Falkland, Book 4.Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
General
Falkland, Book 4.
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
Fiction
That last remembrance, more bitterly than all, possessed him. It will be
recollected that Falkland, in the letters which begin this work, speaking
of the ties he had formed after the loss of his first love, says, that it
was the senses, not the affections, that were engaged. Never, indeed,
since her death, till he met Emily, had his heart been unfaithful to her
memory. Alas! none but those who have cherished in their souls an image
of the death; who have watched over it for long and bitter years in
secrecy and gloom; who have felt that it was to them as a holy and fairy
spot which no eye but theirs could profane; who have filled all things
with recollections as with a spell, and made the universe one wide
mausoleum of the lost;--none but those can understand the mysteries of
that regret which is shed over every after passion, though it be more
burning and intense; that sense of sacrilege with which we fill up the
haunted recesses of the spirit with a new and a living idol and
perpetrate the last act of infidelity to that buried love, which the
heavens that now receive her, the earth where we beheld her, tell us,
with, the unnumbered voices of Nature, to worship with the incense of our
faith.
His carriage stopped at the lodge. The woman who opened the gates gave
him the following note
"Mr. Mandeville is returned; I almost fear that he suspects our
attachment. Julia says, that if you come again to E------, she will
inform him. I dare not, dearest Falkland, see you here. What is to be
done? I am very ill and feverish: my brain burns so, that I can think,
feel, remember nothing, but the one thought, feeling, and remembrance--
that through shame, and despite of guilt, in life, and till death, I am
yours. E. M."
As Falkland read this note, his extreme and engrossing love for Emily
doubled with each word: an instant before, and the certainty of seeing
her had suffered his mind to be divided into a thousand objects; now,
doubt united them once more into one.
He altered his route to L------, and despatched from thence a short note
to Emily, imploring her to meet him that evening by the lake, in order to
arrange their ultimate flight. Her answer was brief, and blotted with
her tears; but it was assent.
During the whole of that day, at least from the moment she received
Falkland's letter, Emily was scarcely sensible of a single idea: she sat
still and motionless, gazing on vacancy, and seeing nothing within her
mind, or in the objects which surrounded her, but one dreary blank.
Sense, thought, feeling, even remorse, were congealed and frozen; and the
tides of emotion were still, bid they were ice!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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