IT is somewhere about three weeks since the party invited by Sir Peter
and Lady Chillingly assembled at Exmundham, and they are still there,
though people invited to a country house have seldom compassion enough
for the dulness of its owner to stay more than three days. Mr.
Chillingly Mivers, indeed, had not exceeded that orthodox limit.
Quietly observant, during his stay, of young Gordon's manner towards
Cecilia, and hers towards him, he had satisfied himself that there was
no cause to alarm Sir Peter, or induce the worthy baronet to regret
the invitation he had given to that clever kinsman. For all the
visitors remaining Exmundham had a charm.
To Lady Glenalvon, because in the hostess she met her most familiar
friend when both were young girls, and because it pleased her to note
the interest which Cecilia Travers took in the place so associated
with memories of the man to whom it was Lady Glenalvon's hope to see
her united. To Chillingly Gordon, because no opportunity could be so
favourable for his own well-concealed designs on the hand and heart of
the heiress. To the heiress herself the charm needs no explanation.
To Leopold Travers the attractions of Exmundham were unquestionably
less fascinating. Still even he was well pleased to prolong his stay.
His active mind found amusement in wandering over an estate the
acreage of which would have warranted a much larger rental, and
lecturing Sir Peter on the old-fashioned system of husbandry which
that good-natured easy proprietor permitted his tenants to adopt, as
well as on the number of superfluous hands that were employed on the
pleasure-grounds and in the general management of the estate, such as
carpenters, sawyers, woodmen, bricklayers, and smiths.
When the Squire said, "You could do just as well with a third of those
costly dependants," Sir Peter, unconsciously plagiarizing the answer
of the old French grand seigneur, replied, "Very likely. But the
question is, could the rest do just as well without me?"
Exmundham, indeed, was a very expensive place to keep up. The house,
built by some ambitious Chillingly three centuries ago, would have
been large for an owner of thrice the revenues; and though the
flower-garden was smaller than that at Braefieldville, there were
paths and drives through miles of young plantations and old woodlands
that furnished lazy occupation to an army of labourers. No wonder
that, despite his nominal ten thousand a year, Sir Peter was far from
being a rich man. Exmundham devoured at least half the rental. The
active mind of Leopold Travers also found ample occupation in the
stores of his host's extensive library.
Travers, never much of a reader, was by no means a despiser of
learning, and he soon took to historical and archaeological researches
with the ardour of a man who must always throw energy into any pursuit
that occasion presents as an escape from indolence. Indolent Leopold
Travers never could be. But, more than either of these resources of
occupation, the companionship of Chillingly Gordon excited his
interest and quickened the current of his thoughts. Always fond of
renewing his own youth in the society of the young, and of the
sympathizing temperament which belongs to cordial natures, he had, as
we have seen, entered very heartily into the ambition of George
Belvoir, and reconciled himself very pliably to the humours of Kenelm
Chillingly. But the first of these two was a little too commonplace,
the second a little too eccentric, to enlist the complete
good-fellowship which, being alike very clever and very practical,
Leopold Travers established with that very clever and very practical
representative of the rising generation, Chillingly Gordon. Between
them there was this meeting-ground, political and worldly, a great
contempt for innocuous old-fashioned notions; added to which, in the
mind of Leopold Travers, was a contempt--which would have been
complete, but that the contempt admitted dread--of harmful
new-fashioned notions which, interpreted by his thoughts, threatened
ruin to his country and downfall to the follies of existent society,
and which, interpreted by his language, tamed itself into the man of
the world's phrase, "Going too far for me." Notions which, by the
much more cultivated intellect and the immeasurably more soaring
ambition of Chillingly Gordon, might be viewed and criticised thus:
"Could I accept these doctrines? I don't see my way to being Prime
Minister of a country in which religion and capital are still powers
to be consulted. And, putting aside religion and capital, I don't see
how, if these doctrines passed into law, with a good coat on my back I
should not be a sufferer. Either I, as having a good coat, should
have it torn off my back as a capitalist, or, if I remonstrated in the
name of moral honesty, be put to death as a religionist."
Therefore when Leopold Travers said, "Of course we must go on,"
Chillingly Gordon smiled and answered, "Certainly, go on." And when
Leopold Travers added, "But we may go too far," Chillingly Gordon
shook his dead, and replied, "How true that is! Certainly too far."
