THE RETURN TO LONDON.--THE ETERNAL NATURE OF DISAPPOINTMENT.--FANNY
MILLINGER.--HER HOUSE AND SUPPER.
It was in the midst of spring, and at the approach of night, that our
travellers entered London. After an absence of some duration, there is a
singular emotion on returning to the roar and tumult of that vast city.
Its bustle, its life, its wealth--the tokens of the ambition and commerce
of the Great Island Race--have something of inconceivable excitement and
power, after the comparative desertion and majestic stillness of
Continental cities. Constance leaned restlessly forth from the window of
the carriage as it whirled on.
"Oh, that I were a man!" said she, fervently.
"And why?" asked Godolphin, smilingly.
"Why! look out on this broad theatre of universal ambition, and read the
why. What a proud and various career lies open in this free city to every
citizen! Look, look yonder--the old hereditary senate, still eloquent
with high memories."
"And close by it," said Godolphin, sneering, "behold the tomb!"
"Yes, but the tomb of great men!" said Constance, eagerly.
"The victims of their greatness."
There was a pause; Constance would not reply, she would scarcely listen.
"And do you feel no excitement, Percy, in the hum and bustle--the lights,
the pomp of your native city?"
"Yes; I am in the mart where all enjoyment may be purchased."
"Ah, fie!"
Godolphin drew his cloak round him, and put up the window.
"These cursed east winds!"
Very true--they are the curse of the country!
The carriage stopped at the stately portico of Erpingham House.
Godolphin felt a little humiliated at being indebted to another--to a
woman, for so splendid a tenement; but Constance, not penetrating into
this sentiment, hastened up the broad stairs, and said, pointing to a door
that led to her boudoir,
"In that room cabinets have been formed and shaken."
Godolphin laughed; he was alive only to the vanity of the boast, because
he shared not the enthusiasm; this was Constance's weak point: her dark
eye flashed fire.
There's nothing bores a man more than the sort of uneasy quiet that
follows a day's journey. Godolphin took his hat, and yawningly stretching
himself, nodded to Constance, and moved to the door; they were in her
dressing-room at the time.
"Why, what, Percy, you cannot be going out now?"
"Indeed I am, my love."
"Where, in Heaven's name?"
"To White's, to learn the news of the Opera, and the strength of the
Ballet."
"I had just rung for lights to show you the house!" said Constance,
disappointed, and half-reproachfully.
"Mercy, Constance! damp rooms and east winds together are too much.
House, indeed! what can there be worth seeing in your English
drawing-rooms after the marble palaces of Italy? Any commands?"
"None!" said Constance, sinking back into her chair, with the tears in her
eyes. Godolphin did not perceive them; he was only displeased by the cold
tone of her answer, and he shut the door, muttering to himself--"Was there
ever such indelicate ostentation!"
"And thus," said Constance, bitterly, "I return to England; friendless,
unloved, solitary in my schemes and my heart as I was before. Awake, my
soul! thou art my sole strength, my sole support. Weak, weak that I was,
to love this man in spite of--Well, well, I am not sunk so low as to
regret."
So saying, she wiped away a few tears, and turning with a strong effort
from softer thoughts, leaned her cheek on her hand, and gazing on the
fire, surrendered herself to the sterner and more plotting meditations
which her return to the circle of her old ambition had at first called
forth.
Meanwhile Godolphin sauntered into the then arch-club of St. James's, that
reservoir of idle exquisites and kid-gloved politicians. There are two
classes of popular men in London; the sprightly, joyous, good-humoured
set; the quiet, gentle, sarcastic herd. The one are fellows called
devilish good--the other, fellows called devilish gentleman like. To the
latter class belonged Godolphin. As he had never written a book, nor set
up for a genius, his cleverness was tacitly allowed to be no impediment to
his good qualities. Nothing atones for the sin, in the eyes of those
young gentlemen who create for their contemporaries reputation, of having
in any way distinguished oneself. "He's such a d--d bore, that man with
his books and poetry," said an arch-dandy of Byron, just after Childe
Harold had turned the heads of the women. There happened to be a knot
assembled at White's when Godolphin entered; they welcomed him
affectionately.
"Wish you joy, old fellow," said one. "Bless me, Godolphin! well, I am
delighted to see you," cried another. "So, you have monopolised Lady
Erpingham!--lucky dog!" whispered a third.
Godolphin, his vanity soothed by the reception he met with, spent his
evening at the Club. The habit begun, became easy--Godolphin spent many
evenings at his club. Constance, running the round of her acquaintance,
was too proud to complain. Perhaps complaint would not have mended the
matter: but one word of delicate tenderness, or one look that asked for
his society, and White's would have been forsaken! Godolphin secretly
resented the very evenness of temper he had once almost overprized.
