FROM KENELM CHILLINGLY TO SIR PETER CHILLINGLY.
MY FATHER, MY DEAR FATHER,--This is no reply to your letters. I know
not if itself can be called a letter. I cannot yet decide whether it
be meant to reach your hands. Tired with talking to myself, I sit
down to talk to you. Often have I reproached myself for not seeing
every fitting occasion to let you distinctly know how warmly I love,
how deeply I reverence you; you, O friend, O father. But we
Chillinglys are not a demonstrative race. I don't remember that you,
by words, ever expressed to me the truth that you loved your son
infinitely more than he deserves. Yet, do I not know that you would
send all your beloved old books to the hammer rather than I should
pine in vain for some untried, if sinless, delight on which I had set
my heart? And do you not know equally well, that I would part with
all my heritage, and turn day-labourer, rather than you should miss
the beloved old books?
That mutual knowledge is taken for granted in all that my heart yearns
to pour forth to your own. But, if I divine aright, a day is coming
when, as between you and me, there must be a sacrifice on the part of
one to the other. If so, I implore that the sacrifice may come from
you. How is this? How am I so ungenerous, so egotistical, so
selfish, so ungratefully unmindful of all I already owe to you, and
may never repay? I can only answer, "It is fate, it is nature, it is
love "--
. . . . . . . . .
Here I must break off. It is midnight, the moon halts opposite to the
window at which I sit, and on the stream that runs below there is a
long narrow track on which every wave trembles in her light; on either
side of the moonlit track all the other waves, running equally to
their grave in the invisible deep, seem motionless and dark. I can
write no more.
. . . . . . . . .
(Dated two days later.)
They say she is beneath us in wealth and station. Are we, my
father--we, two well-born gentlemen--coveters of gold or lackeys of
the great? When I was at college, if there were any there more
heartily despised than another it was the parasite and the
tuft-hunter; the man who chose his friends according as their money or
their rank might be of use to him. If so mean where the choice is so
little important to the happiness and career of a man who has
something of manhood in him, how much more mean to be the parasite and
tuft-hunter in deciding what woman to love, what woman to select as
the sweetener and ennobler of one's everyday life! Could she be to my
life that sweetener, that ennobler? I firmly believe it. Already
life itself has gained a charm that I never even guessed in it before;
already I begin, though as yet but faintly and vaguely, to recognize
that interest in the objects and aspirations of my fellow-men which is
strongest in those whom posterity ranks among its ennoblers. In this
quiet village it is true that I might find examples enough to prove
that man is not meant to meditate upon life, but to take active part
in it, and in that action to find his uses. But I doubt if I should
have profited by such examples; if I should not have looked on this
small stage of the world as I have looked on the large one, with the
indifferent eyes of a spectator on a trite familiar play carried on by
ordinary actors, had not my whole being suddenly leaped out of
philosophy into passion, and, at once made warmly human, sympathized
with humanity wherever it burned and glowed. Ah, is there to be any
doubt of what station, as mortal bride, is due to her,--her, my
princess, my fairy? If so, how contented you shall be, my father,
with the worldly career of your son! how perseveringly he will strive
(and when did perseverance fail?) to supply all his deficiencies of
intellect, genius, knowledge, by the energy concentrated on a single
object which--more than intellect, genius, knowledge, unless they
attain to equal energy equally concentrated--commands what the world
calls honours.
Yes, with her, with her as the bearer of my name, with her to whom I,
whatever I might do of good or of great, could say, "It is thy work,"
I promise that you shall bless the day when you took to your arms a
daughter.
. . . . . . . . .
"Thou art in contact with the beloved in all that thou feelest
elevated above thee." So it is written by one of those weird Germans
who search in our bosoms for the seeds of buried truths, and conjure
them into flowers before we ourselves were even aware of the seeds.
Every thought that associates itself with my beloved seems to me born
with wings.
. . . . . . . . .
I have just seen her, just parted from her. Since I had been
told--kindly, wisely told--that I had no right to hazard her peace of
mind unless I were privileged to woo and to win her, I promised myself
that I would shun her presence until I had bared my heart to you, as I
am doing now, and received that privilege from yourself; for even had
I never made the promise that binds my honour, your consent and
blessing must hallow my choice. I do not feel as if I could dare to
ask one so innocent and fair to wed an ungrateful, disobedient son.
But this evening I met her, unexpectedly, at the vicar's, an excellent
man, from whom I have learned much; whose precepts, whose example,
whose delight in his home, and his life at once active and serene, are
in harmony with my own dreams when I dream of her.
I will tell you the name of the beloved; hold it as yet a profound
secret between you and me. But oh for the day when I may hear you
call her by that name, and print on her forehead the only kiss by man
of which I should not be jealous.
It is Sunday, and after the evening service it is my friend's custom
to gather his children round him, and, without any formal sermon or
discourse, engage their interests in subjects harmonious to
associations with the sanctity of the day; often not directly bearing
upon religion; more often, indeed, playfully starting from some little
incident or some slight story-book which had amused the children in
the course of the past week, and then gradually winding into reference
to some sweet moral precept or illustration from some divine example.
It is a maxim with him that, while much that children must learn they
can only learn well through conscious labour, and as positive
task-work, yet Religion should be connected in their minds not with
labour and task-work, but should become insensibly infused into their
habits of thought, blending itself with memories and images of peace
and love; with the indulgent tenderness of the earliest teachers, the
sinless mirthfulness of the earliest home; with consolation in after
sorrows, support through after trials, and never parting company with
its twin sister, Hope.
