Ethel Churchill/Chapter 92
CHAPTER XVI.
LADY MARCHMONT'S JOURNAL.
Deep in the heart is an avenging power,
Conscious of right and wrong. There is no shape
Reproach can take, one-half so terrible
As when that shape is given by ourselves.
Justice hath needful punishments, and crime
Is a predestined thing to punishment.
Or soon, or late, there will be no escape
From the stern consequence of its own act.
But in ourself is Fate's worst minister:
There is no wretchedness like self-reproach.
He did not call yesterday at the usual hour. How intolerably long the morning seemed; and yet I owed it a new pleasure, it brought my first note from him. I now know his hand-writing; it is graceful, almost, as a woman's. I shall not see him till to-morrow. Ah! is it true that I, and I only, shall be present to his thoughts? that life is only life when passed at my side? How intensely I feel the happiness of being loved! I am so grateful for it! Till now I have been so unappreciated, so uncared for; no one, since my dearest uncle's death, has desired to read my thoughts, or to look beyond the surface, and find what deep and passionate affections lay below.
I am the better for being beloved; I desire to be kinder to others; I would fain share my utter content; a deeper pity crosses me when I see sorrow. I was growing selfish, cold, careless; I am so no longer. I listen patiently, a sweet and ready sympathy seems to knit me closer to my kind. Life had grown so wearisome, I hoped for nothing, cared for nothing; now, a new delight mingles with all things; a look, a word of his, makes my heart beat with tumultuous pleasure.
The other night, he came sooner to Lady Townshend's than was expected, and for my sake. I knew he was there before I saw him. How different he is to everybody else! Perhaps this is the real mystery of love. I remember reading, long ago, an eastern story of a dervise, who had a mystic ointment, with which, when the eyes were touched, all the hidden precious things of earth were given to view. The gold and silver shone within the mountain, and the diamonds glistened within the secret mines: so it is with love, who is the fine magician, shewing all the veiled treasures of the heart. How much has love taught me, that is true and beautiful! What a mistake to build our hopes on the external vanities of life! circumstance is nothing. How worthless, now appears to me, all that once seemed the chief objects of existence! our happiness lies within. To love, says all that can be said of intense and engrossing delight; even when away from him, the sunshine of his presence lingers behind. He gathered from the old garden-wall a branch of those fragile roses, which, frail as they are, linger on to the last: I have kept them, and those few withered leaves have a charm I never yet found in a flower; "They breathe
Not of themselves, but thee!"
Strange, too, how all old enjoyments revive: things that I had thought gone by for ever, I read with almost my former eagerness; but I apply all I read to him. Ah! no moment is languid now; I have so much to remember; I retrace all he said, all he did; I imagine a thousand scenes in which we both take part.
Why is it that, in dreaming of an ideal future, I never lay the scene in London? I fancy to myself a lone and lovely island, far away in the southern seas, where never another step entered but our own; such an island as lives in Pope's delicious verse. How happy I could be in Calypso's cave, where
"Cedar and frankincense, an odorous pile,
Flamed on the hearth, and wide perfumed the isle.
Without the grot, a various sylvan scene
Appeared around, and grots of living green;
Poplars and alders ever quivering played,
And nodding cypress formed a fragrant shade,
On whose high branches, waving with the storm,
The birds of broadest wing their mansions form;
The chough, the sea-mew, and loquacious crow,
And scream aloft, and skim the deep below.
Depending vines the shelving caverns screen,
And purple clusters blushing through the green;
Four limpid fountains from the clefts distil,
And every fountain pours a several rill
In mazy windings, wandering down the hill,
Where blooming meads with verdant greens were crowned,
And glowing violets throw odours round."
I did not feel the full charm of these lines when I first read them, but I do now. It is with such scenes as these—lovely, lonely, and distant—that I connect his image, not with the false and glittering passages of our daily intercourse. The feverish and tumultuous capital is only the "place où l'on se passe le mieux du bonheur." Will he always love me as he seems to love me now? Why do I say seems? out on such cold suspicion! In the truth of my own heart, I read that of his; and yet there are moments when I doubt even to despair; when the terrible truth of my position forces itself upon the memory, which would fain shut it out for ever.
What right have I to rely on the constancy of another, who am false myself? I tremble at the future; what can I, what dare I, hope for? O, that we had met earlier! how happy we might have been! Yet, what do I take from Lord Marchmont, but that which he cares not for,—my dreams, my thoughts, my feelings? Alas, I cannot deceive myself! I am wrong, very wrong; I could not have written to my uncle what I have written here! I can write no longer, it only makes me wretched!
And Henrietta turned away to be more wretched still. She felt what she did not own even to herself—the humiliation, the degradation, of her position. It is love's most dreadful penalty to fear, lest that very love lower you in the eyes of even him who inspires it; and yet this was the inevitable result of such an attachment. But Henrietta's first step in life had been a false one: she had married a man whom she did not love; and she had learned, too late, that in marriage nothing can supply the place of affection.
And she had a yet harder lesson to learn—that nothing can supply the place of strong, undeviating principle. There is but one wrong, and one right; but, alas! Henrietta was beginning to make those palliations and excuses for her own conduct, which should be reserved rigidly for questions in which we are not personally concerned. We may, we ought, to be merciful to others; to ourselves, we should be only just.