Lodore, Vol. 2 (of 3)

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Edward Villiers was the son of a man of fortune. His father had been left a widower young in life, with this only child, who, thus single and solitary in his paternal home, became almost adopted into the family of his mother's brother, Viscount Maristow. This nobleman being rich, married, and blessed with a numerous progeny, the presence of little Edward was not felt as a burthen, and he was brought up with his cousins like one of them. Among these it would have been hard if Villiers could not have found an especial friend: this was not the elder son, who, much his senior, looked down upon him with friendly regard; it was the second, who was likewise several years older. Horatio Saville was a being fashioned for every virtue and distinguished by every excellence; to know that a thing was right to be done, was enough to impel Horatio to go through fire and water to do it; he was one of those who seem not to belong to this world, yet who adorn it most; conscientious, upright, and often cold in seeming, because he could always master his passions; good over-much, he might be called, but that there was no pedantry nor harshness in his nature. Resolute, aspiring, and true, his noble purposes and studious soul, demanded a frame of iron, and he had one of the frailest mechanism. It was not that he was not tall, well-shaped, with earnest eyes, a brow built up high to receive and entertain a capacious mind; but he was thin and shadowy, a hectic flushed his cheek, and his voice was broken and mournful. At school he held the topmost place, at college he was distinguished by the energy with which he pursued his studies; and these, so opposite from what might have been expected to be the pursuits of his ardent mind, were abstruse metaphysics—the highest and most theoretical mathematics, and cross-grained argument, based upon hair-fine logic; to these he addicted himself. His desire was knowledge; his passion truth; his eager and never-sleeping endeavour was to inform and to satisfy his understanding. Villiers waited on him, as an inferior spirit may attend on an archangel, and gathered from him the crumbs of his knowledge, with gladness and content. He could not force his boyish mind to similar exertions, nor feel that keen thirst for knowledge that kept alive his cousin's application, though he could admire and love these with fervour, when exhibited in another. It was indeed a singular fact, that this constant contemplation of so superior a being, added to his careless turn of mind. Not to be like Horatio was to be nothing—to be like him was impossible. So he was content to remain one of the half-ignorant, uninformed creatures most men are, and to found his pride upon his affection for his cousin, who, being several years older, might well be advanced even beyond his emulation. Horatio himself did not desire to be imitated by the light-hearted Edward; he was too familiar with the exhaustion, the sadness, the disappointment of his pursuits; he could not be otherwise himself, but he thought all that he aspired after, was well exchanged for the sparkling eyes, exhaustless spirits, and buoyant step of Villiers. We none of us wish to exchange our identity for that of another; yet we are never satisfied with ourselves. The unknown has always a charm, and unless blinded by miserable vanity, we know ourselves too well to appreciate our especial characteristics at a very high rate. When Horace, after deep midnight study, felt his brain still working like a thousand millwheels, that cannot be stopped; when sleep fled from him, and yet his exhausted mind could no longer continue its labours—he envied the light slumbers of his cousin, which followed exercise and amusement. Villiers loved and revered him; and he felt drawn closer to him than towards any of his brothers, and strove to refine his taste and regulate his conduct through his admonitions and example, while he abstained from following him in the steep and thorny path he had selected.

Horatio quitted college; he was no longer a youth, and his manhood became as studious as his younger days. He had no desire but for knowledge, no thought but for the nobler creations of the soul, and the discernment of the sublime laws of God and nature. He nourished the ambition of showing to these latter days what scholars of old had been, though this feeling was subservient to his instinctive love of learning, and his wish to adorn his mind with the indefeasible attributes of truth. He was universally respected and loved, though little understood. His young cousin Edward only was aware of the earnestness of his affections, and the sensibility that nestled itself in his warm heart. He was outwardly mild, placid, and forbearing, and thus obtained the reputation of being cold—though those who study human nature ought to make it their first maxim, that those who are tolerant of the follies of their fellows—who sympathize with, and assist their wishes, and who apparently forget their own desires, as they devote themselves to the accomplishment of those of their friends, must have the quickest feelings to make them enter into and understand those of others, and the warmest affections to be able to conquer their wayward humours, so that they can divest themselves of selfishness, and incorporate in their own being the pleasures and pains of those around them.

The sparkling eye, the languid step, and flushed cheek of Horatio Saville, were all tokens that there burnt within him a spirit too strong for his frame; but he never complained; or if he ever poured out his pent-up emotions, it was in the ear of Edward only; who but partly understood him, but who loved him entirely. What that thirst for knowledge was that preyed on him, and for ever urged him to drink of the purest streams of wisdom, and yet which ever left him unsatisfied, fevered, and mournful, the gay spirit of Edward Villiers could not guess: often he besought his cousin to close his musty books, to mount a rapid horse, to give his studies to the winds, and deliver his soul to nature. But Horace pointed to some unexplained passage in Plato the divine, or some undiscovered problem in the higher sciences, and turned his eyes from the sun; or if indeed he yielded, and accompanied his youthful friend, some appearance of earth or air would awaken his curiosity, rouze his slumbering mind again to inquire, and making his study of the wide cope of heaven, he gave himself up to abstruse meditation, while nominally seeking for relaxation from his heavier toils.

