Rupert Godwin

WILMINGDON HALL.

Lionel Westford yielded to the influence of the bright face which had looked at him so compassionately in the moment of his despair. He gave way to the temptation against which he had struggled resolutely and manfully, only to break down in the end; and he wrote to Rupert Godwin, accepting the engagement offered him.

Before writing this letter the young man called upon an old college companion, a shallow-minded but kind-hearted young idler, from whom he had kept aloof since his reverse of fortune. It was very much against the grain that he went to ask a favour at the hands of this gentleman, but he had no alternative. Mr. Godwin required some testimony as to the respectability of the stranger whom he was to admit into his household, and Frederick Dudley, his once familiar chum, was the only person to whom Lionel could apply.

Mr. Dudley willingly consented to testify to his old friend’s merits. He knew very little of the changes that had befallen the Westfords, and he jumped at once to the conclusion that Lionel’s assumption of a false name was only a part of some romantic scheme.

“I see it all, Westford,” exclaimed the young man, “though you are so confoundedly close with a fellow. It’s a love affair, that’s what it is; you’ve fallen head over heels in love with this old fogy’s handsome daughter—I’ve met Julia Godwin in society, and a remarkably fine girl she is, though not my style—and you want to get into the house disguised as a poor artist. Quite a romantic dodge, upon my word, and I envy you the spirits for the adventure! I’m so deucedly used-up myself that I should never have thought of such a thing. Come now, confess that I’ve hit it;—eh, old boy?”

“I can confess nothing,” answered Lionel; “but I must not allow you to entertain any false ideas with regard to Miss Godwin. I have only seen that young lady once in my life, and then only for a few minutes.”

“Very likely, my dear boy; and for all that you may be awfully in love with her. There’s such a thing as love at first sight, you know, if we’re to believe those prosy old poets. I don’t understand the thing myself; but then I’m so deucedly used-up. I have not experienced the tender passion since I was spoony on a pretty little pastrycook at Eton,” added the young simpleton, whose moustache had only lately begun to sprout.

“At any rate, I may rely upon your kind offices, Dudley?” asked Lionel, as he prepared to leave his friend’s chambers.

“You shall have them with all my heart, dear boy. But you’ll stop to luncheon, won’t you? I can give you a grilled chicken, and a dry sherry that you’ll not match every day in the week. I shall so enjoy a smoke and a chat with you. It will recall the old times, you know, when we were young and fresh. What have you been doing with yourself lately, old fellow? I haven’t seen you for the last six months.”

“No, my dear Dudley,” answered Lionel; “and very few of my friends have seen me during that time.”

“Why not?”

“Because your world is no longer my world. Since my poor father was lost at sea, a great change has taken place in my fortunes. Such lucky young scapegraces as you can no longer be my companions, for I have entered the ranks of the breadwinners.”

“But, my dear Lionel,” exclaimed the young man, “surely your friends could be of some service to you! I haven’t a very large balance at my banker’s, for the relieving officer has all the parochial hardness of heart, but so far as it goes it is entirely at your disposal.”

Lionel wrung his friend’s hand with a grateful pressure.

“My dear Fred, I know what a good fellow you are, and I thank you most heartily; but I am now certain of employment which will be tolerably remunerative. Good-bye, old friend!”

“And you don’t like me well enough to borrow a few tenners just to carry on the war with?”

“No, thanks, Dudley; I can do without the tenners, if I get the five pounds a week Mr. Godwin is willing to give me for some very easy work.”

“Do you want an introduction to my tailor? I keep the fellow an unconscionable time waiting for his money, but I make a point of recommending him to my friends. What a pity a fellow’s friends have such a knack of going through the Bankruptcy Court, by the way! It takes so much off the value of one’s introductions. Shall I give you a line to my snip?”

“No, dear boy, I’ll not victimise him, this time. I have the remnant of my University extravagances in that way, and can make a decent appearance at Wilmingdon Hall.”

