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.