by Mary Shelley
Lady Santerre died. After the first burst of natural grief, Cornelia began to reflect that Lord might now imagine that every obstacle to their reconciliation was removed. She had looked upon her husband as her enemy and injurer; she had regarded him with indignation and fear; — but now she hated him. Strong aversion had sprung up, during the struggles of passion, in her bosom. She hated him as the eternal barrier between her and one who loved her with rare disinterestedness. The human heart must desire happiness; — in spite of every effort at resignation, it must aspire to the fulfilment of its wish. Lord Lodore was the cause why she was cut off from it for ever. He had foreseen that this feeling, this combat, this misery, would be her doom, in the deserted situation she chose for herself: she had laughed his fears to scorn. Now she abhorred him the more for having divined her destiny. While she banished the pleasant thoughts of love, she indulged in the poisoned ones of hate; and while she resisted each softer emotion as a crime, she opened her heart to the bitterest resentment, as a permitted solace; nor was she aware that thus she redoubled all her woes. It was under the influence of these feelings, that she had written to Mrs. Elizabeth Fitzhenry that harsh, decided letter, which Lodore received at New York. The intelligence of his violent death came as an answer to her expressions of implacable resentment. A pang of remorse stung her, when she thought how she had emptied the vials of her wrath on a head which had so soon after been laid low for ever.
The double loss of husband and mother caused Lady to seclude herself, not in absolute solitude, but in the agreeable retreat of friendly society. She was residing near Brighton, when Saville returned from America, and, with a heart beating high with its own desires, again beheld the mistress of his affections. His delicate nature caused him to respect the weeds she wore, even though they might be termed a mockery: they were the type of her freedom and his hopes; yet, as the tokens of death, they were to be respected. He saw her more beautiful than ever, more courted, more waited on; and he half despaired. How could he, the abstracted student, the man of dreams, the sensitive and timid invalid, ensnare the fancy of one formed to adorn the circles of wealth and fashion?
Thus it was that Saville and Cornelia were further off than ever, when they imagined themselves most near. Neither of them could afterwards comprehend what divided them; or why, when each would have died for the other’s sake, cobweb barriers should have proved inextricable; and wherefore, after weathering every more stormy peril, they should perish beneath the influence of a summer breeze.
The pride of Cornelia’s heart, hid by the artificial courtesies of society, was a sentiment resolved, confirmed, active, and far beyond her own controul. The smallest opposition appeared rebellion to her majesty of will; while her own caprices, her own desires, were sacred decrees. She was too haughty to admit of discussion — too firmly intrenched in a sense of what was due to her, not to start indignantly from remonstrance. It is true, all this was but a painted veil. She was tremblingly alive to censure, and wholly devoted to the object of her attachment; but Saville was unable to understand these contradictions. His modesty led him to believe, that he, of all men, was least calculated to excite love in a woman’s bosom. He saw in Cornelia a beautiful creation, to admire and adore; but he was slow to perceive the tenderness of soul, which her disposition made her anxious to conceal, and he was conscious of no qualities in himself that could entitle him to a place in her affections. Except that he loved her, what merit had he? And the interests of his affection he was willing to sacrifice at the altar of her wishes, though his life should be the oblation necessary to insure their accomplishment.
This is not the description of true love on either side; for, to be perfect, that sentiment ought to exist through the entireness of mutual sympathy and trust: but not the less did their passionate attachment engross the minds of both. All might have been well, indeed, had the lovers been left to themselves; but friends and relations interfered to mar and to destroy. The sisters of Saville accused Lady of encouraging, and intending to marry, the Marquess of C — . Saville instantly resolved to be no obstacle in the way of her ambition. Cornelia was fired with treble indignation to perceive that he at once conceded the place to his rival. One word or look of gentleness would have changed this; but she resolved to vanquish by other arms, and to force him to show some outward sign of jealousy and resentment. Saville had a natural dignity of mind, founded on simplicity of heart and directness of purpose. Cornelia knew that he loved her; — on that his claim rested: all that might be done to embellish and elevate her existence, he would study to achieve; but he could not enter into, nor understand, the puerile fancies of a spoiled Beauty: and while she was exerting all her powers, and succeeded in fascinating a crowd of flatterers, she saw Saville apart, abstracted from such vanities, pursuing a silent course; ready to approach her when her attention was disengaged, but at no time making one among her ostentatious admirers.
