Godfrey Kneller

“ He was not sophisticated by thought or entangled in theory—quite different from the people at Shaylor's Patch.
"She is very pretty; and absolutely a lady—and straight, and all that."
"Then let it alone," counselled Bob Purnett.
"I can't help it, old chap." Again the primitive note—the cry that there are limits to human endurance! Godfrey had not meant to utter it. The saying of it was an illumination to himself. Up to now he had thought that he could help it—and would, if he were faced with theories and irrationality. ”

“ Although he hated the business and thought with longing of his studies, stellar and other, in the Kleindorf observatory, Godfrey was quite clever enough to collect what was needed. In fact, some three months later he passed his examination with ease about half-way up the list, and duly entered Sandhurst.
He found the establishment at Garrick Street just such a place as its owner had described. In it were many charming but idle young men, often with a certain amount of means, who were going up for the Diplomatic Service, the Foreign Office, the Indian Civil, or various branches of the army. ”

“ There is hardly anything in the world which Godfrey will not find out if he is given time. A secret has the same attraction for him that cheese has for a mouse. Some day, I hope, he will find a trap baited with a seductive mystery.
“We always coal at night,” said Power.
“Of course,” said Marion, “the dirt shows so much less at night than it would in daylight.”
“But,” said Godfrey, “I don’t understand why you—”
I rose and said that we must go ashore. I invited Power to dinner, and urged him to bring McNeice with him if possible. I made it quite plain that I was not inviting Godfrey. ”

“ In no very enviable mood, Godfrey pursued his way though the lonely park. The birds had not yet sung their matin hymn to awaken the earth. Deep silence rested upon the august face of nature. Not a breath of air stirred the branches, heavy with dew-drops. The hour was full of beauty and mystery. An awe fell insensibly upon the heart, as if it saw the eye of God visibly watching over the sleeping world. Its holy influence was felt even by the selfish heartless Godfrey. ”

“ People get to a very casual way of doing things on the goldfields. There was no formality about my arrangements; Godfrey helping me pack at a store, and during our work I said without preface, "You'd better come too;" "Right," said he, and the matter was settled. Godfrey, a son of one of the leading Sydney families, had started life in an insurance office, but soon finding that he was not cut out for city life, went on to a Queensland cattle-station, where he gained as varied a knowledge of bush life as any could wish for ”

“ Godfrey's manner was so totally different from what it had been a short time before that he looked like another man. He had got rid of his pomposity and look of self-sufficiency, for he was too thoroughly in earnest at that moment to put on any little airs, and was contented to show himself as he really was, namely, a man full of doubt and hope, of fear and love; in short, a human being and not a machine. ”

“ The heav'ns, for heav'n was deaf to both our pray'rs.
The wretch whose insolent embrace confin'd me
(Like thunder bursting on the guilty soul)
With curs'd Vonones' voice pour'd in my ears
A hateful tale of love; for he it seems
Had seen me at Arabia's royal court,
And took those means to force me to his arms.
Cleone. Perhaps you may gain something from the Captives
Of your lost Parents.
Evanthe. This I meant to try,
Soon as the night hides Nature in her darkness,
Veil'd in the gloom we'll steal into their prison. ”

“ First, he had been deprived of that glass of Malvoisie—which would probably have been plural rather than singular—and of a conversation with Lord Basset, which might have resulted in something of interest: and life was exceedingly devoid of interest, thought Mr Godfrey, in a pessimistic spirit. He had not discovered that, to a great extent, life is to every man what he chooses to make it; that he who keeps his eyes fixed on street mud need not expect to discover pearls, while he who attentively scans the heavens is not at all unlikely to see stars. ”

“ But Godfrey has no ostensible vices. I have never heard of his doing anything wild or disreputable. He does not gamble or borrow money in order to give jewels to pretty actresses. He owes bills to shop-keepers for ties and trousers. His next remark showed me that Nicholson and Blackett were becoming uneasy.
“By the way, Excellency,” he said, “I’d be glad if you’d be civil to the Pringles this afternoon. Get her tea or something.”
Mr. Pringle is the manager of the branch of the bank in which Godfrey keeps his account. ”

