Rupert Godwin

JULIA’S PROTÉGÉ.

The life at Wilmingdon Hall was a new and pleasant one for Lionel Westford.

Here every luxury and comfort were provided for him. He was earning money which he knew would ensure considerable comfort for his mother and sister in their humble lodging, or even a change to better quarters, if they would consent to make that change. He was living in a house in which objects of art and beauty met his eye on every side; and this, to the man endowed with artistic tastes, is no small privilege. Without, a fair sylvan landscape spread itself before his eyes—those weary eyes that had grown so tired of the smoky streets and high black chimneys of London. His work was light—absurdly light, as it seemed to him, after his dreary unprofitable toil as a copyist of law papers. He was his own master, free at any time to ramble where he pleased in the pleasant country, or in the verdant solitude of the park; and if he chose to ride, one of the banker’s horses was at his disposal.

Beyond all this—infinitely more precious a privilege—he was near Julia Godwin, the woman whose compassionate glances had seemed to him like the looks of an angel; the woman with whom he, the penniless adventurer, had fallen over head and ears in love.

He was near her. He heard her low contralto voice as she sang in the rooms below, accompanying herself sometimes on her piano, sometimes with the bewitchingly romantic sound of a few careless chords on her guitar. He saw her—accidentally, of course—not once only, but several times in the day. He met her in the park or gardens, and loitered talking with her for an hour at a time; or he was summoned to discuss the mounting of some picture, and spent an agreeable half-hour or so in the morning-room, where Miss Godwin sat with the stately widow whom the banker had appointed as companion, chaperone, and protectress of the convenances, at a very handsome salary.

Somehow or other, the young people were always happening to meet.

And Lionel Westford would have been supremely happy in this dependent position, but for the stings of conscience. Unhappily, the stings of conscience were very sharp. Argue with himself as he might, he could not shut his eyes to the fact that there was guilt and dishonour in his intercourse with the Godwin family.

There was secrecy, nay, deception,—and deception must always involve meanness. Lionel Westford felt that he had no right to live at ease in the house of the man whom his mother counted as her foe.

He tried to argue with himself that women are always unreasoning in their dislikes. He tried to persuade himself that Rupert Godwin was not the enemy of his household; that the banker had only acted as any other business man might have acted in the same circumstances.

The young man’s sense of his false position was not to be lulled to rest. He knew that he was acting dishonourably. He knew that there was a kind of treachery in the fact of his presence at Wilmingdon Hall, and he could not be entirely at peace, even in the enchanting society of the woman he loved.

A heavy burden seemed to weigh upon his spirits. It was only while he was in Julia’s society that he could put aside that weight of care.

He had been more than a week at Wilmingdon Hall, and he had not again encountered the half-witted old gardener.

But the recollection of the old man’s strange words had often flashed upon him. Sometimes, against his own will, those words haunted his memory, and puzzled and tormented his brain, when he would fain have thought of other things.

One day, when the August weather was brightest and balmiest, Lionel left his apartment after a long morning’s work at the drawings intrusted to him. He strolled out into the grounds, where a few minutes before he had seen Julia Godwin’s muslin dress glancing amongst the laurel groves.

Nothing could be more beautiful than the smooth lawns, the flowery parterres, the sloping banks, and glistening laurel hedges that surrounded Wilmingdon Hall. Nothing could be more beautiful than those exquisitely cultivated gardens, as Lionel Westford saw them to-day, under the golden light of an August sun.

In the distance there sounded the low murmur of a waterfall, which seemed the complaining voice of some spirit of the woodland, rather than any earthly sound. There had been a time when the gardens of Wilmingdon Hall were the pride of Rupert Godwin’s heart. Many a fashionable assembly had met on that broad lawn; many an agreeable flirtation had commenced in those winding shrubbery walks, in which the spreading foliage of the evergreens made a solemn darkness all day long. Many a fair young country damsel had winged her ruthless arrows home to the hearts of her admirers under the patriarchal beeches of the avenue. Fancy-fairs, garden-parties, toxophilite meetings, and flower-shows had been wont to enliven those spacious gardens. It was only within the last year that a shadow seemed to have fallen on the life of Rupert Godwin, the reputed millionnaire; and the county people marvelled at the change in the man who had once aspired to hold a high place amongst them.

It was known that the banker had quarrelled with his son, though the cause of that quarrel had never transpired.

Rumour had made herself busy with the interior of Mr. Godwin’s mansion, and strange things had been said of the disagreement between father and son. People said that it was his son’s misconduct which had led to Mr. Godwin’s desertion of his country seat; and the county gentlemen spoke of the young man’s behaviour in terms of unmitigated disapprobation.

He had turned his back upon the paternal mansion for ever, it was said, and had gone abroad to wander on the face of the earth, a reprobate and an outcast.

The feminine portion of the community were honestly sorry for this erring wanderer. Edward Godwin was young and handsome, and there are young ladies who would pity Cain, and be ready to forgive that unlucky blow with the club, if they were informed on good authority that the first murderer was darkly splendid of aspect.

Julia was devoted to her brother, and she pleaded his cause everywhere; but she was very little wiser than the county gentry with regard to the unhappy misunderstanding which had separated father and son.

She could only tell people that “poor Edward and papa couldn’t get on together,” or that “they didn’t understand each other.” She could only speak in tender deprecation of her brother’s “wild notions on some subjects,” and conclude with the hope that the prodigal would return and be forgiven.

Lionel had watched Julia from his window, and he knew in what direction she had walked. Nothing, therefore, was more natural than that he should meet her—accidentally.

