← catalogue

Godolphin, Complete

by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton · English · Gutenberg #7756 · 698,240 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Godolphin, Complete
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Godolphin, Complete

Author: Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton


        
Release date: November 27, 2004 [eBook #7756]
                Most recently updated: August 28, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7756

Credits: Produced by Andrew Heath and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GODOLPHIN, COMPLETE ***




Produced by Andrew Heath and David Widger








GODOLPHIN

By Edward Bulwer Lytton

(Lord Lytton)



TO COUNT ALFRED D’ORSAY.

MY DEAR COUNT D’ORSAY,

When the parentage of Godolphin was still unconfessed and unknown, you
were pleased to encourage his first struggles with the world: Now, will
you permit the father he has just discovered to re-introduce him to your
notice? I am sorry to say, however, that my unfilial offspring,
having been so long disowned, is not sufficiently grateful for being
acknowledged at last: he says that he belongs to a very numerous family,
and, wishing to be distinguished from his brothers, desires not only to
reclaim your acquaintance, but to borrow your name. Nothing less will
content his ambition than the most public opportunity in his power of
parading his obligations to the most accomplished gentleman of our time.
Will you, then, allow him to make his new appearance in the world under
your wing, and thus suffer the son as well as the father to attest the
kindness of your heart and to boast the honour of your friendship?

                              Believe me,
                         My dear Count d’Orsay,
                              With the sincerest regard,
                         Yours, very faithfully and truly,
                                                E. B. L.




PREFACE TO GODOLPHIN.

In the Prefaces to this edition of my works, I have occasionally so
far availed myself of that privilege of self-criticism which the French
comic writer, Mons. Picord, maintains or exemplifies in the collection
of his plays,--as, if not actually to sit in judgment on my own
performances, still to insinuate some excuse for their faults by
extenuatory depositions as to their character and intentions. Indeed, a
writer looking back to the past is unconsciously inclined to think that
he may separate himself from those children of his brain which have long
gone forth to the world; and though he may not expatiate on the merits
his paternal affection would ascribe to them, that he may speak at
least of the mode in which they were trained and reared--of the hopes he
cherished, or the objects he entertained, when he finally dismissed them
to the opinions of others and the ordeal of Fate or Time.

For my part, I own that even when I have thought but little of the value
of a work, I have always felt an interest in the author’s account of its
origin and formation, and, willing to suppose that what thus affords
a gratification to my own curiosity, may not be wholly unattractive to
others, I shall thus continue from time to time to play the Showman to
my own machinery, and explain the principle of the mainspring and the
movement of the wheels.

This novel was begun somewhere in the third year of my authorship,
and completed in the fourth. It was, therefore, composed almost
simultaneously with Eugene Aram, and afforded to me at least some relief
from the gloom of that village tragedy. It is needless to observe how
dissimilar in point of scene, character, and fable, the one is from the
other; yet they are alike in this--that both attempt to deal with one
of the most striking problems in the spiritual history of man, viz.,
the frustration or abuse of power in a superior intellect originally
inclined to good. Perhaps there is no problem that more fascinates the
attention of a man of some earnestness at that period of his life, when
his eye first disengages itself from the external phenomena around him,
and his curiosity leads him to examine the cause and account for the
effect;--when, to cite reverently the words of the wisest, “He applies
his heart to know and to search, and to seek out wisdom and the reason
of things, and to know the wickedness of folly, even of foolishness and
madness.”

In Eugene Aram, the natural career of genius is arrested by a single
crime; in Godolphin, a mind of inferior order, but more fanciful
colouring, is wasted away by the indulgence of those morbid sentiments
which are the nourishment of egotism, and the gradual influence of the
frivolities which make the business of the idle. Here the Demon tempts
or destroys the hermit in his solitary cell. There, he glides amidst the
pomps and vanities of the world, and whispers away the soul in the voice
of his soft familiars, Indolence and Pleasure.

Of all my numerous novels, Pelham and Godolphin are the only ones
which take their absolute groundwork in what is called “The Fashionable
World.” I have sought in each to make the general composition in
some harmony with the principal figure in the foreground. Pelham
is represented as almost wholly unsusceptible to the more poetical
influences. He has the physical compound, which, versatile and joyous,
amalgamates easily with the world--he views life with the lenient
philosophy that Horace commends in Aristippus: he laughs at the
follies he shares; and is ever ready to turn into uses ultimately (if
indirectly) serious, the frivolities that only serve to sharpen his wit,
and augment that peculiar expression which we term “knowledge of the
world.” In a word, dispel all his fopperies, real or assumed, he is
still the active man of crowds and cities, determined to succeed,
and gifted with the ordinary qualities of success. Godolphin, on the
contrary, is the man of poetical temperament, out of his place alike
among the trifling idlers and the bustling actors of the world--wanting
the stimulus of necessity--or the higher motive which springs from
benevolence, to give energy to his powers, or definite purpose to his
fluctuating desires; not strong enough to break the bonds that confine
his genius--not supple enough to accommodate its movements to their
purpose. He is the moral antipodes to Pelham. In evading the struggles
of the world, he grows indifferent to its duties--he strives with no
obstacles--he can triumph in no career. Represented as possessing mental
qualities of a higher and a richer nature than those to which Pelham can
pretend, he is also represented as very inferior to him in constitution
of character, and he is certainly a more ordinary type of the
intellectual trifler.

The characters grouped around Godolphin are those with which such a
man usually associates his life. They are designed to have a certain
grace--a certain harmony with one form or the other of his twofold
temperament:--viz., either its conventional elegance of taste, or its
constitutional poetry of idea. But all alike are brought under varying
operations of similar influences; or whether in Saville, Constance,
Fanny, or Lucilla--the picture presented is still the picture of gifts
misapplied--of life misunderstood. The Preacher who exclaimed, “Vanity
of vanities! all is vanity,” perhaps solved his own mournful saying,
when he added elsewhere, “This only have I found, that God made men
upright--but they have sought out many inventions.”

This work was first published anonymously, and for that reason perhaps
it has been slow in attaining to its rightful station amongst its
brethren--whose parentage at first was openly acknowledged. If compared
with Pelham, it might lose, at the first glance, but would perhaps gain
on any attentive reperusal.

For although it must follow from the inherent difference in the design
of the two works thus referred to, that in Godolphin there can be
little of the satire or vivacity which have given popularity to its
predecessor, yet, on the other hand, in Godolphin there ought to be a
more faithful illustration of the even polish that belongs to luxurious
life,--of the satiety that pleasure inflicts upon such of its votaries
as are worthy of a higher service. The subject selected cannot adroit
the same facility for observation of things that lie on the surface--but
it may well lend itself to subtler investigation of character--allow
more attempt at pathos, and more appeal to reflection.

Regarded as a story, the defects of Godolphin most apparent to myself,
are in the manner in which Lucilla is re-introduced in the later
chapters, and in the final catastrophe of the hero. There is an
exaggerated romance in the one, and the admission of accident as a
crowning agency in the other, which my maturer judgment would certainly
condemn, and which at all events appear to me out of keeping with the
natural events, and the more patient investigation of moral causes and
their consequences, from which the previous interest of the tale is
sought to be attained. On the other hand, if I may presume to conjecture
the most probable claim to favour which the work, regarded as a
whole, may possess--it may possibly be found in a tolerably accurate
description of certain phases of modern civilisation, and in the
suggestion of some truths that may be worth considering in our
examination of social influences or individual conduct.




CHAPTER I.

THE DEATH-BED OF JOHN VERNON.--HIS DYING WORDS.--DESCRIPTION OF HIS
DAUGHTER, THE HEROINE.--THE OATH.

“Is the night calm, Constance?”

“Beautiful! the moon is up.”

“Open the shutters wider, there. It _is_ a beautiful night. How
beautiful! Come hither, my child.”

The rich moonlight that now shone through the windows streamed on little
that it could invest with poetical attraction. The room was small,
though not squalid in its character and appliances. The bed-curtains,
of a dull chintz, were drawn back, and showed the form of a man, past
middle age, propped by pillows, and bearing on his countenance the marks
of approaching death. But what a countenance it still was! The broad,
pale, lofty brow; the fine, straight, Grecian nose; the short, curved
lip; the full, dimpled chin; the stamp of genius in every line and
lineament;--these still defied disease, or rather borrowed from its very
ghastliness a more impressive majesty. Beside the bed was a table
spread with books of a motley character. Here an abstruse system of
Calculations on Finance; there a volume of wild Bacchanalian Songs; here
the lofty aspirations of Plato’s Phaedon; and there the last speech
of some County Paris on a Malt Tax: old newspapers and dusty pamphlets
completed the intellectual litter; and above them rose, mournfully
enough, the tall, spectral form of a half-emptied phial, and a
chamber-candlestick, crested by its extinguisher.

A light step approached the bedside, and opposite the dying man
now stood a girl, who might have seen her thirteenth year. But her
features--of an exceeding, and what may be termed a regal beauty--were
as fully developed as those of one who had told twice her years; and not
a trace of the bloom or the softness of girlhood could be marked on her
countenance. Her complexion was pale as the whitest marble, but clear,
and lustrous; and her raven hair, parted over her brow in a fashion
then uncommon, increased the statue-like and classic effect of her noble
features. The expression of her countenance seemed cold, sedate, and
somewhat stern; but it might, in some measure, have belied her heart;
for, when turned to the moonlight, you might see that her eyes were
filled with tears, though she did not weep; and you might tell by the
quivering of her lip, that a little hesitation in replying to any remark
from the sufferer arose from her difficulty in commanding her emotions.

“Constance,” said the invalid, after a pause, in which he seemed to
have been gazing with a quiet heart on the soft skies, that, blue
and eloquent with stars, he beheld through the unclosed
windows:--“Constance, the hour is coming; I feel it by signs which I
cannot mistake. I shall die this night.”

“Oh, God!--my father!--my dear, dear father!” broke from Constance’s
lips; “do not speak thus--do not--I will go to Doctor ----”

“No, child, no!--I loathe--I detest the thought of help. They denied it
me while it was yet time. They left me to starve or to rot in gaol, or
to hang myself! They left me like a dog, and like a dog I will die! I
would not have one iota taken from the justice--the deadly and dooming
weight of my dying curse.” Here violent spasms broke on the speech of
the sufferer; and when, by medicine and his daughter’s attentions, he
had recovered, he said, in a lower and calmer key:--“Is all quiet
below, Constance? Are all in bed? The landlady--the servants--our
fellow-lodgers?”

“All, my father.”

“Ay; then I shall die happy. Thank Heaven, you are my only nurse and
attendant. I remember the day when I was ill after one of their rude
debauches. Ill!--a sick headache--a fit of the spleen--a spoiled
lapdog’s illness! Well: they wanted me that night to support one of
their paltry measures--their parliamentary measures. And I had a prince
feeling my pulse, and a duke mixing my draught, and a dozen earls
sending their doctors to me. I was of use to them then! Poor me! Read
me that note, Constance--Flamborough’s note. Do you hesitate? Read it, I
say!”

Constance trembled and complied.


“My dear Vernon,

“I am really au desespoir to hear of your melancholy state;--so sorry I
cannot assist you: but you know my embarrassed circumstances. By the
by, I saw his Royal Highness yesterday. ‘Poor Vernon!’ said he; ‘would
a hundred pounds do him any good?’ So we don’t forget you, mon cher.
Ah! how we missed you at the Beefsteak! Never shall we know again so
glorious a bon vivant. You would laugh to hear L---- attempting to echo
your old jokes. But time presses: I must be off to the House. You know
what a motion it is! Would to Heaven you were to bring it on instead
of that ass T----. Adieu! I wish I could come and see you; but it would
break my heart. Can I send you any books from Hookham’s?

“Yours ever,

“FLAMBOROUGH.”


“This is the man whom I made Secretary of State,” said Vernon. “Very
well!--oh, it’s very well,--very well indeed. Let me kiss thee, my girl.
Poor Constance! You will have good friends when I am dead! they will be
proud enough to be kind to Vernon’s daughter, when Death has shown them
that Vernon is a loss. You are very handsome. Your poor mother’s eyes
and hair--my father’s splendid brow and lip; and your figure, even
now so stately! They will court you: you will have lords and great men
enough at your feet; but you will never forget this night, nor the agony
of your father’s death-bed face, and the brand they have burned in his
heart. And now, Constance, give me the Bible in which you read to me
this morning: that will do:--stand away from the light and fix your eyes
on mine, and listen as if your soul were in your ears.

“When I was a young man, toiling my way to fortune through the
labours of the Bar,--prudent, cautious, indefatigable, confident of
success,--certain lords, who heard I possessed genius, and thought
I might become their tool, came to me, and besought me to enter
parliament. I told them I was poor--was lately married--that my public
ambition must not be encouraged at the expense of my private fortunes.
They answered, that they pledged themselves those fortunes should be
their care. I yielded; I deserted my profession; I obeyed their wishes;
I became famous--and a ruined man! They could not dine without me;
they could not sup without me; they could not get drunk without me; no
pleasure was sweet but in my company. What mattered it that, while
I ministered to their amusement, I was necessarily heaping debt upon
debt--accumulating miseries for future years--laying up bankruptcy, and
care, and shame, and a broken heart, and an early death? But listen,
Constance! Are you listening?--attentively?--Well! note now, I am a just
man. I do not blame my noble friends, my gentle patrons, for this. No:
if I were forgetful of my interests, if I preferred their pleasure to my
happiness and honour, that was my crime, and I deserve the punishment!
But, look you,--time went by, and my constitution was broken; debts came
upon me; I could not pay; men mistrusted my word; my name in the country
fell: With my health, my genius deserted me; I was no longer useful
to my party; I lost my seat in parliament; and when I was on a
sick-bed--you remember it, Constance--the bailiffs came, and tore me
away for a paltry debt--the value of one of those suppers the Prince
used to beg me to give him. From that time my familiars forsook me!--not
a visit, not a kind act, not a service for him whose day of work was
over! ‘Poor Vernon’s character was gone! Shockingly involved--could
not perform his promises to his creditors--always so extravagant--quite
unprincipled--must give him up!’

“In those sentences lies the secret of their conduct. They did not
remember that _for_ them, _by_ them, the character was gone, the
promises broken, the ruin incurred! They thought not how I had served
them; how my best years had been devoted to advance them--to ennoble
their cause in the lying page of History! All this was not thought of:
my life was reduced to two epochs--that of use to them--that not. During
the first, I was honoured; during the last, I was left to starve--to
rot! Who freed me from prison?--who protects me now? One of my
‘party’--my ‘noble friends’--my ‘honourable, right honourable friends’?
No! a tradesman whom I once served in my holyday, and who alone, of all
the world, forgets me not in my penance. You see gratitude, friendship,
spring up only in middle life; they grow not in high stations!

“And now, come nearer, for my voice falters, and I would have these
words distinctly heard. Child, girl as you are--you I consider pledged
to record, to fulfil my desire--my curse! Lay your hand on mine: swear
that through life to death,--swear! You speak not! repeat my words after
me:”--Constance obeyed:--“through life to death; through good, through
ill, through weakness, through power, you will devote yourself to
humble, to abase that party from whom your father received ingratitude,
mortification, and death! Swear that you will not marry a poor
and powerless man, who cannot minister to the ends of that solemn
retribution I invoke! Swear that you will seek to marry from amongst the
great; not through love, not through ambition, but through hate, and
for revenge! You will seek to rise that you may humble those who have
betrayed me! In the social walks of life you will delight to gall their
vanities in state intrigues, you will embrace every measure that can
bring them to their eternal downfall. For this great end you will pursue
all means. What! you hesitate? Repeat, repeat, repeat!--You will lie,
cringe, fawn, and think vice not vice, if it bring you one jot nearer to
Revenge! With this curse on my foes, I entwine my blessing, dear, dear
Constance, on you,--you, who have nursed, watched, all but saved me!
God, God bless you, my child!” And Vernon burst into tears.

It was two hours after this singular scene, and exactly in the third
hour of morning, that Vernon woke from a short and troubled sleep.
The grey dawn (for the time was the height of summer) already began
to labour through the shades and against the stars of night. A raw and
comfortless chill crept over the earth, and saddened the air in the
death-chamber. Constance sat by her father’s bed, her eyes fixed upon
him, and her cheek more wan than ever by the pale light of that crude
and cheerless dawn. When Vernon woke, his eyes, glazed with death,
rolled faintly towards her, fixing and dimming in their sockets as they
gazed;--his throat rattled. But for one moment his voice found vent; a
ray shot across his countenance as he uttered his last words--words that
sank at once and eternally to the core of his daughter’s heart--words
that ruled her life, and sealed her destiny: “Constance, remember--the
Oath--Revenge!”




CHAPTER II.

REMARK ON THE TENURE OF LIFE.--THE COFFINS OF GREAT MEN SELDOM
NEGLECTED.--CONSTANCE TAKES REFUGE WITH LADY ERPINGHAM.--THE HEROINE’S
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND CHARACTER.--THE MANOEUVRING TEMPERAMENT.

What a strange life this is! what puppets we are! How terrible an enigma
is Fate! I never set my foot without my door, but what the fearful
darkness that broods over the next moment rushes upon me. How awful an
event may hang over our hearts! The sword is always above us, seen or
invisible!

And with this life--this scene of darkness and dreadsome men would have
us so contented as to desire, to ask for no other!

Constance was now without a near relation in the world. But her father
predicted rightly: vanity supplied the place of affection. Vernon, who
for eighteen months preceding his death had struggled with the sharpest
afflictions of want--Vernon, deserted in life by all, was interred with
the insulting ceremonials of pomp and state. Six nobles bore his pall:
long trains of carriages attended his funeral: the journals were filled
with outlines of his biography and lamentations at his decease. They
buried him in Westminster Abbey, and they made subscriptions for a
monument in the very best sort of marble. Lady Erpingham, a distant
connection of the deceased, invited Constance to live with her; and
Constance of course consented, for she had no alternative.

On the day that she arrived at Lady Erpingham’s house, in Hill Street,
there were several persons present in the drawing-room.

“I fear, poor girl,” said Lady Erpingham,--for they were talking of
Constance’s expected arrival,--“I fear that she will be quite abashed by
seeing so many of us, and under such unhappy circumstances.”

“How old is she?” asked a beauty.

“About thirteen, I believe.”

“Handsome?”

“I have not seen her since she was seven years old. She promised then to
be very beautiful: but she was a remarkably shy, silent child.”

“Miss Vernon,” said the groom of the chambers, throwing open the door.

With the slow step and self-possessed air of womanhood, but with a far
haughtier and far colder mien than women commonly assume, Constance
Vernon walked through the long apartment, and greeted her future
guardian. Though every eye was on her, she did not blush; though the
Queens of the London World were round her, her gait and air were more
royal than all. Every one present experienced a revulsion of feeling.
They were prepared for pity; this was no case in which pity could be
given. Even the words of protection died on Lady Erpingham’s lip, and
she it was who felt bashful and disconcerted.

I intend to pass rapidly over the years that elapsed till Constance
became a woman. Let us glance at her education. Vernon had not only had
her instructed in the French and Italian; but, a deep and impassioned
scholar himself, he had taught her the elements of the two great
languages of the ancient world. The treasures of those languages she
afterwards conquered of her own accord.

Lady Erpingham had one daughter, who married when Constance had reached
the age of sixteen. The advantages Lady Eleanor Erpingham possessed in
her masters and her governess Constance shared. Miss Vernon drew well,
and sang divinely; but she made no very great proficiency in the science
of music. To say truth, her mind was somewhat too stern, and somewhat
too intent on other subjects, to surrender to that most jealous of
accomplishments the exclusive devotion it requires.

But of all her attractions, and of all the evidences of her cultivated
mind, none equalled the extraordinary grace of her conversation. Wholly
disregarding the conventional leading-strings in which the minds of
young ladies are accustomed to be held--leading-strings, disguised
by the name of “proper diffidence” and “becoming modesty,”--she never
scrupled to share, nay, to lead, discussions even of a grave and solid
nature. Still less did she scruple to adorn the common trifles that make
the sum of conversation with the fascinations of a wit, which, playful,
yet deep, rivalled even the paternal source from which it was inherited.

It seems sometimes odd enough to me, that while young ladies are so
sedulously taught the accomplishments that a husband disregards, they
are never taught the great one he would prize. They are taught to be
_exhibitors_; he wants a _companion_. He wants neither a singing animal,
nor a drawing animal, nor a dancing animal: he wants a talking animal.
But to talk they are never taught; all they know of conversation is
slander, and that “comes by nature.”

