Godolphin Part 19

"Impossible! impossible!" cried Lucilla, vehemently; "it were to take away the only solace I have: it were to make life a privation--a curse."

"Not so, Lucilla; it is to make life respectable and safe. I, on the other hand, will engage that all within these walls shall behave to you with indulgence and kindness."

"I care not for their kindness!--for the kindness of any one; save----"

"Whom?" asked G.o.dolphin, perceiving she would not proceed: but as she was still silent, he did not press the question. "Come!" said he, persuasively: "come, promise, and be friends with me; do not let us part angrily: I am about to take my leave of you for many months.

"Part!--you!--months!--O G.o.d, do not say so!"

With these words, she was by his side; and gazing on him with her large and pleading eyes, wherein was stamped a wildness, a terror, the cause of which he did not as yet decipher.

"No, no," said she, with a faint smile: "no! you mean to frighten me, to extort my promise. You are not going to desert me!"

"But, Lucilla, I will not leave you to unkindness; they shall not--they dare not wound you again."

"Say to me that you are not going from Rome--speak; quick!"

"I go in two days."

"Then let me die!" said Lucilla, in a tone of such deep despair, that it chilled and appalled G.o.dolphin, who did not, however, attribute her grief (the grief of this mere child--a child so wayward and eccentric) to any other cause than that feeling of abandonment which the young so bitterly experience at being left utterly alone with persons unfamiliar to their habits and opposed to their liking.

He sought to soothe her, but she repelled him. Her features worked convulsively: she walked twice across the room; then stopped opposite to him, and a certain strained composure on her brow seemed to denote that she had arrived at some sudden resolution.

"Wouldst thou ask me," she said, "what cause took me into the streets as the shadows darkened, and enabled me lightly to bear threats at home and risk abroad?"

"Ay, Lucilla: will you tell me?"

"Thou wast the cause!" she said, in a low voice, trembling with emotion, and the next moment sank on her knees before him.

With a confusion that ill became so practised and favoured a gallant, G.o.dolphin sought to raise her. "No! no!" she said; "you will despise me now: let me lie here, and die thinking of thee. Yes!" she continued, with an inward but rapid voice, as he lifted her reluctant frame from the earth, and hung over her with a cold and uncaressing attention: "yes! you I loved--I adored--from my very childhood. When you were by, life seemed changed to me; when absent, I longed for night, that I might dream of you. The spot you had touched I marked out in silence, that I might kiss it and address it when you were gone. You left us; four years pa.s.sed away: and the recollection of you made and shaped my very nature.

I loved solitude; for in solitude I saw you--in imagination I spoke to you--and methought you answered and did not chide. You returned--and--and--but no matter: to see you, at the hour you usually leave home; to see you, I wandered forth with the evening. I tracked you, myself unseen; I followed you at a distance: I marked you disappear within some of the proud palaces that never know what love is. I returned home weeping, but happy. And do you think--do you dare to think--that I should have told you this, had you not driven me mad!--had you not left me reckless of what henceforth was thought of me--became of me! What will life be to me when you are gone? And now I have said all!

Go! You do not love me: I know it: but do not say so. Go--leave me; why do you not leave me?"

Does there live one man who can hear a woman, young and beautiful, confess attachment to him, and not catch the contagion? Affected, flattered, and almost melted into love himself, G.o.dolphin felt all the danger of the moment but this young, inexperienced girl--the daughter of his friend--no! her he could not--loving, willing as she was, betray.

Yet it was some moments before he could command himself sufficiently to answer her:--"Listen to me calmly," at length he said; "we are at least to each other dear friends nay, listen, I beseech you. I, Lucilla, am a man whose heart is forestalled--exhausted before its time; I have loved, deeply, and pa.s.sionately: that love is over, but it has unfitted me for any species of love resembling itself--any which I could offer to you.

Dearest Lucilla, I will not disguise the truth from you. Were I to love you, it would be--not in the eyes of _your_ countrymen (with whom such connexions are common), but in the eyes of mine--it would be dishonour.

