JULIA’S PROTÉGÉ.
The life at Wilmingdon Hall was a new and pleasant one for Lionel
Westford.
Here every luxury and comfort were provided for him. He was earning
money which he knew would ensure considerable comfort for his mother
and sister in their humble lodging, or even a change to better
quarters, if they would consent to make that change. He was living
in a house in which objects of art and beauty met his eye on every
side; and this, to the man endowed with artistic tastes, is no small
privilege. Without, a fair sylvan landscape spread itself before his
eyes--those weary eyes that had grown so tired of the smoky streets
and high black chimneys of London. His work was light--absurdly
light, as it seemed to him, after his dreary unprofitable toil as a
copyist of law papers. He was his own master, free at any time to
ramble where he pleased in the pleasant country, or in the verdant
solitude of the park; and if he chose to ride, one of the banker’s
horses was at his disposal.
Beyond all this--infinitely more precious a privilege--he was near
Julia Godwin, the woman whose compassionate glances had seemed to him
like the looks of an angel; the woman with whom he, the penniless
adventurer, had fallen over head and ears in love.
He was near her. He heard her low contralto voice as she sang in the
rooms below, accompanying herself sometimes on her piano, sometimes
with the bewitchingly romantic sound of a few careless chords on
her guitar. He saw her--accidentally, of course--not once only, but
several times in the day. He met her in the park or gardens, and
loitered talking with her for an hour at a time; or he was summoned
to discuss the mounting of some picture, and spent an agreeable
half-hour or so in the morning-room, where Miss Godwin sat with the
stately widow whom the banker had appointed as companion, chaperone,
and protectress of the _convenances_, at a very handsome salary.
Somehow or other, the young people were always happening to meet.
And Lionel Westford would have been supremely happy in this dependent
position, but for the stings of conscience. Unhappily, the stings of
conscience were very sharp. Argue with himself as he might, he could
not shut his eyes to the fact that there was guilt and dishonour in
his intercourse with the Godwin family.
There was secrecy, nay, deception,--and deception must always involve
meanness. Lionel Westford felt that he had no right to live at ease
in the house of the man whom his mother counted as her foe.
He tried to argue with himself that women are always unreasoning in
their dislikes. He tried to persuade himself that Rupert Godwin was
not the enemy of his household; that the banker had only acted as any
other business man might have acted in the same circumstances.
The young man’s sense of his false position was not to be lulled to
rest. He knew that he was acting dishonourably. He knew that there
was a kind of treachery in the fact of his presence at Wilmingdon
Hall, and he could not be entirely at peace, even in the enchanting
society of the woman he loved.
A heavy burden seemed to weigh upon his spirits. It was only while he
was in Julia’s society that he could put aside that weight of care.
He had been more than a week at Wilmingdon Hall, and he had not again
encountered the half-witted old gardener.
But the recollection of the old man’s strange words had often flashed
upon him. Sometimes, against his own will, those words haunted his
memory, and puzzled and tormented his brain, when he would fain have
thought of other things.
One day, when the August weather was brightest and balmiest, Lionel
left his apartment after a long morning’s work at the drawings
intrusted to him. He strolled out into the grounds, where a few
minutes before he had seen Julia Godwin’s muslin dress glancing
amongst the laurel groves.
Nothing could be more beautiful than the smooth lawns, the flowery
parterres, the sloping banks, and glistening laurel hedges that
surrounded Wilmingdon Hall. Nothing could be more beautiful than
those exquisitely cultivated gardens, as Lionel Westford saw them
to-day, under the golden light of an August sun.