But Constance _did_ talk _beautifully_; not like a pedant, or a blue,
or a Frenchwoman. A child would have been as much charmed with her as a
scholar; but _both_ would have been charmed. Her father’s eloquence had
descended to her; but in him eloquence commanded, in her it won. There
was another trait she possessed in common with her father: Vernon (as
most disappointed men are wont) had done the world injustice by his
accusations. It was not his poverty and his distresses alone which had
induced his party to look coolly on his declining day. They were
not without some apparent excuse for desertion--they doubted his
_sincerity_. It is true that it was without actual cause. No modern
politician had ever been more consistent. He had refused bribes, though
poor; and place, though ambitious. But he was essentially--here is the
secret--essentially an _intriguant_. Bred in the old school of policy, he
thought that manoeuvring was wisdom, and duplicity the art of governing.
Like Lysander,(1) he loved plotting, yet neglected self-interest. There
was not a man less open, or more honest. This character, so rare in
all countries, is especially so in England. Your blunt squires, your
politicians at Bellamy’s, do not comprehend it. They saw in Vernon the
arts which deceive enemies, and they dreaded lest, though his friends,
they themselves should be deceived. This disposition, so fatal to
Vernon, his daughter inherited. With a dark, bold, and passionate
genius, which in a man would have led to the highest enterprises, she
linked the feminine love of secrecy and scheming. To borrow again from
Plutarch and Lysander, “When the skin of the lion fell short, she was
quite of opinion that it should be eked out with the fox’s.”

(1) Plutarch’s Life of Lysander.




CHAPTER III.

THE HERO INTRODUCED TO OUR READER’S NOTICE.--DIALOGUE BETWEEN HIMSELF
AND HIS FATHER.--PERCY GODOLPHIN’s CHARACTER AS A BOY.--THE CATASTROPHE
OF HIS SCHOOL LIFE.

“Percy, remember that it is to-morrow you will return to school,” said
Mr. Godolphin to his only son.

Percy pouted, and after a momentary silence replied, “No, father, I
think I shall go to Mr. Saville’s. He has asked me to spend a month with
him; and he says rightly that I shall learn more with him than at Dr.
Shallowell’s, where I am already head of the sixth form.”

“Mr. Saville is a coxcomb, and you are another!” replied the father,
who, dressed in an old flannel dressing-gown, with a worn velvet cap
on his head, and cowering gloomily over a wretched fire, seemed no bad
personification of that mixture of half-hypochondriac, half-miser, which
he was in reality. “Don’t talk to me of going to town, sir, or--”

“Father,” interrupted Percy, in a cool and nonchalant tone, as he
folded his arms, and looked straight and shrewdly on the paternal
face--“father, let us understand each other. My schooling, I suppose, is
rather an expensive affair?”

“You may well say that, sir! Expensive!--It is frightful, horrible,
ruinous!--Expensive! Twenty pounds a year board and Latin; five guineas
washing; five more for writing and arithmetic. Sir, if I were not
resolved that you should not want education, though you may want
fortune, I should--yes, I should--what do you mean, sir?--you are
laughing! Is this your respect, your gratitude to your father?”

A slight shade fell over the bright and intelligent countenance of the
boy.

“Don’t let us talk of gratitude,” said he sadly; “Heaven knows what
either you or I have to be grateful for! Fortune has left to your proud
name but these bare walls and a handful of barren acres; to me she gave
a father’s affection--not such as Nature had made it, but cramped and
soured by misfortunes.”

Here Percy paused, and his father seemed also struck and affected.
“Let us,” renewed in a lighter strain this singular boy, who might have
passed, by some months, his sixteenth year,--“let us see if we cannot
accommodate matters to our mutual satisfaction. You can ill afford my
schooling, and I am resolved that at school I will not stay. Saville is
a relation of ours; he has taken a fancy to me; he has even hinted that
he may leave me his fortune; and he has promised, at least, to afford
me a home and his tuition as long as I like. Give me free passport
hereafter to come and go as I list, and I in turn, will engage never to
cost you another shilling. Come, sir, shall it be a compact?”

“You wound me, Percy,” said the father, with a mournful pride in his
tone; “I have not deserved this, at least from you. You know not,
boy--you know not all that has hardened this heart; but to you it has
not been hard, and a taunt from you--yes, that is the serpent’s tooth!”

Percy in an instant was at his father’s feet; he seized both his hands,
and burst into a passionate fit of tears. “Forgive me,” he said, in
broken words; “I--I meant not to taunt you. I am but a giddy boy!--send
me to school!--do with me as you will!”

“Ay,” said the old man, shaking his head gently, “you know not what pain
a son’s bitter word can send to a parent’s heart. But it is all natural,
perfectly natural! You would reproach me with a love of money, it is the
sin to which youth is the least lenient. But what! can I look round the
world and not see its value, its necessity? Year after year, from my
first manhood, I have toiled and toiled to preserve from the hammer
these last remnants of my ancestor’s remains. Year after year fortune
has slipped from my grasp; and, after all my efforts, and towards the
close of a long life, I stand on the very verge of penury. But you
cannot tell--no man whose heart is not seared with many years can tell
or can appreciate, the motives that have formed my character. You,
however,”--and his voice softened as he laid his hand on his son’s head,
“you, however,--the gay, the bold, the young,--should not have your brow
crossed and your eye dimmed by the cares that surround me. Go! I will
accompany you to town; I will see Saville myself. If he be one with whom
my son can, at so tender an age, be safely trusted, you shall pay him
the visit you wish.”

Percy would have replied but his father checked him; and before the end
of the evening, the father had resolved to forget as much as he pleased
of the conversation.

The elder Godolphin was one of those characters on whom it is vain
to attempt making a permanent impression. The habits of his mind were
durably formed: like waters, they yielded to any sudden intrusion, but
closed instantly again. Early in life he had been taught that he ought
to marry an heiress for the benefit of his estate--his ancestral estate;
the restoration of which he had been bred to consider the grand object
and ambition of life. His views had been strangely baffled; but the more
they were thwarted the more pertinaciously he clung to them. Naturally
kind, generous, and social, he had sunk, at length, into the anchorite
and the miser. All other speculations that should retrieve his ancestral
honours had failed: but there is one speculation that never fails--the
speculation of _saving!_ It was to this that he now indissolubly
attached himself. At moments he was open to all his old habits; but such
moments were rare and few. A cold, hard, frosty penuriousness was his
prevalent characteristic. He had sent this son, with eighteen pence
in his pocket, to a school of twenty pounds a-year; where, naturally
enough, he learned nothing but mischief and cricket: yet he conceived
that his son owed him eternal obligations.

Luckily for Percy, he was an especial favourite with a certain not
uncelebrated character of the name of Saville; and Saville claimed the
privilege of a relation to supply him with money and receive him at his
home. Wild, passionate, fond to excess of pleasure, the young Godolphin
caught eagerly at these occasional visits; and at each his mind, keen
and penetrating as it naturally was, took new flights, and revelled in
new views. He was already the leader of his school, the torment of the
master, and the lover of the master’s daughter. He was sixteen years
old, but a character. A secret pride, a secret bitterness, and an open
wit and recklessness of bearing, rendered him to all seeming a boy more
endowed with energies than affections. Yet a kind word from a friend’s
lips was never without its effect on him, and he might have been led
by the silk while he would have snapped the chain. But these were his
boyish traits of mind: the world soon altered them.

The subject of the visit to Saville was not again touched upon. A little
reflection showed Mr. Godolphin how nugatory were the promises of a
schoolboy that he should not cost his father another shilling; and he
knew that Saville’s house was not exactly the spot in which economy was
best learned. He thought it, therefore, more prudent that his son should
return to school.

To school went Percy Godolphin; and about three weeks afterwards, Percy
Godolphin was condemned to expulsion for returning, with considerable
unction, a slap in the face that he had received from Dr. Shallowell.
Instead of waiting for his father’s arrival, Percy made up a small
bundle of clothes, let himself drop, by the help of the bed-curtains,
from the window of the room in which he was confined, and towards the
close of a fine summer’s evening, found himself on the highroad between
and London, with independence at his heart and (Saville’s last gift) ten
guineas in his pocket.




CHAPTER IV.

PERCY’S FIRST ADVENTURE AS A FREE AGENT.

It was a fine, picturesque outline of road on which the young outcast
found himself journeying, whither he neither knew nor cared. His heart
was full of enterprise and the unfledged valour of inexperience. He had
proceeded several miles, and the dusk of the evening was setting in,
when he observed a stage-coach crawling heavily up a hill, a little
ahead of him, and a tall, well-shaped man, walking alongside of it,
and gesticulating somewhat violently. Godolphin remarked him with some
curiosity; and the man, turning abruptly round, perceived, and in his
turn noticed very inquisitively, the person and aspect of the young
traveller.

“And how now?” said he, presently, and in an agreeable, though familiar
and unceremonious tone of voice; “whither are you bound this time of
day?”

“It is no business of yours, friend,” said the boy with the proud
petulance of his age; “mind what belongs to yourself.”

“You are sharp on me, young sir,” returned the other; “but it is our
business to be loquacious. Know, sir,”--and the stranger frowned--“that
we have ordered many a taller fellow than yourself to execution for a
much smaller insolence than you seem capable of.”

A laugh from the coach caused Godolphin to lift up his eyes, and he
saw the door of the vehicle half-open, as if for coolness, and an arch
female face looking down on him.

“You are merry on me, I see,” said Percy; “come out, and I’ll be even
with you, pretty one.”

The lady laughed yet more loudly at the premature gallantry of the
traveller; but the man, without heeding her, and laying his hand on
Percy’s shoulder, said--

“Pray, sir, do you live at B----?” naming the town they were now
approaching.

“Not I,” said Godolphin, freeing himself from the intrusion.

“You will, perhaps, sleep there?”

“Perhaps I shall.”

“You are too young to travel alone.”

“And you are too old to make such impertinent remarks,” retorted
Godolphin, reddening with anger.

“Faith, I like this spirit, my Hotspur,” said the stranger, coolly. “If
you are really going to put up for the night at B----, suppose we sup
together?”

“And who and what are you?” asked Percy, bluntly.

“Anything and everything! in other words, an actor!”

“And the young lady----?’

“Is our prima donna. In fact, except the driver, the coach holds none
but the ladies and gentlemen of our company. We have made an excellent
harvest at A----, and we are now on our way to the theatre at B----;
pretty theatre it is, too, and has been known to hold seventy-one pounds
eight shillings.” Here the actor fell into a reverie; and Percy, moving
nearer to the coach-door, glanced at the damsel, who returned the look
with a laugh which, though coquettish, was too low and musical to be
called cold.

“So that gentleman, so free and easy in his manners, is not your
husband?”

“Heaven forbid! Do you think I should be so gay if he were? But, pooh!
what can you know of married life? No!” she continued, with a pretty air
of mock dignity; “I am the Belvidera, the Calista, of the company; above
all control, all husbanding, and reaping thirty-three shillings a week.”

“But are you above lovers as well as husbands?” asked Percy with a
rakish air, borrowed from Saville.

“Bless the boy! No: but then my lovers must be at least as tall, and at
least as rich, and, I am afraid, at least as old, as myself.”

“Don’t frighten yourself, my dear,” returned Percy; “I was not about to
make love to you.”

“Were you not? Yes, you were, and you know it. But why will you not sup
with us?”

“Why not, indeed?” thought Percy, as the idea, thus more enticingly put
than it was at first, pressed upon him. “If _you_ ask me,” he said, “I
will.”

“I _do_ ask you, then,” said the actress; and here the hero of the
company turned abruptly round with a theatrical start, and exclaimed,
“To sup or not to sup? that is the question.”

“To sup, sir,” said Godolphin.

“Very well! I am glad to hear it. Had you not better mount and rest
yourself in the coach? You can take my place--I am studying a new part.
We have two miles farther to B---- yet.”

Percy accepted the invitation, and was soon by the side of the pretty
actress. The horses broke into a slow trot, and thus delighted with his
adventure, the son of the ascetic Godolphin, the pupil of the courtly
Saville, entered the town of B----, and commenced his first independent
campaign in the great world.




CHAPTER V.

THE MUMMERS.--GODOLPHIN IN LOVE.--THE EFFECT OF FANNY MILLINGER’S ACTING
UPON HIM.--THE TWO OFFERS.--GODOLPHIN QUITS THE PLAYERS.

Our travellers stopped at the first inn in the outskirts of the town.
Here they were shown into a large room on the ground-floor, sanded, with
a long table in the centre; and, before the supper was served, Percy
had leisure to examine all the companions with whom he had associated
himself.

In the first place, there was an old gentleman, of the age of
sixty-three, in a bob-wig, and inclined to be stout, who always played
the _lover_. He was equally excellent in the pensive Romeo and the
bustling Rapid. He had an ill way of talking off the stage, partly
because he had lost all his front teeth: a circumstance which made him
avoid, in general, those parts in which he had to force a great deal of
laughter. Next, there was a little girl, of about fourteen, who played
angels, fairies, and, at a pinch, was very effective as an old woman.
Thirdly, there was our free-and-easy cavalier, who, having a loud voice
and a manly presence, usually performed the tyrant. He was great in
Macbeth, greater in Bombastes Furioso. Fourthly, came this gentleman’s
wife, a pretty, slatternish woman, much painted. She usually performed
the second female--the confidante, the chambermaid--the Emilia to the
Desdemona. And fifthly, was Percy’s new inamorata,--a girl of about
one-and-twenty, fair, with a nez retrousse: beautiful auburn hair, that
was always a little dishevelled; the prettiest mouth, teeth, and dimple
imaginable; a natural colour; and a person that promised to incline
hereafter towards that roundness of proportion which is more dear to the
sensual than the romantic. This girl, whose name was Fanny Millinger,
was of so frank, good-humoured, and lively a turn, that she was the idol
of the whole company, and her superiority in acting was never made a
matter of jealousy. Actors may believe this, or not, as they please.

“But is this all your company?” said Percy.

“All? no!” replied Fanny, taking off her bonnet, and curling up her
tresses by the help of a dim glass. “The rest are provided at the
theatre along with the candle-snuffer and scene-shifters part of the
fixed property. Why won’t _you_ take to the stage? I wish you would! you
would make a very respectable--page.”

“Upon my word!” said Percy, exceedingly offended.

“Come, come!” cried the actress, clapping her hands, and perfectly
unheeding his displeasure--“why don’t you help me off with my
cloak?--why don’t you set me a chair?--why don’t you take this great box
out of my way?--why don’t you----Heaven help me!” and she stamped her
little foot quite seriously on the floor. “A pretty person for a lover
you are!”

“Oho! then I am a lover, you acknowledge?”

“Nonsense!--get a chair next me at supper.”

The young Godolphin was perfectly fascinated by the lively actress; and
it was with no small interest that he stationed himself the following
night in the stage-box of the little theatre at ----, to see how his
Fanny acted. The house was tolerably well filled, and the play was
_She Stoops to Conquer_. The male parts were, on the whole, respectably
managed; though Percy was somewhat surprised to observe that a man,
who had joined the corps that morning, blessed with the most solemn
countenance in the world--a fine Roman nose, and a forehead like a
sage’s--was now dressed in nankeen tights, and a coat without skirts,
splitting the sides of the gallery in the part of Tony Lumpkin. But into
the heroine, Fanny Millinger threw a grace, a sweetness, a simple, yet
dignified spirit of trite love that at once charmed and astonished all
present. The applause was unbounded; and Percy Godolphin felt proud of
himself for having admired one whom every one else seemed also resolved
upon admiring.

When the comedy was finished, he went behind the scenes, and for the
first time felt the rank which intellect bestows. This idle girl, with
whom he had before been so familiar; who had seemed to him, boy as he
was, only made for jesting and coquetry, and trifling, he now felt to be
raised to a sudden eminence that startled and abashed him. He became shy
and awkward, and stood at a distance stealing a glance towards her, but
without the courage to approach and compliment her.

The quick eye of the actress detected the effect she had produced. She
was naturally pleased at it, and coming up to Godolphin, she touched his
shoulder, and with a smile rendered still more brilliant by the rouge
yet unwashed from the dimpled cheeks, said--“Well, most awkward swain?
no flattery ready for me? Go to! you won’t suit me: get yourself another
empress.”

“You have pleased me into respecting you,” said Godolphin.

There was a delicacy in the expression that was very characteristic of
the real mind of the speaker, though that mind was not yet developed;
and the pretty actress was touched by it at the moment, though, despite
the grace of her acting, she was by nature far too volatile to think it
at all advantageous to be _respected_ in the long run. She did not act
in the afterpiece, and Godolphin escorted her home to the inn.

So long as his ten guineas lasted--which the reader will conceive was
not very long--Godolphin stayed with the gay troop, as the welcome lover
of its chief ornament. To her he confided his name and history:
she laughed heartily at the latter--for she was one of Venus’s true
children, fond of striking mirth out of all subjects. “But what,” said
she, patting his cheek affectionately, “what should hinder you from
joining us for a little while? I could teach you to be an actor in three
lessons. Come now, attend! It is but a mere series of tricks, this art
that seems to you so admirable.”

Godolphin grew embarrassed. There was in him a sort of hidden pride that
could never endure to subject itself to the censure of others. He had
no propensity to imitation, and he had a strong susceptibility to the
ridiculous. These traits of mind thus early developed--which in later
life prevented his ever finding fit scope for his natural powers, which
made him too proud to bustle, and too philosophical to shine--were of
service to him on this occasion, and preserved him from the danger into
which he might otherwise have fallen. He could not be persuaded to act:
the fair Fanny gave up the attempt in despair. “Yet stay with us,” said
she, tenderly, “and share my poor earnings.”

Godolphin started; and in the wonderful contradictions of the proud
human heart, this generous offer from the poor actress gave him a
distaste, a displeasure, that almost reconciled him to parting from
her. It seemed to open to him at once the equivocal mode of life he had
entered upon. “No, Fanny,” said he, after a pause, “I am here because I
resolved to be independent: I cannot, therefore, choose dependence.”

“Miss Millinger is wanted instantly for rehearsal,” said the little
girl who acted fairies and old women, putting her head suddenly into the
room.

“Bless me!” cried Fanny, starting up; “is it so late? Well, I must go
now. Good-bye! look in upon us--do!”

But Godolphin, moody and thoughtful, walked into the street; and lo! the
first thing that greeted his eyes was a handbill on the wall, describing
his own person, and offering twenty guineas reward for his detention.
“Let him return to his afflicted parent,” was the conclusion of the
bill, “and all shall be forgiven.”

Godolphin crept back to his apartment; wrote a long, affectionate letter
to Fanny; inclosed her his watch, as the only keepsake in his power;
gave her his address at Saville’s; and then, towards dusk, once more
sallied forth, and took a place in the mail for London. He had no money
for his passage, but his appearance was such that the coachman readily
trusted him; and the next morning at daybreak he was under Saville’s
roof.




CHAPTER VI.

PERCY GODOLPHIN THE GUEST OF SAVILLE.--HE ENTERS THE LIFE-GUARDS AND
BECOMES THE FASHION.

“And so,” said Saville, laughing, “you really gave them the slip:
excellent! But I envy you your adventures with the player folk. ‘Gad!
if I were some years younger, I would join them myself; I should act Sir
Pertinax Macsycophant famously; I have a touch of the mime in me. Well!
but what do you propose to do?--live with me?--eh!”

“Why, I think that might be the best, and certainly it would be the
pleasantest mode of passing my life. But----”

“But what?”

“Why, I can scarcely quarter myself on your courtesy; I should soon
grow discontented. So I shall write to my father, whom I, kindly and
considerately, by the way, informed of my safety the very first day of
my arrival at B----. I told him to direct his letters to your house;
but I regret to find that the handbill which so frightened me from my
propriety is the only notice he has deigned to take of my whereabout.
I shall write to him therefore again, begging him to let me enter the
army. It is not a profession I much fancy; but what then! I shall be my
own master.”

“Very well said!” answered Saville; “and here I hope I can serve you. If
your father will pay the lawful sum for a commission in the Guards, why,
I think I have interest to get you in for that sum alone--no trifling
favour.”

Godolphin was enchanted at this proposal, and instantly wrote to his
father, urging it strongly upon him; Saville, in a separate epistle,
seconded the motion. “You see,” wrote the latter, “you see, my dear sir,
that your son is a wild, resolute scapegrace. You can do nothing
with him by schools and coercion: put him to discipline in the king’s
service, and condemn him to live on his pay. It is a cheap mode, after
all, of providing for a reprobate; and as he will have the good fortune
to enter the army at so early an age, by the time he is thirty, he may
be a colonel on full pay. Seriously, this is the best thing you can do
with him,--unless you have a living in your family.”

The old gentleman was much discomposed by these letters, and by his
son’s previous elopement. He could not, however, but foresee, that if he
resisted the boy’s wishes, he was likely to have a troublesome time of
it. Scrape after scrape, difficulty following difficulty, might ensue,
all costing both anxiety and money. The present offer furnished him with
a fair excuse for ridding himself, for a long time to come, of further
provision for his offspring; and now growing daily more and more
attached to the indolent routine of solitary economies in which he
moved, he was glad of an opportunity to deliver himself from future
interruption, and surrender his whole soul to his favourite occupation.

At length, after a fortnight’s delay and meditation, he wrote shortly to
Saville and his son; saying, after much reproach to the latter, that
if the commission could really be purchased at the sum specified he
was willing to make a sacrifice, for which he must pinch himself, and
conclude the business. This touched the son, but Saville laughed him
out of the twinge of good feeling; and very shortly afterwards, Percy
Godolphin was gazetted as a cornet in the ---- Life-Guards.

The life of a soldier, in peace, is indolent enough, Heaven knows! Percy
liked the new uniforms and the new horses--all of which were bought on
credit. He liked his new companions; he liked balls; he liked flirting;
he did not dislike Hyde Park from four o’clock till six; and he was not
very much bored by drills and parade. It was much to his credit in the
world that he was the protege of a man who had so great a character for
profligacy and gambling as Augustus Saville; and under such auspices he
found himself launched at once into the full tide of “good society.”