Shall I confer even this partial dishonour on you? No! Lucilla, this feeling of yours towards me is (pardon me) but a young and childish phantasy: you will smile at it some years hence. I am not worthy of so pure and fresh a heart: but at least" (here he spoke in a lower voice, and as to himself)--"at least I am not so unworthy as to wrong it."

"Go!" said Lucilla; "go, I implore you." She spoke, and stood hueless and motionless, as if the life (life's life was indeed gone!) had departed from her. Her features were set and rigid; the tears that stole in large drops down her cheeks were unfelt; a slight quivering of her lips only bespoke what pa.s.sed within her.

"Ah!" cried G.o.dolphin, stung from his usual calm--stung from the quiet kindness he had sought, from principle, to a.s.sume--"can I withstand this trial?--I, whose dream of life has been the love that I might now find!

I, who have never before known an obstacle to a wish which I have not contended against, if not conquered: and, weakened as I am with the habitual indulgence to temptation, which has never been so strong as now;--but no! I will--I will deserve this attachment by self-restraint, self-sacrifice."

He moved away; and then returning, dropped on his knee before Lucilla.

"Spare me!" said he in an agitated voice, which brought back all the blood to that young and transparent cheek, which was now half averted from him--"spare me--spare yourself! Look around, when I am gone, for some one to replace my image: thousands younger, fairer, warmer of heart, will aspire to your love; that love for them will be exposed to no peril--no shame: forget me; select another; be happy and respected.

Permit me alone to fill the place of your friend--your brother. I will provide for your comforts, your liberty: you shall be restrained, offended no more. G.o.d bless you, dear, dear Lucilla; and believe,"

(he said almost in a whisper), "that, in thus flying you, I have acted generously, and with an effort worthy of your loveliness and your love."

He said, and hurried from the apartment. Lucilla turned slowly round as the door closed and then fell motionless on the ground.

Meanwhile G.o.dolphin, mastering his emotion, sought the host and hostess; and begging them to visit his lodging that evening, to receive certain directions and rewards, hastily left the house.

But instead of returning home, the desire for a brief solitude and self-commune, which usually follows strong excitement, (and which, in all less ordinary events, suggested his sole counsellors or monitors to the musing G.o.dolphin), led his steps in an opposite direction. Scarcely conscious whither he was wandering, he did not pause till he found himself in that green and still valley in which the pilgrim beholds the grotto of Egeria.

It was noon, and the day warm, but not overpowering. The leaf slept on the old trees that are scattered about that little valley; and amidst the soft and rich turf the wanderer's step disturbed the lizard, basking its brilliant hues in the noontide, and glancing rapidly through the herbage as it retreated. And from the trees, and through the air, the occasional song of the birds (for in Italy their voices are rare) floated with a peculiar clearness, and even noisiness of music, along the deserted haunts of the Nymph.

The scene, rife with its beautiful a.s.sociations, recalled G.o.dolphin from his reverie. "And here," thought he, "Fable has thrown its most lovely enduring enchantment: here, every one who has tasted the loves of earth, and sickened for the love that is ideal, finds a spell more attractive to his steps--more fraught with contemplation to his spirit, than aught raised by the palace of the Caesars or the tomb of the Scipios."

Thus meditating, and softened by the late scene with Lucilla, (to which his thoughts again recurred), he sauntered onward to the steep side of the bank, in which faith and tradition have hollowed out the grotto of the G.o.ddess. He entered the silent cavern, and bathed his temples in the delicious waters of the fountain.

It was perhaps well that it was not at that moment Lucilla made to him her strange and unlooked-for confession: again and again he said to himself (as if seeking for a justification of his self-sacrifice), "Her father was not Italian, and possessed feeling and honour: let me not forget that he loved me!" In truth, the avowal of this wild girl; an avowal made indeed with the ardour--but also breathing of the innocence, the inexperience--of her character--had opened to his fancy new and not undelicious prospects. He had never loved her, save with a lukewarm kindness, before that last hour; but now, in recalling her beauty, her tears, her pa.s.sionate abandonment can we wonder that he felt a strange beating at his heart, and that he indulged that dissolved and luxurious vein of tender meditation which is the prelude to all love? We must recall, too, the recollection of his own temper, so constantly yearning for the unhackneyed, the untasted; and his deep and soft order of imagination, by which he involuntarily conjured up the delight of living with one, watching one, so different from the rest of the world, and whose thoughts and pa.s.sions (wild as they might be) were all devoted to him!

