Ernest Maltravers, Book 8
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Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Ernest Maltravers, Book 8
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BOOK VIII.
Whither come Wisdom's queen
And the snare-weaving Love?
EURIP. /Iphig. in Aul./ I. 1310.
CHAPTER I.
"Notitiam primosque gradus vicinia fecit."*--OVID.
* Neighbourhood caused the acquaintance and first introduction.
CLEVELAND'S villa /was/ full, and of persons usually called agreeable.
Amongst the rest was Lady Florence Lascelles. The wise old man had ever
counselled Maltravers not to marry too young; but neither did he wish
him to put off that momentous epoch of life till all the bloom of heart
and emotion was passed away. He thought, with the old lawgivers, that
thirty was the happy age for forming a connection, in the choice of
which, with the reason of manhood, ought, perhaps, to be blended the
passion of youth. And he saw that few men were more capable than
Maltravers of the true enjoyments of domestic life. He had long
thought, also, that none were more calculated to sympathise with
Ernest's views, and appreciate his peculiar character, than the gifted
and brilliant Florence Lascelles. Cleveland looked with toleration on
her many eccentricities of thought and conduct,--eccentricities which he
imagined would rapidly melt away beneath the influence of that
attachment which usually operates so great a change in women; and, where
it is strongly and intensely felt, moulds even those of the most
obstinate character into compliance or similitude with the sentiments or
habits of its object.
The stately self-control of Maltravers was, he conceived, precisely that
quality that gives to men an unconscious command over the very thoughts
of the woman whose affection they win: while, on the other hand, he
hoped that the fancy and enthusiasm of Florence would tend to render
sharper and more practical an ambition, which seemed to the sober man of
the world too apt to refine upon the means, and to /cui bono/ the
objects of worldly distinction. Besides, Cleveland was one who
thoroughly appreciated the advantages of wealth and station; and the
rank and the dower of Florence were such as would force Maltravers into
a position in social life, which could not fail to make new exactions
upon talents which Cleveland fancied were precisely those adapted rather
to command than to serve. In Ferrers he recognised a man to /get/ into
power--in Maltravers one by whom power, if ever attained, would be
wielded with dignity, and exerted for great uses. Something, therefore,
higher than mere covetousness for the vulgar interests of Maltravers
made Cleveland desire to secure to him the heart and hand of the great
heiress; and he fancied that, whatever might be the obstacle, it would
not be in the will of Lady Florence herself. He prudently resolved,
however, to leave matters to their natural course. He hinted nothing to
one party or the other. No place for falling in love like a large
country house, and no time for it, amongst the indolent well-born, like
the close of a London season, when, jaded by small cares, and sickened
of hollow intimacies, even the coldest may well yearn for the tones of
affection--the excitement of an honest emotion.
Somehow or other it happened that Florence and Ernest, after the first
day or two, were constantly thrown together. She rode on horseback, and
Maltravers was by her side--they made excursions on the river, and they
sat on the same bench in the gliding pleasure-boat. In the evenings,
the younger guests, with the assistance of the neighbouring families,
often got up a dance in a temporary pavilion built out of the
dining-room. Ernest never danced. Florence did at first. But once, as
she was conversing with Maltravers, when a gay guardsman came to claim
her promised hand in the waltz, she seemed struck by a grave change in
Ernest's face.
"Do you never waltz?" she asked, while the guardsman was searching for a
corner wherein safely to deposit his hat.
"No," said he; "yet there is no impropriety in /my/ waltzing."
"And you mean that there is in mine?"
"Pardon me--I did not say so."
"But you think it."
"Nay, on consideration, I am glad, perhaps, that you do waltz."
"You are mysterious."
"Well then, I mean, that you are precisely the woman I would never fall
in love with. And I feel the danger is lessened, when I see you destroy
any one of my illusions, or, I ought to say, attack any one of my
prejudices."
Lady Florence coloured; but the guardsman and the music left her no time
for reply. However, after that night she waltzed no more. She was
unwell--she declared she was ordered not to dance, and so quadrilles
were relinquished as well as the waltz.
Maltravers could not but be touched and flattered by this regard for his
opinion; but Florence contrived to testify it so as to forbid
acknowledgment, since another motive had been found for it. The second
evening after that commemorated by Ernest's candid rudeness, they
chanced to meet in the conservatory, which was connected with the
ball-room; and Ernest, pausing to inquire after her health, was struck
by the listless and dejected sadness which spoke in her tone and
countenance as she replied to him.
