Godolphin Part 3

CHAPTER VI.

PERCY G.o.dOLPHIN THE GUEST OF SAVILLE.--HE ENTERS THE LIFE-GUARDS AND BECOMES THE FASHION.

"And so," said Saville, laughing, "you really gave them the slip: excellent! But I envy you your adventures with the player folk. 'Gad!

if I were some years younger, I would join them myself; I should act Sir Pertinax Macsycophant famously; I have a touch of the mime in me. Well!

but what do you propose to do?--live with me?--eh!"

"Why, I think that might be the best, and certainly it would be the pleasantest mode of pa.s.sing my life. But----"

"But what?"

"Why, I can scarcely quarter myself on your courtesy; I should soon grow discontented. So I shall write to my father, whom I, kindly and considerately, by the way, informed of my safety the very first day of my arrival at B----. I told him to direct his letters to your house; but I regret to find that the handbill which so frightened me from my propriety is the only notice he has deigned to take of my whereabout.

I shall write to him therefore again, begging him to let me enter the army. It is not a profession I much fancy; but what then! I shall be my own master."

"Very well said!" answered Saville; "and here I hope I can serve you. If your father will pay the lawful sum for a commission in the Guards, why, I think I have interest to get you in for that sum alone--no trifling favour."

G.o.dolphin was enchanted at this proposal, and instantly wrote to his father, urging it strongly upon him; Saville, in a separate epistle, seconded the motion. "You see," wrote the latter, "you see, my dear sir, that your son is a wild, resolute scapegrace. You can do nothing with him by schools and coercion: put him to discipline in the king's service, and condemn him to live on his pay. It is a cheap mode, after all, of providing for a reprobate; and as he will have the good fortune to enter the army at so early an age, by the time he is thirty, he may be a colonel on full pay. Seriously, this is the best thing you can do with him,--unless you have a living in your family."

The old gentleman was much discomposed by these letters, and by his son's previous elopement. He could not, however, but foresee, that if he resisted the boy's wishes, he was likely to have a troublesome time of it. Sc.r.a.pe after sc.r.a.pe, difficulty following difficulty, might ensue, all costing both anxiety and money. The present offer furnished him with a fair excuse for ridding himself, for a long time to come, of further provision for his offspring; and now growing daily more and more attached to the indolent routine of solitary economies in which he moved, he was glad of an opportunity to deliver himself from future interruption, and surrender his whole soul to his favourite occupation.

At length, after a fortnight's delay and meditation, he wrote shortly to Saville and his son; saying, after much reproach to the latter, that if the commission could really be purchased at the sum specified he was willing to make a sacrifice, for which he must pinch himself, and conclude the business. This touched the son, but Saville laughed him out of the twinge of good feeling; and very shortly afterwards, Percy G.o.dolphin was gazetted as a cornet in the ---- Life-Guards.

The life of a soldier, in peace, is indolent enough, Heaven knows! Percy liked the new uniforms and the new horses--all of which were bought on credit. He liked his new companions; he liked b.a.l.l.s; he liked flirting; he did not dislike Hyde Park from four o'clock till six; and he was not very much bored by drills and parade. It was much to his credit in the world that he was the protege of a man who had so great a character for profligacy and gambling as Augustus Saville; and under such auspices he found himself launched at once into the full tide of "good society."

Young, romantic, high-spirited--with the cla.s.sic features of an Antinous, and a very pretty knack of complimenting and writing verses--Percy G.o.dolphin soon became, while yet more fit in years for the nursery than the world, "the curled darling" of that wide cla.s.s of high-born women who have nothing to do but to hear love made to them, and who, all artifice themselves, think the love sweetest which springs from the most natural source. They like boyhood when it is not bashful; and from sixteen to twenty, a Juan need scarcely go to Seville to find a Julia.

But love was not the worst danger that menaced the intoxicated boy.

Saville, the most seductive of tutors--Saville who, in his wit; his bon ton, his control over the great world, seemed as a G.o.d to all less elevated and less aspiring,--Saville was G.o.dolphin's constant companion; and Saville was worse than a profligate--he was a gambler! One would think that gaming was the last vice that could fascinate the young: its avarice, its grasping, its hideous selfishness, its cold, calculating meanness, would, one might imagine, scare away all who have yet other and softer deities to worship. But, in fact, the fault of youth is that it can rarely resist whatever is the Mode. Gaming, in all countries, is the vice of an aristocracy. The young find it already established in the best circles; they are enticed by the habit of others, and ruined when the habit becomes their own.

"You look feverish, Percy," said Saville, as he met his pupil in the Park. "I don't wonder at it; you lost infernally last night."

"More than I can pay," replied Percy, with a quivering lip.

"No! you shall pay it to-morrow, for you shall go shares with me to-night. Observe," continued Saville, lowering his voice, "_I never lose_."

"How _never?_"

"Never, unless by design. I play at no game where chance only presides.

Whist is my favourite game: it is not popular: I am sorry for it. I take up with other games,--I am forced to do it; but, even at rouge et noir, I carry about with me the rules of whist. I calculate--I remember."

"But hazard?"

"I never play at that," said Saville, solemnly. "It is the devil's game; it defies skill. Forsake hazard, and let me teach you ecarte; it is coming into fashion."

Saville took great pains with G.o.dolphin; and G.o.dolphin, who was by nature of a contemplative, not hasty mood, was no superficial disciple.

As his biographer, I grieve to confess, that he became, though a punctiliously honest, a wise and fortunate gamester; and thus he eked out betimes the slender profits of a subaltern's pay.

