Falkland, Book 4.
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron, 1803-1873
English
We will print you a perfectly bound paperback of your selected title and send it to you at your nominated address
Below is a summary of Falkland, Book 4.
This eBook was produced by David Widger
FALKLAND
By Edward Bulwer-Lytton
BOOK IV.
FROM MRS. ST.JOHN TO ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ.
At last I can give a more favourable answer to your letters. Emily is
now quite out of danger. Since the day you forced yourself, with such a
disinterested regard for her health and reputation, into her room, she
grew (no thanks to your forbearance) gradually better. I trust that she
will be able to see you in a few days. I hope this the more, because she
now feels and decides that it will be for the last time. You have, it is
true, injured her happiness for life her virtue, thank Heaven, is yet
spared; and though you have made her wretched, you will never, I trust,
succeed in making her despised.
You ask me, with some menacing and more complaint, why I am so bitter
against you. I will tell you. I not only know Emily, and feel
confident, from that knowledge, that nothing can recompense her for the
reproaches of conscience, but I know you, and am convinced that you are
the last man to render her happy. I set aside, for the moment, all rules
of religion and morality in general, and speak to you (to use the cant
and abused phrase) "without prejudice" as to the particular instance.
Emily's nature is soft and susceptible, yours fickle and wayward in the
extreme. The smallest change or caprice in you, which would not be
noticed by a mind less delicate, would wound her to the heart. You know
that the very softness of her character arises from its want of strength.
Consider, for a moment, if she could bear the humiliation and disgrace
which visit so heavily the offences of an English wife? She has been
brought up in the strictest notions of morality; and, in a mind, not
naturally strong, nothing can efface the first impressions of education.
She is not--indeed she is not--fit for a life of sorrow or degradation.
In another character, another line of conduct might be desirable; but
with regard to her, pause, Falkland, I beseech you, before you attempt
again to destroy her for ever. I have said all. Farewell.
Your, and above all, Emily's friend.
FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE.
You will see me, Emily, now that you are recovered sufficiently to do so
without danger. I do not ask this as a favour. If my love has deserved,
anything from yours, if past recollections give me any claim over you, if
my nature has not forfeited the spell which it formerly possessed upon
your own, I demand it as a right.
The bearer waits for your answer.
FROM LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE TO ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ.
See you, Falkland! Can you doubt it? Can you think for a moment that
your commands can ever cease to become a law to me? Come here whenever
you please. If, during my illness, they have prevented it, it was
without my knowledge. I await you; but I own that this interview will
be the last, if I can claim anything from your mercy.
FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE.
I have seen you, Emily, and for the last time! My eyes are dry--my hand
does not tremble. I live, move, breathe, as before--and yet I have seen
you for the last time! You told me--even while you leaned on my bosom,
even while your lip pressed mine--you told me (and I saw your sincerity)
to spare you, and to see you no more. You told me you had no longer any
will, any fate of your own; that you would, if I still continued to
desire it, leave friends, home, honour, for me; but you did not disguise
from me that you would, in so doing, leave happiness also. You did not
conceal from me that I was not sufficient to constitute all your world:
you threw yourself, as you had done once before, upon what you called my
generosity: you did not deceive yourself then; you have not deceived
yourself now. In two weeks I shall leave England, probably for ever.
I have another country still more dear to me, from its afflictions and
humiliation. Public ties differ but little in their nature from private;
and this confession of preference of what is debased to what is exalted,
will be an answer to Mrs. St. John's assertion, that we cannot love in
disgrace as we can in honour. Enough of this. In the choice, my poor
Emily, that you have made, I cannot reproach you. You have done wisely,
Back