CHAPTER XVI.
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.