And in what spot were these imaginings fed and coloured? In a spot which in the nature of its divine fascination could be found only beneath one sky, that sky the most balmy and loving upon earth! Who could think of love within the haunt and temple of

"That Nympholepsy of some fond despair,"

and not feel that love enhanced, deepened, modulated, into at once a dream and a desire?

It was long that G.o.dolphin indulged himself in recalling the image of Lucilla; but nerved at length and gradually, by harder, and we may hope better, sentiments than those of a love which he could scarcely indulge without criminality on the one hand, or, what must have appeared to the man of the world, derogatory folly on the other; he turned his thoughts into a less voluptuous channel, and prepared, though with a reluctant step, to depart homewards. But what was his amaze, his confusion, when, on reaching the mouth of the cave, he saw within a few steps of him Lucilla herself!

She was walking alone and slowly, her eyes bent upon the ground, and did not perceive him. According to a common custom with the middle cla.s.ses of Rome, her rich hair, save by a single band, was uncovered; and as her slight and exquisite form moved along the velvet sod, so beautiful a shape, and a face so rare in its character, and delicate in its expression, were in harmony with the sweet superst.i.tion of the spot, and seemed almost to restore to the deserted cave and the mourning stream their living Egeria.

G.o.dolphin stood transfixed to the earth; and Lucilla, who was walking in the direction of the grotto, did not perceive, till she was almost immediately before him. She gave a faint scream as she lifted her eyes; and the first and most natural sentiment of the woman breaking forth involuntarily,--she attempted to falter out her disavowal of all expectation of meeting him there.

"Indeed, indeed, I did not know--that is--I--I--" she could achieve no more.

"Is this a favourite spot with you?" said he, with the vague embarra.s.sment of one at a loss for words.

"Yes," said Lucilla, faintly.

And so, in truth, it was: for its vicinity to her home, the beauty of the little valley, and the interest attached to it--an interest not the less to her in that she was but imperfectly acquainted with the true legend of the Nymph and her royal lover--had made it, even from her childhood, a chosen and beloved retreat, especially in that dangerous summer time, which drives the visitor from the spot, and leaves the scene, in great measure, to the solitude which befits it. a.s.sociated as the place was with the recollection of her earlier griefs, it was thither that her first instinct made her fly from the rude contact and displeasing companionship of her relations, to give vent to the various and conflicting pa.s.sions which the late scene with G.o.dolphin had called forth.

They now stood for a few moments silent and embarra.s.sed, till G.o.dolphin, resolved to end a scene which he began to feel was dangerous, said in a hurried tone:--

"Farewell, my sweet pupil!--farewell!--May G.o.d bless you!"

He extended his hand, Lucilla seized it, as if by impulse; and conveying it suddenly to her lips, bathed it with tears. "I feel," said this wild and unregulated girl, "I feel, from your manner, that I ought to be grateful to you: yet I scarcely know why: you confessed you cannot love me, that my affection distresses you--you fly--you desert me. Ah, if you felt one particle even of friendship for me, could you do so?"

"Lucilla, what can I say?--I cannot marry you."

"Do I wish it?--I ask thee but to let me go with thee wherever thou goest."

"Poor child!" said G.o.dolphin, gazing on her; "art thou not aware that thou askest thine own dishonour?"

Lucilla seemed surprised:--"Is it dishonour to love? They do not think so in Italy. It is wrong for a maiden to confess it; but that thou hast forgiven me. And if to follow thee--to sit with thee--to be near thee--bring aught of evil to myself, not thee,--let me incur the evil: it can be nothing compared to the agony of thy absence!"

She looked up timidly as she spoke, and saw, with a sort of terror, that his face worked with emotions which seemed to choke his answer. "If,"