CHAPTER LXIV.
LUCILLA'S FLIGHT.--THE PERPLEXITY OF LADY ERPINGHAM.--A CHANGE COMES OVER
GODOLPHIN'S MIND.--HIS CONVERSATION WITH RADCLYFFE.--GENERAL
ELECTION.--GODOLPHIN BECOMES A SENATOR.
No human heart ever beat with more pure and generous emotions, when freed
from the political fever that burned within her (withering, for the
moment, the chastened and wholesome impulses of her nature), than those
which animated the heart of the queenly Constance. She sent that evening
for the most celebrated physician in London--that polished and courtly man
who seems born for the maladies of the drawing-room, but who beneath so
urbane a demeanour, conceals so accurate and profound a knowledge of the
disorders of his unfortunate race. I say accurate and profound
comparatively, for positive knowledge of pathology is what no physician in
modern times and civilized countries really possesses. No man cures
us--the highest art is not to kill! Constance, then, sent for this
physician, and, as delicately as possible, related the unfortunate state
of Lucilla, and the deep anxiety she felt for her mental and bodily
relief. The physician promised to call the next day; he did so, late in
the afternoon--Lucilla was gone. Strange, self-willed, mysterious, she
came like a dream, to warn, to terrify, and to depart. They knew not
whither she had fled, and her Moorish handmaid alone attended her.
Constance was deeply chagrined at this intelligence; for she had already
begun to build castles in the air, which poor Lucilla, with a frame
restored, and a heart at ease, and nothing left of the past but a soft and
holy penitence, should inhabit. The countess, however, consoled herself
with the hope that Lucilla would at least write to her, and mention her
new place of residence; but days passed and no letter came.
Constance felt that her benevolent intentions were doomed to be
unfulfilled. She was now greatly perplexed whether or not to relate to
Godolphin the interview that had taken place between her and Lucilla. She
knew the deep, morbid, and painful interest which the memory of this wild
and visionary creature created in Godolphin; and she trembled at the
feeling she might re-awaken by even a faint picture of the condition and
mental infirmities of her whose life he had so darkly shadowed. She
resolved, therefore, at all events for the present, and until every hope
of discovering Lucilla once more had expired, to conceal the meeting that
had occurred. And in this resolve she was strengthened by perceiving that
Godolphin's mind had become gradually calmed from its late excitement, and
that he had begun to consider, or at least appeared to consider the
apparition of Lucilla at his window, as the mere delusion of a heated
imagination. His nights grew once more tranquil, and freed from the dark
dreams that had tormented his brain; and even the cool and unimaginative
Constance could scarcely divest herself of the wild fancy that, when
Lucilla was near, a secret and preternatural sympathy between Godolphin
and the reader of the stars had produced that influence over his nightly
dreams which paled, and receded, and vanished, as Lucilla departed from
the actual circle in which he lived.
It was at this time, too, that a change was perceptible in Godolphin's
habits, and crept gradually over the character of his thoughts.
Dissipation ceased to allure him, the light wit of his parasites palled
upon his ear; magnificence had lost its gloss, and the same fastidious,
exacting thirst for the ideal which had disappointed him in the better
objects of life, began now to discontent him with its glittering
pleasures.
