CHAPTER LXVII
THE FULL RENEWAL OF LOVE.--HAPPINESS PRODUCES FEAR, "AND IN TO-DAY ALREADY
WALKS TOMORROW."
Oh, First Love! well sang the gay minstrel of France, that we return again
and again to thee. As the earth returns to its spring, and is green once
more, we go back to the life of life and forget the seasons that have
rolled between! Whether it was--perhaps so--that in the minds of both was
a feeling that their present state was not fated to endure; whether they
felt, in the deep calm they enjoyed, that the storm was already at hand;
whether this was the truth I know not; but certain it is, that during the
short time they remained at Godolphin Priory, previous to their earthly
separation, Constance and Godolphin were rather like lovers for the first
time united, than like those who have dragged on the chain for years.
Their perfect solitude, the absence of all intrusion, so unlike the life
they had long passed, renewed all that charm, that rapture in each other's
society, which belong to the first youth of love. True, that this could
not have endured long; but Fate suffered it to endure to the last of that
tether which remained to their union. Constance was not again doomed to
the severe and grating shock which the sense of estrangement brings to a
woman's heart; she was sensible that Godolphin was never so entirely, so
passionately her own, as towards the close of their mortal connection.
Every thing around them breathed of their first love. This was that home
of Godolphin's to which, from the splendid halls of Wendover, the young
soul of the proud orphan had so often and so mournfully flown with a
yearning and wistful interest: this was that spot in which he, awaking
from the fever of the world, had fed his first dreams of her. The scene,
the solitude, was as a bath to their love: it braced, it freshened, it
revived its tone. They wandered, they read, they thought together; the
air of the spot was an intoxication. The world around and without was
agitated; they felt it not: the breakers of the great deep died in murmurs
on their ear. Ambition lulled its voice to Constance; Godolphin had
realised his visions of the ideal. Time had dimmed their young beauty,
but their eyes saw it not; they were young, they were all beautiful, to
each other.
And Constance hung on the steps of her lover--still let that name be his!
She could not bear to lose him for a moment: a vague indistinctness of
fear seized her if she saw him not. Again and again, in the slumbers of
the night, she stretched forth her arms to feel that he was near; all her
pride, her coldness seemed gone, as by a spell; she loved as the softest,
the fondest, love. Are we, 0 Ruler of the future! imbued with the
half-felt spirit of prophecy as the hour of evil approaches--the great,
the fierce, the irremediable evil of a life? In this depth and intensity
of their renewed passion, was there not something preternatural? Did they
not tremble as they loved? They were on a spot to which the dark waters
were slowly gathering; they clung to the Hour, for eternity was lowering
round.
It was one evening that a foreboding emotion of this kind weighed heavily
on Constance. She pressed Godolphin's hand in hers, and when he returned
the pressure, she threw herself on his neck, and burst into tears.
Godolphin was alarmed; he covered her cheek with kisses, he sought the
cause of her emotion.
"There is no cause," answered Constance, recovering herself, but speaking
in a faltering voice, "only I feel the impossibility that this happiness
can last; its excess makes me shudder."
As she spoke, the wind rose and swept mourningly over the large leaves of
the chestnut-tree beneath which they stood: the serene stillness of the
evening seemed gone; an unquiet and melancholy spirit was loosened abroad,
and the chill of the sudden change which is so frequent to our climate,
came piercingly upon them. Godolphin was silent for some moments, for the
thought found a sympathy in his own.
"And is it truly so?" he said at last; "is there really to be no permanent
happiness for us below? Is pain always to tread the heels of pleasure?
Are we never to say the harbour is reached, and we are safe? No, my
Constance," he added, warming into the sanguine vein that traversed even
his most desponding moods, "no! let us not cherish this dark belief; there
is no experience for the future; one hour lies to the next; if what has
been seem thus chequered, it is no type of what may be. We have
discovered in each other that world that was long lost to our eyes; we
cannot lose it again; death only can separate us!"
"Ah, death!" said Constance, shuddering.
"Do not recoil at that word, my Constance, for we are yet in the noon of
life; why bring, like the Egyptian, the spectre to the feast? And, after
all, if death come while we thus love, it is better than change and
time--better than custom which palls--better than age which chills. Oh!"
continued Godolphin, passionately, "oh! if this narrow shoal and sand of
time be but a breathing-spot in the great heritage of immortality, why
cheat ourselves with words so vague as life and death? What is the
difference? At most, the entrance in and the departure from one scene in
our wide career. How many scenes are left to us! We do but hasten our
journey, not close it. Let us believe this, Constance, and cast from us
all fear of our disunion."
As he spoke, Constance's eyes were fixed upon his face, and the deep calm
that reigned there sank into her soul, and silenced its murmurs. The
thought of futurity is that which Godolphin (because it is so with all
idealists) must have revolved with the most frequent fervour; but it was a
thought which he so rarely touched upon, that it was the first and only
time Constance ever heard it breathed from his lips.
They turned into the house; and the mark is still in that page of the
volume which they read, where the melodious accents of Godolphin died upon
the heart of Constance. Can she ever turn to it again?
