GODOLPHIN’S RETURN HOME.--HIS SOLILOQUY.--LORD ERPINGHAM’S ARRIVAL AT
WENDOVER CASTLE.--THE EARL DESCRIBED.--HIS ACCOUNT OF GODOLPHIN’S LIFE
AT ROME.
With a listless step, Godolphin re-entered the threshold of his
cottage-home. He passed into a small chamber, which was yet the largest
in his house. The poor and scanty furniture scattered around; the
old, tuneless, broken harpsichord; the worn and tattered carpet; the
tenantless birdcage in the recess by the window; the bookshelves,
containing some dozens of worthless volumes; the sofa of the last
century (when, if people knew comfort, they placed it not in lounging)
small, narrow, highbacked, hard, and knotted; these, just as his
father had left, just as his boyhood had seen, them, greeted him with
a comfortless and chill, though familiar welcome. It was evening:
he ordered a fire and lights; and leaning his face on his hand as he
contemplated the fitful and dusky outbreakings of the flame through the
bars of the niggard and contracted grate, he sat himself down to hold
commune with his heart.
“So, I love this woman,” said he, “do I? Have I not deceived myself? She
is poor--no connection; she has nothing whereby to reinstate my house’s
fortunes, to rebuild this mansion, or repurchase yonder demesnes. I love
her! _I_ who have known the value of her sex so well, that I have said,
again and again, I would not shackle life with a princess! Love may
withstand possession--true--but not time. In three years there would be
no glory in the face of Constance, and I should be--what? My fortunes,
broken as they are, can support me alone, and with my few wants. But if
married! the haughty Constance my wife! Nay, nay, nay! this must not
be thought of! I, the hero of Paris! the pupil of Saville! I, to be so
beguiled as even to _dream_ of such a madness!
“Yet I have that within me that might make a stir in the world--I might
rise. Professions are open; the Diplomacy, the House of Commons. What!
Percy Godolphin be ass enough to grow ambitious! to toil, to fret, to
slave, to answer fools on a first principle, and die at length of a
broken heart for a lost place! Pooh, pooh! I, who despise your prime
ministers, can scarcely stoop to their apprenticeship. Life is too
short for toil. And what do men strive for?--to enjoy: but why not enjoy
without the toil? And relinquish Constance? Ay, it is but one woman
lost!”
So ended the soliloquy of a man scarcely of age. The world teaches us
its last lessons betimes; but then, lest we should have nothing left to
acquire from its wisdom, it employs the rest of our life in unlearning
all that it first taught.
Meanwhile, the time approached when Lord Erpingham was to arrive at
Wendover Castle; and at length came the day itself. Naturally anxious to
enjoy as exclusively as possible the company of her son the first day of
his return from so long an absence, Lady Erpingham had asked no one
to meet him. The earl’s heavy travelling-carriage at length rolled
clattering up the court-yard; and in a few minutes a tall man, in the
prime of life, and borrowing some favourable effect as to person from
the large cloak of velvet and furs which hung round him, entered the
room, and Lady Erpingham embraced her son. The kind and familiar manner
with which he answered her inquiries and congratulations was somewhat
changed when he suddenly perceived Constance. Lord Erpingham was a cold
man, and, like most cold men, ashamed of the evidence of affection. He
greeted Constance very quietly; and, as she thought, slightly: but his
eyes turned to her far more often than any friend of Lord Erpingham’s
might ever have remarked those large round hazel eyes turn to any one
before.
When the earl withdrew to adjust his toilet for dinner, Lady Erpingham,
as she wiped her eyes, could not help exclaiming to Constance, “Is he
not handsome? What a figure!”
Constance was a little addicted to flattery where she liked the one who
was to be flattered, and she assented readily enough to the maternal
remark. Hitherto, however, she had not observed anything more in Lord
Erpingham than his height and his cloak: as he re-entered and led her to
the dining-room she took a better, though still but a casual, survey.
Lord Erpingham was that sort of person of whom _men_ always say, “What
a prodigiously fine fellow!” He was above six feet high, stout in
proportion: not, indeed, accurately formed, nor graceful in bearing,
but quite as much so as a man of six feet high need be. He had a manly
complexion of brown, yellow, and red. His whiskers were exceedingly
large, black, and well arranged. His eyes, as I have before said, were
round, large, and hazel; they were also unmeaning. His teeth were good;
and his nose, neither aquiline nor Grecian, was yet a very showy nose
upon the whole. All the maidservants admired him; and you felt, in
looking at him, that it was a pity our army should lose so good a
grenadier.
Lord Erpingham was a Whig of the old school: he thought the Tory
boroughs ought to be thrown open. He was generally considered a sensible
man. He had read Blackstone, Montesquieu, Cowper’s Poems, and _The
Rambler_; and he was always heard with great attention in the House of
Lords. In his moral character he was a bon Vivant, as far as wine is
concerned; for choice _eating_ he cared nothing. He was good-natured,
but close; brave enough to fight a duel, if necessary; and religious
enough to go to church once a week--in the country.