“You will come and see me again, dear boy?”

“Yes, when my position has improved; until then, good-bye.”

Three days after this interview, Lionel Westford left King’s Cross on his way to Hertfordshire. For the first time in his life the young man had told his mother a falsehood. He had told her that artistic work had been offered him in the town of Hertford, and that he was about to occupy himself for a few weeks in that place.

Clara Westford was grieved at the thought of even a brief separation from her son; but she had seen his spirit drooping, and a dark cloud upon his brow, so she was glad to think that he would have employment and change of scene. Lionel’s conscience upbraided him cruelly as he left that devoted mother; and yet he tried to reason with himself against his scruples. Was not Rupert Godwin’s money as good as that of any other man? and would it not purchase comfort for that dear patient sufferer? and was he, Lionel Westford the pauper, to fling away the chance of fortune because it was offered by the banker’s hand?

Thus it was that he went to Wilmingdon Hall. Rupert Godwin had only yielded to a caprice of his daughter’s when he consented to engage the young artist. Julia’s influence over her father was almost unbounded. The cold heart for her grew warm and human; the remorseless nature became softened. Rupert Godwin hated his son; for he knew that the young man had read the secrete of his inner nature, and despised him. He hated his son; but he loved his beautiful daughter with a morbid and exaggerated affection, and there were few requests of hers which he cared to refuse.

At any other time Mr. Godwin might certainly have been inclined to question the prudence of his daughter’s views with regard to the stranger whose desperate condition had excited her compassion. He was by no means given to the Quixotic impulses which were common to Julia’s nature; and whatever benefits he had bestowed upon his fellow creatures had been given in obedience to the prejudices of society rather than to the impulses of his own heart. At another time he would have sided with the outraged guardian of his daughter’s youth, and would have protested against Julia’s philanthropic schemes as absurd and impracticable. Julia had been prepared to encounter such opposition, and had been just a little inclined to repent her somewhat precipitate offer of employment in the interval which elapsed between her meeting with Lionel Westford and her father’s next flying visit to Hertfordshire.

To her surprise, however, the young lady met with only the faintest possible opposition. Of late Rupert Godwin’s mind had been entirely occupied by one all-absorbing care, and he had grown strangely indifferent to the details of his daily life.

He made one or two peevish objections to Julia’s proposition, and then gave way to her wish, but not with the good grace with which he had once been accustomed to grant a favour asked by that fondly loved daughter.

“You want me to write to this young man,” he said half absently, as if it were almost too much trouble for him to concentrate his thoughts for even a few moments on the subject in question. “Very well, Julia—very well; I will write. Don’t worry me any further about the business. I think the whole affair very absurd, but you must have your wish. What does it matter?”

“What does it matter?” That was a phrase which Rupert Godwin had used very frequently of late when called upon to discuss the trifles that make up the sum of existence. These things had become of such complete indifference to him, and it seemed to him that people made such fuss and noise about the petty details that appeared so contemptible in his eyes;—in his eyes, before which for ever loomed one dark awful shape, the shadow whereof shut out all other things from his sight.

Lionel Westford arrived at the Hall in the afternoon of a brilliant August day. Not a leaf stirred in the verdant depths of the park, not a blade of grass was ruffled by a passing breeze. The lake, lying in a green hollow overshadowed by spreading chestnuts and beeches, was smooth as the face of a mirror, and reflected the rich blue of the cloudless summer sky.

Lionel had been for many months a prisoner in the dreary desert of London;—London, which is a delightful city for the denizens of Mayfair or Belgravia, who, if called upon to make a map of the British capital, would place its centre at Apsley House, and its eastern boundary on the further side of Regent-street; but a dismal abode for those needy wayfarers who contemplate it from the purlieus of the New-cut. For months he had looked only on shabby houses, close streets whose blackened walls shut out the light of day; and the pleasantest sound which had announced to him the advent of summer had been the shrill cry of the costermonger vending his “Cauliflow-vers!” to the small householders of the neighbourhood. So it was that, entering the banker’s grand old domain, a kind of intoxication stole over his senses. He looked about him, and drew a deep inspiration—a long breath of rapture. His chest heaved, his head was lifted to the summer sky, his step grew elastic as he trod the crisp springy turf.