“ Such was Godfrey’s introduction to his new home at Kleindorf, where very soon he was happy enough. Notwithstanding his strange appearance and his awkwardness, Monsieur Boiset proved himself to be what is called “a dear old gentleman”; moreover, really learned, and this in sundry different directions. Thus, he was an excellent astronomer, and the possessor of a first-rate telescope, mounted in a little observatory, on a rocky peak of ground which rose up a hundred feet or more in the immediate neighbourhood of the house, that itself stood high. ”

“ I am alone, alone.'
"Godfrey wailed in a manner. It made me ashamed to hear his voice like that—him that looked like my father that was always silent as a sword—him that was the true McNeil.
"'You look at me, and your eyes are the eyes of my mother,' says Godfrey, staring wilder. 'What are you doing here, all so still? Drinking the whiskey? I am the same as you. I am your brother. I will sit with you, and if you drink the whiskey, I will drink the whiskey, too.'
"Aleck McTavish! with that he sat down on the floor in the dirt and litter beside Donald, that was oldest of us all. ”

“ But it was necessary to make a start. Godfrey felt the responsibility which rested on him, on him alone, for he could in no way depend on his companion. In that empty box which served the professor for a cranium there could be born no practical idea; Godfrey would have to think, contrive, and decide for both.
His first thought was for Phina, his betrothed, whom he had so stupidly refused to make his wife; his second for his Uncle Will, whom he had so imprudently left, and then turning to Tartlet,—
"To vary our ordinary," he said, "here are some shell-fish and half a dozen eggs." ”

“ Perhaps a dead rat under the floor,” suggested Godfrey.
“Twenty dead rats, probably, since I imagine that this hole has not been cleaned since the time of George II. We are martyrs in this world, Sir. I come here to attend to the affairs of some whippersnapper whom I never saw and never want to see, just because Helen Ogilvy, who was my first cousin, chooses to make me a trustee of her confounded will, in which she leaves money to the confounded whippersnapper, God knows why. ”

“ The sadness in her voice struck him. "You poor dear! You've had bad luck, and you've fallen among evil counsellors, in which term, heaven forgive me, I include my dear friends here at Shaylor's Patch."
"I'll try your principles another way. If you were Godfrey, would you leave me—now?"
He twisted his moustache and hesitated. "Well, there you have me," he admitted at last. "If a man does what he did, as a gentleman he must stand to be damned for it."
"Godfrey's free to go, of course—that's our bargain. But you wouldn't have made a bargain like that?"
"I would not, Winnie. ”

“ What made Bräsig stare at us so sharply, I wonder? I think I must have blushed. What a good man Godfrey is. How seriously and learnedly he can talk. How decided he is, and I think he has the marks of his spiritual calling written in his face. He isn't the least bit handsome it is true; Rudolph is much better looking, but then Godfrey has an air with him that seems to say, 'don't disturb me by telling me of any of your foolish worldly little vanities, for I have high thoughts and aspirations, I am going to be a clergyman.' I'll cut his hair short though as soon as I have the power. ”

“ Conroy’s sudden departure was a bitter sorrow and disappointment to Godfrey. He came up to dinner that night with three new pearl studs in the front of his shirt.
“What I can’t understand,” he said, “is why a man like Conroy should spend his time with your upper servants; people like Crossan, whom I shouldn’t dream of shaking hands with.”
“I’m afraid,” I said, “that he’s not going to give you that job you hoped for.”
“He may,” said Godfrey. “I think he liked me right enough. If only he could be got to believe that Power is robbing him right and left.” ”

“ An unlucky accident has associated you in people's minds with Mr. Luker. You have told me what scandal says of him. What does scandal say of you?"
Even at the eleventh hour, dear Mr. Godfrey—always ready to return good for evil—tried to spare her.
"Don't ask me!" he said. "It's better forgotten, Rachel—it is, indeed."
"I will hear it!" she cried out, fiercely, at the top of her voice.
"Tell her, Godfrey!" entreated my aunt. "Nothing can do her such harm as your silence is doing now!"
Mr. Godfrey's fine eyes filled with tears. ”

