Book: Godolphin, Volume 1.
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Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Godolphin, Volume 1.
[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 oneand-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 be 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 himsef 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 srings 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.