“It is a paradise!” he exclaimed—“a paradise, and she is its queen!”

The distance from the lodge-gates to the house was a long one. Lionel had left his portmanteau at the lodge, and had there obtained instructions as to the nearest road to the Hall. The lodge-keeper had directed him to go by a narrow pathway winding through a thick shrubbery, and leading past the grotto and fernery.

In the depths of this leafy arcade a solemn gloom prevailed, even on this brilliant summer day; and as Lionel Westford advanced further into that forest darkness, the sombre twilight of the place, together with its perfect stillness, produced a strange effect upon his mind.

He was no longer elated, he was no longer carried away by a sense of rapture. On the contrary, he felt all at once strangely depressed; a mysterious burden seemed to weigh down his heart. It was almost as if there had been something stifling in the very atmosphere of that luxuriant shrubbery. And under this strange influence even the image of Julia Godwin faded out of the young man’s mind. All other feelings seemed absorbed by that mysterious sensation, the nature of which he could not define.

He quickened his pace. The solitude of the scene was distasteful to him. He hurried on, eager to reach the Hall, eager to behold human faces, to hear cheerful voices.

After walking a considerable distance, he came at last to a spot which he recognized as the grotto and fernery.

The spot was darker, wilder, and more solitary than any other part of Wilmingdon Park.

Great craggy masses of limestone and granite were mingled with the ruins of some classic temple; and amongst the broken pillars and the rugged rockwork the ferns grew high in rank luxuriance.

A small cascade trickled noiselessly amongst the moss-grown stones, and dropped into a smooth pool of water—a pool that looked as if beneath its quiet surface there lurked a treacherous depth.

“It looks like a spot that has been blighted by the influence of some evil deed,” thought Lionel, as he paused for a few moments to contemplate the scene. “It looks like a place upon which the red hand of murder had set its stamp. I could fancy some Eugene Aram lying in wait for his victim behind one of those Doric columns, prepared to shoot him through the head, and then drop him quietly to the bottom of that pool. It’s the sort of place a Highlander would call ‘uncanny.’”

While this thought was still in his mind he was startled by long melancholy moan, which sounded near him.

Lionel Westford inherited his father’s courage, and yet his heart sank within him as he heard that strange unearthly utterance.

The hardiest nature succumbs, for a moment at least, beneath the influence of the supernatural.

But that sudden thrill of fear passed with the moment.

“Pshaw!” exclaimed the young man; “the sound was human enough, I daresay, though it was awfully like the wail of a departed soul. I have only to discover its cause. It seemed to come from behind this rockery.”

As he said this, Lionel Westford walked round the irregular pile of stonework, and speedily discovered whence that mysterious moaning had proceeded.

An old man, dressed in a suit of well-worn corduroy, was sitting on a block of moss-grown stone, with his elbows resting on his bony knees, and his face hidden in his tanned and withered hands.

He seemed very old, for long thin locks of snowy whiteness fell over his spare shoulders. He was evidently employed about the grounds, for gardening implements lay on the grass near him.

As Lionel stood looking at this strange figure, the dismal moan was repeated.

Then the old man spoke.

“O Lord, O Lord!” he cried, “it’s dreadful to bear; it’s dreadful, dreadful, dreadful!”

This time Lionel Westford’s only feeling was one of compassion.

He laid his hand lightly upon the gardener’s shoulder. The old man started to his feet as if under the influence of a galvanic shock. The face he turned towards Lionel was blanched with fear, and his whole frame was shaken by a convulsive trembling.

“Who are you?” he gasped. “Who are you, and where did come from?”