In the distance there sounded the low murmur of a waterfall, which
seemed the complaining voice of some spirit of the woodland, rather
than any earthly sound. There had been a time when the gardens of
Wilmingdon Hall were the pride of Rupert Godwin’s heart. Many a
fashionable assembly had met on that broad lawn; many an agreeable
flirtation had commenced in those winding shrubbery walks, in which
the spreading foliage of the evergreens made a solemn darkness all
day long. Many a fair young country damsel had winged her ruthless
arrows home to the hearts of her admirers under the patriarchal
beeches of the avenue. Fancy-fairs, garden-parties, toxophilite
meetings, and flower-shows had been wont to enliven those spacious
gardens. It was only within the last year that a shadow seemed to
have fallen on the life of Rupert Godwin, the reputed millionnaire;
and the county people marvelled at the change in the man who had once
aspired to hold a high place amongst them.
It was known that the banker had quarrelled with his son, though the
cause of that quarrel had never transpired.
Rumour had made herself busy with the interior of Mr. Godwin’s
mansion, and strange things had been said of the disagreement between
father and son. People said that it was his son’s misconduct which
had led to Mr. Godwin’s desertion of his country seat; and the county
gentlemen spoke of the young man’s behaviour in terms of unmitigated
disapprobation.
He had turned his back upon the paternal mansion for ever, it was
said, and had gone abroad to wander on the face of the earth, a
reprobate and an outcast.
The feminine portion of the community were honestly sorry for this
erring wanderer. Edward Godwin was young and handsome, and there
are young ladies who would pity Cain, and be ready to forgive that
unlucky blow with the club, if they were informed on good authority
that the first murderer was darkly splendid of aspect.
Julia was devoted to her brother, and she pleaded his cause
everywhere; but she was very little wiser than the county gentry with
regard to the unhappy misunderstanding which had separated father and
son.
She could only tell people that “poor Edward and papa couldn’t get
on together,” or that “they didn’t understand each other.” She could
only speak in tender deprecation of her brother’s “wild notions on
some subjects,” and conclude with the hope that the prodigal would
return and be forgiven.
* * * * *
Lionel had watched Julia from his window, and he knew in what
direction she had walked. Nothing, therefore, was more natural than
that he should meet her--accidentally.
He entered one of the long shadowy alleys, which seemed to narrow to
a vanishing point, and his heart beat faster than its wont, as he
saw the graceful figure of Julia Godwin seated in an old-fashioned
bower, midway between him and the end of the walk.
She was reading, but she looked up smiling and blushing as Lionel
drew near.
He began to talk to her about her book, the last popular volume
of travels in the centre of Africa, and from that subject they
wandered on to other topics. Julia was very bright and animated.
She had spent a weary morning in the society of her companion, Mrs.
Melville, whose conversation was the very essence of dulness; and
she had fled to the gardens for a refuge from that monotonous drip,
drip, drip of meaningless babble. It is scarcely strange, therefore,
if she was more or less interested in Lionel’s conversation, when
it is considered that he talked his best, as if inspired by that
enthusiastic listener.
It was easy for a clever woman to discover that the young man had
received the highest class of education which modern civilization can
afford.
Julia perceived this; she saw that Lionel was a gentleman both by
birth and breeding; and she could not but wonder at the strange
position in which she had found him.
All that was most generous in her nature was aroused in sympathy with
the stranger’s misfortunes. She would fain have known his history.
She had hoped to win his confidence; but she found this was no easy
task. The young man spoke freely of every subject--except of himself
and his antecedents. On these points he preserved a guarded silence.
They sat talking together for nearly an hour--an hour whose sands ran
out as the sands only run when “Love takes up the glass of Time, and
turns it in his glowing hands.”
At last Julia took a tiny watch from her belt, and glanced at the
dial. She blushed as she perceived the hour, for conscience told
her there must be some special reason for her forgetfulness of the
flight of time. What would her father have said to her, had he known
that she could waste an hour in conversation with a penniless young
artist, whose history was utterly unknown to her--whose only claim
upon her had been his destitution?
“But whatever papa could say of him, he is a gentleman,” thought
Julia, “as highly educated as the best and brightest of papa’s
aristocratic friends.”
