Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton

“ Constance and Godolphin were drawn into it.
“It is impossible,” said Godolphin, “to compare life in a southern climate with that which we lead in colder countries. There is an indolence, a laissez aller, a philosophical insouciance, produced by living under these warm suns, and apart from the ambition of the objects of our own nation, which produce at last a state of mind that divides us for ever from our countrymen. It is like living amidst perpetual music—a different kind of life—a soft, lazy, voluptuous romance of feeling, that indisposes us to action—almost to motion. ”

“ But, come what will, Volktman, come all that you foretell to me; crosses in my love, disappointment in my life, melancholy in my blood, and a violent death in the very flush of my manhood,—Me: at least, Me! my soul, my heart, my better part, you shall never cast down, nor darken, nor deject. I move in a certain and serene circle; ambition cannot tempt me above it, nor misfortune cast me below!”
Volktman looked at the speaker with surprise and admiration; the enthusiasm of a brave mind is the only fire broader and brighter than that of a fanatical one. ”

“ Too thoughtful to be without a leading principle in life, the one principle I adopted has been one error. I have tasted all that imagination can give to earthly possession: youth, health, liberty, knowledge, love, luxury, pomp. Woman was my first passion,—what woman have I wooed in vain? I imagined that my career hung upon Constance’s breath—Constance loved and refused me. I attributed my errors to that refusal; Constance became mine—how have I retrieved them? A vague, a dim, an unconfessed remorse has pursued me in the memory of Lucilla ”

“ But love was not the worst danger that menaced the intoxicated boy. Saville, the most seductive of tutors—Saville who, in his wit; his bon ton, his control over the great world, seemed as a god to all less elevated and less aspiring,—Saville was Godolphin’s constant companion; and Saville was worse than a profligate—he was a gambler! One would think that gaming was the last vice that could fascinate the young: its avarice, its grasping, its hideous selfishness, its cold, calculating meanness, would, one might imagine, scare away all who have yet other and softer deities to worship. ”

“ All that is left to me in the world are these very visions, this very power—call it delusion if you will—from which you would tear me. Nay, look not so reproachfully, and in such wonder. Do you not know that men have in poverty, sickness, and all outer despair, clung to a creative spirit within—a world peopled with delusions—and called it Poetry? and that gift has been more precious to them than all that wealth and pomp could bestow? So,” continued Lucilla, with fervid and insane enthusiasm, “so is this, my creative spirit, my imaginary world, my inspiration, what poetry may be to others. ”

“ You speak not! repeat my words after me:”—Constance obeyed:—“through life to death; through good, through ill, through weakness, through power, you will devote yourself to humble, to abase that party from whom your father received ingratitude, mortification, and death! Swear that you will not marry a poor and powerless man, who cannot minister to the ends of that solemn retribution I invoke! Swear that you will seek to marry from amongst the great; not through love, not through ambition, but through hate, and for revenge! You will seek to rise that you may humble those who have betrayed me! ”

“ It is an ambition of trifle, it is true; but it is still ambition. It frets, it irritates, but it keeps them alive. The great are the true victims of ennui. The more firmly seated their rank, the more established their position, the more their life stagnates into insipidity. Constance was at the height of her wishes. No one was so courted, so adored. One after one, she had humbled and subdued all those who, before her marriage, had trampled on her pride—or, who after it, had resisted her pretensions: a look from her had become a triumph, and a smile conferred a rank on its receiver. ”

“ And those stars still, with their soft, unspeakable eyes of love, looked down upon Godolphin as of old, when, by the Italian lake, he roved with her for whom he had become the world itself. No, not now, nor ever, could he gaze upon those wan, mysterious orbs, and not feel the pang that reminded him of Lucilla! Between them and her was an affinity which his imagination could not sever. All whom we have loved have something in nature especially devoted to their memory; a peculiar flower, a breath of air, a leaf, a tone. What love is without some such association. ”

“ For the first time since she had lived with Godolphin she turned, but disconsolately, to the company of books.
Works of all sorts filled their home, but the spell that once spoke to her from the page was broken. If the book was not of love, it possessed no interest;—if of love, she thought the description both tame and false. No one ever painted love so as fully to satisfy another:—to some it is too florid—to some too commonplace; the god, like other gods, has no likeness on earth, and every wave on which the star of passion beams, breaks the lustre into different refractions of light. ”

“ Oh, would,” added Constance, kindling as she spoke, “that you—you, Mr. Godolphin,—with an intellect so formed for high accomplishment—with all the weapons and energies of life at your command,—would that you could awaken to a more worthy estimate—pardon me—of the uses of exertion! Surely, surely, you must be sensible of the calls that your country, that mankind, have at this epoch of the world, upon all—all, especially, possessing your advantages and powers. Can we pierce one inch beyond the surface of society, and not see that great events are hastening to their birth? ”

“ What a world of wisdom in that one saying of Radclyffe’s, ‘Benevolence is the sole cure to idealism;’ to live for others draws us from demanding miracles for ourselves. What duty as yet have I fulfilled? I renounced ambition as unwise, and with it I renounced wisdom itself. I lived for pleasure—I lived the life of disappointment. Without one vicious disposition, I have fallen into a hundred vices; I have never been actively selfish, yet always selfish. I nursed high thoughts—for what end? A poet in heart, a voluptuary in life. ”