“I am a perfect stranger here,” answered Lionel. “I heard you moaning just now, and naturally felt anxious to discover the cause of your distress.”

“A stranger!” repeated the old man in a hoarse whisper, wiping the sweat-drops from his forehead as he spoke. “A stranger! Are you sure of that?—eh?”

He peered earnestly into Lionel’s frank face, as if he would fain have read the truth there.

“Yes, yes,” he muttered; “I see you don’t deceive me. You are a stranger to this dreadful place. But just now I was talking, wasn’t I? I talk sometimes without knowing it. I’m an old man, and my brain’s getting muddled. Did I say much—did I say anything—anything queer—anything that made your blood run cold and your hair stand on end?—eh?”

Lionel Westford looked compassionately at the old gardener.

What could this be but madness, or at least the cloudy twilight of a fading mind, through which there flitted the dark and hideous shadows of delirium?

“My good man, there is no occasion for this distress,” Lionel said gently. “You said nothing, except that something or other was dreadful. Pray calm yourself. It was only the sound of your moaning that attracted me here.”

“And I said nothing? Ah! but I say queer things sometimes—very queer things! But there’s no meaning in ’em—no meaning; no more meaning than there is in the screeching of them old ravens as you’ll hear sometimes in this here shrubbery. They’re as old as I am and older, them ravens, and they screeches awful sometimes after dark. That sounds dreadful; but there’s nothing in it. I’m a very old man. I’ve served the Godwins, man and boy, for seventy years. I remember this Mr. Godwin—Rupert Godwin—a baby; and I remember his father a boy—a bright-faced, free-hearted boy; not dark and silent, like this one, but bright and open; the right sort he was—yes, the right sort. I’ve served ’em long, and faithful; and they’ve been good masters to me. It isn’t likely that I should turn against ’em and betray ’em, now I’m an old man. Is it?”

“Of course not,” answered Lionel. “What should you have to betray?”

“No, no,” muttered the old gardener, speaking to himself rather than to Lionel, “it isn’t likely. I’ve eaten their bread for seventy years, and it isn’t likely I should speak agen ’em, though I feel now sometimes as if that bread would choke me. But I musn’t be talking, sir; I musn’t stand talking here to you, for I say queer things sometimes, only there’s no meaning in ’em; mind that—there’s never any meaning in ’em.”

The old man shouldered his spade and walked off, leaving Lionel very much bewildered by his manner.

“Mad!” thought the young man. “Mad! Poor old fellow; I wonder the banker doesn’t pension off such an old servant. I should scarcely like to have such a melancholy object about my place, if I were Mr. Godwin. Frère, il faut mourir! The man must be a perpetual reminder of the horrors of old age.”

Lionel Westford walked on a few paces further, and presently emerged from the shrubberies on to a smooth lawn, across which he saw the grand old mansion that had sheltered so many noble inhabitants.

In a moment the recollection of the mad old gardener was blotted out of his mind. He thought only of that radiant vision which had so bewitched and enchanted him a week before in the printseller’s shop. He could only think of the wondrous dark eyes of Julia Godwin.

He arrived at the house, and was received by a stately butler, who ushered him immediately up the broad staircase and along a corridor, out of which a great many doors opened. One of these doors was thrown open by the aristocratic butler, and Lionel found himself in a comfortably furnished sitting-room, out of which there opened a bedroom and dressing-room.

These were the apartments which the housekeeper had caused to be prepared for the artist. Lionel could but compare their simple though luxurious furniture with the dingy curtains and meagre-looking weak-legged chairs and tables of the shabby lodging in which he had left his mother and sister.

He seated himself before a table near the window, on which a large portfolio had been placed ready for him, and began to consider his work without further delay. But his mind was oppressed by the thought that he was acting a treacherous part towards both his mother and Rupert Godwin; and the image of the half-imbecile old gardener mingled itself strangely with the radiant vision of Julia in all her proud young beauty.