Rupert Godwin

CRUEL KINDNESS.

While Violet began her lowly career at the Circenses, Lionel made a new effort to earn a few pounds. His powers as an artist were of no mean order, and he made a desperate attempt to turn his talents to some account. He gathered together a little bundle of sketches, some in water-colours, some in pen-and-ink, but all of them exhibiting considerable dash and talent: sporting sketches, military sketches, graceful groups à la Watteau, cavaliers in the ever-picturesque costume of the Restoration, all the work of happy hours at the Grange. With this bundle under his arm, Lionel Westford sallied forth one wet afternoon in quest of some enterprising dealer in art.

Never had the streets of London looked duller or dingier than they did to-day. There were few carriages even in the best thoroughfares, and the muddy foot-passengers who trod wearily upon the sloppy pavement seemed all of them more or less at odds with fortune.

Lionel Westford crossed Waterloo Bridge and made his way by different short cuts to Regent-street.

Here, as well as in the meaner quarters of the town, the foot-passengers might suffer all the inconvenience and discomfort of muddy pavements and perpetual rain; but pampered beauty, rolling here and there in her luxurious carriage, could descend therefrom to be sheltered by the huge umbrella held by a deferential footman, and to be escorted into a shop as elegantly and as comfortably furnished as a West-end drawing-room.

Lionel entered the shop of a fashionable printseller. It was comparatively empty, and he was able to make his way at once to the counter, where the principal was busily occupied sorting some engravings in a portfolio.

Three or four fashionable-looking men were lounging near the door, and glanced with supreme indifference at the shabbily-dressed stranger, whose threadbare coat and shining hat, dripping with rain, too palpably betrayed his poverty.

Lionel Westford approached the counter, and after a few preliminary words, opened his portfolio.

The printseller looked at the sketches readily enough. They were very clever, he said; they gave indications of great talent, but unluckily they were not wanted; there were plenty of such things to be had, done by the regular people.

Lionel Westford’s cheek grew paler as he saw his last hope deserting him.

“Can you not give me some kind of employment?” he asked, with a feverish energy. “You think, perhaps, I shall want high prices for what I do. You are mistaken. I will work for starvation wages, and work untiringly—I only ask you to give me a chance.”

The printseller shook his head decisively.

“Quite impossible,” he said. “I have more of these kind of things in my stock than I shall be able to sell in a twelvemonth. Photography has quite superseded this kind of work. The fashion for scrap-books has gone out.”

“But if I were to paint a more important picture——”

“There would be no market for it, my good young man. You must have some kind of reputation as an artist before you can expect your pictures to sell,” answered the shopkeeper impatiently.

Lionel shut his portfolio, and turned away from the counter with a feeling of heart-sickness in his breast. None, save those who have endured such disappointments, can tell their anguish.

His face was deadly pale; his lips contracted rigidly; and there was an angry look in his eyes. He was in the humour which would have sent a Frenchman on the first stage of that fatal journey which halts at the filets de St. Cloud, to make its dismal end in the darksome cells of the Morgue.

As he turned from the counter he found himself face to face with a woman—a woman whose beauty startled him by its splendour.

Never before had he seen a face that seemed to him so wondrous in its magical charm. It was not an English type of beauty. The large, almond-shaped eyes, darkly lustrous yet soft and dewy even in their lustre, were like the eyes of a Madonna by Correggio. The rich complexion was foreign in its clear olive tint. The hair, simply dressed under a pink crape bonnet, was of that bluish-black which a painter would choose for the massy tresses of an Assyrian queen.

This Spanish-looking divinity was dressed in the height of fashion and the perfection of taste, as it seemed to Lionel Westford, whose artistic eye took in every detail of her appearance, even in that dreary crisis of his fate. His own troubles and perplexities vanished out of his mind as he looked at this unknown beauty, and he was wholly absorbed by the painter’s delight in loveliness of form and colour.

The young lady wore a dress of some silken material, in which violet and silvery grey were artfully intermingled. A priceless cashmere shawl draped her perfect figure, lending itself to those diagonal lines which are agreeable to the painter’s eye. Close behind this brilliant demoiselle appeared a stout but very stately matron of the chaperone class—the kind of person created for domestic surveillance—the modern form under which the dragon of the famous garden guards the unapproachable fruit.

Lionel Westford was scarcely conscious of this latter lady’s presence. It was the young beauty whose sudden appearance bewildered him, as he turned away, despairing, from the printseller’s counter.

He gazed for some moments upon the unknown beauty, dazzled by her splendour, and then passed hastily on. He wanted to leave the shop—he felt eager to withdraw himself from the influence of that beauteous face. It seemed to him as if there was something almost stifling in the atmosphere. What had he to do with such a creature as this pampered and doubtless high-bred beauty?—he, a beggar, an outcast, a kind of Pariah, by reason of his poverty?