Horatio Saville was nine-and-twenty when he first met Lady Lodore, who was nearly the same age. He had begun to feel that his health was shaken, and he tried to forget for a time his devouring avocations. He changed the scene, and went on a visit to a friend, who had a country house not far from Hastings. Lady Lodore was expected as a guest, together with her mother. She was much talked of, having become an object of interest or curiosity to the many. A mystery hung over her fate; but her reputation was cloudless, and she was warmly supported by the leaders of fashion. Saville heard of her beauty and her sufferings; the injustice with which she had been treated—of her magnanimity and desolate condition; he heard of her talents, her powers of conversation, her fashion. He figured to himself (as we are apt to incarnate to our imagination the various qualities of a human being, of whom we hear much) a woman, brilliant, but rather masculine, majestic in figure, with wild dark eyes, and a very determined manner. Lady Lodore came: she entered the room where he was sitting, and the fabric of his fancy was at once destroyed. He saw a sweet-looking woman; serene, fair, and with a countenance expressive of contented happiness. He found that her manners were winning, from their softness; her conversation was delightful, from its total want of pretension or impertinence.

What the power was that from the first moment they met, drew Horatio Saville and Lady Lodore together is one of those natural secrets which it is impossible to explain. Though a student, Saville was a gentleman, with the manners and appearance of the better specimens of our aristocracy. There might be something in his look of ill health, which demanded sympathy; something in his superiority to the rest of the persons about her, in the genius that sat on his brow, and the eloquence that flowed from his lips; something in the contrast he presented to every one else she had ever seen—neither entering into their gossiping slanders, nor understanding their empty self-sufficiency, that possessed a charm for one satiated with the world's common scene. It was less of wonder that Cornelia pleased the student. There were no rough corners, no harshness about her; she won her way into any heart by her cheerful smiles and kind tones; and she listened to Saville when he talked of what other women would have lent a languid ear to, with such an air of interest, that he found no pleasure so great as that of talking on.

Saville was accustomed to find the men of his acquaintance ignorant. All the knowledge of worldlings was as a point in comparison with his vast acquirements. He did not seek Lady Lodore's society either to learn or to teach, but to forget thought, and to feel himself occupied and diverted from the sense of listlessness that haunted him in society, without having recourse to the, to him dangerous, attraction of his books.

Lady Lodore had, in the very brightness of her earliest youth, selected a proud and independent position. She had refused to bend to her husband's will, or to submit to the tyranny, as she named it, which he had attempted to exercise. Youth is bold and fearless. The forked tongue of scandal, the thousand ills with which woman is threatened in society, without a guide or a protector—all the worldly considerations which might lead her to unite herself again to her husband, she had rejected with unbounded disdain. Her mother was there to stand between her and the shafts of envy and calumny, and she conceived no mistrust of herself; she believed that she could hold her course with taintless feelings and security of soul, through a thousand dangers. At first she had been somewhat annoyed by ill-natured observations, but Lady Santerre poured the balm of flattery on her wounds, and a few tears shed in her presence dissipated the gathering cloud.

Cornelia had every motive a woman could have for guarding her conduct from reproach. She lived in the midst of polished society, and was thoroughly imbued with its maxims and laws. She witnessed the downfall of several, as young and lovely as herself, and heard the sarcasms and beheld the sneers which were heaped as a tomb above their buried fame. She had vowed to herself never to become one of these. She was applauded for her pride, and held up as a pattern. No one feared her. She was no coquette, though she strove universally to please. She formed no intimate friendships, though every man felt honoured by her notice. She had no prudery on her lips, but her conduct was as open and as fair as day. Here lay her defence against her husband; and she preserved even the outposts of such bulwarks with scrupulous yet unobtrusive exactitude.

Her spirits, as well as her spirit, held her up through many a year. More than ten years had passed since her separation from Lodore—a long time to tell of; but it had glided away, she scarcely knew how—taking little from her loveliness, adding to the elegance of her appearance, and the grace of her manners. Season after season came, and went, and she had no motive for counting them anxiously. She was sought after and admired; it was a holiday life for her, and she wondered what people meant when they spoke of the delusions of this world, and the dangers of our own hearts. She saw a gay reality about her, and felt the existence of no internal enemy. Nothing ever moved her to sorrow, except the reflection that now and then came across, that she had a child—divorced for ever from her maternal bosom. The sight of a baby cradled in its mother's arms, or stretching out its little hands to her, had not unoften caused her to turn abruptly away, to hide her tears; and once or twice she had been obliged to quit a theatre to conceal her emotion, when such sentiments were brought too vividly before her. But when her eyes were drowned in tears, and her bosom heaved with sad emotion, pride came to check the torrent, and hatred of her oppressor gave a new impulse to her swelling heart.

She had rather avoided female friendships, and had been warned from them by the treachery of one, and the misconduct of another, of her more intimate acquaintances. Lady Lodore renounced friendship, but the world began to grow a little dull. The frivolity of one, the hard-heartedness of another, disgusted. She saw each occupied by themselves and their families, and she was alone. Balls and assemblies palled upon her—country pleasures were stupid—she had began to think all things "stale and unprofitable," when she became acquainted with Horatio Saville. She was glad again to feel animated with a sense of living enjoyment; she congratulated herself on the idea that she could take interest in some one thing or person among the empty shapes that surrounded her; and without a thought beyond the amusement of the present moment, most of her hours were spent in his company.