I entered the vicar's room this evening just as the group had
collected round him. By the side of his wife sat a lady in whom I
feel a keen interest. Her face wears that kind of calm which speaks
of the lassitude bequeathed by sorrow. She is the aunt of my beloved
one. Lily had nestled herself on a low ottoman, at the good pastor's
feet, with one of his little girls, round whose shoulder she had wound
her arm. She is much more fond of the companionship of children than
that of girls of her own age. The vicar's wife, a very clever woman,
once, in my hearing, took her to task for this preference, asking her
why she persisted in grouping herself with mere infants who could
teach her nothing? Ah! could you have seen the innocent, angel-like
expression of her face when she answered simply, "I suppose because
with them I feel safer, I mean nearer to God."
Mr. Emlyn--that is the name of the vicar--deduced his homily this
evening from a pretty fairy tale which Lily had been telling to his
children the day before, and which he drew her on to repeat.
Take, in brief, the substance of the story:--
"Once on a time, a king and queen made themselves very unhappy because
they had no heir to their throne; and they prayed for one; and lo, on
some bright summer morning, the queen, waking from sleep, saw a cradle
beside her bed, and in the cradle a beautiful sleeping babe. Great
day throughout the kingdom! But as the infant grew up, it became very
wayward and fretful: it lost its beauty; it would not learn its
lessons; it was as naughty as a child could be. The parents were very
sorrowful; the heir, so longed for, promised to be a great plague to
themselves and their subjects. At last one day, to add to their
trouble, two little bumps appeared on the prince's shoulders. All the
doctors were consulted as to the cause and the cure of this deformity.
Of course they tried the effect of back-bands and steel machines,
which gave the poor little prince great pain, and made him more
unamiable than ever. The bumps, nevertheless, grew larger, and as
they increased, so the prince sickened and pined away. At last a
skilful surgeon proposed, as the only chance of saving the prince's
life, that the bumps should be cut out; and the next morning was fixed
for that operation. But at night the queen saw, or dreamed she saw, a
beautiful shape standing by her bedside. And it said to her
reproachfully, 'Ungrateful woman! How wouldst thou repay me for the
precious boon that my favour bestowed on thee! In me behold the Queen
of the Fairies. For the heir to thy kingdom, I consigned to thy
charge an infant from Fairyland, to become a blessing to thee and to
thy people; and thou wouldst inflict upon it a death of torture by the
surgeon's knife.' And the queen answered, 'Precious indeed thou mayest
call the boon,--a miserable, sickly, feverish changeling.'
"'Art thou so dull,' said the beautiful visitant, 'as not to
comprehend that the earliest instincts of the fairy child would be
those of discontent, at the exile from its native home? and in that
discontent it would have pined itself to death, or grown up, soured
and malignant, a fairy still in its power but a fairy of wrath and
evil, had not the strength of its inborn nature sufficed to develop
the growth of its wings. That which thy blindness condemns as the
deformity of the human-born, is to the fairy-born the crowning
perfection of its beauty. Woe to thee, if thou suffer not the wings
of the fairy child to grow.'
"And the next morning the queen sent away the surgeon when he came
with his horrible knife, and removed the back-board and the steel
machines from the prince's shoulders, though all the doctors predicted
that the child would die. And from that moment the royal heir began
to recover bloom and health. And when at last, out of those deforming
bumps, budded delicately forth the plumage of snow-white wings, the
wayward peevishness of the prince gave place to sweet temper. Instead
of scratching his teachers, he became the quickest and most docile of
pupils, grew up to be the joy of his parents and the pride of their
people; and people said, 'In him we shall have hereafter such a king
as we have never yet known.'"
Here ended Lily's tale. I cannot convey to you a notion of the
pretty, playful manner in which it was told. Then she said, with a
grave shake of the head, "But you do not seem to know what happened
afterwards. Do you suppose that the prince never made use of his
wings? Listen to me. It was discovered by the courtiers who attended
on His Royal Highness that on certain nights, every week, he
disappeared. In fact, on these nights, obedient to the instinct of
the wings, he flew from palace halls into Fairyland; coming back
thence all the more lovingly disposed towards the human home from
which he had escaped for a while."
"Oh, my children," interposed the preacher earnestly, "the wings would
be given to us in vain if we did not obey the instinct which allures
us to soar; vain, no less, would be the soaring, were it not towards
the home whence we came, bearing back from its native airs a stronger
health, and a serener joy; more reconciled to the duties of earth by
every new flight into heaven."
As he thus completed the moral of Lily's fairy tale, the girl rose
from her low seat, took his hand, kissed it reverently, and walked
away towards the window. I could see that she was affected even to
tears, which she sought to conceal. Later in the evening, when we
were dispersed on the lawn, for a few minutes before the party broke
up, Lily came to my side timidly and said, in a low whisper,--
"Are you angry with me? what have I done to displease you?"
"Angry with you; displeased? How can you think of me so unjustly?"
"It is so many days since you have called, since I have seen you," she
said so artlessly, looking up at me with eyes in which tears still
seemed to tremble.
Before I could trust myself to reply, her aunt approached, and
noticing me with a cold and distant "Good-night," led away her niece.
I had calculated on walking back to their home with them, as I
generally have done when we met at another house. But the aunt had
probably conjectured I might be at the vicarage that evening, and in
order to frustrate my intention had engaged a carriage for their
return. No doubt she has been warned against permitting further
intimacy with her niece.
My father, I must come to you at once, discharge my promise, and
receive from your own lips your consent to my choice; for you will
consent, will you not? But I wish you to be prepared beforehand, and
I shall therefore put up these disjointed fragments of my commune with
my own heart and with yours, and post them to-morrow. Expect me to
follow them after leaving you a day free to consider them
alone,--alone, my dear father: they are meant for no eye but yours.
K. C.