Young, romantic, high-spirited--with the classic features of an
Antinous, and a very pretty knack of complimenting and writing
verses--Percy Godolphin soon became, while yet more fit in years for
the nursery than the world, “the curled darling” of that wide class of
high-born women who have nothing to do but to hear love made to them,
and who, all artifice themselves, think the love sweetest which springs
from the most natural source. They like boyhood when it is not bashful;
and from sixteen to twenty, a Juan need scarcely go to Seville to find a
Julia.

But love was not the worst danger that menaced the intoxicated boy.
Saville, the most seductive of tutors--Saville who, in his wit; his
bon ton, his control over the great world, seemed as a god to all less
elevated and less aspiring,--Saville was Godolphin’s constant companion;
and Saville was worse than a profligate--he was a gambler! One would
think that gaming was the last vice that could fascinate the young: its
avarice, its grasping, its hideous selfishness, its cold, calculating
meanness, would, one might imagine, scare away all who have yet other
and softer deities to worship. But, in fact, the fault of youth is that
it can rarely resist whatever is the Mode. Gaming, in all countries, is
the vice of an aristocracy. The young find it already established in the
best circles; they are enticed by the habit of others, and ruined when
the habit becomes their own.

“You look feverish, Percy,” said Saville, as he met his pupil in the
Park. “I don’t wonder at it; you lost infernally last night.”

“More than I can pay,” replied Percy, with a quivering lip.

“No! you shall pay it to-morrow, for you shall go shares with me
to-night. Observe,” continued Saville, lowering his voice, “_I never
lose_.”

“How _never?_”

“Never, unless by design. I play at no game where chance only presides.
Whist is my favourite game: it is not popular: I am sorry for it. I take
up with other games,--I am forced to do it; but, even at rouge et noir,
I carry about with me the rules of whist. I calculate--I remember.”

“But hazard?”

“I never play at that,” said Saville, solemnly. “It is the devil’s game;
it defies skill. Forsake hazard, and let me teach you ecarte; it is
coming into fashion.”

Saville took great pains with Godolphin; and Godolphin, who was by
nature of a contemplative, not hasty mood, was no superficial disciple.
As his biographer, I grieve to confess, that he became, though a
punctiliously honest, a wise and fortunate gamester; and thus he eked
out betimes the slender profits of a subaltern’s pay.

This was the first great deterioration in Percy’s mind--a mind which
ought to have made him a very different being from what he became, but
which no vice, no evil example, could ever entirely pervert.




CHAPTER VII.

SAVILLE EXCUSED FOR HAVING HUMAN AFFECTIONS.--GODOLPHIN SEES ONE WHOM HE
NEVER SEES AGAIN.--THE NEW ACTRESS.

Saville was deemed the consummate man of the world--wise and heartless.
How came he to take such gratuitous pains with the boy Godolphin? In
the first place, Saville had no legitimate children; Godolphin was his
relation; in the second place it may be observed that hackneyed and
sated men of the world are fond of the young, in whom they recognise
something--a better something belonging to themselves. In Godolphin’s
gentleness and courage, Saville thought he saw the mirror of his
own crusted urbanity and scheming perseverance; in Godolphin’s
fine imagination and subtle intellect he beheld his own cunning and
hypocrisy. The boy’s popularity flattered him; the boy’s conversation
amused. No man is so heartless but that he is capable of strong likings,
when they do not put him much out of his way; it was this sort of liking
that Saville had for Godolphin. Besides, there was yet another reason
for attachment, which might at first seem too delicate to actuate the
refined voluptuary; but examined closely, the delicacy vanished. Saville
had loved, at least had offered his hand to--Godolphin’s mother (she was
supposed an heiress!) He thought he had just missed being Godolphin’s
father: his vanity made him like to show the boy what a much better
father he would have been than the one that Providence had given him.
His resentment, too, against the accepted suitor, made him love to
exercise a little spiteful revenge against Godolphin’s father; he was
glad to show that the son preferred where the mother rejected. All these
motives combined made Saville take, as it were, to the young Percy;
and being rich, and habitually profuse, though prudent, and a shrewd
speculator withal, the pecuniary part of his kindness cost him no pain.
But Godolphin, who was not ostentatious, did not trust himself largely
to the capricious fount of the worldling’s generosity. Fortune smiled on
her boyish votary; and during the short time he was obliged to cultivate
her favours, showered on him at least a sufficiency for support, or even
for display.

Crowded with fine people, and blazing with light, were the rooms of the
Countess of B----, as, flushed from a late dinner at Saville’s, young
Godolphin made his appearance in the scene. He was not of those numerous
gentlemen, the stock-flowers of the parterre, who stick themselves up
against walls in the panoply of neckclothed silence. He came not to
balls from the vulgar motive of being seen there in the most conspicuous
situation--a motive so apparent among the stiff exquisites of England.
He came to amuse himself; and if he found no one capable of amusing
him, he saw no necessity in staying. He was always seen, therefore,
conversing or dancing, or listening to music--or he was not seen at all.

In exchanging a few words with a Colonel D----, a noted roue and
gamester, he observed, gazing on him very intently--and as Percy
thought, very rudely--an old gentleman in a dress of the last century.
Turn where he would, Godolphin could not rid himself of the gaze; so
at length he met it with a look of equal scrutiny and courage. The old
gentleman slowly approached. “Percy Godolphin, I think?” said he.

“That is _my_ name, sir,” replied Percy. “Yours----”

“No matter! Yet stay! you shall know it. I am Henry Johnstone--old Harry
Johnstone. You have heard of him?--your father’s first cousin. Well,
I grieve, young sir, to find that you associate with that rascal
Saville--Nay, never interrupt me sir!--I grieve to find that you, thus
young, thus unguarded, are left to be ruined in heart and corrupted
in nature by any one who will take the trouble! Yet I like your
countenance!--I like your countenance!--it is open, yet thoughtful;
frank, and yet it has something of melancholy. You have not Charles’s
coloured hair; but you are much younger--much. I am glad I have seen
you; I came here on purpose; good-night!”--and without waiting for an
answer, the old man disappeared.

Godolphin, recovering from his surprise, recollected that he had often
heard his father speak of a rich and eccentric relation named Johnstone.
This singular interview made a strong but momentary impression on
him. He intended to seek out the old man’s residence; but one thing or
another drove away the fulfilment of the intention, and in this world
the relations never met again.

Percy, now musingly gliding through the crowd, sank into a seat beside
a lady of forty-five, who sometimes amused herself in making love to
him--because there could be no harm in such a mere boy!--and presently
afterwards, a Lord George Somebody, sauntering up, asked the lady if he
had not seen her at the play on the previous night.

“O, yes! we went to see the new actress. How pretty she is!--so
unaffected too;--how well she sings!”

“Pretty well--er!” replied Lord George, passing his hand through
his hair. “Very nice girl--er!--good ankles. Devilish hot--er, is
it not--er--er? What a bore this is: eh! Ah! Godolphin! don’t forget
Wattier’s--er!” and his lordship er’d himself off.

“What actress is this?”

“Oh, a very good one indeed!--came out in _The Belle’s Stratagem_. We
are going to see her to-morrow; will you dine with us early, and be our
cavalier?”

“Nothing will please me more! Your ladyship has dropped your
handkerchief.”

“Thank you!” said the lady, bending till her hair touched Godolphin’s
cheek, and gently pressing the hand that was extended to her. It was a
wonder that Godolphin never became a coxcomb.

He dined at Wattier’s the next day according to appointment: he went
to the play; and at the moment his eye first turned to the stage,
a universal burst of applause indicated the entrance of the new
actress--Fanny Millinger!




CHAPTER VIII.

GODOLPHIN’S PASSION FOR THE STAGE.--THE DIFFERENCE IT ENGENDERED IN HIS
HABITS OF LIFE.

Now this event produced a great influence over Godolphin’s habits--and
I suppose, therefore, I may add, over his character. He renewed his
acquaintance with the lively actress.

“What a change!” cried both.

“The strolling player risen into celebrity!”

“And the runaway boy polished into fashion!”

“You are handsomer than ever, Fanny.”

“I return the compliment,” replied Fanny; with a curtsey.

And now Godolphin became a constant attendant at the theatre. This led
him into a mode of life quite different from that which he had lately
cultivated.

There are in London two sets of idle men: one set, the butterflies of
balls; the loungers of the regular walks of society; diners out; the
“old familiar faces,” seen everywhere, known to every one: the other
set, a more wild, irregular, careless race; who go little into parties,
and vote balls a nuisance; who live in clubs; frequent theatres; drive
about late o’ nights in mysterious-looking vehicles and enjoy a vast
acquaintance among the Aspasias of pleasure. These are the men who are
the critics of theatricals: black-neckclothed and well-booted, they sit
in their boxes and decide on the ankles of a dancer or the voice of a
singer. They have a smattering of literature, and use a great deal of
French in their conversation: they have something of romance in their
composition, and have been known to marry for love. In short, there is
in their whole nature, a more roving, liberal, Continental character of
dissipation, than belongs to the cold, tame, dull, prim, hedge-clipped
indolence of more national exquisitism. Into this set, out of the other
set, fell young Godolphin; and oh! the merry mornings at actresses’
houses; the jovial suppers after the play; the buoyancy, the brilliancy,
the esprit, with which the hours, from midnight to cockcrow, were often
pelted with rose-leaves and drowned in Rhenish.

By degrees, however, as Godolphin warmed into his attendance at the
playhouses, the fine intellectual something that lay yet undestroyed at
his heart stirred up emotions which he felt his more vulgar associates
were unfitted to share.

There is that in theatrical representation which perpetually awakens
whatever romance belongs to our character. The magic lights; the pomp
of scene; the palace, the camp; the forest; the midnight wold; the
moonlight reflected on the water; the melody of the tragic rhythm; the
grace of the comic wit; the strange art that give such meaning to the
poet’s lightest word;--the fair, false, exciting life that is detailed
before us--crowding into some three little hours all that our most
busy ambition could desire--love, enterprise, war, glory! the kindling
exaggeration of the sentiments which belong to the stage--like our own
in our boldest moments: all these appeals to our finer senses are not
made in vain. Our taste for castle-building and visions deepens upon us;
and we chew a mental opium which stagnates all the other faculties, but
wakens that of the ideal.

Godolphin was peculiarly fascinated by the stage; he loved to steal away
from his companions, and, alone, and unheeded, to feast his mind on the
unreal stream of existence that mirrored images so beautiful. And oh!
while yet we are young--while yet the dew lingers on the green leaf of
spring--while all the brighter, the more enterprising part of the future
is to come--while we know not whether the true life may not be visionary
and excited as the false--how deep and rich a transport is it to see,
to feel, to hear Shakspeare’s conceptions made actual, though
all imperfectly, and only for an hour! Sweet Arden! are we in thy
forest?--thy “shadowy groves and unfrequented glens”? Rosalind,
Jaques, Orlando, have you indeed a being upon earth! Ah! this is true
enchantment! and when we turn back to life, we turn from the colours
which the Claude glass breathes over a winter’s landscape to the
nakedness of the landscape itself!




CHAPTER IX.

THE LEGACY.--A NEW DEFORMITY IN SAVILLE.--THE NATURE OF WORLDLY
LIAISONS.--GODOLPHIN LEAVES ENGLAND.

But then, it is not always a sustainer of the stage delusion to be
enamoured of an actress: it takes us too much behind the scenes.
Godolphin felt this so strongly that he liked those plays least in which
Fanny performed. Off the stage her character had so little romance, that
he could not deceive himself into the romance of her character before
the lamps. Luckily, however, Fanny did not attempt Shakspeare. She was
inimitable in vaudeville, in farce, and in the lighter comedy; but she
had prudently abandoned tragedy in deserting the barn. She was a girl of
much talent and quickness, and discovered exactly the paths in which her
vanity could walk without being wounded. And there was a simplicity, a
frankness, about her manner, that made her a most agreeable companion.

The attachment between her and Godolphin was not very violent; it was a
silken tie, which opportunity could knit and snap a hundred times
over without doing much wrong to the hearts it so lightly united. Over
Godolphin the attachment itself had no influence, while the effects of
the attachment had an influence so great.

One night, after an absence from town of two or three days Godolphin
returned home from the theatre, and found among the letters waiting his
arrival one from his father. It was edged with black; the seal, too, was
black. Godolphin’s heart misgave him: tremblingly he opened it, and read
as follows:

“DEAR PERCY,

“I have news for you, which I do not know whether I should call good or
bad. On the one hand, your cousin, that old oddity, Harry Johnstone,
is dead, and has left you, out of his immense fortune, the poor sum
of twenty thousand pounds. But mark! on condition that you leave the
Guards, and either reside with me, or at least leave London, till
your majority is attained. If you refuse these conditions you lose the
legacy. It is rather strange that this curious character should take
such pains with your morals, and yet not leave _me_ a single shilling.
But justice is out of fashion nowadays; your showy virtues only are
the rage. I beg, if you choose to come down here, that you will get
me twelve yards of house-flannel; I inclose a pattern of the quality.
Snugg, in Oxford Street, near Tottenham Court Road, is my man. It is
certainly a handsome thing in old Johnstone: but so odd to omit me.
How did you get acquainted with him? The twenty thousand pounds
will, however, do much for the poor property. Pray take care of it,
Percy,--pray do.

“I have had a touch of the gout, for the first time. I have been too
luxurious: by proper abstinence, I trust to bring it down. Compliments
to that smooth rogue, Saville.

“Your affectionate, A. G.

“P. S.--Discharged Old Sally for flirting with the butcher’s boy:
flirtations of that sort make meat weigh much heavier. Bess is my only
she-helpmate now, besides the old creature who shows the ruins: so
much the better. What an eccentric creature that Johnstone was! I hate
eccentric people.”

The letter fell from Percy’s hands. And this, then, was the issue of
his single interview with the poor old man! It was events like these,
wayward and strange (events which chequered his whole life), that,
secretly to himself, tinged Godolphin’s character with superstition. He
afterwards dealt con amore with fatalities and influences.

You may be sure that he did not sleep much that night. Early the next
morning he sought Saville, and imparted to him the intelligence he had
received.

“Droll enough!” said Saville, languidly, and more than a little
displeased at this generosity to Godolphin from another; for, like all
small-hearted persons, he was jealous; “droll enough! Hem! and you never
knew him but once, and then he abused me! I wonder at that; I was very
obliging to his vulgar son.”

“What! he had a son, then?”

“Some two-legged creature of that sort, raw and bony, dropped into
London, like a ptarmigan, wild, and scared out of his wits. Old
Johnstone was in the country, taking care of his wife, who had lost
the use of her limbs ever since she had been married;--caught a
violent--husband--the first day of wedlock! The boy, sole son and
heir, came up to town at the age of discretion; got introduced to me;
I patronised him; brought him into a decent degree of fashion; played
a few games at cards with him; won some money; would not win any more;
advised him to leave off; too young to play; neglected my advice; went
on, and, d--n the fellow! if he did not cut his throat one morning; and
the father, to my astonishment, laid the blame upon me!”

Godolphin stood appalled in speechless disgust. He never loved Saville
from that hour.

“In fact,” resumed Saville, carelessly, “he had lost very considerably.
His father was a stern, hard man, and the poor boy was frightened at the
thought of his displeasure. I suppose Monsieur Papa imagined me a sort
of moral ogre, eating up all the little youths that fall in my way!
since he leaves you twenty thousand pounds on condition that you take
care of yourself and shun the castle I live in. Well, well! ‘tis all
very flattering! And where will you go? To Spain?”

This story affected Percy sensibly. He regretted deeply that he had not
sought out the bereaved father, and been of some comfort to his later
hours. He appreciated all that warmth of sympathy, that delicacy of
heart, which had made the old man compassionate his young relation’s
unfriended lot, and couple his gift with a condition, likely perhaps, to
limit Percy’s desires to the independence thus bestowed, and certain to
remove his more tender years from a scene of constant contagion. Thus
melancholy and thoughtful, Godolphin repaired to the house of the now
famous, the now admired Miss Millinger.

Fanny received the good news of his fortune with a smile, and the
bad news of his departure from England with a tear. There are some
attachments, of which we so easily sound the depth, that the one never
thinks of exacting from the other the sacrifices that seemed inevitable
to more earnest affections. Fanny never dreamed of leaving her
theatrical career, and accompanying Godolphin; Godolphin never dreamed
of demanding it. These are the connections of the great world: my good
reader, learn the great world as you look at them!

All was soon settled. Godolphin was easily disembarrassed of his
commission. Six hundred a year from his fortune was allowed him during
his minority. He insisted on sharing this allowance with his father; the
moiety left to himself was quite sufficient for all that a man so young
could require. At the age of little more than seventeen, but with a
character which premature independence had half formed, and also half
enervated, the young Godolphin saw the shores of England recede before
him, and felt himself alone in the universe--the lord of his own fate.




CHAPTER X.

THE EDUCATION OF CONSTANCE’S MIND.

Meanwhile, Constance Vernon grew up in womanhood and beauty. All around
her contributed to feed that stern remembrance which her father’s dying
words had bequeathed. Naturally proud, quick, susceptible, she felt
slights, often merely incidental, with a deep and brooding resentment.
The forlorn and dependent girl could not, indeed, fail to meet with many
bitter proofs that her situation was not forgotten by a world in which
prosperity and station are the cardinal virtues. Many a loud whisper,
many an intentional “aside,” reached her haughty ear, and coloured
her pale cheek. Such accidents increased her early-formed asperity
of thought; chilled the gushing flood of her young affections; and
sharpened, with a relentless edge, her bitter and caustic hatred to
a society she deemed at once insolent and worthless. To a taste
intuitively fine and noble the essential vulgarities--the fierceness
to-day, the cringing to-morrow; the veneration for power; the
indifference to virtue, which characterised the framers and rulers of
“society”--could not but bring contempt as well as anger; and amidst
the brilliant circles, to which so many aspirers looked up with hopeless
ambition, Constance moved only to ridicule, to loathe, to despise.

So strong, so constantly nourished, was this sentiment of contempt, that
it lasted with equal bitterness when Constance afterwards became the
queen and presider over that great world in which she now shone--to
dazzle, but not to rule. What at first might have seemed an exaggerated
and insane prayer on the part of her father, grew, as her experience
ripened, a natural and laudable command. She was thrown entirely with
that party amongst whom were his early friends and his late deserters.
She resolved to humble the crested arrogance around her, as much from
her own desire, as from the wish to obey and avenge her father. From
contempt for rank rose naturally the ambition of rank. The young beauty
resolved, to banish love from her heart; to devote herself to one aim
and object; to win title and station, that she might be able to give
power and permanence to her disdain of those qualities in others; and
in the secrecy of night she repeated the vow which had consoled her
father’s death-bed, and solemnly resolved to crush love within her heart
and marry solely for station and for power.

As the daughter of so celebrated a politician, it was natural that
Constance should take interest in politics. She lent to every discussion
of state events an eager and thirsty ear. She embraced with masculine
ardour such sentiments as were then considered the extreme of
liberality; and she looked on that career which society limits to man,
as the noblest, the loftiest in the world. She regretted that she was a
woman, and prevented from personally carrying into effect the sentiments
she passionately espoused. Meanwhile, she did not neglect, nor suffer to
rust, the bright weapon of a wit which embodied at times all the biting
energies of her contempt. To insolence she retorted sarcasm; and, early
able to see that society, like virtue, must be trampled upon in order
to yield forth its incense, she rose into respect by the hauteur of her
manner, the bluntness of her satire, the independence of her mind, far
more than by her various accomplishments and her unrivalled beauty.

Of Lady Erpingham she had nothing to complain; kind, easy, and
characterless, her protectress sometimes wounded her by carelessness,
but never through design; on the contrary, the Countess at once loved
and admired her, and was as anxious that her protegee should form a
brilliant alliance as if she had been her own daughter. Constance,
therefore, loved Lady Erpingham with sincere and earnest warmth, and
endeavoured to forget all the commonplaces and littlenesses which made
up the mind of her protectress, and which, otherwise, would have been
precisely of that nature to which one like Constance would have been the
least indulgent.




CHAPTER XI.

CONVERSATION BETWEEN LADY ERPINGHAM AND CONSTANCE.--FURTHER PARTICULARS
OF GODOLPHIN’S FAMILY, ETC.


Lady Erpingham was a widow; her jointure, for she had been an heiress
and a duke’s daughter, was large; and the noblest mansion of all the
various seats possessed by the wealthy and powerful house of Erpingham
had been allotted by her late lord for her widowed residence. Thither
she went punctually on the first of every August, and quitted it
punctually on the eighth of every January.

It was some years after the date of Godolphin’s departure from England,
and the summer following the spring in which Constance had been “brought
out;” and, after a debut of such splendour that at this day (many years
subsequent to that period) the sensation she created is not only a
matter of remembrance but of conversation, Constance, despite the
triumph of her vanity, was not displeased to seek some refuge, even from
admiration, among the shades of Wendover Castle.