This was the first great deterioration in Percy's mind--a mind which ought to have made him a very different being from what he became, but which no vice, no evil example, could ever entirely pervert.

CHAPTER VII.

SAVILLE EXCUSED FOR HAVING HUMAN AFFECTIONS.--G.o.dOLPHIN SEES ONE WHOM HE NEVER SEES AGAIN.--THE NEW ACTRESS.

Saville was deemed the consummate man of the world--wise and heartless.

How came he to take such gratuitous pains with the boy G.o.dolphin? In the first place, Saville had no legitimate children; G.o.dolphin was his relation; in the second place it may be observed that hackneyed and sated men of the world are fond of the young, in whom they recognise something--a better something belonging to themselves. In G.o.dolphin's gentleness and courage, Saville thought he saw the mirror of his own crusted urbanity and scheming perseverance; in G.o.dolphin's fine imagination and subtle intellect he beheld his own cunning and hypocrisy. The boy's popularity flattered him; the boy's conversation amused. No man is so heartless but that he is capable of strong likings, when they do not put him much out of his way; it was this sort of liking that Saville had for G.o.dolphin. Besides, there was yet another reason for attachment, which might at first seem too delicate to actuate the refined voluptuary; but examined closely, the delicacy vanished. Saville had loved, at least had offered his hand to--G.o.dolphin's mother (she was supposed an heiress!) He thought he had just missed being G.o.dolphin's father: his vanity made him like to show the boy what a much better father he would have been than the one that Providence had given him.

His resentment, too, against the accepted suitor, made him love to exercise a little spiteful revenge against G.o.dolphin's father; he was glad to show that the son preferred where the mother rejected. All these motives combined made Saville take, as it were, to the young Percy; and being rich, and habitually profuse, though prudent, and a shrewd speculator withal, the pecuniary part of his kindness cost him no pain.

But G.o.dolphin, who was not ostentatious, did not trust himself largely to the capricious fount of the worldling's generosity. Fortune smiled on her boyish votary; and during the short time he was obliged to cultivate her favours, showered on him at least a sufficiency for support, or even for display.

Crowded with fine people, and blazing with light, were the rooms of the Countess of B----, as, flushed from a late dinner at Saville's, young G.o.dolphin made his appearance in the scene. He was not of those numerous gentlemen, the stock-flowers of the parterre, who stick themselves up against walls in the panoply of neckclothed silence. He came not to b.a.l.l.s from the vulgar motive of being seen there in the most conspicuous situation--a motive so apparent among the stiff exquisites of England.

He came to amuse himself; and if he found no one capable of amusing him, he saw no necessity in staying. He was always seen, therefore, conversing or dancing, or listening to music--or he was not seen at all.

In exchanging a few words with a Colonel D----, a noted roue and gamester, he observed, gazing on him very intently--and as Percy thought, very rudely--an old gentleman in a dress of the last century.

Turn where he would, G.o.dolphin could not rid himself of the gaze; so at length he met it with a look of equal scrutiny and courage. The old gentleman slowly approached. "Percy G.o.dolphin, I think?" said he.

"That is _my_ name, sir," replied Percy. "Yours----"

"No matter! Yet stay! you shall know it. I am Henry Johnstone--old Harry Johnstone. You have heard of him?--your father's first cousin. Well, I grieve, young sir, to find that you a.s.sociate with that rascal Saville--Nay, never interrupt me sir!--I grieve to find that you, thus young, thus unguarded, are left to be ruined in heart and corrupted in nature by any one who will take the trouble! Yet I like your countenance!--I like your countenance!--it is open, yet thoughtful; frank, and yet it has something of melancholy. You have not Charles's coloured hair; but you are much younger--much. I am glad I have seen you; I came here on purpose; good-night!"--and without waiting for an answer, the old man disappeared.

G.o.dolphin, recovering from his surprise, recollected that he had often heard his father speak of a rich and eccentric relation named Johnstone.

This singular interview made a strong but momentary impression on him. He intended to seek out the old man's residence; but one thing or another drove away the fulfilment of the intention, and in this world the relations never met again.

Percy, now musingly gliding through the crowd, sank into a seat beside a lady of forty-five, who sometimes amused herself in making love to him--because there could be no harm in such a mere boy!--and presently afterwards, a Lord George Somebody, sauntering up, asked the lady if he had not seen her at the play on the previous night.

"O, yes! we went to see the new actress. How pretty she is!--so unaffected too;--how well she sings!"

"Pretty well--er!" replied Lord George, pa.s.sing his hand through his hair. "Very nice girl--er!--good ankles. Devilish hot--er, is it not--er--er? What a bore this is: eh! Ah! G.o.dolphin! don't forget Wattier's--er!" and his lordship er'd himself off.

"What actress is this?"

"Oh, a very good one indeed!--came out in _The Belle's Stratagem_. We are going to see her to-morrow; will you dine with us early, and be our cavalier?"

"Nothing will please me more! Your ladyship has dropped your handkerchief."

"Thank you!" said the lady, bending till her hair touched G.o.dolphin's cheek, and gently pressing the hand that was extended to her. It was a wonder that G.o.dolphin never became a c.o.xcomb.

He dined at Wattier's the next day according to appointment: he went to the play; and at the moment his eye first turned to the stage, a universal burst of applause indicated the entrance of the new actress--f.a.n.n.y Millinger!

CHAPTER VIII.

G.o.dOLPHIN'S Pa.s.sION FOR THE STAGE.--THE DIFFERENCE IT ENGENDERED IN HIS HABITS OF LIFE.

Now this event produced a great influence over G.o.dolphin's habits--and I suppose, therefore, I may add, over his character. He renewed his acquaintance with the lively actress.