He would have passed out of the shop; but, to his utter bewilderment, the fashionable beauty followed him towards the door, after a brief whispered disputation with the elder lady, and laid her little gloved hand upon the damp sleeve of his shabby coat. The gesture was only momentary. The slim fingers touched him as lightly as a butterfly’s wing; and yet a kind of thrill seemed to vibrate through his veins.

“Do not go just yet,” pleaded a low earnest voice; “I should be glad to speak with you for a few minutes.”

“I am quite at your service, madam.”

At her service! How cold and formal the words sounded as he uttered them! What was she to him but a stranger, whose face had shone upon him for the first time only five minutes ago? And yet he felt as if he could have surrendered his life to give her pleasure. He stood with his hat in his hand, waiting until she should address him.

If he was embarrassed, she was still more so. The rich crimson blood rushed to her cheeks—the dark fringes drooped over her eyes. And yet the impulse that stirred her heart was only one of womanly compassion; it was pity alone that had impelled her to address Lionel Westford.

She had overheard his appeal to the shopkeeper. She had perceived from his tone and manner that he was a gentleman, unaccustomed to bitter struggles for daily bread. She had seen his white face, almost ghastly in its look of despair; and, with impulsive generosity, she had determined, if possible, to help him.

“You are very much in need of employment?” she said hesitatingly.

“My dearest Julia,” exclaimed the outraged matron, “this is really such a very unprecedented kind of proceeding, I must protest against such inconsiderate conduct.”

“My dear Mrs. Melville, for once in a way don’t protest against anything: I am only going to speak to this gentleman about a matter of business,” returned the young lady, just a little impatiently.

“But, my dear Julia, your papa——”

“Papa always allows me to have my own way.”

“But, my dear love, this per—this—ahem!—gentleman is an utter stranger to you.”

All this was spoken in an undertone, but Lionel could perceive that the language of remonstrance was being addressed to the young lady by an outraged duenna, and he moved again towards the door, anxious to terminate an embarrassing situation.

The young lady’s generous impulses were not to be subjugated by matronly caution.

She stopped Lionel once more as he was about to leave the shop.

“Pray do not hesitate to answer me,” she said. “I heard you say just now that you needed employment.”

“I only said the truth, madam. I need it very much.”

“And would you be particular as to the nature of the employment, so long as it were tolerably remunerative?”

“Particular, madam!” exclaimed Lionel. “I would sweep a crossing in the muddy street yonder, or hold horses at the doors of the clubs. I would do anything that an honest man may do, in order to get bread for those I love.”

“For those you love!” repeated the lady. “You have a young wife, perhaps—or even children—whom you find it difficult to support?”

“O no, madam! I have no wife to reproach me for my poverty. The dear ones of whom I spoke are my mother and sister.”

“I think I could offer you remunerative employment,” said the Spanish beauty, still in the same hesitating manner, “if the nature of it would not be unpleasant to you.”

“Unpleasant to me, madam!” exclaimed Lionel. “Believe me, there is no fear of that. Pray speak—command me, in any way you please.”

“I have an only brother,” answered the lady, “who possesses the same talent as yourself. He is abroad now; and indeed we have been separated for some time; but we are truly attached to each other, and everything relating to him is sacred in my eyes. When he went away from home he left behind him a great quantity of sketches—things to which he attached no value, but which are very precious to me. I am anxious to get these drawings mounted by some one with artistic taste. I should be very glad if you would undertake the task. Our house in the country is a very large one; and I have no doubt papa would give you rooms in it while you were engaged in carrying out my wishes. I will ask him to write to you on the subject, if you like. In the mean time, here is my card.”

She opened an exquisitely carved ivory case, and handed Lionel a card, while the outraged matron looked on in silence, with an air of wounded dignity that approached the tragic.

Her tone and manner throughout, even when she was most hesitating, seemed those of one accustomed to command. There was an imperious grandeur in her beauty, which contrasted strongly with her maidenly shyness in addressing a stranger.

The name which Lionel Westford read upon the card was

Miss Godwin,
Wilmingdon Hall, Herts.

Miss Godwin of Wilmingdon Hall! Lionel Westford started, and recoiled a little from his lovely companion.

“I dare say you know my father’s name,” she said; “almost everybody knows Mr. Godwin the banker.”

“I don’t know what people would say if they knew Mr. Godwin’s daughter went about the world picking up strange young men in shops,” thought the matron.

Lionel faltered some few words in reply to Miss Godwin, but those words were not intelligible.

Rupert Godwin’s daughter! This girl, who was anxious to be his patroness, his benefactress, was no other than the daughter of Rupert Godwin, his mother’s worst enemy!

Could he accept any favour from that man’s race? And, on the other hand, how could he now refuse this girl’s help, so generously offered, so eagerly accepted, a few moments before?