"Dear Lady Florence," said he, "I fear you are worse than you will
confess. You should shun these draughts. You owe it to your friends to
be more careful of yourself."
"Friends!" said Lady Florence, bitterly--"I have no friends!--even my
poor father would not absent himself from a cabinet dinner a week after
I was dead. But that is the condition of public life--its hot and
searing blaze puts out the lights of all lesser but not unholier
affections.--Friends! Fate, that made Florence Lascelles the envied
heiress, denied her brothers, sisters; and the hour of her birth lost
her even the love of a mother! Friends! where shall I find them?"
As she ceased, she turned to the open casement, and stepped out into the
verandah, and by the trembling of her voice Ernest felt that she had
done so to hide or to suppress her tears.
"Yet," said he, following her, "there is one class of more distant
friends, whose interest Lady Florence Lascelles cannot fail to secure,
however she may disdain it. Among the humblest of that class, suffer me
to rank myself. Come, I assume the privilege of advice--the night air
is a luxury you must not indulge."
"No, no, it refreshes me--it soothes. You misunderstand me, I have no
illness that still skies and sleeping flowers can increase."
Maltravers, as is evident, was not in love with Florence, but he could
not fail, brought, as he had lately been, under the direct influence of
her rare and prodigal gifts, mental and personal, to feel for her a
strong and even affectionate interest--the very frankness with which he
was accustomed to speak to her, and the many links of communion there
necessarily were between himself and a mind so naturally powerful and so
richly cultivated, had already established their acquaintance upon an
intimate footing.
"I cannot restrain you, Lady Florence," said he, half smiling, "but my
conscience will not let me be an accomplice. I will turn king's
evidence, and hunt out Lord Saxingham to send him to you."
Lady Florence, whose face was averted from his, did not appear to hear
him.
"And you, Mr. Maltravers," turning quickly round--"you--have you
friends? Do you feel that there are, I do not say public, but private
affections and duties, for which life is made less a possession than a
trust?"
"Lady Florence--no!--I have friends, it is true, and Cleveland is of the
nearest; but the life within life--the second self, in whom we vest the
right and mastery over our own being--I know it not. But is it," he
added, after a pause, "a rare privation? Perhaps it is a happy one. I
have learned to lean on my own soul, and not look elsewhere for the
reeds that a wind can break."
"Ah, it is a cold philosophy--you may reconcile yourself to its wisdom
in the world, in the hum and shock of men; but in solitude, with
Nature--ah, no! While the mind alone is occupied, you may be contented
with the pride of stoicism; but there are moments when the /heart/
wakens as from a sleep--wakens like a frightened child--to feel itself
alone and in the dark."
Ernest was silent, and Florence continued, in an altered voice: "This is
a strange conversation--and you must think me indeed a wild,
romance-reading person, as the world is apt to call me. But if I
live--I--pshaw!--life denies ambition to women."
"If a woman like you, Lady Florence, should ever love, it will be one in
whose career you may perhaps find that noblest of all ambitions--the
ambition women only feel--the ambition for another!"
"Ah! but I shall never love," said Lady Florence, and her cheek grew
pale as the starlight shone on it; "still, perhaps," she added quickly,
"I may at least know the blessing of friendship. Why now," and here,
approaching Maltravers, she laid her hand with a winning frankness on
his arm--" why now, should not we be to each other as if love, as you
call it, were not a thing for earth--and friendship supplied its
place?--there is no danger of our falling in love with each other! You
are not vain enough to expect it in me, and I, you know, am a coquette;
let us be friends, confidants--at least till you marry, or I give
another the right to control my friendships and monopolise my secrets."
Maltravers was startled--the sentiment Florence addressed to him, he, in
words not dissimilar, had once addressed to Valerie.
"The world," said he, kissing the hand that yet lay on his arm, "the
world will--"
"Oh, you men!--the world, the world!--Everything gentle, everything
pure, everything noble, high-wrought and holy--is to be squared, and
cribbed, and maimed to the rule and measure of the world! The
world--are you, too, its slave? Do you not despise its hollow cant--its
methodical hypocrisy?"
"Heartily!" said Ernest Maltravers, almost with fierceness. "No man ever
so scorned its false gods and its miserable creeds--its war upon the
weak--its fawning upon the great--its ingratitude to benefactors--its
sordid league with mediocrity against excellence. Yes, in proportion as
I love mankind, I despise and detest that worse than Venetian oligarchy
which mankind set over them and call 'THE WORLD.'"