Apart from the congeniality of political sentiment, there were other
points of friendly contact between the older and younger man. Each
was an exceedingly pleasant man of the world; and, though Leopold
Travers could not have plumbed certain deeps in Chillingly Gordon's
nature,--and in every man's nature there are deeps which his ablest
observer cannot fathom,--yet he was not wrong when he said to himself,
"Gordon is a gentleman."
Utterly would my readers misconceive that very clever young man, if
they held him to be a hypocrite like Blifil or Joseph Surface.
Chillingly Gordon, in every private sense of the word, was a
gentleman. If he had staked his whole fortune on a rubber at whist,
and an undetected glance at his adversary's hand would have made the
difference between loss and gain, he would have turned away his head
and said, "Hold up your cards." Neither, as I have had occasion to
explain before, was he actuated by any motive in common with the
vulgar fortune-hunter in his secret resolve to win the hand of the
heiress. He recognized no inequality of worldly gifts between them.
He said to himself, "Whatever she may give me in money, I shall amply
repay in worldly position if I succeed, and succeed I certainly shall.
If I were as rich as Lord Westminster, and still cared about being
Prime Minister, I should select her as the most fitting woman I have
seen for a Prime Minister's wife."
It must be acknowledged that this sort of self-commune, if not that of
a very ardent lover, is very much that of a sensible man setting high
value on himself, bent on achieving the prizes of a public career, and
desirous of securing in his wife a woman who would adorn the station
to which he confidently aspired. In fact, no one so able as
Chillingly Gordon would ever have conceived the ambition of being
Minister of England if in all that in private life constitutes the
English gentleman he could be fairly subject to reproach.
He was but in public life what many a gentleman honest in private life
has been before him, an ambitious, resolute egotist, by no means
without personal affections, but holding them all subordinate to the
objects of personal ambition, and with no more of other principle than
that of expediency in reference to his own career than would cover a
silver penny. But expediency in itself he deemed the statesman's only
rational principle. And to the consideration of expediency he brought
a very unprejudiced intellect, quite fitted to decide whether the
public opinion of a free and enlightened people was for turning St.
Paul's Cathedral into an Agapemone or not.
During the summer weeks he had thus vouchsafed to the turfs and groves
of Exmundham, Leopold Travers was not the only person whose good
opinion Chillingly Gordon had ingratiated. He had won the warmest
approbation from Mrs. Campion. His conversation reminded her of that
which she had enjoyed in the house of her departed spouse. In talking
with Cecilia she was fond of contrasting him to Kenelm, not to the
favour of the latter, whose humours she utterly failed to understand,
and whom she pertinaciously described as "so affected." "A most
superior young man Mr. Gordon, so well informed, so sensible,--above
all, so natural." Such was her judgment upon the unavowed candidate
to Cecilia's hand; and Mrs. Campion required no avowal to divine the
candidature. Even Lady Glenalvon had begun to take friendly interest
in the fortunes of this promising young man. Most women can
sympathize with youthful ambition. He impressed her with a deep
conviction of his abilities, and still more with respect for their
concentration upon practical objects of power and renown. She too,
like Mrs. Campion, began to draw comparisons unfavourable to Kenelm
between the two cousins: the one seemed so slothfully determined to
hide his candle under a bushel, the other so honestly disposed to set
his light before men. She felt also annoyed and angry that Kenelm was
thus absenting himself from the paternal home at the very time of her
first visit to it, and when he had so felicitous an opportunity of
seeing more of the girl in whom he knew that Lady Glenalvon deemed he
might win, if he would properly woo, the wife that would best suit
him. So that when one day Mrs. Campion, walking through the gardens
alone with Lady Glenalvon while from the gardens into the park went
Chillingly Gordon, arm-in-arm with Leopold Travers, abruptly asked,
"Don't you think that Mr. Gordon is smitten with Cecilia, though he,
with his moderate fortune, does not dare to say so? And don't you
think that any girl, if she were as rich as Cecilia will be, would be
more proud of such a husband as Chillingly Gordon than of some silly
earl?"
Lady Glenalvon answered curtly, but somewhat sorrowfully, "Yes."