“ A more subdued and gentle spirit had descended on her surpassing beauty, and the change was of an order that Percy Godolphin could especially appreciate. And the world, for which he owned reluctantly that she yet lived too much, had, nevertheless, seemed rather to enlarge and animate the natural nobleness of her mind, than to fritter it down to the standard of its common votaries. When she spoke he delighted in, even while he dissented from, the high and bold views which she conceived. He loved her indignation of all that was mean and low—her passion for all that was daring and exalted. ”

“ Could I, with a silent heart, watch by that victim; could I, viewing his certain doom, elate him with false hopes?—No, no! fly from me,—from the thought of such a destiny. Marry one who can bring you wealth, and support you with rank; then be ambitious if you will. Leave me to fulfil my doom,—my vow; and to think, however wretched I may be, that I have not inflicted a permanent wretchedness on you.”
Godolphin sprang forward; but the door closed upon his eyes; and he saw Constance—as Constance Vernon—no more. ”

“ Godolphin was peculiarly fascinated by the stage; he loved to steal away from his companions, and, alone, and unheeded, to feast his mind on the unreal stream of existence that mirrored images so beautiful. And oh! while yet we are young—while yet the dew lingers on the green leaf of spring—while all the brighter, the more enterprising part of the future is to come—while we know not whether the true life may not be visionary and excited as the false—how deep and rich a transport is it to see, to feel, to hear Shakspeare’s conceptions made actual, though all imperfectly, and only for an hour! ”

“ You mistake me if you think sordid and vulgar ambition can only influence me. No! I could be worthy of you! The daughter of John Vernon could be a worthy wife to the man of indigence and genius. In your poverty I could soothe you; in your labour I could support you; in your reverses console, in your prosperity triumph. But—but, it must not be. Go, Godolphin—dear Godolphin! There are thousands better and fairer than I am, who will do for you as I would have done; but who possess the power I have not—who, instead of sharing, can raise your fortunes. ”

“ For myself I could ask no honour: for you, I will labour for all. No toil shall be dry to me—no pleasure shall decoy. I will renounce my idle and desultory pursuits. I will enter the great public arena, where all who come armed with patience and with energy are sure to win. Constance, I am not without talents, though they have slept within me; say but the word, and you know not what they can produce.”
An irresolution in Constance was felt as a sympathy by Godolphin; he continued,—
“We are both desolate in the world, Constance; we are orphans—friendless, fortuneless. ”

“ She obeyed, as she ever did, the impulse of the moment, and read what follows:
“Constance—As I write that word how many remembrances rush upon me!—for how many years has that name been a talisman to my heart, waking its emotions at will! You are the first woman I ever really loved: you rejected me, yet I could not disdain you. You became another’s but my love could not desert you. Your hand wrote the history of my life after the period when we met,—my habits—my thoughts—you influenced and coloured them all! And now, Constance, you are free; and I love you more fervently than ever! ”

“ This is the true moral of life; every one who minds it gets on, thrives, and fattens; they who don’t, come to us to borrow money, if gentlemen; or fall upon the parish, if plebeians. I mind it, my dear Godolphin; I have minded it all my life; I am very contented—content is the sign of virtue,—ah,—bah!”
Yes; Constance was a widow. The hand of her whom Percy Godolphin had loved so passionately, and whose voice even now thrilled to his inmost heart, and awakened the echoes that had slept for years, it was once more within her power to bestow, and within his to demand. ”

“ You must come; you are an old favourite, you know: she’ll be so glad to see you,—all innocent, by the way: Lady Erpingham need not be jealous— (jealous! Constance jealous of Fanny Millinger!) all innocent. Come, I’ll drive you there; my cab is at the door.”
“Anything better than a lecture on ambition,” thought Godolphin; and he consented. Godolphin’s friend was a lively young nobleman, of that good-natured, easy, uncaptious temper, which a clever, susceptible, indolent man often likes better than comrades more intellectual, because he has not to put himself out of his way in the comradeship. ”

“ Fanny; no satire from you: you, who are not properly speaking even a tragic actress! But there is something about your profession sublimely picturesque in the midst of these noisy brawls. The storms of nations shake not the stage; you are wrapt in another life; the atmosphere of poetry girds you. You are like the fairies who lived among men, visible only at night, and playing their fantastic tricks amidst the surrounding passions—the sorrow, the crime, the avarice, the love, the wrath, the luxury, the famine, that belong to the grosser dwellers of the earth. You are to be envied, Fanny. ”

“ The moon arose, and cast its light over Volktman’s earnest countenance,—over the rich bloom and watchful eye of Lucilla,—over the contemplative brow and motionless figure of Godolphin. It was a group of indefinable interest: the Earth was so still, that the visionary might well have fancied it had hushed itself, to drink within its quiet heart the voices of that Heaven in whose oracles he believed. Not one of the group spoke,—the astrologer’s mind and gaze were riveted above; and neither of his companions wished to break the meditations of the old and dreaming man. ”

“ Its bustle, its life, its wealth—the tokens of the ambition and commerce of the Great Island Race—have something of inconceivable excitement and power, after the comparative desertion and majestic stillness of Continental cities. Constance leaned restlessly forth from the window of the carriage as it whirled on.
“Oh, that I were a man!” said she, fervently.
“And why?” asked Godolphin, smilingly.
“Why! look out on this broad theatre of universal ambition, and read the why. What a proud and various career lies open in this free city to every citizen! ”