“When,” said she one morning, as she was walking with Lady Erpingham
upon a terrace beneath the windows of the castle, which overlooked the
country for miles,--“when will you go with me, dear Lady Erpingham, to
see those ruins of which I have heard so much and so often, and which I
have never been able to persuade you to visit? Look! the day is so
clear that we can see their outline now--there, to the right of that
church!--they cannot be so very far from Wendover.”

“Godolphin Priory is about twelve miles off,” said Lady Erpingham;
“but it may seem nearer, for it is situated on the highest spot of
the county. Poor Arthur Godolphin! he is lately dead!” Lady Erpingham
sighed.

“I never heard you speak of him before.”

“There might be a reason for my silence, Constance. He was the person,
of all whom I ever saw, who appeared to me when I was at your age, the
most fascinating. Not, Constance, that I was in love with him, or that
he gave me any reason to become so through gratitude for any affection
on his part. It was a girl’s fancy, idle and short-lived--nothing more!”

“And the young Godolphin--the boy who, at so early an age, has made
himself known for his eccentric life abroad?”

“Is his son; the present owner of those ruins, and, I fear, of little
more, unless it be the remains of a legacy received from a relation.”

“Was the father extravagant, then?”

“Not he! But his father had exceeded a patrimony greatly involved,
and greatly reduced from its ancient importance. All the lands we see
yonder---those villages, those woods--once belonged to the Godolphins.
They were the most ancient and the most powerful family in this part of
England; but the estates dwindled away with each successive generation,
and when Arthur Godolphin, my Godolphin, succeeded to the property,
nothing was left for him but the choice of three evils--a profession,
obscurity, or a wealthy marriage. My father, who had long destined me
for Lord Erpingham, insinuated that it was in me that Mr. Godolphin
wished to find the resource I have last mentioned, and that in such
resource was my only attraction in his eyes. I have some reason to
believe he proposed to the Duke; but he was silent to me, from whom,
girl as I was, he might have been less certain of refusal.”

“What did he at last?”

“Married a lady who was supposed to be an heiress; but he had scarcely
enjoyed her fortune a year before it became the subject of a lawsuit.
He lost the cause and the dowry; and, what was worse, the expenses of
litigation, and the sums he was obliged to refund, reduced him to what,
for a man of his rank, might be considered absolute poverty. He was
thoroughly chagrined and soured by this event; retired to those ruins,
or rather to the small cottage that adjoins them, and there lived to
the day of his death, shunning society, and certainly not exceeding his
income.”

“I understand you: he became parsimonious.”

“To the excess which his neighbours called miserly.”

“And his wife?”

“Poor woman! she was a mere fine lady, and died, I believe, of the same
vexation which nipped, not the life, but the heart of her husband.”

“Had they only one son?”

“Only the present owner: Percy, I think--yes, Percy; it was his mother’s
surname--Percy Godolphin.”

“And how came this poor boy to be thrown so early on the world? Did he
quarrel with Mr. Godolphin?”

“I believe not: but when Percy was about sixteen, he left the obscure
school at which he was educated, and resided for some little time with
a relation, Augustus Saville. He stayed with him in London for about a
year, and went everywhere with him, though so mere a boy. His manners
were, I well remember, assured and formed. A relation left him some
moderate legacy, and afterwards he went abroad alone.”

“But the ruins! The late Mr. Godolphin, notwithstanding his reserve, did
not object to indulging the curiosity of his neighbours.”

“No: he was proud of the interest the ruins of his hereditary mansion
so generally excited,--proud of their celebrity in print-shops and in
tours; but he himself was never seen. The cottage in which he lived,
though it adjoins the ruins, was, of course, sacred from intrusion,
and is so walled in, that that great delight of English visitors at
show-places--peeping in at windows--was utterly forbidden. However that
be, during Mr. Godolphin’s life, I never had courage to visit what, to
me, would have been a melancholy scene now, the pain would be somewhat
less; and since you wish it, suppose we drive over and visit the ruins
to-morrow? It is the regular day for seeing them, by the by.”

“Not, dear Lady Erpingham, if it give you the least--”

“My sweet girl,” interrupted Lady Erpingham, when a servant approached
to announce visitors at the castle.

“Will you go into the saloon, Constance?” said the elder lady, as,
thinking still of love and Arthur Godolphin, she took her way to her
dressing-room to renovate her rouge.

It would have been a pretty amusement to one of the lesser devils, if,
during the early romance of Lady Erpingham’s feelings towards Arthur
Godolphin, he had foretold her the hour when she would tell how Arthur
Godolphin died a miser--just five minutes before she repaired to the
toilette to decorate the cheek of age for the heedless eyes of a common
acquaintance. ‘Tis the world’s way! For my part, I would undertake to
find a better world in that rookery opposite my windows.




CHAPTER XII.

DESCRIPTION OF GODOLPHIN’S HOUSE.--THE FIRST INTERVIEW.--ITS EFFECT ON
CONSTANCE.

“But,” asked Constance, as, the next day, Lady Erpinghain and herself
were performing the appointed pilgrimage to the ruins of Godolphin
Priory, “if the late Mr. Godolphin, as he grew in years, acquired a turn
of mind so penurious, was he not enabled to leave his son some addition
to the pied de terre we are about to visit?”

“He must certainly have left some ready money,” answered Lady
Erpinghain. “But is it, after all, likely that so young a man as Percy
Godolphin could have lived in the manner he has done without incurring
debts? It is most probable that he had some recourse to those persons
so willing to encourage the young and extravagant, and that repayment
to them will more than swallow up any savings his father might have
amassed.”

“True enough!” said Constance; and the conversation glided into remarks
on avaricious fathers and prodigal sons. Constance was witty on the
subject, and Lady Erpingham laughed herself into excellent humour.

It was considerably past noon when they arrived at the ruins.

The carriage stopped before a small inn, at the entrance of a dismantled
park; and, taking advantage of the beauty of the day, Lady Erpingham and
Constance walked slowly towards the remains of the Priory.

The scene, as they approached, was wild and picturesque in the extreme.
A wide and glassy lake lay stretched beneath them: on the opposite side
stood the ruins. The large oriel window--the Gothic arch--the broken,
yet still majestic column, all embrowned and mossed with age, were still
spared, and now mirrored themselves in the waveless and silent tide.
Fragments of stone lay around, for some considerable distance, and the
whole was backed by hills, covered with gloomy and thick woods of pine
and fir. To the left, they saw the stream which fed the lake, stealing
away through grassy banks, overgrown with the willow and pollard oak:
and there, from one or two cottages, only caught in glimpses, thin
wreaths of smoke rose in spires against the clear sky. To the right,
the ground was broken into a thousand glens and hollows: the deer-loved
fern, the golden broom, were scattered about profusely; and here and
there were dense groves of pollards; or, at very rare intervals, some
single tree decaying (for all round bore the seal of vassalage to Time),
but mighty, and greenly venerable in its decay.

As they passed over a bridge that, on either side of the stream,
emerged, as it were, from a thick copse, they caught a view of the small
abode that adjoined the ruins. It seemed covered entirely with ivy;
and, so far from diminishing, tended rather to increase the romantic and
imposing effect of the crumbling pile from which it grew.

They opened a little gate at the other extremity of the bridge, and in a
few minutes more, they stood at the entrance to the Priory.

It was an oak door, studded with nails. The jessamine grew upon either
side; and, to descend to a commonplace matter, they had some difficulty
in finding the bell among the leaves in which it was imbedded. When they
had found and touched it, its clear and lively sound rang out in that
still and lovely though desolate spot, with an effect startling and
impressive from its contrast. There is something very fairy-like in the
cheerful voice of a bell sounding among the wilder scenes of nature,
particularly where Time advances his claim to the sovereignty of the
landscape; for the cheerfulness is a little ghostly, and might serve
well enough for a tocsin to the elvish hordes whom our footsteps may be
supposed to disturb.

An old woman, in the neat peasant dress of our country, when, taking a
little from the fashion of the last century (the cap and the kerchief),
it assumes no ungraceful costume,--replied to their summons. She was
the solitary cicerone of the place. She had lived there, a lone and
childless widow, for thirty years; and, of all the persons I have ever
seen, would furnish forth the best heroine to one of those pictures
of homely life which Wordsworth has dignified with the partriarchal
tenderness of his genius.

They wound a narrow passage, and came to the ruins of the great hall.
Its gothic arches still sprang lightly upward on either side; and,
opening a large stone box that stood in a recess, the old woman showed
them the gloves, and the helmet, and the tattered banners, which had
belonged to that Godolphin who had fought side by side with Sidney,
when he, whose life--as the noblest of British lyrists hath somewhere
said--was “poetry put into action,”(1) received his death-wound in the
field of Zutphen.

Thence they ascended by the dilapidated and crumbling staircase, to
a small room, in which the visitors were always expected to rest
themselves, and enjoy the scene in the garden below. A large chasm
yawned where the casement once was; and round this aperture the ivy
wreathed itself in fantastic luxuriance. A sort of ladder, suspended
from this chasm to the ground, afforded a convenience for those who were
tempted to a short excursion by the view without.

And the view _was_ tempting! A smooth green lawn, surrounded by shrubs
and flowers, was ornamented in the centre by a fountain. The waters
were, it is true, dried up; but the basin, and the “Triton with his
wreathed shell,” still remained. A little to the right was an old
monkish sun-dial; and through the green vista you caught the glimpse of
one of those gray, grotesque statues with which the taste of Elizabeth’s
day shamed the classic chisel.

There was something quiet and venerable about the whole place; and when
the old woman said to Constance, “Would you not like, my lady, to walk
down and look at the sun-dial and the fountain?” Constance felt she
required nothing more to yield to her inclination. Lady Erpingham,
less adventurous, remained in the ruined chamber; and the old woman,
naturally enough, honoured the elder lady with her company.

Constance, therefore, descended the rude steps alone. As she paused by
the fountain, an indescribable and delicious feeling of repose stole
over a mind that seldom experienced any sentiment so natural or so soft.
The hour, the stillness, the scene, all conspired to lull the heart into
that dreaming and half-unconscious reverie in which poets would suppose
the hermits of elder times to have wasted a life, indolent, and yet
scarcely, after all, unwise. “Methinks,” she inly soliloquised, “while
I look around, I feel as if I could give up my objects of life; renounce
my hopes; forget to be artificial and ambitious; live in these ruins,
and,” (whispered the spirit within,) “loved and loving, fulfil the
ordinary doom of woman.”

Indulging a mood, which the proud and restless Constance, who despised
love as the poorest of human weaknesses, though easily susceptible
to all other species of romance, had scarcely ever known before, she
wandered away from the lawn into one of the alleys cut amidst the grove
around. Caught by the murmur of an unseen brook, she tracked it through
the trees, as its sound grew louder and louder on her ear, till at
length it stole upon her sight. The sun, only winning through the trees
at intervals, played capriciously upon the cold and dark waters as they
glided on, and gave to her, as the same effect has done to a thousand
poets, ample matter for a simile or a moral.

She approached the brook, and came unawares upon the figure of a young
man, leaning against a stunted tree that overhung the waters, and
occupied with the idle amusement of dropping pebbles in the stream. She
saw only his profile; but that view is, in a fine countenance, almost
always the most striking and impressive, and it was eminently so in the
face before her. The stranger, who was scarcely removed from boyhood,
was dressed in deep mourning. He seemed slight, and small of stature.
A travelling cap of sables contrasted, not hid, light brown hair of
singular richness and beauty. His features were of that pure and severe
Greek of which the only fault is that in the very perfection of the
chiselling of the features there seems something hard and stern. The
complexion was pale, even to wanness; and the whole cast and contour of
the head were full of intellect, and betokening that absorption of
mind which cannot be marked in any one without exciting a certain vague
curiosity and interest.

So dark and wondrous are the workings of our nature, that there are
scarcely any of us, however light and unthinking, who would not be
arrested by the countenance of one in deep reflection--who would not
pause, and long to pierce into the mysteries that were agitating
that world, most illimitable by nature, but often most narrowed by
custom--the world within.

And this interest, powerful as it is, spelled and arrested Constance at
once. She remained for a minute gazing on the countenance of the young
stranger, and then she--the most self-possessed and stately of human
creatures--blushing deeply, and confused though unseen, turned lightly
away and stopped not on her road till she regained the old chamber and
Lady Erpingham.

The old woman was descanting upon the merits of the late Lord of
Godolphin Priory,--

“For though they called him close, and so forth, my lady, yet he was
generous to others; it was only himself he pinched. But, to be sure, the
present squire won’t take after him there.”

“Has Mr. Percy Godolphin been here lately?” asked Lady Erpingham.

“He is at the cottage now, my lady,” replied the old woman. “He came two
days ago.”

“Is he like his father?”

“Oh! not near so fine-looking a gentleman! much smaller, and quite
pale-like. He seems sickly: them foreign parts do nobody no good. He
was as fine a lad at sixteen years old as ever I seed; but now he is not
like the same thing.”

So then it was evidently Percy Godolphin whom Constance had seen by
the brook--the owner of a home without coffers, and estates without a
rent-roll--the Percy Godolphin, of whom, before he had attained the age
when others have left the college, or even the school, every one had
learned to speak--some favourably, all with eagerness. Constance felt a
vague interest respecting him spring up in her mind. She checked it, for
it was a sin in her eye to think with interest on a man neither rich
nor powerful; and as she quitted the ruins with Lady Erpingham,
she communicated to the latter her adventure. She was, however,
disingenuous; for though Godolphin’s countenance was exactly of that
cast which Constance most admired, she described him just as the
old woman had done; and Lady Erpingham figured to herself, from the
description, a little yellow man, with white hair and a turned-up nose.
O Truth! what a hard path is thine! Does any keep it for three inches
together in the commonest trifle?--and yet two sides of my library are
filled with histories!

(1) Campbell.




CHAPTER XIII.

A BALL ANNOUNCED.--GODOLPHIN’S VISTT TO WENDOVER CASTLE.--HIS MANNERS
AND CONVERSATION.

Lady Erpingham (besides her daughter, Lady Eleanor, married to Mr.
Clare, a county member, of large fortune) was blessed with one son.

The present Earl had been for the last two years abroad. He had never,
since his accession to his title, visited Wendover Castle; and Lady
Erpingham one morning experienced the delight of receiving a letter from
him, dated Dover, and signifying his intention of paying her a visit.
In honour of this event, Lady Erpingham resolved to give a grand ball.
Cards were issued to all the families in the county; and, among others,
to Mr. Godolphin.

On the third day after this invitation had been sent to the person
I have last named, as Lady Erpingham and Constance were alone in the
saloon, Mr. Percy Godolphin was announced. Constance blushed as she
looked up, and Lady Erpingham was struck by the nobleness of his
address, and the perfect self-possession of his manner. And yet nothing
could be so different as was his deportment from that which she had been
accustomed to admire--from that manifested by the exquisites of the
day. The calm, the nonchalance, the artificial smile of languor, the
evenness, so insipid, yet so irreproachable, of English manners when
considered most polished,--all this was the reverse of Godolphin’s
address and air. In short, in all he said or did there was something
foreign, something unfamiliar. He was abrupt and enthusiastic in
conversation, and used gestures in speaking. His countenance lighted up
at every word that broke from hint on the graver subjects of discussion.
You felt, indeed, with him that you were with a man of genius--a wayward
and a spoiled man, who had acquired his habits in solitude, but his
graces in the world.

They conversed about the ruins of the Priory, and Constance expressed
her admiration of their romantic and picturesque beauty. “Ah!” said he
smiling, but with a slight blush, in which Constance detected something
of pain; “I heard of your visit to my poor heaps of stone. My father
took great pleasure in the notice they attracted. When a proud man has
not riches to be proud of, he grows proud of the signs of his poverty
itself. This was the case with my poor father. Had he been rich, the
ruins would not have existed: he would have rebuilt the old mansion.
As he was poor, he valued himself on their existence, and fancied
magnificence in every handful of moss. But all life is delusion: all
pride, all vanity, all pomp, are equally deceit. Like the Spanish
hidalgo, we put on spectacles when we eat our cherries, in order that
they may seem ten times as big as they are!”

Constance smiled; and Lady Erpingham, who had more kindness than
delicacy, continued her praises of the Priory and the scenery round it.

“The old park,” said she, “with its wood and water, is so beautiful! It
wants nothing but a few deer, just tame enough to come near the ruins,
and wild enough to start away as you approach.”

“Now you would borrow an attraction from wealth,” said Godolphin,
who, unlike English persons in general, seemed to love alluding to his
poverty: “it is not for the owner of a ruined Priory to consult the
aristocratic enchantments of that costly luxury, the Picturesque. Alas!
I have not even wherewithal to feed a few solitary partridges; and I
hear, that if I go beyond the green turf, once a park, I shall be warned
off forthwith, and my very qualification disputed.”

“Are you fond of shooting?” said Lady Erpingham.

“I fancy I should be; but I have never enjoyed the sport in England.”

“Do pray come, then,” said Lady Erpingham, kindly, “and spend your first
week in September here. Let me see: the first of the month will be
next Thursday; dine with us on Wednesday. We have keepers and dogs here
enough, thanks to Robert; so you need only bring your gun.”

“You are very kind, dear Lady Erpingham,” said Godolphin warmly: “I
accept your invitation at once.”

“Your father was a very old friend of mine,” said the lady with a sigh.

“He was an old admirer,” said the gentleman, with a bow.




CHAPTER XIV.

CONVERSATION BETWEEN GODOLPHIN AND CONSTANCE.--THE COUNTRY LINE AND THE
TOWN LINE.

And Godolphin came on the appointed Wednesday. He was animated that day
even to brilliancy. Lady Erpingham thought him the most charming of men;
and even Constance forgot that he was no match for herself. Gifted and
cultivated as she was, it was not without delight that she listened to
his glowing descriptions of scenery, and to his playful yet somewhat
melancholy strain of irony upon men and their pursuits. The peculiar
features of her mind made her, indeed, like the latter more than she
could appreciate the former; for in her nature there was more bitterness
than sentiment. Still, his rich language and fluent periods, even in
description, touched her ear and fancy, though they sank not to her
heart; and she yielded insensibly to the spells she would almost have
despised in another.

The next day, Constance, who was no very early riser, tempted by the
beauty of the noon, strolled into the gardens. She was surprised to hear
Godolphin’s voice behind her: she turned round and he joined her.

“I thought you were on your shooting expedition?”

“I have been shooting, and I am returned. I was out by daybreak, and I
came back at noon in the hope of being allowed to join you in your ride
or walk.”

Constance smilingly acknowledged the compliment; and as they passed up
the straight walks of the old-fashioned and stately gardens, Godolphin
turned the conversation upon the varieties of garden scenery; upon the
poets who have described those varieties best; upon that difference
between the town life and the country, on which the brothers of the
minstrel craft have, in all ages, so glowingly insisted. In this
conversation, certain points of contrast between the characters of these
two young persons might be observed.

“I confess to you,” said Godolphin, “that I have little faith in
the permanence of any attachment professed for the country by the
inhabitants of cities. If we can occupy our minds solely with the
objects around us,--if the brook and the old tree, and the golden
sunset, and the summer night, and the animal and homely life that we
survey,--if these can fill our contemplation, and take away from us the
feverish schemes of the future,--then indeed I can fully understand
the reality of that tranquil and happy state which our elder poets have
described as incident to a country life. But if we carry with us to the
shade all the restless and perturbed desires of the city; if we only
employ present leisure in schemes for an agitated future--then it is in
vain that we affect the hermit and fly to the retreat. The moment the
novelty of green fields is over, and our projects are formed, we wish
to hurry to the city to execute them. We have, in a word, made our
retirement only a nursery for schemes now springing up, and requiring to
be transplanted.”

“You are right,” said Constance, quickly; “and who would pass life as if
it were a dream? It seems to me that we put retirement to the right use
when we make it only subservient to our aims in the world.”

“A strange doctrine for a young beauty,” thought Godolphin, “whose head
ought to be full of groves and love.” “Then,” said he aloud, “I must
rank among those who abuse the purposes of retirement; for I have
hitherto been flattered to think that I enjoy it for itself. Despite the
artificial life I have led, everything that speaks of nature has a voice
that I can rarely resist. What feelings created in a city can compare
with those that rise so gently and so unbidden within us when the trees
and the waters are our only companions--our only sources of excitement
and intoxication? Is not contemplation better than ambition?”

“Can you believe it?” said Constance, incredulously.

“I do.”

Constance smiled; and there would have been contempt in that beautiful
smile, had not Godolphin interested her in spite of herself.







CHAPTER XV.

THE FEELINGS OF CONSTANCE AND GODOLPHIN TOWARDS EACH OTHER.--THE
DISTINCTION IN THEIR CHARACTERS.--REMARKS ON THE EFFECTS PRODUCED BY THE
WORLD UPON GODOLPHIN.--THE HIDE.--RURAL DESCRIPTIONS.--OMENS.--THE FIRST
INDISTINCT CONFESSION.

Every day, at the hour in which Constance was visible, Godolphin had
loaded the keeper, and had returned to attend upon her movements. They
walked and rode together; and in the evening, Godolphin hung over her
chair, and listened to her songs; for though, as I have before said,
she had but little science in instrumental music, her voice was rich and
soft beyond the pathos of ordinary singers.

