not want education, though you may want
fortune, I should--yes, I should--what do you mean, sir?--you are
laughing! Is this your respect, your gratitude to your father?"
A slight shade fell over the bright and intelligent countenance of the
boy.
"Don't let us talk of gratitude," said he sadly; "Heaven knows what
either you or I have to be grateful for! Fortune has left to your proud
name but these bare walls and a handful of barren acres; to me she gave
a father's affection--not such as Nature had made it, but cramped and
soured by misfortunes."
Here Percy paused, and his father seemed also struck and affected. "Let
us," renewed in a lighter strain this singular boy, who might have
passed, by some months, his sixteenth year,--"let us see if we cannot
accommodate matters to our mutual satisfaction. You can ill afford my
schooling, and I am resolved that at school I will not stay. Saville is a
relation of ours; he has taken a fancy to me; he has even hinted that he
may leave me his fortune; and he has promised, at least, to afford me a
home and his tuition as long as I like. Give me free passport hereafter
to come and go as I list, and I in turn, will engage never to cost you
another shilling. Come, sir, shall it be a compact?"
"You wound me, Percy," said the father, with a mournful pride in his
tone; "I have not deserved this, at least from you. You know not,
boy--you know not all that has hardened this heart; but to you it has not
been hard, and a taunt from you--yes, that is the serpent's tooth!"
Percy in an instant was at his father's feet; he seized both his hands, and
burst into a passionate fit of tears. "Forgive me," he said, in broken
words; "I--I meant not to taunt you. I am but a giddy boy!--send me to
school!--do with me as you will!"
"Ay," said the old man, shaking his head gently, "you know not what
pain a son's bitter word can send to a parent's heart. But it is all natural,
perfectly natural! You would reproach me with a love of money, it is
the sin to which youth is the least lenient. But what! can I look round
the world and not see its value, its necessity? Year after year, from my
first manhood, I have toiled and toiled to preserve from the hammer
these last remnants of my ancestor's remains. Year after year fortune
has slipped from my grasp; and, after all my efforts, and towards the
close of a long life, I stand on the very verge of penury. But you cannot
tell--no man whose heart is not seared with many years can tell or can
appreciate, the motives that have formed my character. You,
however,"--and his voice softened as he laid his hand on his son's head,
"you, however,--the gay, the bold, the young,--should not have your
brow crossed and your eye dimmed by the cares that surround me. Go!
I will accompany you to town; I will see Saville myself. If he be one
with whom my son can, at so tender an age, be safely trusted, you shall
pay him the visit you wish."
Percy would have replied but his father checked him; and before the
end of the evening, the father had resolved to forget as much as he
pleased of the conversation.
The elder Godolphin was one of those characters on whom it is vain to
attempt making a permanent impression. The habits of his mind were
durably formed: like waters, they yielded to any sudden intrusion, but
closed instantly again. Early in life he had been taught that he ought to
marry an heiress for the benefit of his estate--his ancestral estate; the
restoration of which he had been bred to consider the grand object and
ambition of life. His views had been strangely baffled; but the more
they were thwarted the more pertinaciously he clung to them. Naturally
kind, generous, and social, he had sunk, at length, into the anchorite
and the miser. All other speculations that should retrieve his ancestral
honours had failed: but there is one speculation that never fails--the
speculation of _saving!_ It was to this that he now indissolubly
attached himself. At moments he was open to all his old habits; but
such moments were rare and few. A cold, hard, frosty penuriousness
was his prevalent characteristic. He had sent this son, with eighteen
pence in his pocket, to a school of twenty pounds a-year; where,
naturally enough, he learned nothing but mischief and cricket: yet he
conceived that his son owed him eternal obligations.
Luckily for Percy, he was an especial favourite with a certain not
uncelebrated
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