So far Lord Erpingham might seem modelled from one of Sir Walter’s
heroes: we must reverse the medal, and show the points in which he
differed from those patterns of propriety.
Like the generality of his class, he was peculiarly loose in his notions
of women, though not ardent in pursuit of them. His amours had been
among opera-dancers, “because,” as he was wont to say, “there was
no d--d bore with _them._” Lord Erpingham was always considered a
high-minded man. People chose him as an umpire in quarrels; and told a
story (which was not true) of his having held some state office for a
whole year, and insisted on returning the emoluments.
Such was Robert Earl of Erpingham. During dinner, at which he displayed,
to his mother’s great delight, a most excellent appetite, he listened,
as well as he might, considering the more legitimate occupation of the
time and season, to Lady Erpingham’s recitals of county history; her
long answers to his brief inquiries whether old friends were dead and
young ones married; and his countenance brightened up to an expression
of interest--almost of intelligence--when he was told that birds were
said to be plentiful. As the servants left the room, and Lord Erpingham
took his first glass of claret, the conversation fell upon Percy
Godolphin.
“He has been staying with us a whole fortnight,” said Lady Erpingham;
“and, by the by, he said he had met you in Italy, and mentioned your
name as it deserved.”
“Indeed! And did he really condescend to praise me?” said Lord
Erpingham, with eagerness; for there was that about Godolphin, and his
reputation for fastidiousness, which gave a rarity and a value to his
praise, at least to lordly ears. “Ah! he’s a queer fellow; he led a very
singular life in Italy.”
“So I have always heard,” said Lady Erpingham. “But of what description?
was he very wild?”
“No, not exactly: there was a good deal of mystery about him: he saw
very few English, and those were chiefly men who played high. He was
said to have a great deal of learning and so forth.”
“Oh! then he was surrounded, I suppose, by those medalists and
picture-sellers, and other impostors, who live upon such of our
countrymen as think themselves blessed with a taste or afflicted with
a genius,” said Lady Erpingham; who, having lived with the wits and
orators of the time, had caught mechanically their way of rounding a
period.
“Far from it!” returned the earl. “Godolphin is much too deep a fellow
for that; he’s not easily taken in, I assure you. I confess I don’t like
him the worse for that,” added the close noble. “But he lived with the
Italian doctors and men of science; and encouraged, in particular, one
strange fellow who affected sorcery, I fancy, or something very like
it. Godolphin resided in a very lonely spot at Rome: and I believe
laboratories, and caldrons, and all sorts of devilish things, were
always at work there--at least so people said.”
“And yet,” said Constance, “you thought him too sensible to be easily
taken in?”
“Indeed I do, Miss Vernon; and the proof of it is, that no man has less
fortune or is made more of. He plays, it is true, but only occasionally;
though as a player at games of skill--piquet, billiards, whist,--he
has no equal, unless it be Saville. But then Saville, entre noun, is
suspected of playing unfairly.”
“And you are quite sure,” said the placid Lady Erpingham, “that Mr.
Godolphin is only indebted to skill for his success?”
Constance darted a glance of fire at the speaker.
“Why, faith, I believe so! No one ever accused him of a single shabby,
or even suspicious trick; and indeed, as I said before, no one was ever
more sought after in society, though he shuns it; and he’s devilish
right, for it’s a cursed bore!”
“My dear Robert! at your age!” exclaimed the mother. “But,” continued
the earl, turning to Constance,--“but, Miss Vernon, a man may have his
weak point; and the cunning Italian may have hit on Godolphin’s, clever
as he is in general; though, for my part, I will tell you frankly, I
think he only encouraged him to mystify and perplex people, just to
get talked of--vanity, in short. He’s a good-looking fellow that
Godolphin--eh?” continued the earl, in the tone of a man who meant you
to deny what he asserted.
“Oh, beautiful!” said Lady Erpingham. “Such a countenance!”
“Deuced pale, though!--eh?--and not the best of figures: thin,
narrow-shouldered, eh--eh?”
Godolphin’s proportions were faultless; but your strapping heroes think
of a moderate-sized man as mathematicians define a point--declare that
he has no length nor breadth whatsoever.
“What say _you,_ Constance?” asked Lady Erpingham, meaningly.
Constance felt the meaning, and replied calmly, that Mr. Godolphin
appeared to her handsomer than any one she had seen lately.
Lord Erpingham played with his neckcloth, and Lady Erpingham rose to
leave the room. “D--d fine girl!” said the earl, as he shut the door
upon Constance;--“but d--d sharp!” added he, as he resettled himself on
his chair.