Lady Erpingham saw, with secret delight, what she believed to be a
growing attachment. She loved Constance for herself, and Godolphin for
his father’s memory. She thought again and again what a charming couple
they would make--so handsome--so gifted: and if Prudence whispered
also--so poor, the kind Countess remembered, that she herself had saved
from her ample jointure a sum which she had always designed as a dowry
for Constance, and which, should Godolphin be the bridegroom, she felt
she should have a tenfold pleasure in bestowing. With this fortune,
which would place them, at least, in independence, she united in her
kindly imagination the importance which she imagined Godolphin’s talents
must ultimately acquire; and for which, in her aristocratic estimation,
she conceived the senate the only legitimate sphere. She said, she
hinted, nothing to Constance; but she suffered nature, youth, and
companionship to exercise their sway.

And the complexion of Godolphin’s feelings for Constance Vernon did
indeed resemble love--was love itself, though rather love in its romance
than its reality. What were those of Constance for him? She knew
not herself at that time. Had she been of a character one shade less
ambitious, or less powerful, they would have been love, and love of
no common character. But within her musing, and self-possessed, and
singularly constituted mind, there was, as yet, a limit to every
sentiment, a chain to the wings of every thought, save those of one
order; and that order was not of love. There was a marked difference,
in all respects, between the characters of the two; and it was singular
enough, that that of the woman was the less romantic, and composed of
the simpler materials.

A volume of Wordsworth’s most exquisite poetry had then just appeared.
“Is not this wonderful?” said Godolphin, reciting some of those lofty,
but refining thoughts which characterise the Pastor of modern poets.

Constance shook her head.

“What! you do not admire it?”

“I do not understand it.”

“What poetry do you admire?”

“This.”

It was Pope’s translation of the Iliad.

“Yes, yes, to be sure,” said Godolphin, a little vexed; “we all admire
this in its way: but what else?”

Constance pointed to a passage in the Palamon and Arcite of Dryden.

Godolphin threw down his Wordsworth. “You take an ungenerous advantage
of me,” said he. “Tell me something you admire, which, at least, I may
have the privilege of disputing,--something that you think generally
neglected.”

“I admire few things that are generally neglected,” answered Constance,
with her bright and proud smile. “Fame gives its stamp to all metal that
is of intrinsic value.”

This answer was quite characteristic of Constance: she worshipped fame
far more than the genius which won it. “Well, then,” said Godolphin,
“let us see now if we can come to a compromise of sentiment;” and he
took up the Comus of Milton.

No one read poetry so beautifully: his voice was so deep and flexible;
and his countenance answered so well to every modulation of his voice.
Constance was touched by the reader, but not by the verse. Godolphin had
great penetration; he perceived it, and turned to the speeches of Satan
in Paradise Lost. The noble countenance before him grew luminous at
once: the lip quivered, the eye sparkled; the enthusiasm of Godolphin
was not comparable to that of Constance. The fact was, that the broad
and common emotions of the intellectual character struck upon the
right key. Courage, defiance, ambition, these she comprehended to their
fullest extent; but the rich subtleties of thought which mark the cold
and bright page of the Comus; the noble Platonism--the high and rare
love for what is abstractedly good, these were not “sonorous and
trumpet-speaking” enough for the heart of one meant by Nature for a
heroine or a queen, not a poetess or a philosopher.

But all that in literature was delicate, and half-seen, and abstruse,
had its peculiar charm for Godolphin. Of a reflective and refining
mind, he had early learned to despise the common emotions of men: glory
touched him not, and to ambition he had shut his heart. Love, with
him--even though he had been deemed, not unjustly, a man of gallantry
and pleasure--love was not compounded of the ordinary elements of the
passions. Full of dreams, and refinements, and intense abstractions, it
was a love that seemed not homely enough for endurance, and of too rare
a nature to hope for sympathy in return.

And so it was in his intercourse with Constance, both were continually
disappointed. “You do not feel this,” said Constance. “She cannot
understand me,” sighed Godolphin.

But we must not suppose--despite his refinements, and his reveries,
and his love for the intellectual and the pure--that Godolphin was of a
stainless character or mind. He was one who, naturally full of decided
and marked qualities, was, by the peculiar elements of our society,
rendered a doubtful, motley, and indistinct character, tinctured by the
frailties that leave us in a wavering state between vice and virtue.
The energies that had marked his boyhood were dulled and crippled in
the indolent life of the world. His wandering habits for the last few
years--the soft and poetical existence of the South--had fed his
natural romance, and nourished that passion for contemplation which
the intellectual man of pleasure so commonly forms; for pleasure has
a philosophy of its own--a sad, a fanciful, yet deep persuasion of the
vanity of all things--a craving after the bright ideal--

   “The desire of the moth for the star.”

Solomon’s thirst for pleasure was the companion of his wisdom: satiety
was the offspring of the one--discontent of the other. But this
philosophy, though seductive, is of no wholesome nor useful character;
it is the philosophy of feelings, not principles--of the heart, not
head. So with Godolphin: he was too refined in his moralising to cling
to what was moral. The simply good and the simply bad he left for us
plain folks to discover. He was unattracted by the doctrines of right
and wrong which serve for all men; but he had some obscure and shadowy
standard in his own mind by which he compared the actions of others.
He had imagination, genius, even heart; was brilliant always, sometimes
profound; graceful in society, yet seldom social: a lonely man, yet a
man of the world; generous to individuals, selfish to the mass. How many
fine qualities worse than thrown away!

Who will not allow that he has met many such men?--and who will not
follow this man to his end?

One day (it was the last of Godolphin’s protracted visit) as the sun
was waning to its close, and the time was unusually soft and tranquil,
Constance and Godolphin were returning slowly home from their customary
ride. They passed by a small inn, bearing the common sign of the
“Chequers,” round which a crowd of peasants were assembled, listening to
the rude music which a wandering Italian boy drew from his guitar. The
scene was rustic and picturesque; and as Godolphin reined in his
horse and gazed on the group, he little dreamed of the fierce and dark
emotions with which, at a far distant period, he was destined to revisit
that spot.

“Our peasants,” said he, as they rode on, “require some humanising
relaxation like that we have witnessed. The music and the morris-dance
have gone from England; and instead of providing, as formerly, for the
amusement of the grinded labourer, our legislators now regard with the
most watchful jealousy his most distant approach to festivity. They
cannot bear the rustic to be merry: disorder and amusement are words for
the same offence.”

“I doubt,” said the earnest Constance, “whether the legislators are
not right. For men given to amusement are easily enslaved. All noble
thoughts are grave.”

Thus talking, they passed a shallow ford in the stream. “We are not
far from the Priory,” said Godolphin, pointing to its ruins, that rose
greyly in the evening skies from the green woods around it.

Constance sighed involuntarily. She felt pain in being reminded of
the slender fortunes of her companion. Ascending the gentle hill that
swelled from the stream, she now, to turn the current of her thoughts,
pointed admiringly to the blue course of the waters, as they wound
through their shagged banks. And deep, dark, rushing, even at that still
hour, went the stream through the boughs that swept over its surface.
Here and there the banks suddenly shelved down, mingling with the waves;
then abruptly they rose, overspread with thick and tangled umbrage,
several feet above the level of the river.

“How strange it is,” said Godolphin, “that at times a feeling comes over
us, as we gaze upon certain places, which associates the scene either
with some dim-remembered and dream-like images of the Past, or with
a prophetic and fearful omen of the Future! As I gaze now upon this
spot--those banks--that whirling river--it seems as if my destiny
claimed a mysterious sympathy with the scene: when--how-wherefore--I
know not--guess not: only this shadowy and chilling sentiment
unaccountably creeps over me. Every one has known a similar strange,
indistinct, feeling at certain times and places, and with a similar
inability to trace the cause. And yet, is it not singular that in
poetry, which wears most feelings to an echo, I leave never met with any
attempt to describe it?”

“Because poetry,” said Constance, “is, after all, but a hackneyed
imitation of the most common thoughts, giving them merely a gloss by the
brilliancy of verse. And yet how little poets _know!_ They _imagine,_
and they _imitate;_--behold all their secrets!”

“Perhaps you are right,” said Godolphin, musingly; “and I, who have
often vainly fancied I had the poetical temperament, have been so
chilled and sickened by the characteristics of the tribe, that I have
checked its impulses with a sort of disdain; and thus the Ideal, having
no vent in me, preys within, creating a thousand undefined dreams and
unwilling superstitions, making me enamoured of the Shadowy and Unknown,
and dissatisfying me with the petty ambitions of the world.”

“You will awake hereafter,” said Constance, earnestly.

Godolphin shook his head, and replied not.

Their way now lay along a green lane that gradually wound round a hill
commanding a view of great richness and beauty. Cottages, and spires,
and groves, gave life--but it was scattered and remote life--to the
scene; and the broad stream, whose waves, softened in the distance, did
not seem to break the even surface of the tide, flowed onward, glowing
in the sunlight, till it was lost among dark and luxuriant woods.

Both once more arrested their horses by a common impulse, and both
became suddenly silent as they gazed. Godolphin was the first to speak:
it brought to his memory a scene in that delicious land, whose Southern
loveliness Claude has transfused to the canvas, and De Stael to the
page. With his own impassioned and earnest language, he spoke to
Constance of that scene and that country. Every tree before him
furnished matter for his illustration or his contrast; and, as she heard
that magic voice, and speaking, too, of a country dedicated to
love, Constance listened with glistening eyes, and a cheek which
he,--consummate master of the secrets of womanhood--perceived was
eloquent with thoughts which she knew not, but which _he_ interpreted to
the letter.

“And in such a spot,” said he, continuing, and fixing his deep and
animated gaze on her,--“in such a spot I could have stayed for ever but
for one recollection, one feeling--_I should have been too much alone!_
In a wild or a grand, or even a barren country, we may live in solitude,
and find fit food for thought; but not in one so soft, so subduing, as
that which I saw and see. Love comes over us then in spite of ourselves;
and I feel--I feel now”--his voice trembled as he spoke--“that any
secret we may before have nursed, though hitherto unacknowledged, makes
itself at length a voice. We are oppressed with the desire to be loved;
we long for the courage to say we love.”

Never before had Godolphin, though constantly verging into sentiment,
spoken to Constance in so plain a language. Eye, voice, cheek--all
spoke. She felt that he had confessed he loved her! And was she not
happy at that thought? She was: it was her happiest moment. But, in that
sort of vague and indistinct shrinking from the subject with which a
woman who loves hears a disclosure of love from him on whose lips it is
most sweet, she muttered some confused attempt to change the subject,
and quickened her horse’s pace. Godolphin did not renew the topic so
interesting and so dangerous, only, as with the winding of the road the
landscape gradually faded from their view, he said, in a low voice, as
if to himself,--“How long, how fondly, shall I remember this day!”




CHAPTER XVI.

GODOLPHIN’S RETURN HOME.--HIS SOLILOQUY.--LORD ERPINGHAM’S ARRIVAL AT
WENDOVER CASTLE.--THE EARL DESCRIBED.--HIS ACCOUNT OF GODOLPHIN’S LIFE
AT ROME.

With a listless step, Godolphin re-entered the threshold of his
cottage-home. He passed into a small chamber, which was yet the largest
in his house. The poor and scanty furniture scattered around; the
old, tuneless, broken harpsichord; the worn and tattered carpet; the
tenantless birdcage in the recess by the window; the bookshelves,
containing some dozens of worthless volumes; the sofa of the last
century (when, if people knew comfort, they placed it not in lounging)
small, narrow, highbacked, hard, and knotted; these, just as his
father had left, just as his boyhood had seen, them, greeted him with
a comfortless and chill, though familiar welcome. It was evening:
he ordered a fire and lights; and leaning his face on his hand as he
contemplated the fitful and dusky outbreakings of the flame through the
bars of the niggard and contracted grate, he sat himself down to hold
commune with his heart.

“So, I love this woman,” said he, “do I? Have I not deceived myself? She
is poor--no connection; she has nothing whereby to reinstate my house’s
fortunes, to rebuild this mansion, or repurchase yonder demesnes. I love
her! _I_ who have known the value of her sex so well, that I have said,
again and again, I would not shackle life with a princess! Love may
withstand possession--true--but not time. In three years there would be
no glory in the face of Constance, and I should be--what? My fortunes,
broken as they are, can support me alone, and with my few wants. But if
married! the haughty Constance my wife! Nay, nay, nay! this must not
be thought of! I, the hero of Paris! the pupil of Saville! I, to be so
beguiled as even to _dream_ of such a madness!

“Yet I have that within me that might make a stir in the world--I might
rise. Professions are open; the Diplomacy, the House of Commons. What!
Percy Godolphin be ass enough to grow ambitious! to toil, to fret, to
slave, to answer fools on a first principle, and die at length of a
broken heart for a lost place! Pooh, pooh! I, who despise your prime
ministers, can scarcely stoop to their apprenticeship. Life is too
short for toil. And what do men strive for?--to enjoy: but why not enjoy
without the toil? And relinquish Constance? Ay, it is but one woman
lost!”

So ended the soliloquy of a man scarcely of age. The world teaches us
its last lessons betimes; but then, lest we should have nothing left to
acquire from its wisdom, it employs the rest of our life in unlearning
all that it first taught.

Meanwhile, the time approached when Lord Erpingham was to arrive at
Wendover Castle; and at length came the day itself. Naturally anxious to
enjoy as exclusively as possible the company of her son the first day of
his return from so long an absence, Lady Erpingham had asked no one
to meet him. The earl’s heavy travelling-carriage at length rolled
clattering up the court-yard; and in a few minutes a tall man, in the
prime of life, and borrowing some favourable effect as to person from
the large cloak of velvet and furs which hung round him, entered the
room, and Lady Erpingham embraced her son. The kind and familiar manner
with which he answered her inquiries and congratulations was somewhat
changed when he suddenly perceived Constance. Lord Erpingham was a cold
man, and, like most cold men, ashamed of the evidence of affection. He
greeted Constance very quietly; and, as she thought, slightly: but his
eyes turned to her far more often than any friend of Lord Erpingham’s
might ever have remarked those large round hazel eyes turn to any one
before.

When the earl withdrew to adjust his toilet for dinner, Lady Erpingham,
as she wiped her eyes, could not help exclaiming to Constance, “Is he
not handsome? What a figure!”

Constance was a little addicted to flattery where she liked the one who
was to be flattered, and she assented readily enough to the maternal
remark. Hitherto, however, she had not observed anything more in Lord
Erpingham than his height and his cloak: as he re-entered and led her to
the dining-room she took a better, though still but a casual, survey.

Lord Erpingham was that sort of person of whom _men_ always say, “What
a prodigiously fine fellow!” He was above six feet high, stout in
proportion: not, indeed, accurately formed, nor graceful in bearing,
but quite as much so as a man of six feet high need be. He had a manly
complexion of brown, yellow, and red. His whiskers were exceedingly
large, black, and well arranged. His eyes, as I have before said, were
round, large, and hazel; they were also unmeaning. His teeth were good;
and his nose, neither aquiline nor Grecian, was yet a very showy nose
upon the whole. All the maidservants admired him; and you felt, in
looking at him, that it was a pity our army should lose so good a
grenadier.

Lord Erpingham was a Whig of the old school: he thought the Tory
boroughs ought to be thrown open. He was generally considered a sensible
man. He had read Blackstone, Montesquieu, Cowper’s Poems, and _The
Rambler_; and he was always heard with great attention in the House of
Lords. In his moral character he was a bon Vivant, as far as wine is
concerned; for choice _eating_ he cared nothing. He was good-natured,
but close; brave enough to fight a duel, if necessary; and religious
enough to go to church once a week--in the country.

So far Lord Erpingham might seem modelled from one of Sir Walter’s
heroes: we must reverse the medal, and show the points in which he
differed from those patterns of propriety.

Like the generality of his class, he was peculiarly loose in his notions
of women, though not ardent in pursuit of them. His amours had been
among opera-dancers, “because,” as he was wont to say, “there was
no d--d bore with _them._” Lord Erpingham was always considered a
high-minded man. People chose him as an umpire in quarrels; and told a
story (which was not true) of his having held some state office for a
whole year, and insisted on returning the emoluments.

Such was Robert Earl of Erpingham. During dinner, at which he displayed,
to his mother’s great delight, a most excellent appetite, he listened,
as well as he might, considering the more legitimate occupation of the
time and season, to Lady Erpingham’s recitals of county history; her
long answers to his brief inquiries whether old friends were dead and
young ones married; and his countenance brightened up to an expression
of interest--almost of intelligence--when he was told that birds were
said to be plentiful. As the servants left the room, and Lord Erpingham
took his first glass of claret, the conversation fell upon Percy
Godolphin.

“He has been staying with us a whole fortnight,” said Lady Erpingham;
“and, by the by, he said he had met you in Italy, and mentioned your
name as it deserved.”

“Indeed! And did he really condescend to praise me?” said Lord
Erpingham, with eagerness; for there was that about Godolphin, and his
reputation for fastidiousness, which gave a rarity and a value to his
praise, at least to lordly ears. “Ah! he’s a queer fellow; he led a very
singular life in Italy.”

“So I have always heard,” said Lady Erpingham. “But of what description?
was he very wild?”

“No, not exactly: there was a good deal of mystery about him: he saw
very few English, and those were chiefly men who played high. He was
said to have a great deal of learning and so forth.”

“Oh! then he was surrounded, I suppose, by those medalists and
picture-sellers, and other impostors, who live upon such of our
countrymen as think themselves blessed with a taste or afflicted with
a genius,” said Lady Erpingham; who, having lived with the wits and
orators of the time, had caught mechanically their way of rounding a
period.

“Far from it!” returned the earl. “Godolphin is much too deep a fellow
for that; he’s not easily taken in, I assure you. I confess I don’t like
him the worse for that,” added the close noble. “But he lived with the
Italian doctors and men of science; and encouraged, in particular, one
strange fellow who affected sorcery, I fancy, or something very like
it. Godolphin resided in a very lonely spot at Rome: and I believe
laboratories, and caldrons, and all sorts of devilish things, were
always at work there--at least so people said.”

“And yet,” said Constance, “you thought him too sensible to be easily
taken in?”

“Indeed I do, Miss Vernon; and the proof of it is, that no man has less
fortune or is made more of. He plays, it is true, but only occasionally;
though as a player at games of skill--piquet, billiards, whist,--he
has no equal, unless it be Saville. But then Saville, entre noun, is
suspected of playing unfairly.”

“And you are quite sure,” said the placid Lady Erpingham, “that Mr.
Godolphin is only indebted to skill for his success?”

Constance darted a glance of fire at the speaker.

“Why, faith, I believe so! No one ever accused him of a single shabby,
or even suspicious trick; and indeed, as I said before, no one was ever
more sought after in society, though he shuns it; and he’s devilish
right, for it’s a cursed bore!”

“My dear Robert! at your age!” exclaimed the mother. “But,” continued
the earl, turning to Constance,--“but, Miss Vernon, a man may have his
weak point; and the cunning Italian may have hit on Godolphin’s, clever
as he is in general; though, for my part, I will tell you frankly, I
think he only encouraged him to mystify and perplex people, just to
get talked of--vanity, in short. He’s a good-looking fellow that
Godolphin--eh?” continued the earl, in the tone of a man who meant you
to deny what he asserted.

“Oh, beautiful!” said Lady Erpingham. “Such a countenance!”

“Deuced pale, though!--eh?--and not the best of figures: thin,
narrow-shouldered, eh--eh?”

Godolphin’s proportions were faultless; but your strapping heroes think
of a moderate-sized man as mathematicians define a point--declare that
he has no length nor breadth whatsoever.

“What say _you,_ Constance?” asked Lady Erpingham, meaningly.

Constance felt the meaning, and replied calmly, that Mr. Godolphin
appeared to her handsomer than any one she had seen lately.

Lord Erpingham played with his neckcloth, and Lady Erpingham rose to
leave the room. “D--d fine girl!” said the earl, as he shut the door
upon Constance;--“but d--d sharp!” added he, as he resettled himself on
his chair.




CHAPTER XVII.

CONSTANCE AT HER TOILET.--HER FEELINGS.--HER CHARACTER OF BEAUTY
DESCRIBED.--THE BALL.--THE DUCHESS OF WINSTOUN AND HER DAUGHTER.--AN
INDUCTION FROM THE NATURE OF FEMALE RIVALRIES.--JEALOUSY IN A
LOVER.--IMPERTINENCE RETORTED.--LISTENERS NEVER HEAR GOOD OF
THEMSELVES.--REMARKS ON THE AMUSEMENTS OF A PUBLIC ASSEMBLY.--THE
SUPPER.--THE FALSENESS OF SEEMING GAIETY.--VARIOUS REFLECTIONS, NEW AND
TRUE.--WHAT PASSES BETWEEN GODOLPHIN AND CONSTANCE.

It was the evening of the ball to be given in honour of Lord
Erpingham’s arrival. Constance, dressed for conquest, sat alone in her
dressing-room. Her woman had just left her. The lights still burned in
profusion about the antique chamber (antique, for it was situated in the
oldest part of the castle); those lights streamed full upon the broad
brow and exquisite features of Miss Vernon. As she leaned back in her
chair--the fairy foot upon the low Gothic stool, and the hands drooping
beside her despondingly--her countenance betrayed much, but not serene,
thought; and, mixed with that thought, was something of irresolution and
of great and real sadness.

