Lodore, Vol. 2 (of 3)

In the turmoil of our lives, Men are like politic states, or troubled seas. Tossed up and down with several storms and tempests, Change and variety of wrecks and fortunes; Till, labouring to the havens of our homes, We struggle for the calm that crowns our ends.
FORD.
Excellent creature! whose perfections make Even sorrow lovely!
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
Mr. Villiers now became the constant visitor of Mrs. Elizabeth and her niece; and all discontent, all sadness, all listlessness, vanished in his presence. There was in his mind a constant spring of vivacity, which did not display itself in mere gaiety, but in being perfectly alive at every moment, and continually ready to lend himself to the comfort and solace of his companions. Sitting in their dingy London house, the spirit of dulness had drawn a curtain between them and the sun; and neither thought nor event had penetrated the fortification of silence and neglect which environed them. Edward Villiers came; and as mist flies before the wind, so did all Ethel's depression disappear when his voice only met her ear: his step on the stairs announced happiness; and when he was indeed before her, light and day displaced every remnant of cheerless obscurity.
The abstracted, wounded, yet lofty spirit of Lodore was totally dissimilar to the airy brightness of Villiers' disposition. Lodore had outlived a storm, and shown himself majestic in ruin. No ill had tarnished the nature of Villiers: he enjoyed life, he was in good-humour with the world, and thought well of mankind. Lodore had endangered his peace from the violence of passion, and reaped misery from the pride of his soul. Villiers was imprudent from his belief in the goodness of his fellow-creatures, and imparted happiness from the store that his warm heart insured to himself. The one had never been a boy—the other had not yet learned to be a man.
Ethel's heart had been filled by her father; and all affection, all interest, borrowed their force from his memory. She did not think of love; and while Villiers was growing into a part of her life, becoming knit to her existence by daily habit, and a thousand thoughts expended on him, she entertained his idea chiefly as having been the friend of Lodore. He is certainly the kindest-hearted creature in the world. This was the third time that, when laying her gentle head on the pillow, this feeling came like a blessing to her closing eyes. She heard his voice in the silence of night, even more distinctly than when it was addressed to her outward sense during the day. For the first time after the lapse of months, she found one to whom she could spontaneously utter every thought, as it rose in her mind. A fond, elder brother, if such ever existed, cherishing the confidence and tenderness of a beloved sister, might fill the place which her new friend assumed for Ethel. She thought of him with overflowing affection; and the name of Mr. Villiers sometimes fell from her lips in solitude, and hung upon her ear like sweetest music. In early life there is a moment—perhaps of all the enchantments of love it is the one which is never renewed—when passion, unacknowledged to ourselves, imparts greater delight than any after-stage of that ever-progressive sentiment. We neither wish nor expect. A new joy has risen, like the sun, upon our lives; and we rejoice in the radiance of morning, without adverting to the noon and twilight that is to follow. Ethel stood on the threshold of womanhood: the door of life had been closed before her;—again it was thrown open—and the sudden splendour that manifested itself blinded her to the forms of the objects of menace or injury, which a more experienced eye would have discerned within the brightness of her new-found day.