The change was natural and the causes not difficult to fathom. The fact
was, that Godolphin had now arrrived at that period of existence when a
man's character is almost invariably subject to great change; the crisis
in life's fever, when there is a new turn in our fate, and our moral death
or regeneration is sealed by the silent wavering, or the solemn decision
of the Hour. Arrived at the confines of middle age, there is an outward
innovation in the whole system; unlooked-for symptoms break forth in the
bodily, unlooked-for symptoms in the mental, frame. It happened to
Godolphin that, at this critical period, a chance, a circumstance, a
straw, had reunited his long interrupted, but never stifled affections to
the image of his beautiful Constance. The reign of passion, the magic of
those sweet illusions, that ineffable yearning which possession mocks,
although it quells at last, were indeed for ever over; but a friendship
more soft and genial than exists in any relation, save that of husband and
wife, had sprung up, almost as by a miracle (so sudden was it), between
breasts for years divided. And the experience of those years had taught
Godolphin how frail and unsubstantial had been all the other ties he had
formed. He wondered, as sitting alone with Constance, her tenderness
recalled the past, her wit enlivened the present, and his imagination
still shed a glory and a loveliness over the future, that he had been so
long insensible to the blessing of that communion which he now
experienced. He did not perceive what in fact was the case--that the
tastes and sympathies of each, blunted by that disappointment which is the
child of experience, were more willing to concede somewhat to the tastes
and sympathies of the other; that Constance gave a more indulgent
listening to his beautiful refinements of an ideal and false epicurism;
that he, smiling still, smiled with kindness, not with scorn, at the
sanguine politics, the worldly schemes, and the rankling memories of the
intriguing Constance. Fortunately, too, for her, the times were such,
that men who never before dreamed of political interference were roused
and urged into the mighty conflux of battling interests, which left few
moderate and none neuter. Every coterie resounded with political
war-cries; every dinner rang; from soup to the coffee, with the merits of
the bill; wherever Godolphin turned for refuge, Reform still assailed him;
and by degrees the universal feeling, that was at first ridiculed, was at
last, although reluctantly, admitted by his mind.
"Why," said he, one clay, musingly, to Radclyffe, whom he met in the old
Green Park,--(for since the conversation recorded between Radclyffe and
Constance the former came little to Erpingham House), "why should I not
try a yet untried experiment? Why should I not live like others in their
graver as in their lighter pursuits? I confess, when I look back to the
years I have spent in England, I feel that I calculated erroneously. I
chalked out a plan--I have followed it rigidly. I have lived for self,
for pleasure, for luxury; I have summoned wit, beauty, even wisdom around
me. I have been the creator of a magic circle, but to the magician
himself the magic was tame and ignoble. In short, I have dreamed, and am
awake. Yet, what course of life should supply this, which I think of
deserting? Shall I go once more abroad, and penetrate some untravelled
corner of the earth? Shall I retire into the country, and write, draining
my mind of the excitement that presses on it; or lastly, shall I plunge
with my contemporaries into the great gulf of actual events, and strive,
and fret, and struggle?--or--in short, Radclyffe, you are a wise man:
advise me!"
"Alas!" answered Radclyffe, "it is of no use advising one to be happy who
has no object beyond himself. Either enthusiasm, or utter mechanical
coldness, is necessary to reconcile men to the cares and mortifications of
life. You must feel nothing, or you must feel for others. Unite yourself
to a great object; see its goal distinctly; cling to its course
courageously; hope for its triumph sanguinely; and on its majestic
progress you sail, as in a ship, agitated indeed by the storms, but
unheeding the breeze and the surge that would appal the individual effort.
The larger public objects make us glide smoothly and unfelt over our minor
private griefs. To be happy, my dear Godolphin, you must forget yourself.
Your refining and poetical temperament preys upon your content. Learn
benevolence--it is the only cure to a morbid nature."
Godolphin was greatly struck by this answer of Radclyffe; the more so, as
he had a deep faith in the unaffected sincerity and the calculating wisdom
of his adviser. He looked hard in Radclyffe's face, and, after a pause of
some moments, replied slowly, "I believe you are right after all; and I
have learned in a few short sentences the secret of a discontented life."
Godolphin would have sought other opportunities of conversing with
Radclyffe, but events soon parted them. Parliament was dissolved! What
an historical event is recorded in those words! The moment the king
consented to that measure, the whole series of subsequent events became,
to an ordinary prescience, clear as in a mirror. Parliament dissolved in
the heat of the popular enthusiasm, a majority, a great majority of
Reformers was sure to be returned.
Constance perceived at a glance the whole train of consequences issuing
from that one event; perceived and exulted. A glory had gone for ever
from the party she abhorred. Her father was already avenged. She heard
his scornful laugh ring forth from the depths of his forgotten grave.
