This eBook was produced by David Widger
By Edward Bulwer-Lytton
It is dangerous for women, however wise it be for men, "to commune withtheir own hearts, and to be still!" Continuing to pursue the follies ofthe world had been to Emily more prudent than to fly them; to pause, toseparate herself from the herd, was to discover, to feel, to murmur atthe vacuum of her being; and to occupy it with the feelings which itcraved, could in her be but the hoarding a provision for despair.
Married, before she had begun the bitter knowledge of herself, to a manwhom it was impossible to love, yet deriving from nature a tenderness ofsoul, which shed itself over everything around, her only escape frommisery had been in the dormancy of feeling. The birth of her son hadopened to her a new field of sensations, and she drew the best charm ofher own existence from the life she had given to another. Had she notmet Falkland, all the deeper sources of affection would have flowed intoone only and legitimate channel; but those whom he wished to fascinatehad never resisted his power, and the attachment he inspired was inproportion to the strength and ardour of his own nature.
It was not for Emily Mandeville to love such as Falkland without feelingthat from that moment a separate and selfish existence had ceased to be.Our senses may captivate us with beauty; but in absence we forget, or byreason we can conquer, so superficial an impression. Our vanity mayenamour us with rank; but the affections of vanity are traced in sand;but who can love Genius, and not feel that the sentiments it excitespartake of its own intenseness and its own immortality? It arouses,concentrates, engrosses all our emotions, even to the most subtle andconcealed. Love what is common, and ordinary objects can replace ordestroy a sentiment which an ordinary object has awakened. Love what weshall not meet again amidst the littleness and insipidity which surroundus, and where can we turn for a new object to replace that which has noparallel upon earth? The recovery from such a delirium is like returnfrom a fairy land; and still fresh in the recollections of a bright andimmortal clime, how can we endure the dulness of that human existence towhich for the future we are condemned?
It was some weeks since Emily had written to Mrs. St. John; and her lastletter, in mentioning Falkland, had spoken of him with a reserve whichrather alarmed than deceived her friend. Mrs. St. John had indeed astrong and secret reason for fear. Falkland had been the object of herown and her earliest attachment, and she knew well the singular andmysterious power which he exercised at will over the mind. He had, it istrue, never returned, nor even known of, her feelings towards him; andduring the years which had elapsed since she last saw him, and in the newscenes which her marriage with Mr. St. John had opened, she had almostforgotten her early attachment, when Lady Emily's letter renewed itsremembrance. She wrote in answer an impassioned and affectionate cautionto her friend. She spoke much (after complaining of Emily's latesilence) in condemnation of the character of Falkland, and in warning ofits fascinations; and she attempted to arouse alike the virtue and thepride which so often triumph in alliance, when separately they would soeasily fail. In this Mrs. St. John probably imagined she was actuatedsolely by friendship; but in the best actions there is always some latentevil in the motive; and the selfishness of a jealousy, though hopelessnot conquered, perhaps predominated over the less interested feelingswhich were all that she acknowledged to herself.
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