She closed her book, and rose to leave the quaint old arbour of
clipped laurels.
“Two o’clock!” she exclaimed. “How quickly the time slips away! I had
no idea that I had been out so long. I must wish you good morning,
Mr. Wilton.”
A faint flush tinged Lionel’s face as he heard his false name
pronounced by those lovely lips. He could not stifle the feeling of
shame which the consciousness of his deception awoke in his mind.
“You will allow me to accompany you to the house?” he said.
“O, certainly,” Julia answered, “if you have nothing better to do.”
Some complimentary speech rose to the young man’s lips, but he
repressed it.
How could he dare to betray his admiration, his love, for Julia
Godwin? Even if she had not been the daughter of his mother’s enemy,
his own poverty would have been an insurmountable barrier, separating
him from her entirely.
No; his love was hopeless. This girl, luxuriously nurtured, heiress
to an ample fortune, would, no doubt, have laughed to scorn the
devotion of a man whom she had rescued from a state of beggary, that
had been near akin to starvation. The story of King Cophetua and the
beggar maiden is the prettiest of poetic legends; but reverse the
positions of the lovers, and the poetry is gone. The king may lead
the beggar maiden up the steps of his throne, amid the acclamations
of an approving people; but the queen must not stoop from her high
estate to smile on low-born merit. This, at any rate, was Lionel
Westford’s reading of the old legend, and he felt that there was
something almost contemptible in his position in relation to Miss
Godwin.
“Let my pride protect me,” he said to himself. “Let me remember how
we met, and let me hold my tongue, whatever effort it may cost me
to set a watch upon my lips. I can endure anything rather than her
contempt.”
The two young people walked for some little time in silence. Then
Lionel spoke; but there was something of constraint in his tone.
“You will, perhaps, like to hear an account of my morning’s work,
Miss Godwin,” he said. “I have been mounting the Snow piece and the
Alpine Sunset. They are both very good. Your brother has real genius,
wonderful freedom and vigour in his pencil, and a splendid eye for
colour. I only know one amateur artist at all equal to him.”
“Indeed!--and who is he?”
“A young man whom I met in Hampshire. Perhaps I ought not to call
him an amateur, for I believe he intended to make painting his
profession. Your brother’s style very much reminds me of his, though
he may have been, perhaps, a little further advanced in his art.”
“And his name?”
“His name was Stanmore--George Stanmore.”
“And you met him in Hampshire?”
“Yes.”
“Long ago?”
“Not very long. It is about a twelvemonth since I last saw him.”
Julia was silent. A cloud seemed to spread itself over her bright
face. She was near the house now; and before the great stone porch
Lionel bowed, and left her.
He had worked hard that day, and had risen early in the summer
morning in order to make rapid progress with the work which was for
him a labour of love, since it was to please _her_ he took so much
trouble in the mounting and touching-up of the drawings. What was he
but a salaried servant in that house, and how could he maintain the
smallest sense of independence except by hard work?
He was in no humour to return to his solitary apartments. Julia
Godwin’s image filled his mind. He strolled back to the laurel grove
in which he had spent such pleasant hours. For a long time he paced
up and down the long alley between the clipped laurel edges, thinking
of the beautiful girl with whom he had been so besotted as to fall
in love. Then, scarcely knowing where he went, he wandered away from
the laurel alley, through an old-fashioned garden, in which there
were big, straggling yew-trees, which had once been the pride of
a gardener’s heart, in the shape of peacocks and lions, and stiff
little flower-beds of geometrical form, where the kitchen gardeners
grew savoury herbs, to give flavour and piquancy to the flesh-pots of
Wilmingdon Hall.
After exploring this garden, Lionel went through an opening in a
close-cut hedge of yew, and found himself suddenly under the dark
walls of the northern wing. Those ancient walls seemed to cast a cold
and dismal shadow across the garden--a shadow that darkened the glory
of the summer day.