"Oh, Godolphin," one evening whispered a young lord, "we sup at the little
actress's,--the Millinger; you remember the Millinger? You must come; you
are an old favourite, you know: she'll be so glad to see you,--all
innocent, by the way: Lady Erpingham need not be jealous--(jealous!
Constance jealous of Fanny Millinger!) all innocent. Come, I'll drive you
there; my cab is at the door."
"Anything better than a lecture on ambition," thought Godolphin; and he
consented. Godolphin's friend was a lively young nobleman, of that
good-natured, easy, uncaptious temper, which a clever, susceptible,
indolent man often likes better than comrades more intellectual, because
he has not to put himself out of his way in the comradeship. Lord
Falconer rattled on, as they drove along the brilliant streets, through a
thousand topics, of which Godolphin heard as much as he pleased; and
Falconer was of that age and those spirits when a listener may be easily
dispensed with.
They arrived at a little villa at Brompton: there was a little garden
round it, and a little bower in one corner, all kept excessively neat; and
the outside of the house had just been painted white from top to bottom;
and there was a veranda to the house; and the windows were plate-glass,
with mahogany sashes--only, here and there, a Gothic casement was stuck in
by way of looking "tasty;" and through one window on the ground-floor, the
lights shining within, showed crimson silk and gilded chairs, and all
sorts of finery--Louis Quatorze in a nutshell! The reader knows the
sort of house as well as if he had lived in it. Ladies of Fanny
Millinger's turn of mind always choose the same kind of habitation. It
is astonishing what a unanimity of taste they have; and young men about
town call it "taste" too, and imitate the fashion in their own little
tusculums in Chapel street.
After having threaded a Gothic hall four feet by eight and an oval
conservatory with a river-god in the middle, the two visitors found
themselves in the presence of Fanny Millinger.
Godolphin had certainly felt no small curiosity to see again the frank,
fair, laughing face which had shone on his boyhood, and his mind ran
busily back to that summer evening when, with a pulse how different from
its present languid tenor, and a heart burning with ardour and the pride
of novel independence, the young adventurer first sallied on the world.
He drew back involuntarily as he now gazed on the actress: she had kept
the promise of her youth, and grown round and full in her proportions.
She was extravagantly dressed, but not with an ungraceful, although a
theatrical choice: her fair hands and arms were covered with jewels, and
that indescribable air which betrays the stage was far more visibly marked
in her deportment than when Godolphin first knew her; yet still there was
the same freedom as of old, the same joyousness, and good-humoured
carelessness in her manner, and in the silver ring of her voice as she
greeted Falconer, and turned to question him as to his friend. Godolphin
dropped his cloak, and the next moment, with a pretty scream, quite
stage-effect, and yet quite natural, the actress had thrown herself into
his arms.
"Oh! but I forgot," said she presently, with a mock salutation of respect,
"you are married now; there will be no more cakes and ale. Ah! what long
years since we met; yet I have never quite forgotten you, although the
stage requires all one's memory for one's new parts. Alas! your hair--it
was so beautiful, it has lost half its curl, and grown thin. Very rude in
me to say so, but I always speak the truth, and my heart warms to see you,
so all its thoughts thaw out."
"Well," said Lord Falconer, who had been playing with a little muffy sort
of dog, "you'll recollect me presently."
"You! Oh! one never thinks of you, except when you speak, and then one
recollects you--to look at the clock."
"Very good, Fanny--very good, Fan: and when do you expect Windsor?--He
ought to be here soon. Tell me, do you like him really?"
"Like him!--yes, excessively; just the word for him--for you all. If love
were thrown into the stream of life, my little sail would be upset in an
instant. But in truth, what with dressing, and playing, and all the grave
business of life, I am not idle enough to love. And oh, Godolphin, I'm so
improved! Ask Lord Falconer, if I don't sing like an angel, although my
voice is hardly strong enough to go round a loo-table; but on the stage,
one learns to dispense with all qualities. It is a curious thing, that
fictitious existence, side by side with the real one! We live in
enchantment, Percy, and enjoy what the poets pretend to."
The dreaming Godolphin was struck by the remark. He was surprised, also,
to see how much Fanny remained the same. A life of gaiety had not debased
her.
Tom Windsor came next, an Irishman of five-and-forty, not like his
countrymen in aught save wit. Thin, small, shrivelled, but up to his ears
in knowledge of the world, and with a jest for ever on his tongue: rich
and gay,--he was always popular, and he made the most of his little life
without being an absolute rascal. Next dropped in the handsome Frenchman
De Damville; next, the young gambler, St. John; next two ladies, both
actresses; and the party was complete.
The supper was in keeping with the house; the best wines, excellent
viands--the actress had grown rich. Wit, noise, good-humour, anecdote,
flashed round with the champagne; and Godolphin, exhilarated into a second
youth, fancied himself once more the votary of pleasure.