After a pause she added, "There is a man with whom I did once think
she would have been happier than with any other. One man who ought to
be dearer to me than Mr. Gordon, for he saved the life of my son, and
who, though perhaps less clever than Mr. Gordon, still has a great
deal of talent within him, which might come forth and make him--what
shall I say?--a useful and distinguished member of society, if married
to a girl so sure of raising any man she marries as Cecilia Travers.
But if I am to renounce that hope, and look through the range of young
men brought under my notice, I don't know one, putting aside
consideration of rank and fortune, I should prefer for a clever
daughter who went heart and soul with the ambition of a clever man.
But, Mrs. Campion, I have not yet quite renounced my hope; and, unless
I do, I yet think there is one man to whom I would rather give
Cecilia, if she were my daughter."
Therewith Lady Glenalvon so decidedly broke off the subject of
conversation that Mrs. Campion could not have renewed it without such
a breach of the female etiquette of good breeding as Mrs. Campion was
the last person to adventure.
Lady Chillingly could not help being pleased with Gordon. He was
light in hand, served to amuse her guests, and made up a rubber of
whist in case of need.
There were two persons, however, with whom Gordon made no ground;
namely, Parson John and Sir Peter. When Travers praised him one day
for the solidity of his parts and the soundness of his judgment, the
Parson replied snappishly, "Yes, solid and sound as one of those
tables you buy at a broker's; the thickness of the varnish hides the
defects in the joints: the whole framework is rickety." But when the
Parson was indignantly urged to state the reason by which he arrived
at so harsh a conclusion, he could only reply by an assertion which
seemed to his questioner a declamatory burst of parsonic intolerance.
"Because," said Parson John, "he has no love for man, and no reverence
for God. And no character is sound and solid which enlarges its
surface at the expense of its supports."
On the other hand, the favour with which Sir Peter had at first
regarded Gordon gradually vanished, in proportion as, acting on the
hint Mivers had originally thrown out but did not deem it necessary to
repeat, he watched the pains which the young man took to insinuate
himself into the good graces of Mr. Travers and Mrs. Campion, and the
artful and half-suppressed gallantry of his manner to the heiress.
Perhaps Gordon had not ventured thus "to feel his way" till after
Mivers had departed; or perhaps Sir Peter's parental anxiety rendered
him, in this instance, a shrewder observer than was the man of the
world, whose natural acuteness was, in matters of affection, not
unfrequently rendered languid by his acquired philosophy of
indifferentism.
More and more every day, every hour, of her sojourn beneath his roof,
did Cecilia become dearer to Sir Peter, and stronger and stronger
became his wish to secure her for his daughter-in-law. He was
inexpressibly flattered by her preference for his company: ever at
hand to share his customary walks, his kindly visits to the cottages
of peasants or the homesteads of petty tenants; wherein both were sure
to hear many a simple anecdote of Master Kenelm in his childhood,
anecdotes of whim or good-nature, of considerate pity or reckless
courage.
Throughout all these varieties of thought or feeling in the social
circle around her, Lady Chillingly preserved the unmoved calm of her
dignified position. A very good woman certainly, and very ladylike.
No one could detect a flaw in her character, or a fold awry in her
flounce. She was only, like the gods of Epicurus, too good to trouble
her serene existence with the cares of us simple mortals. Not that
she was without a placid satisfaction in the tribute which the world
laid upon her altars; nor was she so supremely goddess-like as to soar
above the household affections which humanity entails on the dwellers
and denizens of earth. She liked her husband as much as most elderly
wives like their elderly husbands. She bestowed upon Kenelm a liking
somewhat more warm, and mingled with compassion. His eccentricities
would have puzzled her, if she had allowed herself to be puzzled: it
troubled her less to pity them. She did not share her husband's
desire for his union with Cecilia. She thought that her son would
have a higher place in the county if he married Lady Jane, the Duke of
Clanville's daughter; and "that is what he ought to do," said Lady
Chillingly to herself. She entertained none of the fear that had
induced Sir Peter to extract from Kenelm the promise not to pledge his
hand before he had received his father's consent. That the son of
Lady Chillingly should make a /mesalliance/, however crotchety he
might be in other respects, was a thought that it would have so
disturbed her to admit that she did not admit it.
Such was the condition of things at Exmundham when the lengthy
communication of Kenelm reached Sir Peter's hands.