Chapter Twenty Two.
The Sign to the Unknown.
Love knows not want—he has no such intimate as poverty; if he smiles, he has but one dread foe; if he frowns, he has but one true friend; and those both concentrate in the oblivion of death.
I loved—yes, I loved Lolita. While she lived, the soul-invigorating fire of her eyes kept alive my passion-torn frame. And yet who was I that I dared thus ally myself with heavenly beauty and terrestrial greatness? She was the daughter of an Earl and I a mere secretary, dependent upon her brother’s favours. No title, no transcendent qualities were mine. And yet, was I not ennobled? Did I not wear within my heart the never-fading insignia of love, the qualifications of which were fervency and immutable truth?
The proud Countess had sneered at me. She sneered because the passion of true love had never known a place in her fickle heart. As next day I sat alone in the express travelling up to Scotland, memory of the hour came back to me when I had first gazed upon those charms I since had learned to reverence with all the fervour of matchless truth. I recollected how long, long ago, whenever I saw Lolita, my pulse beat with an unwonted motion, and the throbbing of my heart spoke to my soul in a language it had never known before—my brain became on fire, and ere I knew the term, I knew what constituted love. Yes, love—love that had not yet taught me what presumption was, but I rather stood the awe-struck victim of his all-puissant will.
And now I was tearing with all speed to seek her, to hear the truth from her own sweet lips. Never once had she told me that my love was reciprocated, yet in her clear bright eyes I had long ago seen that mixture of tender pity, noble generosity, candour and pure refined womanly feeling open as the face of day, that told me that she was not averse to my attentions even though I was neither wealthy nor of noble birth.
Day had succeeded day since her departure for the north, and every coming dawn had proved what gave bitter anguish to my soul. A strange suspicion that seemed to envelop her like a cloud—a suspicion which somehow I could not determine—had caused the struggle of conflicting thoughts. And now I was rushing towards her, hoping fervently that her words to me might reveal the truth, and infuse into my chaotic soul one bright spark of heavenly comfort whence might blaze the inextinguishable flame of requited love.
Alone, gazing aimlessly at the fleeting panorama of hill and dale as the express rushed on from Crewe to Carlisle, my busy fancy seemed to reconcile impossibilities, and as the mariner who feebly grasps the plank surrounded by a sea of deadly horrors, so I, amid the gloom of black despair, illumined the fallacious touch of hope and wandered into the maze of gilded fallacy.
Ah! Hope, thou flitting phantom, thou gaudy illusion, thou fond misleader of the wrecked senses, that framest a paradise of airy nothingness, how strange that thou canst in pleasing dreams bring to the tortured mind a brief respite.
And yet when I recollected the dark suspicions that rested upon my love, I held my breath. When I calmly reviewed all the circumstances, life seemed all a blank to me; my reason bade me cease to hope. Yet better be warmed by madness than chilled by coward fear; better burn with jealousy than die the silent fool of black despair.