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+The Project Gutenberg EBook Godolphin, by E. B. Lytton, Vol. 1
+#177 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
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+Title: Godolphin, Volume 1.
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7750]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on May 27, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GODOLPHIN, BY LYTTON, V1 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Andrew Heath
+and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+GODOLPHIN, Volume 1.
+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 Phoedon; 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 bona 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 any 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, Constancy--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 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.
+
+"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."
+
+"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.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GODOLPHIN, BY LYTTON, V1 ***
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