He entered one of the long shadowy alleys, which seemed to narrow to a vanishing point, and his heart beat faster than its wont, as he saw the graceful figure of Julia Godwin seated in an old-fashioned bower, midway between him and the end of the walk.

She was reading, but she looked up smiling and blushing as Lionel drew near.

He began to talk to her about her book, the last popular volume of travels in the centre of Africa, and from that subject they wandered on to other topics. Julia was very bright and animated. She had spent a weary morning in the society of her companion, Mrs. Melville, whose conversation was the very essence of dulness; and she had fled to the gardens for a refuge from that monotonous drip, drip, drip of meaningless babble. It is scarcely strange, therefore, if she was more or less interested in Lionel’s conversation, when it is considered that he talked his best, as if inspired by that enthusiastic listener.

It was easy for a clever woman to discover that the young man had received the highest class of education which modern civilization can afford.

Julia perceived this; she saw that Lionel was a gentleman both by birth and breeding; and she could not but wonder at the strange position in which she had found him.

All that was most generous in her nature was aroused in sympathy with the stranger’s misfortunes. She would fain have known his history. She had hoped to win his confidence; but she found this was no easy task. The young man spoke freely of every subject—except of himself and his antecedents. On these points he preserved a guarded silence.

They sat talking together for nearly an hour—an hour whose sands ran out as the sands only run when “Love takes up the glass of Time, and turns it in his glowing hands.”

At last Julia took a tiny watch from her belt, and glanced at the dial. She blushed as she perceived the hour, for conscience told her there must be some special reason for her forgetfulness of the flight of time. What would her father have said to her, had he known that she could waste an hour in conversation with a penniless young artist, whose history was utterly unknown to her—whose only claim upon her had been his destitution?

“But whatever papa could say of him, he is a gentleman,” thought Julia, “as highly educated as the best and brightest of papa’s aristocratic friends.”

She closed her book, and rose to leave the quaint old arbour of clipped laurels.

“Two o’clock!” she exclaimed. “How quickly the time slips away! I had no idea that I had been out so long. I must wish you good morning, Mr. Wilton.”

A faint flush tinged Lionel’s face as he heard his false name pronounced by those lovely lips. He could not stifle the feeling of shame which the consciousness of his deception awoke in his mind.

“You will allow me to accompany you to the house?” he said.

“O, certainly,” Julia answered, “if you have nothing better to do.”

Some complimentary speech rose to the young man’s lips, but he repressed it.

How could he dare to betray his admiration, his love, for Julia Godwin? Even if she had not been the daughter of his mother’s enemy, his own poverty would have been an insurmountable barrier, separating him from her entirely.

No; his love was hopeless. This girl, luxuriously nurtured, heiress to an ample fortune, would, no doubt, have laughed to scorn the devotion of a man whom she had rescued from a state of beggary, that had been near akin to starvation. The story of King Cophetua and the beggar maiden is the prettiest of poetic legends; but reverse the positions of the lovers, and the poetry is gone. The king may lead the beggar maiden up the steps of his throne, amid the acclamations of an approving people; but the queen must not stoop from her high estate to smile on low-born merit. This, at any rate, was Lionel Westford’s reading of the old legend, and he felt that there was something almost contemptible in his position in relation to Miss Godwin.

“Let my pride protect me,” he said to himself. “Let me remember how we met, and let me hold my tongue, whatever effort it may cost me to set a watch upon my lips. I can endure anything rather than her contempt.”

The two young people walked for some little time in silence. Then Lionel spoke; but there was something of constraint in his tone.

“You will, perhaps, like to hear an account of my morning’s work, Miss Godwin,” he said. “I have been mounting the Snow piece and the Alpine Sunset. They are both very good. Your brother has real genius, wonderful freedom and vigour in his pencil, and a splendid eye for colour. I only know one amateur artist at all equal to him.”

“Indeed!—and who is he?”

“A young man whom I met in Hampshire. Perhaps I ought not to call him an amateur, for I believe he intended to make painting his profession. Your brother’s style very much reminds me of his, though he may have been, perhaps, a little further advanced in his art.”

“And his name?”

“His name was Stanmore—George Stanmore.”

“And you met him in Hampshire?”

“Yes.”

“Long ago?”

“Not very long. It is about a twelvemonth since I last saw him.”

Julia was silent. A cloud seemed to spread itself over her bright face. She was near the house now; and before the great stone porch Lionel bowed, and left her.

He had worked hard that day, and had risen early in the summer morning in order to make rapid progress with the work which was for him a labour of love, since it was to please her he took so much trouble in the mounting and touching-up of the drawings. What was he but a salaried servant in that house, and how could he maintain the smallest sense of independence except by hard work?

He was in no humour to return to his solitary apartments. Julia Godwin’s image filled his mind. He strolled back to the laurel grove in which he had spent such pleasant hours. For a long time he paced up and down the long alley between the clipped laurel edges, thinking of the beautiful girl with whom he had been so besotted as to fall in love. Then, scarcely knowing where he went, he wandered away from the laurel alley, through an old-fashioned garden, in which there were big, straggling yew-trees, which had once been the pride of a gardener’s heart, in the shape of peacocks and lions, and stiff little flower-beds of geometrical form, where the kitchen gardeners grew savoury herbs, to give flavour and piquancy to the flesh-pots of Wilmingdon Hall.

After exploring this garden, Lionel went through an opening in a close-cut hedge of yew, and found himself suddenly under the dark walls of the northern wing. Those ancient walls seemed to cast a cold and dismal shadow across the garden—a shadow that darkened the glory of the summer day.