And then it was, warmed by the excitement of released feelings,
long and carefully shrouded, that this man, ordinarily so calm and
self-possessed, poured burningly and passionately forth all those
tumultuous and almost tremendous thoughts, which, however much we
may regulate, control, or disguise them, lurk deep within the souls
of all of us, the seeds of the eternal war between the natural man
and the artificial; between our wilder genius and our social
conventionalities;--thoughts that from time to time break forth into the
harbingers of vain and fruitless revolutions, impotent struggles against
destiny;--thoughts that good and wise men would be slow to promulge and
propagate, for they are of a fire which burns as well as brightens, and
which spreads from heart to heart--as a spark spreads amidst
flax;--thoughts which are rifest where natures are most high, but belong
to truths that virtue dare not tell aloud. And as Maltravers spoke,
with his eyes flashing almost intolerable light--his breast heaving, his
form dilated, never to the eyes of Florence Lascelles did he seem so
great: the chains that bound the strong limbs of his spirit seemed
snapped asunder, and all his soul was visible and towering, as a thing
that has escaped slavery, and lifts its crest to heaven, and feels that
it is free.
That evening saw a new bond of alliance between these two
persons,--young, handsome, and of opposite sexes, they agreed to be
friends, and nothing more. Fools!
CHAPTER II.
"Idem velle, et idem nolle, ea demum firma amicitia est."*
SALLUST.
*To will the same thing and not to will the same thing, that at length
is firm friendship.
"/Carlos./ That letter.
/Princess Eboli./ Oh, I shall die. Return it instantly."
SCHILLER: /Don Carlos/.
IT seemed as if the compact Maltravers and Lady Florence had entered
into removed whatever embarrassment and reserve had previously existed.
They now conversed with an ease and freedom not common in persons of
different sexes before they have passed their grand climacteric.
Ernest, in ordinary life, like most men of warm emotions and strong
imagination, if not taciturn, was at least guarded. It was as if a
weight were taken from his breast, when he found one person who could
understand him best when he was most candid. His eloquence--his
poetry--his intense and concentrated enthusiasm found a voice. He could
talk to an individual as he would have written to the public--a rare
happiness to the men of books.
Florence seemed to recover her health and spirits as by a miracle; yet
she was more gentle, more subdued, than of old--there was less effort to
shine, less indifference whether she shocked. Persons who had not met
her before, wondered why she was dreaded in society. But at times a
great natural irritability of temper--a quick suspicion of the motives
of those around her--an imperious and obstinate vehemence of will, were
visible to Maltravers, and served, perhaps, to keep him heart-whole. He
regarded her through the eyes of the intellect, not those of the
passions--he thought not of her as a woman--her very talents, her very
grandeur of idea and power of purpose, while they delighted him in
conversation, diverted his imagination from dwelling on her beauty. He
looked on her as something apart from her sex;--a glorious creature
spoilt by being a woman. He once told her so, laughing, and Florence
considered it a compliment. Poor Florence, her scorn of her sex avenged
her sex, and robbed her of her proper destiny!
Cleveland silently observed their intimacy, and listened with a quiet
smile to the gossips who pointed out /tetes-a-tetes/ by the terrace, and
loiterings by the lawn, and predicted what would come of it all. Lord
Saxingham was blind. But his daughter was of age, in possession of her
princely fortune, and had long made him sensible of her independence of
temper. His lordship, however, thoroughly misunderstood the character
of her pride, and felt fully convinced she would marry no one less than
a duke; as for flirtations, he thought them natural and innocent
amusements. Besides, he was very little at Temple Grove. He went to
London every morning, after breakfasting in his own room--came back to
dine, play at whist, and talk good-humoured nonsense to Florence in his
dressing-room, for the three minutes that took place between his sipping
his wine-and-water and the appearance of his valet. As for the other
guests, it was not their business to do more than gossip with each
other; and so Florence and Maltravers went on their way unmolested,
though not unobserved. Maltravers, not being himself in love, never
fancied that Lady Florence loved him, or that she would be in any danger
of doing so. This is a mistake a man often commits--a woman never. A
woman always knows when she is loved, though she often imagines she is
loved when she is not. Florence was not happy, for happiness is a calm
feeling. But she was excited with a vague, wild, intoxicating emotion.
