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.
