Book: Godolphin, Volume 1.
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Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Godolphin, Volume 1.
"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
witk 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 precisly 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."