Book: Godolphin, Volume 2.
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Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Godolphin, Volume 2.
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. Rut
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 bebeld. 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?"