London emptied itself at once. England was one election. Godolphin
remained almost alone. For the first time a sense of littleness crept
over him; a feeling of insignificance, which wounded and galled his vain
nature. In these beat struggles he was nothing. The admired--the
cultivated--spirituel--the splendid Godolphin, sank below the commonest
adventurer, the coarsest brawler--yea, the humblest freeman, who felt his
stake in the state, joined the canvass, swelled the cry, and helped in the
mighty battle between old things and new, which was so resolutely begun.
This feeling gave an impetus to the growth of the new aspirations he had
already suffered his mind to generate; and Constance marked, with vivid
delight, that he now listened to her plans with interest, and examined the
political field with a curious and searching gaze.
But she was soon condemned to a disappointment proportioned to her
delight. Though Godolphin had hitherto taken no interest in party
politics, his prejudices, his feelings, his habits of mind, were all the
reverse of democratic. When he once began to examine the bearings of the
momentous question that agitated England, he was not slow in coming to
conclusions which threatened to produce a permanent disagreement between
Constance and himself.
"You wish me to enter Parliament, my dear Constance," said he, with his
quiet smile; "it would be an experiment dangerous to the union
re-established between us. I should vote against your Bill."
"You!" exclaimed Constance, with warmth; "is it possible that you can
sympathise with the fears of a selfish oligarchy--with the cause of the
merchants and traffickers of the plainest right of a free people--the
right to select their representatives?"
"My dear Constance," returned Godolphin, "my whole theory of Government is
aristocratic. The right of the, people to choose representatives!--you
may as well say the right of the people to choose kings, or magistrates,
and judges--or clergymen and archbishops! The people have, it is true,
the abstract and original right to choose all these, and every year to
chop and change them as they please, but the people, very properly, in all
states, mortgage their lementary rights for one catholic and practical
right--the right to be well governed. It may be no more to the advantage
of the state that the People (that is, the majority, the populace) should
elect uncontrolled all the members of the House of Commons--than that they
should elect all the pastors of their religion. The sole thing we have to
consider is, will they be better governed?"
"Unquestionably," said Constance.
"Unquestionably!--Well, I question it. I foresee a more even balance of
parties--nothing else. When parties are evenly balanced states tremble.
In good government there should be somewhere sufficient power to carry on,
not unexamined, but at least with vigour, the different operations of
government itself. In free countries, therefore, one party ought to
preponderate sufficiently over the other. If it do not--all the state
measures are crippled, delayed, distorted, and the state languishes while
the doctors dispute as to the medicines to be applied to it. You will
find by your Bill, not that the Tories are destroyed, but that the Whigs
and the Radicals are strengthened--the Lords are not crushed--but the
Commons are in a state to contest with them. Hence party battles upon
catchwords--struggles between the two chambers for things of straw. You
who desire progress and movement will find the real affairs of this great
Artificial Empire, in its trade--commerce--colonies--internal
legislation--standing still while the Whigs and the Tories pelt each other
with the quibbles of faction. No I should vote against your Bill! I am
not for popular governments, though I like free states. All the
advantages of democracy seem to me more than counterbalanced by the
sacrifice of the peace and tranquillity, the comfort and the grace, the
dignity and the charities of life that democracies usually entail. If the
object of men is to live happily--not to strive and to fret--not to make
money in the marketplace, and call each other rogues on the hustings, who
would not rather be a German than an American? I own I regret to differ
from you. For--but no matter----"
"For!--what were you about to say?"
"For--then, since you must know it--I am beginning to feel interest in
these questions--excitement is contagious. And after all, if a man really
deem his mother-country in some danger, inaction is not philosophy, but a
species of parricide. But to think of the daily and hourly pain I should
occasion to you, my beloved and ardent Constanceby shocking all your
opinions, counteracting all your schemes, working against objects which
your father's fate and your early associations have so singularly made
duties in your eyes-to do all this is a patriotism beyond me. Let us
glide out of this whirlpool, and hoist sail for some nook in the country
where we can hear gentler sounds than the roar of the democracy."