“ Giving as they do with both hands, I knew that Attley and Mrs. Godfrey could take nobly; but I never met a man who so nobly gave and so nobly received thanks as Shend did.
'Tell us why you have been so unbelievably kind to us gipsies,' Mrs. Godfrey said to him one day on deck.
He looked up from a diagram of some Thames-mouth shoals which he was explaining to me, and answered with his gentle smile:
'I will. It's because it makes me happy--it makes me more than happy--to be with you. It makes me comfortable. You know how selfish men are? ”

“ This was an unsafe thing for any man to say, but when the man was the magistrate who had read Oates’s deposition, he invited danger. Such were the chances that Godfrey risked from the Plot party. The Catholics, on the other hand, if they were aware that Godfrey possessed the secret of the Jesuit meeting of April 24, and if they deemed him too foolish to keep the secret in his own interest, could not but perceive that to murder him was to play into the hands of the Whigs by clinching the belief in a Popish plot. ”

“ Godfrey pressed the old man into our service and made him cut bushes for a shade; it seemed to me that an axe was not just the best thing for a man who would probably sooner have used it against us than not, so he was deposed from his office as woodcutter. ”

“ The judge rose blinking. “According to your own statements,” he said, “the letter has not been out of Miss Haldane’s possession at all, and the [66] message once on there could not disappear. I fear I shall have to hold Mr. Orrington after all, till we can hear from the President.”
My heart sank. Tom turned to me.
“Never you mind, Jim, we’ll find the President for you, and have you out inside two days.”
I smiled somewhat wearily. “You mustn’t leave your work to do that, Tom.”
Dorothy broke in. “We can’t work alone. It needs all three of us to get anywhere, doesn’t it, Tom?” ”

“ We must accept all of Mr. Wynell’s statement or none; we cannot accept, like Mr. Pollock, only Godfrey’s confession of owning a dangerous secret, without Godfrey’s explanation of the nature of the danger. Against THAT danger (his knowing and taking no action upon what Oates had deposed) Godfrey’s ‘security’ was Oates’s other deposition, that his information was already in the Minister’s hands, and that he had come to Godfrey by the Minister’s orders. The invidiousness of knowing and not acting on Oates’s ‘dangerous secret,’ Godfrey hoped, fell on the Minister rather than on himself. ”

“ Did Godfrey ever rave?"
Grace began to bristle at once. "Godfrey never raves about any one," she said, "but if he admires either of the Heathcote girls, it is Agatha, the eldest. He always says that she has the most regular features. I don't suppose he ever saw much of the other, for she must have been practically engaged to young Cargill the summer Godfrey was at Little Speenham."
"I see," said Lady Hemingway. She could not resist adding, however, "Clergymen's daughters are always so sly. You never know what they're up to. They usually catch the richest men in the parish." ”

“ He looked into his companion's eyes, with an expression so peculiar, that Godfrey started as if some new light had suddenly flashed upon his soul, while Mathews continued in a lower voice, "Suppose, now that we could get up a regular quarrel between old Ironsides and his son; who would then be the miser's heir?"
Godfrey took the hand of the smuggler and pressed it hard.
"Can you form no better scheme than that?"
"I understand you, Mr. Godfrey. You are a perfect genius in wickedness. The devil never found a fitter agent for doing his business on a grand scale. ”

“ He had his flirtations also; being a man of susceptibility who was popular with women, how could they be avoided? For above all things Godfrey was a man, not a hermit or a saint or an æsthete, but just a man with more gifts of a sort than have some others. He lived the life of the rest, he hunted, he shot tigers, doing those things that the Anglo-Indian officer does, but all the same he studied. Whether it were of his trade of soldiering, or of the natives, or of Eastern thought and law, he was always learning something, till at last he knew a great deal, often he wondered to what end. ”