There was no moment of her life in which Cornelia did not fully appreciate her lover’s value, and her own good fortune in having inspired him with a serious and faithful attachment. But she imagined that this must be known and acknowledged; and that to ask any demonstration of gratitude, was ungenerous and tyrannical. An untaught girl could not have acted with more levity and wilfulness. It was worse when she found that she was accused of encouraging a wealthier and more illustrious rival. She disdained to exculpate herself from the charge of such low ambition, but rather furnished new grounds for accusation; and, in the arrogance of conscious power, smiled at the pettiness of the attempts made to destroy her influence. Proud in the belief that she could in an instant dispel the clouds she had conjured athwart her heaven, she cared not how ominously the thunder muttered, nor how dark and portentous lowered the threatening storm. It came when she least expected it: convinced of the fallacy of his confidence, made miserable by her caprices, agonized by the idea that he only lingered to add another trophy to his rival’s triumph, Saville, who was always impetuous and precipitate, suddenly quitted England.
This was a severe blow at first; but soon Cornelia smiled at it. He would return — he must. The sincerity of their mutual preference would overcome the petty obstacles of time and distance. She never felt more sure of his devotion than now; and she looked so happy, and spoke so gaily, that those who were more ready to discern indifference, than love, in her sentiments, assured the absent Saville, that Lady rejoiced at his absence, as having shaken off a burthen, and got rid of an impediment, which, in spite of herself, was a clog to her brilliant career. The trusting love that painted her face in smiles was a traitor to itself and while she rose each day in the belief that the one was near at hand which would bring her lover before her, dearer and more attached than ever, she was in reality at work in defacing the whole web of life, and substituting dark, blank, and sad disappointment, for the images of light and joy with which her fancy painted it.
Saville had been gone five months. It was strange that he did not return; and she began to ponder upon how she must unbend, and what demonstration she must make, to attract him again to her side. The Marquess of C — was dismissed; and she visited the daughters of Lord Maristow, to learn what latest news they had received of their brother. “Do you know, Lady ,” said Sophia Saville, “that this is Horatio’s wedding-day? It is too true: we regret it, because he weds a foreigner — but there is no help now. He is married.”
Had sudden disease seized on the frame-work of her body, and dissolved and scattered with poisonous influence and unutterable pains, the atoms that composed it, Lady would have been less agonized, less terrified. A thousand daggers were at once planted in her bosom. Saville was false! married! divided from her for ever! She was stunned: — scarcely understanding the meaning of the phrases addressed to her, and, unable to conceal her perturbation, she replied at random, and hastened to shorten her visit.
But not interval of doubt or hope was afforded. The words she had heard were concise, true to their meaning and all-sufficing. Her heart died wit
hin her. What had she done? Was she the cause? She longed to learn all the circumstances that led to this hasty marriage, and whether inconstancy or resentment had impelled him to the fatal act. Yet wherefore ask these things? It was over; the scene was closed. It were little worth to analyze the poison she had imbibed, since she was past all mortal cure.
Her first resolve was to forget — never, never to think of the false one more. But her thoughts never wandered from his image, and she was eternally busied in retrospection and conjecture. She was tempted at one time to disbelieve the intelligence, and to consider it as a piece of malice on the part of Miss Saville; then the common newspaper told her, that at the Ambassador’s house at Naples, the Honourable Horatio Saville had married Clorinda, daughter of the Principe Villamarina, a Neapolitan nobleman of the highest rank.