Constance sighed, and suffered Godolphin to quit her in silence. But her
generous heart was touched by his own generosity. This is one of the
great curses of a woman who aspires to the man's part of political
controversy. If the man choose to act, the woman, with all her wiles, her
intrigues, her arts, is powerless. If Godolphin were to enter Parliament
a Tory, the great Whig rendezvous of Erpingham House was lost, and
Constance herself a cipher--and her father's wrongs forgotten, and the
stern purpose of her masculine career baffled at the very moment of
success. She now repented that she had ever desired to draw Godolphin's
attention to political matters. She wondered at her own want of
foresight. How, with his love for antiquity--his predilections for the
elegant and the serene--his philosophy of the "Rose-garden"--could she
ever have supposed that he would side with the bold objects and turbulent
will of a popular party in a stormy crisis?
The subject was not renewed. But she had the pain of observing that
Godolphin's manner was altered: he took pleasure in none of his old
hobbies--he was evidently dissatisfied with himself. In fact, it is true
that he, for the first time in his life, felt that there is a remorse to
the mind as well as to the soul, and that a man of genius cannot be
perpetually idle without, as he touches on the middle of his career,
looking to the past with some shame, and to the fixture with some
ambition. One evening, when he had sat by the open window in a thoughtful
and melancholy, almost morose, silence for a considerable time, Constance,
after a violent struggle with herself, rose suddenly, and fell on his
neck--
"Forgive me, Percy," she said, unable to suppress her tears--"forgive
me--it is past--I have no right that you, so superior to myself, should be
sacrificed to my--my prejudices you would call them--so be it. Is it for
your wife to condemn you to be inglorious? No--no--dear Godolphin--fulfil
your destiny--you are born for high objects. Be active--be
distinguished--and I will ask no more!"
John Vernon, in that hour you were forgotten! Who among the dead can ever
hope for fidelity, when love to the living invites a woman to betray?
"My sweet Constance," said Godolphin, drawing her to his heart, and
affected in proportion as he appreciated all that in that speech his wife
gave up for his sake--the all, far more than the lovely person, the
splendid wealth, the lofty rank that she had brought to his home--"my
sweet Constance, do not think I will take advantage of words so
generously, but hastily spoken. Time enough hereafter to think of
differences between us. At present let us indulge only the luxury of the
new love--the holiness of the new nuptials--that have made us as one
Being. Perhaps this restlessness, so unusual to me, will pass away--let
us wait awhile. At present 'Sparta has many a worthier son.' One other
year, one sweet summer, of the private life we have too much suffered to
glide away, enjoyed, and then we will see whether the harsh realities of
Ambition be worth either a concession or a dispute. Let us go into the
country--to-morrow if you will."
And as Constance was about to answer, he sealed her lips with his kiss.
But Lady Erpingham was not one of those who waver in what they deem a
duty. She passed the night in stern and sleepless commune with herself;
she was aware of all that she hazarded--all that she renounced: she was
even tortured by scruples as to the strange oath that had almost unsexed
her. Still, in spite of all, she felt that nothing would excuse her in
suffering that gifted and happy intellect, now awakened from the sleep of
the Sybarite, to fall back into its lazy and effeminate repose. She had
no right to doom a human soul to rot away in its clay. Perhaps, too, she
hoped, as all polemical enthusiasts do, that Godolphin, once aroused,
would soon become her convert. Be that as it may, she delayed, on various
pretences, their departure from London. She went secretly the next day to
one of the proprietors of the close Boroughs, the existence of which was
about to be annihilated, and a few days afterwards Godolphin received a
letter informing him that he had been duly elected member for ----. I
will not say what were his feelings at these tidings. Perhaps, such is
man's proud and wayward heart, he felt shame to be so outdone by
Constance.