It is not, as I have before hinted, to be supposed that Constance’s
lot had been hitherto a proud one, even though she was the most admired
beauty of her day; even though she lived with, and received adulation
from, the high, and noble, and haughty of her land. Often, in the
glittering crowd that she attracted around her, her ear, sharpened by
the jealousy and pride of her nature, caught words that dashed the
cup of pleasure and of vanity with shame and anger. “What! that _the_
Vernon’s daughter? Poor girl! dependent entirely on Lady Erpingham! Ah!
she’ll take in some rich roturier, I hope.”

Such words from ill-tempered dowagers and faded beauties were no
unfrequent interruption to her brief-lived and wearisome triumphs. She
heard manoeuvring mothers caution their booby sons, whom Constance would
have looked into the dust had they dared but to touch her hand, against
her untitled and undowried charms. She saw cautious earls, who were all
courtesy one night, all coldness another, as some report had reached
them accusing their hearts of feeling too deeply her attractions, or,
as they themselves suspected, for the first time, that a heart was not
a word for a poetical nothing, and that to look on so beautiful and
glorious a creature was sufficient to convince them, even yet, of the
possibility of emotion. She had felt to the quick the condescending
patronage of duchesses and chaperons; the oblique hint; the nice and
fine distinction which, in polished circles, divides each grade from
the other, and allows you to be galled without the pleasure of feeling
justified in offence.

All this, which, in the flush and heyday of youth, and gaiety, and
loveliness, would have been unnoticed by other women, rankled deep
in the mind of Constance Vernon. The image of her dying father, his
complaints, his accusations (the justice of which she never for an
instant questioned), rose up before her in the brightest hours of the
dance and the revel. She was not one of those women whose meek and
gentle nature would fly what wounds them: Constance had resolved
to conquer. Despising glitter and gaiety, and show, she burned, she
thirsted for power--a power which could retaliate the insults she
fancied she had received, and should turn condescension into homage.
This object, which every casual word, every heedless glance from
another, fixed deeper and deeper in her heart, took a sort of sanctity
from the associations with which she linked it--her father’s memory and
his dying breath.

At this moment in which we have portrayed her, all these restless, and
sore, and haughty feelings were busy within; but they were combated,
even while the more fiercely aroused, by one soft and tender
thought--the image of Godolphin--of Godolphin, the spendthrift heir of
a broken fortune and a fallen house. She felt too deeply that she loved
him; and, ignorant of his worldlier qualities, imagined that he loved
her with all the devotion of that romance, and the ardour of that
genius, which appeared to her to compose his character. But this
persuasion gave her now no delightful emotion. Convinced that she ought
to reject him, his image only coloured with sadness those objects and
that ambition which she had hitherto regarded with an exulting pride.
She was not less bent on the lofty ends of her destiny; but the glory
and the illusion had fallen from them. She had taken an insight into
futurity, and felt, that to enjoy power was to lose happiness. Yet, with
this full conviction, she forsook the happiness and clung to the power.
Alas! for our best and wisest theories, our problems, our systems, our
philosophy! Human beings will never cease to mistake the means for the
end; and, despite the dogmas of sages, our conduct does not depend on
our convictions.

Carriage after carriage had rolled beneath the windows of the room
where Constance sat, and still she moved not; until at length a certain
composure, as if the result of some determination, stole over her
features. The brilliant and transparent hues returned to her cheek, and,
as she rose and stood erect with a certain calmness and energy on her
lip and forehead, perhaps her beauty had never seemed of so lofty and
august a cast. In passing through the chamber, she stopped for a moment
opposite the mirror that reflected her stately shape in its full height.
Beauty is so truly the weapon of woman, that it is as impossible for
her, even in grief, wholly to forget its effect, as it is for the flying
warrior to look with indifference on the sword with which he has won
his trophies or his fame. Nor was Constance that evening disposed to
be indifferent to the effect she should produce. She looked on the
reflection of herself with a feeling of triumph, not arising from vanity
alone.

And when did mirror ever give back a form more worthy of a Pericles
to worship, or an Apelles to paint? Though but little removed from the
common height, the impression Constance always gave was that of a person
much taller than she really was. A certain majesty in the turn of
the head, the fall of the shoulders, the breadth of the brow, and the
exceeding calmness of the features, invested her with an air which I
have never seen equalled by any one, but which, had Pasta been a beauty,
she might have possessed. But there was nothing hard or harsh in
this majesty. Whatsoever of a masculine nature Constance might have
inherited, nothing masculine, nothing not exquisitely feminine, was
visible in her person. Her shape was rounded, and sufficiently full to
show, that in middle age its beauty would be preserved by that richness
and freshness which a moderate increase of the proportions always gives
to the sex. Her arms and hands were, and are, even to this day, of a
beauty the more striking, because it is so rare. Nothing in any European
country is more uncommon than an arm really beautiful both in hue and
shape. In any assembly we go to, what miserable bones, what angular
elbows, what red skins, do we see under the cover of those capacious
sleeves, which are only one whit less ugly. At the time I speak of,
those coverings were not worn; and the white, round, dazzling arm of
Constance, bare almost to the shoulder, was girded by dazzling gems,
which at once set off, and were foiled by, the beauty of nature. Her
hair was of the most luxuriant, and of the deepest, black; and it was
worn in a fashion--then uncommon, without being bizarre--now hackneyed
by the plainest faces, though suiting only the highest order of
beauty--I mean that simple and classic fashion to which the French
have given a name borrowed from Calypso, but which appears to me suited
rather to an intellectual than a voluptuous goddess. Her long lashes,
and a brow delicately but darkly pencilled, gave additional eloquence
to an eye of the deepest blue, and a classic contour to a profile
so slightly aquiline, that it was commonly considered Grecian. That
necessary completion to all real beauty of either sex, the short and
curved upper lip, terminated in the most dazzling teeth and the ripe
and dewy under lip added to what was noble in her beauty that charm also
which is exclusively feminine. Her complexion was capricious; now pale,
now tinged with the pink of the sea-shell, or the softest shade of the
rose leaf: but in either it was so transparent, that you doubted which
became her the most. To these attractions, add a throat, a bust of the
most dazzling whiteness, and the justest proportions; a foot, whose
least beauty was its smallness, and a waist narrow--not the narrowness
of tenuity or constraint;--but round, gradual, insensibly less in its
compression:--and the person of Constance Vernon, in the bloom of her
youth, is before you.

She passed with her quiet and stately step from her room, through one
adjoining it, and which we stop to notice, because it was her customary
sitting-room when not with Lady Erpingham. There had Godolphin, with the
foreign but courtly freedom, the respectful and chivalric ease of his
manners, often sought her; there had he lingered in order to detain her
yet a moment and a moment longer from other company, seeking a sweet
excuse in some remark on the books that strewed the tables, or the music
in that recess, or the forest scene from those windows through which
the moon of autumn now stole with its own peculiar power to soften and
subdue. As these recollections came across her, her step faltered and
her colour faded from its glow: she paused a moment, cast a mournful
glance round the room, and then tore herself away, descended the lofty
staircase, passed the stone hall, melancholy with old banners and rusted
crests, and bore her beauty and her busy heart into the thickening and
gay crowd.

Her eye looked once more round for the graceful form of Godolphin:
but he was not visible; and she had scarcely satisfied herself of this
before Lord Erpingham, the hero of the evening, approached and claimed
her hand.

“I have just performed my duty,” said he, with a gallantry of speech not
common to him, “now for my reward. I have danced the first dance with
Lady Margaret Midgecombe: I come, according to your promise, to dance
the second with you.”

There was something in these words that stung one of the morbid
remembrances in Miss Vernon’s mind. Lady Margaret Midgecombe, in
ordinary life, would have been thought a good-looking, vulgar girl:--she
was a Duke’s daughter and she was termed a Hebe. Her little nose, and
her fresh colour, and her silly but not unmalicious laugh, were called
enchanting; and all irregularities of feature and faults of shape were
absolutely turned into merits by that odd commendation, so common with
us--“A deuced fine girl; none of your regular beauties.”

Not only in the county of ----shire, but in London, had Lady Margaret
Midgecombe been set up as the rival beauty of Constance Vernon. And
Constance, far too lovely, too cold, too proud, not to acknowledge
beauty in others, where it really existed, was nevertheless unaffectedly
indignant at a comparison so unworthy; she even, at times, despised her
own claims to admiration, since claims so immeasurably inferior could
be put into competition with them. Added to this sore feeling for Lady
Margaret, was one created by Lady Margaret’s mother. The Duchess of
Winstoun was a woman of ordinary birth--the daughter of a peer of
great wealth but new family. She had married, however, one of the most
powerful dukes in the peerage;--a stupid, heavy, pompous man, with four
castles, eight parks, a coal-mine, a tin-mine, six boroughs, and about
thirty livings. Inactive and reserved, the duke was seldom seen in
public: the care of supporting his rank devolved on the duchess; and
she supported it with as much solemnity of purpose as if she had been
a cheesemonger’s daughter. Stately, insolent, and coarse; asked
everywhere; insulting all; hated and courted; such was the Duchess of
Winstoun, and such, perhaps, have been other duchesses before her.

Be it understood that, at that day, Fashion had not risen to the
despotism it now enjoys: it took its colouring from Power, not
controlled it. I shall show, indeed, how much of its present condition
that Fashion owes to the Heroine of these Memoirs. The Duchess of
Winstoun could not now be that great person she was then: there is
a certain good taste in Fashion which repels the mere insolence of
flank--which requires persons to be either agreeable, or brilliant, or
at least original--which weighs stupid dukes in a righteous balance and
finds vulgar duchesses wanting. But in lack of this new authority this
moral sebastocrator between the Sovereign and the dignity hitherto
considered next to the Sovereign’s--her Grace of Winstoun exercised with
impunity the rights of insolence. She had taken an especial dislike
to Constance:--partly because the few good judges of beauty, who care
neither for rank nor report, had very unreservedly placed Miss Vernon
beyond the reach of all competition with her daughter; and principally,
because the high spirit and keen irony of Constance had given more than
once to the duchess’s effrontery so cutting and so public a check, that
she had felt with astonishment and rage there was one woman in that
world--that woman too unmarried--who could retort the rudeness of the
Duchess of Winstoun. Spiteful, however, and numerous were the things
she said of Miss Vernon, when Miss Vernon was absent; and haughty beyond
measure were the inclination of her head and the tone of her voice when
Miss Vernon was present. If, therefore, Constance was disliked by the
duchess, we may readily believe that she returned the dislike. The very
name roused her spleen and her pride; and it was with a feeling all a
woman’s, though scarcely feminine in the amiable sense of the word, that
she learned to whom the honour of Lord Erpingham’s precedence had been
(though necessarily) given.

As Lord Erpingham led her to her place, a buzz of admiration and
enthusiasm followed her steps. This pleased Erpingham more than, at
that moment, it did Constance. Already intoxicated by her beauty, he
was proud of the effect it produced on others, for that effect was a
compliment to his taste. He exerted himself to be agreeable; nay, more,
to be fascinating: he affected a low voice; and he attempted--poor
man!--to flatter.

The Duchess of Winstoun and her daughter sat behind on an elevated
bench. They saw with especial advantage the attentions with which one
of the greatest of England’s earls honoured the daughter of one of the
greatest of England’s orators. They were shocked at his want of dignity.
Constance perceived their chagrin, and she lent a more pleased and
attentive notice to Lord Erpingham’s compliments: her eyes sparkled and
her cheek blushed: and the good folks around, admiring Lord Erpingham’s
immense whiskers, thought Constance in love.

It was just at this time that Percy Godolphin entered the room.

Although Godolphin’s person was not of a showy order, there was
something about him that always arrested attention. His air; his
carriage; his long fair locks; his rich and foreign habits of dress,
which his high bearing and intellectual countenance redeemed from
coxcombry; all, united, gave something remarkable and distinguished to
his appearance; and the interest attached to his fortunes, and to
his social reputation for genius and eccentricity, could not fail of
increasing the effect he produced when his name was known.

From the throng of idlers that gathered around him; from the bows of the
great and the smiles of the fair; Godolphin, however, directed his whole
notice--his whole soul--to the spot which was hallowed by Constance
Vernon. He saw her engaged with a man rich, powerful, and handsome.
He saw that she listened to her partner with evident interest--that he
addressed her with evident admiration. His heart sank within him; he
felt faint and sick; then came anger--mortification; then agony and
despair. All his former resolutions--all his prudence, his worldliness,
his caution, vanished at once; he felt only that he loved, that he was
supplanted, that he was undone. The dark and fierce passions of his
youth, of a nature in reality wild and vehement, swept away at once the
projects and the fabrics of that shallow and chill philosophy he had
borrowed from the world, and deemed the wisdom of the closet. A cottage
and a desert with Constance--Constance all his--heart and hand--would
have been Paradise: he would have nursed no other ambition, nor dreamed
of a reward beyond. Such effect has jealousy upon us. We confide, and we
hesitate to accept a boon: we are jealous, and we would lay down life to
attain it.

“What a handsome fellow Erpingham is!” said a young man in a cavalry
regiment.

Godolphin heard and groaned audibly.

“And what a devilish handsome girl he is dancing with!” said another
young man, from Oxford.

“Oh, Miss Vernon!--By Jove, Erpingham seems smitten. What a capital
thing it would be for her!”

“And for him, too!” cried the more chivalrous Oxonian.

“Humph!” said the officer.

“I heard,” renewed the Oxonian, “that she was to be married to young
Godolphin. He was staying here a short time ago. They rode and walked
together. What a lucky fellow he has been. I don’t know any one I should
so much like to see.”

“Hush!” said a third person, looking at Godolphin.

Percy moved on. Accomplished and self-collected as he usually was, he
could not wholly conceal the hell within. His brow grew knit and gloomy:
he scarcely returned the salutations he received; and moving out of the
crowd, he stole to a seat behind a large pillar, and, scarcely seen by
any one, fixed his eyes on the form and movements of Miss Vernon.

It so happened that he had placed himself in the vicinity of the Duchess
of Winstoun, and within hearing of the conversation that I am about to
record.

The dance being over, Lord Erpingham led Constance to a seat close by
Lady Margaret Midgecombe. The duchess had formed her plan of attack;
and, rising as she saw Constance within reach, approached her with an
air that affected civility.

“How do you do, Miss Vernon? I am happy to see you looking so well. What
truth in the report, eh?” And the duchess showed her teeth--videlicet,
smiled.

“What report does your grace allude to?”

“Nay, nay; I am sure Lord Erpingham has heard it as well as myself; and
I wish for your sake (a slight emphasis), indeed, for both your sakes,
that it may be true.”

“To wait till the Duchess of Winstoun speaks intelligibly would be a
waste of her time and my own,” said the haughty Constance, with the
rudeness in which she then delighted, and for which she has since become
known. But the duchess was not to be offended until she had completed
her manoeuvre.

“Well, now,” said she, turning to Lord Erpingham, “I appeal to you;
is not Miss Vernon to be married very soon to Mr. Godolphin? I am sure
(with an affected good-nature and compassion that stung Constance to the
quick), I am sure I _hope_ so.”

“Upon my word you amaze me,” said Lord Erpingham, opening to their
fullest extent the large, round, hazel eyes for which he was so justly
celebrated. “I never heard this before.”

“Oh! a secret as yet?” said the duchess; “very well! I can keep a
secret.”

Lady Margaret looked down, and laughed prettily.

“I thought till now,” said Constance, with grave composure, “that no
person could be more contemptible than one who collects idle reports: I
now find I was wrong: a person infinitely more contemptible is one who
invents them.”

The rude duchess beat at her own weapons, blushed with anger even
through her rouge: but Constance turned away, and, still leaning on Lord
Erpingham’s arm, sought another seat;--that seat, on the opposite side
of the pillar behind which Godolphin sat, was still within his hearing.

“Upon my word, Miss Vernon,” said Erpingham, “I admire your spirit.
Nothing like setting down those absurd people who try to tease one, and
think one dares not retort. But pray--I hope I’m not impertinent--pray,
may I ask if this rumour have any truth in it?”

“Certainly not,” said Constance, with great effort, but in a clear tone.

“No: I should have thought not--I should have thought not. Godolphin’s
much too poor--much too poor for you. Miss Vernon is not born to marry
for love in a cottage,--is she?”

Constance sighed.

That soft, low tone thrilled to Godolphin’s very heart. He bent forward:
he held his breath: he thirsted for her voice; for some tone, some word
in answer; it came not at that moment.

“You remember,” renewed the earl,--“you remember Miss L----? no: she was
before your time. Well! she married S----, much such another fellow
as Godolphin. He had not a shilling: but he lived well: had a house
in Mayfair; gave dinners; hunted at Melton, and so forth: in short, he
played high. She had about ten thousand pounds. They married, and lived
for two years so comfortably, you have no idea. Every one envied them.
They did not keep a close carriage, but he used to drive her out
to dinners in his French cabriolet.(1) There was no show--no pomp:
everything deuced neat, though; quite love in a cottage--only the
cottage was in Curzon Street. At length, however, the cards turned;
S---- lost everything; owed more than he could ever pay: we were forced
to cut him; and his relation, Lord ----, coming into the ministry a year
afterwards, got him a place in the Customs. They live at Brompton: he
wears a pepper-and-salt coat, and she a mob-cap, with pink ribands: they
have five hundred a year, and ten children. Such was the fate of S----‘s
wife; such may be the fate of Godolphin’s. Oh, Miss Vernon could not
marry _him!_”

“You are right, Lord Erpingham,” said Constance with emphasis; “but you
take too much licence in expressing your opinion.”

Before Lord Erpingham could stammer forth his apology they heard a
slight noise behind: they turned; Godolphin had risen. His countenance,
always inclined to a calm severity--for thought is usually severe in its
outward aspect--bent now on both the speakers with so dark and menacing
an aspect that the stout earl felt his heart stand still for a moment;
and Constance was appalled as if it had been the apparition, and not the
living form, of her lover that she beheld. But scarcely had they seen
this expression of countenance ere it changed. With a cold and polished
smile, a relaxed brow and profound inclination of his form Godolphin
greeted the two: and passing from his seat with a slow step glided among
the crowd and vanished.

What a strange thing, after all, is a great assembly! An immense mob
of persons, who feel for each other the profoundest indifference--met
together to join in amusements which the large majority of them consider
wearisome beyond conception. How unintellectual, how uncivilised, such
a scene, and such actors! What a remnant of barbarous times, when people
danced because they had nothing to say! Were there nothing ridiculous in
dancing, there would be nothing ridiculous in seeing wise men dance. But
that sight would be ludicrous because of the disparity between the
mind and the occupation. However, we have some excuse; we go to these
assemblies to sell our daughters, or flirt with our neighbours’ wives.
A ballroom is nothing more or less than a great market-place of beauty.
For my part, were I a buyer, I should like making my purchases in a less
public mart.

“Come, Godolphin, a glass of champagne,” cried the young Lord Belvoir,
as they sat near each other at the splendid supper.

“With all my heart; but not from that bottle! We must have a new one;
for this glass is pledged to Lady Delmour, and I would not drink to
her health but from the first sparkle! Nothing tame, nothing insipid,
nothing that has lost its first freshness, can be dedicated to one so
beautiful and young.”

The fresh bottle was opened, and Godolphin bowed over his glass to Lord
Belvoir’s sister--a Beauty and a Blue. Lady Delmour admired Godolphin,
and she was flattered by a compliment that no one wholly educated in
England would have had the gallant courage to utter across a crowded
table.

“You have been dancing?” said she.

“No!”

“What then?”

“What then?” said Godolphin. “Ah, Lady Delmour, do not ask.” The look
that accompanied the word, supplied them with a meaning. “Need I add,”
 said he, in a lower voice, “that I have been thinking of the most
beautiful person present?”

“Pooh,” said Lady Delmour, turning away her head. Now, that _pooh_ is
a very significant word. On the lips of a man of business, it denotes
contempt for romance; on the lips of a politician it rebukes a theory.
With that monosyllable, a philosopher massacres a fallacy: by those
four letters a rich man gets rid of a beggar. But in the rosy mouth of a
woman the harshness vanishes, the disdain becomes encouragement. “Pooh!”
 says the lady when you tell her she is handsome; but she smiles when she
says it. With the same reply she receives your protestation of love,
and blushes as she receives. With men it is the sternest, with women the
softest, exclamation in the language.

“Pooh!” said Lady Delmour, turning away her head:--and Godolphin was in
singular spirits. What a strange thing that we should call such hilarity
from our gloom! The stroke induces the flash; excite the nerves by
jealousy, by despair, and with the proud you only trace the excitement
by the mad mirth and hysterical laughter it creates. Godolphin was
charming comme un amour, and the young countess was delighted with his
gallantry.

“Did you ever love?” asked she, tenderly, as they sat alone after
supper.

“Alas, yes!” said he.

“How often?”

“Read Marmontel’s story of the Four Phials: I have no other answer.”

“Oh, what a beautiful tale that is! The whole history of a man’s heart
is contained in it.”