It was true therefore — and how was it true? Did he love his bride? why else marry? — had he forgotten his tenderness towards her? Alas! it needed not forgetting; it was a portion of past time, fleeting as time itself; it had been borne away with the hours as they passed, and remembered as a thing which had been, and was no more. The reveries of love which for months had formed all her occupation, were a blank; or rather to be replaced by the agonies of despair. Her native haughtiness forsook her. She was alone and desolate — hedged in on all sides by insuperable barriers, which shut out every glimpse of hope. She was humbled in her own eyes, through her want of success, and heartily despised herself, and all her caprices and vanities, which had led her to this desart, and then left her to pine. She detested her position in society, her mechanism of being, and every circumstance, self-inherent, or adventitious, that attended her existence. All seemed to her sick fancy so constructed as to ensure disgrace, desertion, and contempt. She lay down each night feeling as if she could never endure to raise her head on the morrow.
The unkindness and cruelty of her lover’s conduct next presented themselves to her contemplation. She had suffered much during the past years, more than she had ever acknowledged, even to herself; she had suffered of regret and sorrow, while she brooded over her solitary position, and the privation of every object on whom she might bestow affection. She had had nothing to hope. Saville had changed all this; he had banished her cares, and implanted hope in her heart. Now again his voice recalled the evils, his hand crushed the new-born expectation of happiness. He was the cause of every ill; and the adversity which she had endured proudly and with fortitude while it seemed the work of fate, grew more bitter and heavy when she felt that it arose through the agency of one, whose kind affection and guardianship she had fondly believed would hereafter prove a blessing sent as from Heaven itself, be to the star of her life.
This fit passed off; with struggles and relapses she wore down the first gush of sorrow, and her disposition again assumed force over her. She had found it difficult to persuade herself, in spite of facts, that she was not loved; but it was easy, once convinced of the infidelity of her lover, to regard him with indifference. She now regretted lost happiness — but Saville was no longer regretted. She wept over the vanished forms of delight, lately so dear to her; but she remembered that he who had called them into life had driven them away; and she smiled in proud scorn of his fleeting and unworthy passion. It was not to this love that she had made so tender and lavish a return. She had loved his constancy, his devotion, his generous solicitude for her welfare — for the happiness which she bestowed on him, and for the sympathy that so dearly united them. These were fled; and it were vain to consecrate herself to an empty and deformed mockery of so beautiful a truth.
Then she tried to hate him — to despise and to lessen him in her own estimation. The attempt recoiled on herself. The recollection of his worth stole across her memory, to frustrate her vain endeavours: his voice haunted — his expressive eyes beamed on her. It were better to forget. Indifference was her only refuge, and to attain this she must wholly banish his image from her mind. Cornelia was possessed of wonderful firmness of purpose. It had carried her on so long unharmed, and now that danger was at hand, it served effectually to defend her. She rose calm and free, above unmerited disaster. She grew proud of the power she found that she possessed of conquering the most tyrannical of passions. Peace entered her soul, and she hailed it as a blessing.
The clause in her husband’s will which deprived her of the guardianship of her daughter had been forgotten during this crisis. Before, under the supposition that she should marry, she had deferred taking any step to claim her. The idea of a struggle to be made, unassisted, unadvised, and unshielded, was terrible. She had not courage to encounter all the annoyances that might ensue. To get rid for a time of the necessity of action and reflection, she went abroad. She changed the scene — she travelled from place to place. She gave herself up in the solitude of continental journies to the whole force of contending passions; now overcome by despair, and again repressing regret, asserting to herself the lofty pride of her nature.
By degrees she recovered a healthier tone of mind — a distant and faint, yet genuine sense of duty dawned upon her; and she began to think on what her future existence was to depend, and how she could best secure some portion of happiness. Her heart once again warmed towards the image of her daughter — and she felt that in watching the development of her mind, and leading her to love and depend on her, a new interest and real pleasure might spring up in life. She reproached herself for having so long, by silence and passive submission, given scope to the belief that she was willing to be a party against herself, in the injustice of ; and she returned to England with the intention of instantly enforcing her rights over her child, and taking to her bosom and to her fondest care the little being, whose affection and gratitude was to paint her future life with smiles.