He was silent. He stood with the card in his hand, staring absently at the name inscribed upon it, while a sharp mental struggle went on within his breast.

What was he to do? Was he, who so needed help, to reject this most unexpected succour, this friendly rope flung out to him at the moment when he was buffeting with waves that threatened his annihilation? Was he to refuse the help offered in this crisis of his life, in deference to a feeling which was, perhaps, after all, only a foolish prejudice?

He thought of his mother’s broken home. He believed that Rupert Godwin had only acted as any other hard-headed, callous-hearted man of business might have done. But the memory of that desolate home was very vivid in his mind, and he had long ago learned to look upon the banker as a bitter enemy.

Yet he could not reject Julia Godwin’s offer of assistance. The images of his mother and sister seemed to fade from his mind. He stood before Julia Godwin bewildered by conflicting emotions, helpless as some creature under the influence of a spell.

“Shall I ask Papa to write to you about terms and other arrangements? Will you consent to mount my brother’s sketches?” asked the soft voice, while the chaperone still looked on with the stony stare of amazement.

“Yes, I am at your service. I will do what you please,” answered Lionel.

“You are very good. And to what address shall papa write?”

The young man paused for a moment, and then named a post-office in a street near his lodging.

Julia Godwin wrote the address on the back of one of her cards with the jewelled pencil dangling amongst the costly toys at her watch-chain.

“And the name?” she asked.

“Lewis Wilton,” Lionel answered, after another brief pause.

He could only enter Rupert Godwin’s house under a false name. Henceforward his independence would be gone, for there would be falsehood and dishonour in his life.

He felt this; and a sense of shame mingled with his delight in the thought that he and Julia Godwin would meet again.

“And now I am quite at your service, dear Mrs. Melville,” she said to her duenna, placidly ignoring the tempest of indignation with which the matron’s breast had been swelling. “Yet stay, I had almost forgotten to make my purchases.”

She went to the counter, and bought some trifling articles, while Lionel waited to escort the two ladies to their carriage.

It was a very magnificent equipage; and the young man thought, as Julia Godwin bowed to him from the window, that she looked like some foreign princess, dazzling alike by her beauty and by the splendour of her surroundings.

He little knew that the infamous theft of his father’s hardly-earned fortune had alone preserved that splendid equipage from the hands of infuriated creditors. He little knew that all his own sufferings were occasioned by the diabolical fraud which had enabled Rupert Godwin to stem the tide in his affairs, and float into new enterprises that had brought him the command of money.

Yes; the twenty thousand pounds had saved the banker’s commercial position, and had enabled him to enter upon new speculations, which had been singularly, almost miraculously, fortunate.

Lucifer sometimes favours his children. Harley Westford’s money had been very lucky to Rupert Godwin.

And yet, hard and resolute as the banker’s nature was, there were times when he would have gladly sacrificed all his position in the commercial world if he could have recalled the day upon which he first saw the captain of the Lily Queen.

Lionel stood on the muddy pavement, lingering until Godwin’s carriage was quite out of sight.

Then he turned slowly away, and walked homeward; heedless of the fast-falling rain—almost unconscious of the way by which he went; entirely absorbed in thoughts of the lovely face that had so lately beamed upon him—the low musical voice which seemed still to sound in his ear.

But, think as he would of the beautiful Julia, he could not quite banish from his mind the memory of his mother’s trials. What would she think of her only son, could she but know that he was about to accept service with the man who had rendered her home desolate, the man of whom she never spoke without a shudder of aversion?

“There is something horribly base in this business,” thought the young man. “False to Rupert Godwin, since I enter his house as a concealed enemy; false to my mother, whose natural hatred of this man I must outrage by any dealings with him or his race. False every way! What can I do but despise myself for my meanness and folly? No!—come what may, I will not be so utterly weak and degraded. I will not enter the house of Rupert Godwin!”

But there is a Nemesis who guides the footsteps of the avenger. It was destined that Lionel Westford should enter Rupert Godwin’s house under a false name.

The hand of fatality pointed to Wilmingdon Hall. Harley Westford’s son was to go thither.

Chance seemed to have brought about that which was to be the first step in a long train of circumstances leading, slowly but surely, towards discovery and retribution.

Two days after his interview with Julia Godwin, Lionel called at the post-office, and received a letter from the banker.

It was brief, but not uncourteous:

“Sir,—In accordance with my daughter’s request and recommendation, I am prepared to employ you for some weeks in the cleaning and mounting of my son’s sketches. The salary I can offer you is five guineas a week; and you can be accommodated with rooms at my house.

“I shall naturally expect a reference to some person of position who can testify to the respectability of your character and antecedents.

“Yours obediently,
“Rupert Godwin.

“Wilmingdon Hall, Herts.”