While Godolphin was thus talking with Lady Delmour, his whole soul
was with Constance; of her only he thought, and on her he thirsted for
revenge. There is a curious phenomenon in love, showing how much vanity
has to do with even the best species of it; when, for your mistress to
prefer another, changes all your affection into hatred:--is it the loss
of the mistress, or her preference to the other? The last, to be sure:
for if the former, you would only grieve--but jealousy does not make you
grieve, it makes you enraged; it does not sadden, it stings. After all,
as we grow old, and look back on the “master passion,” how we smile
at the fools it made of us--at the importance we attach to it--of the
millions that have been governed by it! When we examine the passion
of love, it is like examining the character of some great roan; we are
astonished to perceive the littlenesses that belong to it. We ask in
wonder, “How come such effects from such a cause?”

Godolphin continued talking sentiment with Lady Delmour, until her lord,
who was very fond of his carriage horses, came up and took her away; and
then, perhaps glad to be relieved, Percy sauntered into the ballroom,
where, though the crowd was somewhat thinned, the dance was continued
with that spirit which always seems to increase as the night advances.

For my own part, I now and then look late in at a ball as a warning and
grave memento of the flight of time. No amusement belongs of right so
essentially to the young, in their first youth,--to the unthinking, the
intoxicated,--to those whose blood is an elixir.

“If Constance be woman,” said Godolphin to himself, as he returned to
the ballroom, “I will yet humble her to my will. I have not learned the
science so long, to be now foiled in the first moment I have seriously
wished to triumph.”

As this thought inspired and excited him, he moved along at some
distance from, but carefully within the sight of Constance. He paused
by Lady Margaret Midgecombe. He addressed her. Notwithstanding the
insolence and the ignorance of the Duchess of Winstoun, he was well
received by both mother and daughter. Some persons there are, in all
times and in all spheres, who command a certain respect, bought neither
by riches, rank, nor even scrupulous morality of conduct. They win it
by the reputation that talent alone can win them, and which yet is not
always the reputation of talent. No man, even in the frivolous societies
of the great, obtains homage without certain qualities, which, had
they been happily directed, would have conducted him to fame. Had the
attention of a Grammont, or of a ----, been early turned towards what
ought to be the objects desired, who can doubt that, instead of the
heroes of a circle, they might have been worthy of becoming names of
posterity?

Thus the genius of Godolphin had drawn around him an eclat which made
even the haughtiest willing to receive and to repay his notice; and Lady
Margaret actually blushed with pleasure when he asked her to dance.
A foreign dance, then only very partially known in England, had been
called for: few were acquainted with it,--those only who had been
abroad; and as the movements seemed to require peculiar grace of person,
some even among those few declined, through modesty, the exhibition.

To this dance Godolphin led Lady Margaret. All crowded round to see the
performers; and, as each went through the giddy and intoxicating
maze, they made remarks on the awkwardness or the singularity, or the
impropriety of the dance. But when Godolphin began, the murmurs changed.
The slow and stately measure then adapted to the steps, was one in which
the graceful symmetry of his person might eminently display itself. Lady
Margaret was at least as well acquainted with the dance: and the couple
altogether so immeasurably excelled all competitors, that the rest,
as if sensible of it, stopped one after the other; and when Godolphin,
perceiving that they were alone, stopped also, the spectators made
their approbation more audible than approbation usually is in polished
society.

As Godolphin paused, his eyes met those of Constance. There was not
there the expression he had anticipated there was neither the anger of
jealousy, nor the restlessness of offended vanity, nor the desire
of conciliation, visible in those large and speaking orbs. A deep, a
penetrating, a sad inquiry seemed to dwell in her gaze,--seemed anxious
to pierce into his heart, and to discover whether there she possessed
the power to wound, or whether each had been deceived: so at least
seemed that fixed and melancholy intenseness of look to Godolphin.
He left Lady Margaret abruptly: in an instant he was by the side of
Constance.

“You must be delighted with this evening,” said he, bitterly: “wherever
I go I hear your praises: every one admires you; and he who does not
admire so much as worship you, _he_ alone is beneath your notice.
He--born to such shattered fortunes,--he indeed might never _aspire_ to
that which titled and wealthy idiots deem they may _command,_--the hand
of Constance Vernon.”

It was with a low and calm tone that Godolphin spoke. Constance turned
deadly pale: her frame trembled; but she did not answer immediately. She
moved to a seat retired a little from the busy crowd; Godolphin followed
and sat himself beside her; and then, with a slight effort, Constance
spoke.

“You heard what was said, Mr. Godolphin, and I grieve to think you
did. If I offended you, however, forgive me, I pray you; I pray
sincerely--warmly. God knows I have suffered myself enough from idle
words, and from the slighting opinion with which this hard world visits
the poor, not to feel deep regret and shame if I wound, by like means,
another, more especially”--Constance’s voice trembled,--“more especially
_you!_”

As she spoke, she turned her eyes on Godolphin, and they were full of
tears. The tenderness of her voice, her look, melted him at once. Was
it to him, indeed, that the haughty Constance addressed the words of
kindness and apology?--to him whose intrinsic circumstances she had
heard described as so unworthy of her, and, his reason told him, with
such justice?

“Oh, Miss Vernon!” said he, passionately; “Miss Vernon--Constance--dear,
dear Constance! dare I call you so? hear me one word. I love you with a
love which leaves me no words to tell it. I know my faults, my poverty,
my unworthiness; but--but--may I--may I hope?”

And all the woman was in Constance’s cheek, as she listened. That cheek,
how richly was it dyed! Her eyes drooped; her bosom heaved. How every
word in those broken sentences sank into her heart! never was a tone
forgotten. The child may forget its mother, and the mother desert the
child: but never, never from a woman’s heart departs the memory of the
first confession of love from him whom she first loves! She lifted her
eyes, and again withdrew them, and again gazed.

“This must not be,” at last she said; “no, no! it is folly, madness in
both!”

“Not so; nay, not so!” whispered Godolphin, in the softest notes of
a voice that could never be harsh. “It may seem folly--madness if you
will, that the brilliant and all-idolized Miss Vernon should listen to
the vows of so lowly an adorer: but try me--prove me, and own--yes, you
_will_ own some years hence, that that folly has been happy beyond the
happiness of prudence or ambition.”

“This!” answered Constance, struggling with her emotions; “this is no
spot or hour for such a conference. Let us meet to-morrow--the western
chamber.”

“And the hour?”

“Twelve!”

“And I may hope--till then?”

Constance again grew pale; and in a voice that, though it scarcely
left her lips, struck coldness and dismay into his sudden and delighted
confidence, answered,

“No, Percy, there is no hope!--none!”

(1) Then uncommon.




CHAPTER XVIII.

THE INTERVIEW.--THE CRISIS OF A LIFE.

The western chamber was that I have mentioned as the one in which
Constance usually fixed her retreat, when neither sociability nor state
summoned her to the more public apartments. I should have said that
Godolphin slept in the house; for, coming from a distance and through
country roads, Lady Erpingham had proffered him that hospitality, and
he had willingly accepted it. Before the appointed hour, he was at the
appointed spot.

He had passed the hours till then without even seeking his pillow. In
restless strides across his chamber, he had revolved those words with
which Constance had seemed to deny the hopes she herself had created.
All private and more selfish schemes or reflections had vanished, as
by magic, from the mind of a man prematurely formed, but not yet wholly
hardened in the mould of worldly speculation. He thought no more of what
he should relinquish in obtaining her hand; with the ardour of boyish
and real love, he thought only of her. It was as if there existed no
world but the little spot in which she breathed and moved. Poverty,
privation, toil, the change of the manners and habits of his whole
previous life, to those of professional enterprise and self-denial;--to
all this he looked forward, not so much with calmness as with triumph.

“Be but Constance mine!” said he again and again; and again and again
those fatal words knocked at his heart, “No hope--none!” and he gnashed
his teeth in very anguish, and muttered, “But mine she will not--she
will never be!”

Still, however, before the hour of noon, something of his habitual
confidence returned to him. He had succeeded, though but partially, in
reasoning away the obvious meaning of the words; and he ascended to the
chamber from the gardens, in which he had sought, by the air, to cool
his mental fever, with a sentiment, ominous and doubtful indeed, but
still removed from despondency and despair.

The day was sad and heavy. A low, drizzling rain, and labouring yet
settled clouds, which denied all glimpse of the sky, and seemed cursed
into stagnancy by the absence of all wind or even breeze, increased
by those associations we endeavour in vain to resist, the dark and
oppressive sadness of his thoughts.

He paused as he laid his hand on the door of the chamber: he listened;
and in the acute and painful life which seemed breathed into all
his senses, he felt as if he could have heard,--though without the
room,--the very breath of Constance; or known, as by an inspiration, the
presence of her beauty. He opened the door gently; all was silence and
desolation for him--Constance was not there!

He felt, however, as if that absence was a relief. He breathed more
freely, and seemed to himself more prepared for the meeting. He took his
station by the recess of the window: in vain--he could rest in no spot:
he walked to and fro, pausing only for a moment as some object before
him reminded him of past and more tranquil hours. The books he had
admired and which, at his departure, had been left in their usual
receptacle at another part of the house, he now discovered on the
tables: they opened of themselves at the passages he had read aloud to
Constance: those pages, in his presence, she had not seemed to admire;
he was inexpressibly touched to perceive that, in his absence, they had
become dear to her. As he turned with a beating heart from this silent
proof of affection, he was startled by the sudden and almost living
resemblance to Constance, which struck upon him in a full-length picture
opposite--the picture of her father. That picture, by one of the best
of our great modern masters of the art, had been taken of Vernon in
the proudest epoch of his prosperity and fame. He was portrayed in the
attitude in which he had uttered one of the most striking sentences
of one of his most brilliant orations: the hand was raised, the foot
advanced, the chest expanded. Life, energy, command, flashed from the
dark eye, breathed from the dilated nostril, broke from the inspired
lip. That noble brow--those modelled features--that air, so full of
the royalty of genius--how startlingly did they resemble the softer
lineaments of Constance!

Arrested, in spite of himself, by the skill of the limner, and the
characteristic of the portrait Godolphin stood, motionless and gazing,
till the door opened, and Constance herself stood before him. She smiled
faintly, but with sweetness as she approached; and seating herself,
motioned him to a chair at a little distance. He obeyed the gesture in
silence.

“Godolphin!” said she, softly. At the sound of her voice he raised his
eyes from the ground, and fixed them on her countenance with a look so
full of an imploring and earnest meaning, so expressive of the passion,
the suspense of his heart, that Constance felt her voice cease at
once. But he saw as he gazed how powerful had been his influence. Not
a vestige of bloom was on her cheek: her very lips were colourless:
her eyes were swollen with weeping; and though she seemed very calm and
self-possessed, all her wonted majesty of mien was gone. The form seemed
to shrink within itself. Humbleness and sorrow--deep, passionate, but
quiet sorrow--had supplanted the haughtiness and the elastic freshness
of her beauty. “Mr. Godolphin,” she repeated, after a pause, “answer
me truly and with candour; not with the world’s gallantry, but with a
sincere, a plain avowal. Were you not--in your unguarded expressions
last night--were you not excited by the surprise, the passion, of the
moment? Were you not uttering what, had you been actuated only by a calm
and premeditated prudence, you would at least have suppressed?”

“Miss Vernon,” replied Godolphin, “all that I said last night, I now,
in calmness, and with deliberate premeditation, repeat: all that I can
dream of happiness is in your hands.”

“I would, indeed, that I could disbelieve you,” said Constance,
sorrowfully; “I have considered deeply on your words. I am touched--made
grateful--proud--yes, truly proud--by your confessed affection--but--”

“Oh, Constance!” cried Godolphin; in a sudden and agonized voice--and
rising, he flung himself impetuously at her feet--“Constance! do not
reject me!”

He seized her hand: it struggled not with his. He gazed on her
countenance: it was dyed in blushes; and before those blushes vanished,
her agitation found relief in tears, which flowed fast and full.

“Beloved!” said Godolphin, with a solemn tenderness, “why struggle with
your heart? That heart I read at this moment: _that_ is not averse to
me.” Constance wept on. “I know what you would say, and what you feel,”
 continued Godolphin: “you think that I--that we both are poor: that you
could ill bear the humiliations of that haughty poverty which those born
to higher fortunes so irksomely endure. You tremble to link your fate
with one who has been imprudent--lavish--selfish, if you will. You
recoil before you intrust your happiness to a man who, if he wreck that,
can offer you nothing in return: no rank--no station--nothing to heal
a bruised heart, or cover its wound, at least, in the rich disguises of
power and wealth. Am I not right, Constance? Do I not read your mind?”

“No!” said Constance with energy. “Had I been born any man’s daughter,
but his from whom I take my name; were I the same in all things, mind
and heart, save in one feeling, one remembrance, one object--that I
am now; Heaven is my witness that I would not cast a thought upon
poverty--upon privation: that I would--nay, I do--I do confide in your
vows, your affection. If you have erred, I know it not. If any but
you tell me you have erred, I believe them not. You I trust wholly and
implicitly. Heaven, I say, is my witness that, did I obey the voice
of my selfish heart, I would gladly, proudly, share and follow your
fortunes. You mistake me if you think sordid and vulgar ambition can
only influence me. No! I could be worthy of you! The daughter of John
Vernon could be a worthy wife to the man of indigence and genius. In
your poverty I could soothe you; in your labour I could support you; in
your reverses console, in your prosperity triumph. But--but, it must not
be. Go, Godolphin--dear Godolphin! There are thousands better and fairer
than I am, who will do for you as I would have done; but who possess
the power I have not--who, instead of sharing, can raise your fortunes.
Go!--and if it comfort, if it soothe you, believe that I have not been
insensible to your generosity, your love. My best wishes, my fondest
prayers, my dearest hopes, are yours.”

Blinded by her tears, subdued by her emotions, Constance was still
herself. She rose; she extricated her hand from Godolphin’s; she turned
to leave the room. But Godolphin, still kneeling, caught hold of her
robe, and gently, but effectually detained her.

“The picture you have painted,” said he, “do not destroy at once. You
have portrayed yourself my soother, guide, restorer. You _can,_ indeed
you can, be this. You do not know me, Constance. Let me say one word for
my self. Hitherto, I have shunned fame and avoided ambition. Life has
seemed to me so short, and all that even glory wins so poor, that I
have thought no labour worth the price of a single hour of pleasure and
enjoyment. For you, how joyfully will I renounce my code! For myself I
could ask no honour: for you, I will labour for all. No toil shall
be dry to me--no pleasure shall decoy. I will renounce my idle and
desultory pursuits. I will enter the great public arena, where all who
come armed with patience and with energy are sure to win. Constance, I
am not without talents, though they have slept within me; say but the
word, and you know not what they can produce.”

An irresolution in Constance was felt as a sympathy by Godolphin; he
continued,--

“We are both desolate in the world, Constance; we are
orphans--friendless, fortuneless. Yet both have made our way without
friends, and commanded our associates, though without fortune. Does not
this declare we have that within us which, when we are united, can
still exalt or conquer our destiny? And we--we--alone in the noisy
and contentious world with which we strive--we shall turn, after each
effort, to our own hearts, and find there a comfort and a shelter. All
things will bind us closer and closer to each other. The thought of
our past solitude, the hope of our future objects, will only feed the
fountain of our present love. And how much sweeter, Constance, will be
honours to you, if we thus win them; sanctified as they will be by the
sacrifices we have made; by the thought of the many hours in which we
desponded, yet took consolation from each other; by the thought how we
sweetened mortifications by sympathy, and made even the lowest successes
noble by the endearing associations with which we allied them! How much
sweeter to you will be such honours than those which you might command
at once, but accompanied by a cold heart; rendered wearisome because won
with ease and low because undignified by fame! Oh, Constance! am I not
heard? Have not love, nature, sense, triumphed?”

As he spoke, he had risen gently, and wound his arms around her
not reluctant form: her head reclined upon his bosom; her hand was
surrendered to his; and his kiss stole softly and unchidden to her
cheek. At that instant, the fate of both hung on a very hair. How
different might the lot, the character, of each have been, had
Constance’s lips pronounced the words that her heart already recorded!
And she might have done so; but as she raised her eyes, the same object
that had before affected Godolphin came vividly upon her, and changed,
as by an electric shock, the whole current of her thoughts. Full and
immediately before her was the picture of her father. The attitude there
delineated, so striking at all times, seemed to Constance at that moment
more than ever impressive, and even awful in the _livingness_ of its
command. It was the face of Vernon in the act of speech--of warning--of
reproof; such as she had seen it often in private life; such as she had
seen it in his bitter maledictions on his hollow friends at the close
of his existence: nay, such as she had seen it,--only more fearful, and
ghastly with the hues of death,--in his last hours; in those hours in
which he had pledged her to the performance of his revenge, and bade her
live not for love but the memory of her sire.

With the sight of the face rushed upon her the dark and solemn
recollections of that time and of that vow. The weakness of love
vanished before the returning force of a sentiment nursed through her
earliest years, fed by her dreams, strengthened by her studies, and
hardened by the daring energies of a nature lofty yet fanatical, into
the rule, the end, nay, the very religion of life! She tore herself
away from the surprised and dismayed Godolphin; she threw herself on her
knees before the picture; her lips moved rapidly; the rapid and brief
prayer for forgiveness was over, and Constance rose a new being. She
turned to Godolphin, and, lifting her arm towards the picture, as she
regarded, with her bright and kindling eyes, the face of her lover; she
said:--

“As you think now, thought he whose voice speaks to you from the canvas;
he, who pursued the path that you would tread; who, through the same
toil, the same pursuit, that you would endure, used the same powers and
the same genius you would command; he, who won,--what you might win also
at last,--the smile of princes, the trust of nobles, the shifting and
sandy elevation which the best, the wisest, and greatest statesmen in
this country, if unbacked by a sordid and caballing faction, can alone
obtain;--he warns you from that hollow distinction,--from its wretched
consummation. Oh, Godolphin!” she continued, subdued, and sinking from
a high-wrought but momentary paroxysm, uncommon to her collected
character, “Oh, Godolphin! I saw that man dying, deserted,
lonely, cursed by his genius, ruined by his prosperity. I saw him
dying,--die,--of a broken and trampled heart. Could I doom another
victim to the same course, and the same perfidy, and the same fate?
Could I, with a silent heart, watch by that victim; could I, viewing his
certain doom, elate him with false hopes?--No, no! fly from me,--from
the thought of such a destiny. Marry one who can bring you wealth, and
support you with rank; _then_ be ambitious if you will. Leave me to
fulfil my doom,--my vow; and to think, however wretched I may be, that I
have not inflicted a permanent wretchedness on you.”

Godolphin sprang forward; but the door closed upon his eyes; and he saw
Constance--as Constance _Vernon_--no more.




CHAPTER XIX.

A RARE AND EXQUISITE OF THE BEST (WORST) SCHOOL.--A CONVERSATION ON A
THOUSAND MATTERS.--THE DECLENSION OF THE “SUI PROFUSUS” INTO THE “ALIENI
APPETENS.”

There was, in the day I now refer to, a certain house in Chesterfield
Street, Mayfair, which few young men anxious for the eclat of society
passed without a wish for the acquaintance of the inmate. To that small
and dingy mansion, with its verandahs of dusky green, and its blinds
perpetually drawn, there attached an interest, a consideration, and
a mystery. Thither, at the dusk of night, were the hired carriages
of intrigue wont to repair, and dames to alight, careful seemingly of
concealment, yet wanting, perhaps, even a reputation to conceal. Few, at
the early hours of morn, passed that street on their way home from
some glittering revel without noticing some three or four chariots
in waiting;--or without hearing from within the walls the sounds of
protracted festivity. That house was the residence of a man who had
never done anything in public, and yet was the most noted personage in
Society in early life, the all-accomplished Lovelace! in later years
mingling the graces with the decayed heart and the want of principle of
a Grammont. Feared, contemned, loved, hated, ridiculed, honoured, the
very genius, the very personification, of a civilized and profligate
life seemed embodied in Augustus Saville. Hitherto we have spoken of,
let us now describe him.

Born to the poor fortunes and equivocal station of cadet in a noble but
impoverished house, he had passed his existence in a round of lavish,
but never inelegant, dissipation. Unlike other men, whom youth, and
money, and the flush of health, and aristocratic indulgence, allure
to follies, which shock the taste as well as the morality of the wise,
Augustus Saville had never committed an error which was not varnished
by grace, and limited by a profound and worldly discretion. A systematic
votary of pleasure--no woman had ever through him lost her reputation
or her sphere; whether it was that he corrupted into fortunate
dissimulation the minds that he betrayed into guilt, or whether he chose
his victims with so just a knowledge of their characters, and of the
circumstances round them, that he might be sure the secrecy maintained
by himself would scarcely be divulged elsewhere. All the world
attributed to Augustus Saville the most various and consummate success
in that quarter in which success is most envied by the lighter part
of the world: yet no one could say exactly who, amongst the many he
addressed, had been the object of his triumph. The same quiet, and yet
victorious discretion waited upon all he did. Never had he stooped to
win celebrity from horses or from carriages; nothing in his equipages
showed the ambition to be distinguished from another; least of all did
he affect that most displeasing of minor ostentatious, that offensive
exaggeration of neatness, that outer simplicity, which our young nobles
and aspiring bankers so ridiculously think it bon ton to assume. No
harness, industriously avoiding brass; no liveries, pretending to the
tranquillity of a gentleman’s dress; no panels, disdaining the
armorial attributes of which real dignity should neither be ashamed
nor proud--converted plain taste into a display of plainness. He seldom
appeared at races, and never hunted; though he was profound master of
the calculations in the first, and was, as regarded the second, allowed
to be one of the most perfect masters of horsemanship in his time. So,
in his chess, while he chose even sedulously what became him most, he
avoided the appearance of coxcombry, by a disregard to minutiae. He did
not value himself on the perfection of his boot; and suffered a wrinkle
in his coat without a sigh: yet, even the exquisites of the time allowed
that no one was more gentlemanlike in the tout ensemble; and while he
sought by other means than dress to attract, he never even in dress
offended. Carefully shunning the character of the professed wit, or
the general talker, he was yet piquant, shrewd, and animated to the few
persons whom he addressed, or with whom he associated: and though he had
refused all offers to enter public life, he was sufficiently master
of the graver subjects that agitated the times to impress even those
practically engaged in them with a belief in his information and his
talents.

