind. He was one who, naturally full of decided
and marked qualities, was, by the peculiar elements of our society,
rendered a doubtful, motley, and indistinct character, tinctured by the
frailties that leave us in a wavering state between vice and virtue. The
energies that had marked his boyhood were dulled and crippled in the
indolent life of the world. His wandering habits for the last few
years--the soft and poetical existence of the South--had fed his natural
romance, and nourished that passion for contemplation which the
intellectual man of pleasure so commonly forms; for pleasure has a
philosophy of its own--a sad, a fanciful, yet deep persuasion of the
vanity of all things--a craving after the bright ideal--
"The desire of the moth for the star."
Solomon's thirst for pleasure was the companion of his wisdom: satiety was
the offspring of the one--discontent of the other. But this philosophy,
though seductive, is of no wholesome nor usefnl character; it is the
philosophy of feelings, not principles--of the heart, not head. So with
Godolphin: he was too refined in his moralising to cling to what was
moral. The simply good and the simply bad he left for us plain folks to
discover. He was unattracted by the doctrines of right and wrong which
serve for all men; but he had some obscure and shadowy standard in his own
mind by which he compared the actions of others. He had imagination,
genius, even heart; was brilliant always, sometimes profound; graceful in
society, yet seldom social: a lonely man, yet a man of the world; generous
to individuals, selfish to the mass. How many fine qualities worse than
thrown away!
Who will not allow that he has met many such men?--and who will not follow
this man to his end?
One day (it was the last of Godolphin's protracted visit) as the sun was
waning to its close, and the time was unusually soft and tranquil,
Constance and Godolphin were returning slowly home from their customary
ride. They passed by a small inn, bearing the common sign of the
"Chequers," round which a crowd of peasants were assembled, listening to
the rude music which a wandering Italian boy drew from his guitar. The
scene was rustic and picturesque; and as Godolphin reined in his horse and
gazed on the group, he little dreamed of the fierce and dark emotions with
which, at a far distant period, he was destined to revisit that spot.
"Our peasants," said he, as they rode on, "require some humanising
relaxation like that we have witnessed. The music and the morris-dance
have gone from England; and instead of providing, as formerly, for the
amusement of the grinded labourer, our legislators now regard with the
most watchful jealousy his most distant approach to festivity. They
cannot bear the rustic to be merry: disorder and amusement are words for
the same offence."
"I doubt," said the earnest Constance, "whether the legislators are not
right. For men given to amusement are easily enslaved. All noble
thoughts are grave."
Thus talking, they passed a shallow ford in the stream. "We are not far
from the Priory," said Godolphin, pointing to its ruins, that rose greyly
in the evening skies from the green woods around it.
Constance sighed involuntarily. She felt pain in being reminded of the
slender fortunes of her companion. Ascending the gentle hill that swelled
from the stream, she now, to turn the current of her thoughts, pointed
admiringly to the blue course of the waters, as they wound through their
shagged banks. And deep, dark, rushing, even at that still hour, went the
stream through the boughs that swept over its surface. Here and there the
banks suddenly shelved down, mingling with the waves; then abruptly they
rose, overspread with thick and tangled umbrage, several feet above the
level of the river.
"How strange it is," said Godolphin, that at times a feeling comes over
us, as we gaze upon certain places, which associates the scene either with
some dim-remembered and dream-like images of the Past, or with a prophetic
and fearful omen of the Future! As I gaze now upon this spot--those
banks--that whirling river--it seems as if my destiny claimed a mysterious
sympathy with the scene: when--how-wherefore--I know not--guess not: only
this shadowy and chilling sentiment unaccountably creeps over me. Every
one has known a similar strange, indistinct, feeling at certain times and
places, and with a similar inability to trace the cause. And yet, is it
not singular that in poetry, which wears most feelings to an echo, I leave
never met with any attempt to describe it?"
"Because poetry," said Constance, "is, after all, but a hackneyed
imitation of the most common thoughts, giving them merely a gloss by the
brilliancy of verse. And yet how little poets _know!_ They _imagine,_
and they _imitate;_--behold all their secrets!"
"Perhaps you are right," said Godolphin, musingly; "and I, who have often
vainly fancied I had the poetical temperament, have been so chilled and
sickened by the characteristics of the tribe, that I have checked its
impulses with a sort of disdain; and thus the Ideal, having no vent in me,
preys within, creating a thousand undefined dreams and unwilling
superstitions, making me enamoured of the Shadowy and Unknown, and
dissatisfying me with the petty ambitions of the world."
"You will awake hereafter," said Constance, earnestly.
Godolphin shook his head, and replied not.
Their way now lay along a green lane that gradually wound round a hill
commanding a view of great richness and beauty. Cottages, and spires, and
groves, gave life--but it was scattered and remote life--to the scene; and
the broad stream, whose waves, softened in the distance, did not seem to
break the even surface of the tide, flowed onward, glowing in the
sunlight, till it was lost among dark and luxuriant woods.
Both once more arrested their horses by a common impulse, and both became
suddenly silent as they gazed. Godolphin was the first to speak: it
brought to his memory a scene in that delicious land, whose Southern
loveliness Claude has transfused to the canvas, and De Stael to the page.
With his own impassioned and earnest language, he spoke to Constance of
that scene and that country. Every tree before him furnished matter for
his illustration or his contrast; and, as she heard that magic voice, and
speaking, too, of a country dedicated to love, Constance listened with
glistening eyes, and a cheek which he,--consummate master of the secrets
of womanhood--perceived was eloquent with thoughts which she knew not, but
which _he_ interpreted to the letter.
"And in such a spot," said he, continuing, and fixing his deep and
animated gaze on her,--"in such a spot I could have stayed for ever but
for one recollection, one feeling--_I should have been too much alone!_
In a wild or a grand, or even a barren country, we may live in solitude,
and find fit food for thought; but not in one so soft, so subduing, as
that which I saw and see. Love comes over us then in spite of ourselves;
and I feel--I feel now--"his voice trembled as he spoke--"that any secret
we may before have nursed, though hitherto unacknowledged, makes itself at
length a voice. We are oppressed with the desire to be loved; we long for
the courage to say we love."
Never before had Godolphin, though constantly verging into sentiment,
spoken to Constance in so plain a language. Eye, voice, cheek--all spoke.
She felt that he had confessed he loved her! And was she not happy at
that thought? She was: it was her happiest moment. But, in that sort of
vague and indistinct shrinking from the subject with which a woman who
loves hears a disclosure of love from him on whose lips it is most sweet,
she muttered some confused attempt to change the subject, and quickened
her horse's pace. Godolphin did not renew the topic so interesting and so
dangerous, only, as with the winding of the road the landscape gradually
faded from their view, he said, in a low voice, as if to himself,--"How
long, how fondly, shall I remember this day!"