She called to mind Lady Santerre’s worldly maxims, and her own experience. She knew that the first step to success is the appearance of prosperity and power. To command the good wishes and aid of her friends she must appear independent of them. She was earnest therefore to hide the wounds her heart had received, and the real loathing with which she regarded all things. She arrayed herself in smiles, and banished, far below into the invisible recesses of her bosom, the contempt and disgust with which she viewed the scene around her.
She returned to England. She appeared at the height of the season, in the midst of society, as beautiful, as charming, as happy in look and manner, as in her days of light-hearted enjoyment. She paused yet a moment longer, to reflect on what step she had better take on first enforcing her claim; but her mind was full of its intention, and set upon the fulfilment.
At this time, but a few days after her arrival in London, she went to the opera. She heard the name of Fitzhenry called in the lobby — she saw and recognized Mrs. Elizabeth — the venerable sister Bessy, so little altered, that time might be said to have touched, but not trenched her homely kindly face. With her, in attendance on her, she beheld Horatio Saville’s favourite cousin — the gay and fashionable Edward Villiers. It was strange; her curiosity was strongly excited. It had not long to languish: the next morning Villiers called, and was readily admitted.
CHAPTER V.
And as good lost is seld or never found.
— Shakspeare.
Lady and Villiers met for the first time since Horatio Saville’s marriage. Neither were exactly aware of what the other knew or thought. Cornelia was ignorant how far her attachment to his cousin was known to him; whether he shared the general belief in her worldly coquetry, or what part he might have had in occasioning their unhappy separation. She could not indeed see him without emotion. He had been Lodore’s second, and received the last dying breath of him who had, in her brightest youth, selected her from the world, to share his fortunes. Those days were long past; yet as she grew older, disappointed, and devoid of pleasurable interest in the present, she often turned her thoughts backward, and wondered at the part she had acted.
Similar feelings were in Edward’s mind. He was prejudiced against her in
every way. He despised her worldly calculations, as reported to him, and rejoiced in their failure. He believed these reports, and despised her; yet he could not see her without being moved at once with admiration and pity. The moon-lit hill, and tragic scene, in which he had played his part, came vividly before his eyes. He had been struck by the nobleness of ‘s appearance — the sensibility that sat on his countenance — his gentle, yet dignified manners. Ethel’s idolatry of her father had confirmed the favourable prepossession. He could not help compassionating Cornelia for the loss of her husband, forgetting, for the moment, their separation. Then again recurred to him the eloquent appeals of Saville; his eulogiums; his fervent, reverential affection. She had lost him also. Could she hold up her head after such miserable events? The evidence of the senses, and the ideas of our own minds, are more forcibly present, than any notion we can form of the feelings of others. In spite, therefore, of his belief in her heartlessness, Villiers had pictured Cornelia attired in dismal weeds, the victim of grief. He saw her, beaming in beauty, at the opera; — he now beheld her, radiant in sweet smiles, in her own home. Nothing touched — nothing harmed her; and the glossy surface, he doubted not, imaged well the insensible, unimpressive soul within.
Lady would have despised herself for ever had she betrayed the tremor that shook her frame when Villiers entered. Her pride of sex was in arms to enable her to convince him, that no regret, no pining, shadowed her days. The reality was abhorrent, and should never be confessed. Thus then they met — each with a whole epic of woe and death alive in their memory; but both wearing the outward appearance of frivolity and thoughtlessness. He saw her as lovely as ever, and as kind. Her softest and sweetest welcome was extended to him. It was this frequent show of frank cordiality which gained her “golden opinions” from the many. Her haughtiness was all of the mind; — a desire to please, and constant association with others, had smoothed the surface, and painted it in the colours most agreeable to every eye.