She had learned from Maltravers that she had been misinformed by
Ferrers, and that no other claimed empire over his heart; and whether or
not he loved her, still for the present they seemed all in all to each
other; she lived but for the present day, she would not think of the
morrow.
Since that severe illness which had tended so much to alter Ernest's
mode of life, he had not come before the public as an author. Latterly,
however, the old habit had broken out again. With the comparative
idleness of recent years, the ideas and feelings which crowd so fast on
the poetical temperament, once indulged, had accumulated within him to
an excess that demanded vent. For with some, to write is not a vague
desire, but an imperious destiny. The fire is kindled and must break
forth; the wings are fledged, and the birds must leave their nest. The
communication of thought to man is implanted as an instinct in those
breasts to which Heaven has intrusted the solemn agencies of genius. In
the work which Maltravers now composed he consulted Florence: his
confidence delighted her--it was a compliment she could appreciate.
Wild, fervid, impassioned, was that work--a brief and holiday
creation--the youngest and most beloved of the children of his brain.
And as day by day the bright design grew into shape, and thought and
imagination found themselves "local habitations," Florence felt as if
she were admitted into the palace of the genii, and made acquainted with
the mechanism of those spells and charms with which the preternatural
powers of mind design the witchery of the world. Ah, how different in
depth and majesty were those intercommunications of idea between Ernest
Maltravers and a woman scarcely inferior to himself in capacity and
acquirement, from that bridge of shadowy and dim sympathies which the
enthusiastic boy had once built up between his own poetry of knowledge
and Alice's poetry of love!
It was one late afternoon in September, when the sun was slowly going
down its western way, that Lady Florence, who had been all that morning
in her own room, paying off, as she said, the dull arrears of
correspondence, rather on Lord Saxingham's account than her own; for he
punctiliously exacted from her the most scrupulous attention to cousins
fifty times removed, provided they were rich, clever, well off, or in
any way of consequence:--it was one afternoon that, relieved from these
avocations, Lady Florence strolled through the grounds with Cleveland.
The gentlemen were still in the stubble-fields, the ladies were out in
barouches and pony phaetons, and Cleveland and Lady Florence were alone.
Apropos of Florence's epistolary employment, their conversation fell
upon that most charming species of literature, which joins with the
interest of a novel the truth of a history--the French memoir and
letter-writers. It was a part of literature in which Cleveland was
thoroughly at home.
"Those agreeable and polished gossips," said he, "how well they
contrived to introduce nature into art! Everything artificial seemed so
natural to them. They even feel by a kind of clockwork, which seems to
go better than the heart itself. Those pretty sentiments, those
delicate gallantries, of Madame de Sevigne to her daughter, how amiable
they are; but, somehow or other, I can never fancy them the least
motherly. What an ending for a maternal epistle is that elegant
compliment--'Songez que de tons les coeurs ou vous regnez, il n'y en a
aucun ou votre empire soit si bien etabli que dans le mien.'* I can
scarcely fancy Lord Saxingham writing so to you, Lady Florence."
* Think that of all the hearts over which you reign, there is not one in
which your empire can be so well established as in mine.
"No, indeed," replied Lady Florence, smiling. "Neither papas nor mammas
in England are much addicted to compliment; but I confess I like
preserving a sort of gallantry even in our most familiar
connections--why should we not carry the imagination into all the
affections?"
"I can scarce answer the why," returned Cleveland; "but I think it would
destroy the reality. I am rather of the old school. If I had a
daughter, and asked her to get my slippers, I am afraid I should think
it a little wearisome if I had, in receiving them, to make /des belles
phrases/ in return."
While they were thus talking, and Lady Florence continued to press her
side of the question, they passed through a little grove that conducted
to an arm of the stream which ornamented the grounds, and by its quiet
and shadowy gloom was meant to give a contrast to the livelier features
of the domain. Here they came suddenly upon Maltravers. He was walking
by the side of the brook, and evidently absorbed in thought.
It was the trembling of Lady Florence's hand as it lay on Cleveland's
arm, that induced him to stop short in an animated commentary on
Rochefoucauld's character of Cardinal de Retz, and look round.
"Ha, most meditative Jacques!" said he; "and what new moral hast thou
been conning in our Forest of Ardennes?"
"Oh, I am glad to see you; I wished to consult you, Cleveland. But
first, Lady Florence, to convince you and our host that my rambles have
not been wholly fruitless, and that I could not walk from Dan to
Beersheba and find all barren, accept my offering--a wild rose that I
discovered in the thickest part of the wood. It is not a civilised
rose. Now, Cleveland, a word with you."