But he was born poor; and yet he had lived for nearly thirty years as a
rich man! What was his secret?--he had lived upon others. At all games
of science, he played with a masterly skill; and in those wherein
luck preponderates, there are always chances for a cool and systematic
calculation. He had been, indeed, suspected of unfair play; but the
charge had never cooled the eagerness with which he had been courted.
With far better taste, and in far higher estimation than Brummell, he
obtained an equal, though a more secret sway. Every one was desirous
to know him: without his acquaintance, the young debutant felt that
he wanted the qualification to social success: by his intimacy, even
vulgarity became the rage. It was true that, as no woman’s disgrace was
confessedly traced to him, so neither was any man’s ruin--save only in
the doubtful instance of the unfortunate Johnstone. He never won of any
person, however ardent, more than a certain portion of his fortune--the
rest of his undoing Saville left to his satellites; nay, even those who
had in reality most reason to complain of him, never perceived his due
share in their impoverishment. It was common enough to hear men say,
“Ah! Saville, I wish I had taken your advice, and left off while I had
yet half my fortune!” They did not accurately heed that the first half
was Saville’s; because the first half had excited, not ruined them.

Besides this method of making money, so strictly social, Saville had
also applied his keen intellect and shrewd sense to other speculations.
Cheap houses, cheap horses, fluctuations in the funds, all descriptions
of property (except perhaps stolen goods), had passed under his earnest
attention; and in most cases, such speculations had eminently succeeded.
He was therefore now, in his middle age, and still unmarried, a man
decidedly wealthy; having, without ever playing miser, without ever
stinting a luxury, or denying a wish, turned nothing into something,
poverty into opulence.

It was noon; and Saville was slowly finishing his morning repast, and
conversing with a young man stretched on a sofa opposite in a listless
attitude. The room was in perfect keeping with the owner: there was
neither velvet, nor gilding, nor buhl, nor marquetrie--all of which
would have been inconsistent with the moderate size of the apartment.
But the furniture was new, massive, costly, and luxurious without the
ostentation of luxury. A few good pictures, and several exquisite busts
and figures in bronze, upon marble pedestals, gave something classic and
graceful to the aspect of the room. Annexed to the back drawing-room,
looking over Lord Chesterfield’s gardens, a small conservatory, filled
with rich exotics, made the only feature in the apartment that might
have seemed, to a fastidious person, effeminate or unduly voluptuous.

Saville himself was about forty-seven years of age: of a person slight
and thin, without being emaciated: a not ungraceful, though habitual
stoop, diminished his height, which might be a little above the ordinary
standard. In his youth he had been handsome; but in his person there was
now little trace of any attraction beyond that of a manner remarkably
soft and insinuating: yet in his narrow though high forehead--his sharp
aquiline nose, grey eye, and slightly sarcastic curve of lip, something
of his character betrayed itself. You saw, or fancied you saw in them
the shrewdness, the delicacy of tact; the consciousness of duping
others; the subtle and intuitive, yet bland and noiseless penetration
into the characters around him, which made the prominent features of his
mind. And, indeed, of all qualities, dissimulation is that which betrays
itself the most often in the physiognomy. A fortunate thing, that the
long habit of betraying should find at times the index in which to
betray itself.

“But you don’t tell me, my dear Godolphin,” said Saville, as he broke
the toast into his chocolate,--“you don’t tell me how the world employed
itself at Rome. Were there any of the true calibre there? steady
fellows, yet ardent, like myself?--men who make us feel our strength
and put it forth--with whom we cannot dally nor idle--who require our
coolness of head, clearness of memory, ingenuity of stratagem--in a
word, men of my art--the art of play:--were there any such?”

“Not many, but enough for honour,” said Godolphin: “for myself, I have
long forsworn gambling for profit.”

“Ah! I always thought you wanted that perseverance which belongs to
strength of character. And how stand your resources now? Sufficient to
recommence the world here with credit and eclat?”

“Ay, were I so disposed, Saville. But I shall return to Italy. Within a
month hence, I shall depart.”

“What! and only just arrived in town! An heir in possession!”

“Of what?”

“The reputation of having succeeded to a property, the extent of which,
if wise, you will tell to no one! Are you so young, Godolphin, as to
imagine that it signifies one crumb of this bread what be the rent-roll
of your estate, so long as you can obtain credit for any sum to which
you are pleased to extend it? Credit! beautiful invention!--the moral
new world to which we fly when banished from the old. Credit!--the true
charity of Providence, by which they who otherwise would starve live in
plenty, and despise the indigent rich. Credit!--admirable system, alike
for those who live on it and the wiser few who live by it. Will you
borrow some money of me, Godolphin?”

“At what percentage?”

“Why, let me see: funds are low; I’ll be moderate. But stay; be it with
you as I did with George Sinclair. You shall have all you want, and pay
me with a premium, when you marry an heiress. Why, roan, you wince at
the word ‘marry!’”

“‘Tis a sore subject, Saville: one that makes a man think of halters.”

“You are right--I recognise my young pupil. Your old play-writers talked
nonsense when they said men lost liberty of person by marriage. Men lose
liberty, but it is the liberty of the mind. We cease to be independent
of the world’s word, when we grow respectable with a wife, a fat butler,
two children, and a family coach. It makes a gentleman little better
than a grocer or a king! But you have seen Constance Vernon. Why, out
on this folly, Godolphin! You turn away. Do you fancy that I did not
penetrate your weakness the moment you mentioned her name?--still less,
do you fancy, my dear young friend, that I, who have lived through
nearly half a century, and know our nature, and the whole thermometer
of our blood, think one jot the worse of you for forming a caprice, or a
passion, if you will--for a woman who would set an anchoret, or, what is
still colder, a worn out debauchee, on fire? Bah! Godolphin, I am wiser
than you take me for. And I will tell you more. For your sake, I am
_happy_ that you have incurred already this, our common folly (which we
all have once in a life), and that the fit is over. I do not pry into
your secrets; I know their delicacy, I do not ask which of you drew
back; for, to have gone forward, to have married, would have been
madness in both. Nay, it was an _impossibility_: it could not have
happened to my pupil; the ablest, the subtlest, the wisest of my pupils.
But, however it was broken off, I repeat that I am glad it happened. One
is never sure of a man’s wisdom, till he has been really and vainly in
love. You know what that moralizing lump of absurdity, Lord Edouard, has
said in the Julie--‘the path of the passions conducts us to philosophy!’
It is true, very true; and now that the path has been fairly trod, the
goal is at hand. _Now,_ I can confide in your steadiness; now, I can
feel that you will run no chance in future, of over-appreciating that
bauble, Woman. You will beg, borrow, steal, and exchange or lose the
jewel, with the same delicious excitement, coupled with the same steady
indifference, with which we play at a more scientific game, and for a
more comprehensive reward. I say more comprehensive reward: for how many
women may we be able to buy by a judicious bet on the odd trick!”

“Your turn is sudden,” said Godolphin, smiling; “and there is some
justice in your reasoning. The fit _is_ over; and if ever I can be wise,
I have entered on wisdom now. But talk of this no more.”

“I will not,” said Saville, whose unerring tact had reached just the
point where to stop, and who had led Godolphin through just that vein
of conversation, half sentimentalising, half sensible, all profligate,
which seldom fails to win the ear of a man both of imagination and of
the world. “I will not; and, to vary the topic, I will turn egoist, and
tell you _my_ adventures.”

With this, Saville began a light and amusing recital of his various and
singular life for the last three years. Anecdote, jest, maxim, remark,
interspersed, gave a zest and piquancy to the narration. An accomplished
roue always affects to moralise; it is a part of his character. There
is a vague and shrewd sentiment that pervades his morale and his system.
Frequent excitement, and its attendant relaxation; the conviction of the
folly of all pursuits; the insipidity of all life; the hollowness of all
love; the faithlessness in all ties; the disbelief in all worth; these
consequences of a dissipated existence on a thoughtful mind, produce
some remarkable, while they make so many wretched, characters. They
coloured some of the most attractive prose among the French, and the
most fascinating verse in the pages of Byron. It might be asked, by a
profane inquirer (and I have touched on this before), what effect a life
nearly similar--a life of luxury, indolence, lassitude, profuse, but
heartless love, imparted to the deep and touching wisdom in his page,
whom we consider the wisest of men, and who has left us the most
melancholy of doctrines?

It was this turn of mind that made Savill’s conversation peculiarly
agreeable to Godolphin in his present humour; and the latter invested
it, from his own mood, with a charm which in reality it wanted. For, as
I shall show, in Godolphin, what deterioration the habits of frivolous
and worldly life produce on the mind of a man of genius, I show only in
Saville the effect they produce on a man of sense.

“Well, Godolphin,” said Saville, as he saw the former rise to depart;
“you will at least dine with me to-day--a punctual eight. I think I can
promise you an agreeable evening. The Linettini, and that dear little
Fanny Millinger (your old flame), are coming; and I have asked old
Stracey, the poet, to say bons mots for them. Poor old Stracey! He goes
about to all his former friends and fellow-liberals, boasting of his
favour with the Great, and does not see that we only use him as we would
a puppet-show or a dancing-dog.”

“What folly,” said Godolphin, “it is in any man of genius (not also
of birth) to think the Great of this country can possibly esteem him!
Nothing can equal the secret enmity with which dull men regard an
intellect above their comprehension. Party politics, and the tact, the
shifting, the commonplace that Party politics alone require; these they
can appreciate; and they feel respect for an orator, even though he be
not a county member; for he can assist them in their paltry ambition
for place and pension: but an author, or a man of science, the rogues
positively jeer at him!”

“And yet,” said Saville, “how few men of letters perceive a truth so
evident to us, so hackneyed even in the conversations of society! For a
little reputation at a dinner table, for a coaxing note from some titled
demirep affecting the De Stael, they forget not only to be glorious
but even to be respectable. And this, too, not only for so petty a
gratification, but for one that rarely lasts above a London season. We
allow the low-born author to be the lion this year; but we dub him a
bore the next. We shut our doors upon his twice-told jests, and send for
the Prague minstrels to sing to us after dinner instead.”

“However,” said Godolphin, “it is only poets you find so foolish as to
be deceived by you. There is not a single prose writer of real genius so
absurd.”

“And why is that?”

“Because,” replied Godolphin, philosophising, “poets address themselves
more to women than men; and insensibly they acquire the weaknesses which
they are accustomed to address. A poet whose verses delight the women
will be found, if we closely analyse his character, to be very like a
woman himself.”

“You don’t love poets?” said Saville.

“The glory of old has departed from them. I mean less from their pages
than their minds. We have plenty of beautiful poets, but how little
poetry breathing of a great soul!”

Here the door opened, and a Mr. Glosson was announced. There entered a
little, smirking, neat-dressed man, prim as a lawyer or a house-agent.

“Ah, Glosson, is that you?” said Saville, with something like animation:
“sit down, my good sir,--sit down. Well! well! (rubbing his hands); what
news? what news?”

“Why, Mr. Saville, I think we may get the land from old ----. He has
the right of the job. I have been with him all this morning. He asks six
thousand pounds for it.

“The unconscionable dog! He got it from the crown for two.”

“Ah, very true,--very true: but you don’t see, sir,--you don’t see, that
it is well worth nine. Sad times,--sad times: jobs from the crown are
growing scarcer every day, Mr. Saville.”

“Humph! that’s all a chance, a speculation. Times are bad indeed, as
you say: no money in the market; go, Glosson; offer him five; your
percentage shall be one per cent. higher than if I pay six thousand, and
shall be counted up to the latter sum.”

“He! he! he! sir!” grinned Glosson; “you are fond of your joke, Mr.
Saville.”

“Well, now; what else in the market? never mind my friend: Mr.
Godolphin--Mr. Glosson; now all gene is over; proceed,--proceed.”

Glosson hummed, and bowed, and hummed again, and then glided on to speak
of houses, and crown lands, and properties in Wales, and places at court
(for some of the subordinate posts at the palace were then--perhaps are
now--regular matter of barter); and Saville, bending over the table,
with his thin delicate hands clasped intently, and his brow denoting his
interest, and his sharp shrewd eye fixed on the agent, furnished to
the contemplative Godolphin a picture which he did not fail to note, to
moralise on, to despise!

What a spectacle is that of the prodigal rake, hardening and sharpening
into the grasping speculator!




CHAPTER XX.

FANNY MILLINGER ONCE MORE.--LOVE.--WOMAN.--BOOKS.--A HUNDRED TOPICS
TOUCHED ON THE SURFACE.--GODOLPHIN’S STATE OF MIND MORE MINUTELY
EXAMINED.--THE DINNER AT SAVILLE’S.

Godolphin went to see and converse with Fanny Millinger.

She was still unmarried, and still the fashion. There was a sort of
allegory of real life, in the manner in which, at certain epochs,
our Idealist was brought into contact with the fair actress of ideal
creations. There was, in short, something of a moral in the way these
two streams of existence--the one belonging to the Actual, the other to
the Imaginary--flowed on, crossing each other at stated times. Which
was the more really imaginative--the life of the stage, or that of the
world’s stage? The gay Fanny was rejoiced to welcome back again her
early lover. She ran on, talking of a thousand topics, without remarking
the absent mind and musing eye of Godolphin, till he himself stopped her
somewhat abruptly:--

“Well, Fanny, well, and what do you know of Saville? You have grown
intimate with him, eh? We shall meet at his house this evening.”

“Oh, yes, he is a charming person in his little way; and the only man
who allows me to be a friend without dreaming of becoming a lover. Now
that’s what I like. We poor actresses have so much would-be love in the
course of our lives, that a little friendship now and then is a novelty
which other and soberer people can never appreciate. On reading Gil Blas
the other day--I am no great reader, as you may remember--I was struck
by that part in which the dear Santillane assures us that there was
never any love between him and Laura the actress. I thought it so
true to nature, so probable, that they should have formed so strong an
intimacy for each other, lived in the same house, had every opportunity
for love, yet never loved. And it was exactly because she was an
actress, and a light good-for-nothing creature that it so happened;
the very multiplicity of lovers prevented her falling in love; the very
carelessness of her life, poor girl, rendered a friend so charming to
her. It would have spoiled the friend to have made him an adorer; it
would have turned the rarity into the every-day character. Now, so it
is with me and Saville; I like his wit, he likes my good temper. We see
each other as often as if we were in love; and yet I do not believe it
even possible that he should ever kiss my hand. After all,” continued
Fanny, laughing, “love is not so necessary to us women as people think.
Fine writers say, ‘Oh, men have a thousand objects, women but one!’
That’s nonsense, dear Percy; women have their thousand objects too. They
have not the bar, but they have the milliner’s shop; they can’t fight,
but they can sit by the window and embroider a work-bag; they don’t rush
into politics, but they plunge their souls into love for a parrot or a
lap-dog. Don’t let men flatter themselves; Providence has been just as
kind in that respect to one sex as to the other; our objects are small,
yours great; but a small object may occupy the mind just as much as the
loftiest.”

“Ours great! pshaw!” said Godolphin, who was rather struck with Fanny’s
remarks; “there is nothing great in those professions which man is
pleased to extol. Is selfishness great? Are the low trickery, the
organised lies of the bar, a great calling? Is the mechanical slavery
of the soldier--fighting because he is in the way of fighting, without
knowing the cause, without an object, save a dim, foolish vanity which
he calls glory, and cannot analyse--is that a great aim and vocation?
Well: the senate! look at the outcry which wise men make against the
loathsome corruption of that arena; then look at the dull hours,--the
tedious talk, the empty boasts, the poor and flat rewards, and tell me
where is the greatness? No, Fanny! the embroidered work-bag, and the
petted parrot, afford just as great--morally great--occupations as those
of the bar, the army, the senate. It is only the frivolous who talk of
frivolities; there is nothing frivolous; all earthly occupations are
on a par--alike important if they alike occupy; for to the wise all are
poor and valueless.”

“I fancy you are very wrong,” said the actress, pressing her pretty
fingers to her forehead, as if to understand him; “but I cannot tell you
why, and I never argue. I ramble on in my odd way, casting out my shrewd
things without defending them if any one chooses to quarrel with them.
What I do I let others do. My maxim in talk is my maxim in life. I claim
liberty for myself, and give indulgence to others.”

“I see,” said Godolphin, “that you have plenty of books about you,
though you plead not guilty to reading. Do you learn your philosophy
from them? for I think you have contracted a vein of reflection since we
parted which I scarcely recognise as an old characteristic.”

“Why,” answered Fanny, “though I don’t read, I skim. Sometimes I canter
through a dozen novels in a morning. I am disappointed, I confess, in
all these works; I want to see more real knowledge of the world than
they ever display. They tell us how Lord Arthur looked, and Lady Lucy
dressed, and what was the colour of those curtains, and these eyes, and
so forth; and then the better sort, perhaps, do also tell us what the
heroine felt as well as wore, and try with might and main to pull some
string of the internal machine; but still I am not enlightened, not
touched. I don’t recognise men and women; they are puppets with holiday
phrases: and I tell you what, Percy, these novelists make the last
mistake you would suppose them guilty of; they have not romance enough
in them to paint the truths of society. Old gentlemen say novels are
bad teachers of life, because they make it too ideal; quite the reverse:
novels are too trite! too superficial! Their very talk about love, and
the fuss they make about it, show how shallow real romance is with them;
for they say nothing new on it, and real romance is for ever striking
out new thoughts. Am I not right, Percy?--No! life, be it worldly as
it may, has a vast deal of romance in it. Every one of us (even poor
I) have a mine of thoughts, and fancies, and wishes, that books are too
dull and commonplace to reach the heart is a romance in itself.”

“A philosophical romance, my Fanny; full of mysteries and conceits,
and refinements, mixed up with its deeper passages. But how came you so
wise?”

“Thank you!” answered Fanny, with a profound curtsey. “The fact
is--though you, as in duty bound, don’t perceive it--that I am older
than I was when we last met. I reflect where I then felt. Besides, the
stage fills our heads with a half sort of wisdom, and gives us that
strange melange of shrewd experience and romantic notions which is, in
fact, the real representation of nine human hearts out of ten.
Talking of books, I want some one to write a novel, which shall be
a metaphysical Gil Blas; which shall deal more with the mind than Le
Sage’s book, and less with the actions; which shall make its hero the
creature of the world, but a different creation, though equally true;
which shall give a faithful picture in the character of one man of the
aspect and the effects of our social system; making that man of a better
sort of clay than the amusing lacquey was, and the produce of a more
artificial grade of society. The book I mean would be a sadder one than
Le Sage’s but equally faithful to life.”

“And it would have more of romance, if I rightly understand what you
mean?”

“Precisely: romance of idea as well as incident--natural romance. By the
way, how few know what natural romance is: so that you feel the ideas in
a book or play are true and faithful to the characters they are ascribed
to, why mind whether the incidents are probable? Yet common readers
only go by the incidents; as if the incidents in three-fourths of
Shakspeare’s plays were even ordinarily possible! But people have so
little nature in them, that they don’t know what is natural!”

Thus Fanny ran on, in no very connected manner; stringing together those
remarks which, unless I am mistaken, show how much better an uneducated,
clever girl, whose very nature is a quick perception of art, can play
the critic, than the pedants who assume the office.

But it was only for the moment that the heavy heart of Godolphin could
forget its load. It was in vain that he sought to be amused while yet
smarting under the freshness of regret. A great shock had been given to
his nature; he had loved against his will; and as we have seen, on
his return to the Priory, he had even resolved on curing himself of
a passion so unprofitable and unwise. But the jealousy of a night had
shivered into dust a prudence which never of right belonged to a very
ardent and generous nature: that jealousy was soothed, allayed; but
how fierce, how stunning was the blow that succeeded it! Constance had
confessed love, and yet had refused him--for ever! Clear and noble as to
herself her motives might seem in that refusal, it was impossible that
they should appear in the same light to Godolphin. Unable to penetrate
into the effect which her father’s death-bed and her own oath had
produced on the mind of Constance; how indissolubly that remembrance
had united itself with all her schemes and prospects for the future; how
marvellously, yet how naturally, it had converted worldly ambition into
a sacred duty;--unable, I say, to comprehend all these various, and
powerful, and governing motives, Godolphin beheld in her refusal on

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/7756