"And now, Mr. Maltravers, I am /de trop/," said Lady Florence.
"Pardon me, I have no secrets from you in this matter--or rather these
matters; for there are two to be discussed. In the first place, Lady
Florence, that poor Cesarini,--you know and like him--nay, no blushes."
"Did I blush?--then it was in recollection of an old reproach of yours."
"At its justice?--well, no matter. He is one for whom I always felt a
lively interest. His very morbidity of temperament only increases my
anxiety for his future fate. I have received a letter from De
Montaigne, his brother-in-law, who seems seriously uneasy about
Castruccio. He wishes him to leave England at once, as the sole means
of restoring his broken fortunes. De Montaigne has the opportunity of
procuring him a diplomatic situation, which may not again
occur--and--but you know the man--what shall we do? I am sure he will
not listen to me; he looks on me as an interested rival for fame."
"Do you think I have any subtler eloquence?" said Cleveland. "No, I am
an author, too. Come, I think your ladyship must be the
arch-negotiator."
"He has genius, he has merit," said Maltravers, pleadingly; "he wants
nothing but time and experience to wean him from his foibles. /Will/
you try to save him, Lady Florence?"
"Why? nay, I must not be obdurate; I will see him when I go to town. It
is like you, Mr. Maltravers, to feel this interest in one--"
"Who does not like me, you would say; but he will some day or other.
Besides, I owe him deep gratitude. In his weaker qualities I have seen
many which all literary men might incur, without strict watch over
themselves; and let me add, also, that his family have great claims on
me."
"You believe in the soundness of his heart, and in the integrity of his
honour?" said Cleveland, inquiringly.
"Indeed I do; these are, these must be, the redeeming qualities of
poets."
Maltravers spoke warmly; and such at that time was his influence over
Florence, that his words formed--alas, too fatally!--her estimate of
Castruccio's character, which had at first been high, but which his own
presumption had latterly shaken. She had seen him three or four times
in the interval between the receipt of his apologetic letter and her
visit to Cleveland, and he had seemed to her rather sullen than humbled.
But she felt for the vanity she herself had wounded.
"And now," continued Maltravers, "for my second subject of consultation.
But that is political; will it weary Lady Florence?"
"Oh, no; to politics I am never indifferent: they always inspire me with
contempt or admiration, according to the motives of those who bring the
science into action. Pray say on."
"Well," said Cleveland, "one confidant at a time; you will forgive me,
for I see my guests coming across the lawn, and I may as well make a
diversion in your favour. Ernest can consult /me/ at any time."
Cleveland walked away; but the intimacy between Maltravers and Florence
was of so frank a nature that there was nothing embarrassing in the
thought of a /tete-a-tete/.
"Lady Florence," said Ernest, "there is no one in the world with whom I
can confer so cheerfully as with you. I am almost glad of Cleveland's
absence, for, with all his amiable and fine qualities, 'the world is too
much with him,' and we do not argue from the same data. Pardon my
prelude--now to my position. I have received a letter from Mr. ------.
That statesman, whom none but those acquainted with the chivalrous
beauty of his nature can understand or appreciate, sees before him the
most brilliant career that ever opened in this country to a public man
not born an aristocrat. He has asked me to form one of the new
administration that he is about to create: the place offered to me is
above my merits, nor suited to what I have yet done, though, perhaps, it
be suited to what I may yet do. I make that qualification, for you
know," added Ernest, with a proud smile, "that I am sanguine and
self-confident."
"You accept the proposal?"
"Nay,--should I not reject it? Our politics are the same only for the
moment, our ultimate objects are widely different. To serve with Mr.
------, I must make an unequal compromise--abandon nine opinions to
promote one. Is not this a capitulation of that great citadel, one's
own conscience? No man will call me inconsistent, for, in public life,
to agree with another on a party question is all that is required; the
thousand questions not yet ripened, and lying dark and concealed in the
future, are not inquired into and divined; but I own I shall deem myself
worse than inconsistent. For this is my dilemma,--if I use this noble
spirit merely to advance one object, and then desert him where he halts,
I am treacherous to him; if I halt with him, but one of my objects
effected, I am treacherous to myself. Such are my views. It is with
pain I arrive at them, for, at first, my heart beat with a selfish
ambition."