CHAPTER XXI.

MR. SAUNDERSON and Kenelm sat in the arbour: the former sipping his grog

and smoking his pipe; the latter looking forth into the summer night

skies with an earnest yet abstracted gaze, as if he were trying to count

the stars in the Milky Way.

“Ha!” said Mr. Saunderson, who was concluding an argument; “you see it

now, don’t you?”

“I? not a bit of it. You tell me that your grandfather was a farmer,

and your father was a farmer, and that you have been a farmer for thirty

years; and from these premises you deduce the illogical and irrational

conclusion that therefore your son must be a farmer.”

“Young man, you may think yourself very knowing ‘cause you have been at

the ‘Varsity, and swept away a headful of book-learning.”

“Stop,” quoth Kenelm. “You grant that a university is learned.”

“Well, I suppose so.”

“But how could it be learned if those who quitted it brought the

learning away? We leave it all behind us in the care of the tutors. But

I know what you were going to say,--that it is not because I had read

more books than you have that I was to give myself airs and pretend to

have more knowledge of life than a man of your years and experience.

Agreed, as a general rule. But does not every doctor, however wise and

skilful, prefer taking another doctor’s opinion about himself, even

though that other doctor has just started in practice? And seeing that

doctors, taking them as a body, are monstrous clever fellows, is not

the example they set us worth following? Does it not prove that no man,

however wise, is a good judge of his own case? Now, your son’s case

is really your case: you see it through the medium of your likings and

dislikings; and insist upon forcing a square peg into a round hole,

because in a round hole you, being a round peg, feel tight and

comfortable. Now I call that irrational.”

“I don’t see why my son has any right to fancy himself a square peg,”

said the farmer, doggedly, “when his father and his grandfather and his

great-grandfather have been round pegs; and it is agin’ nature for

any creature not to take after its own kind. A dog is a pointer or

a sheep-dog according as its forebears were pointers or sheep-dogs.

There,” cried the farmer, triumphantly, shaking the ashes out of his

pipe. “I think I have posed you, young master!”

“No; for you have taken it for granted that the breeds have not been

crossed. But suppose that a sheep-dog has married a pointer, are you

sure that his son will not be more of a pointer than a sheep-dog?”

Mr. Saunderson arrested himself in the task of refilling his pipe, and

scratched his head.

“You see,” continued Kenelm, “that you have crossed the breed. You

married a tradesman’s daughter, and I dare say her grandfather and

great-grandfather were tradesmen too. Now, most sons take after their

mothers, and therefore Mr. Saunderson junior takes after his kind on the

distaff side, and comes into the world a square peg, which can only be

tight and comfortable in a square hole. It is no use arguing, Farmer:

your boy must go to his uncle; and there’s an end of the matter.”

“By goles!” said the farmer, “you seem to think you can talk me out of

my senses.”

“No; but I think if you had your own way you would talk your son into

the workhouse.”

“What! by sticking to the land like his father before him? Let a man

stick by the land, and the land will stick by him.”

“Let a man stick in the mud, and the mud will stick to him. You put

your heart in your farm, and your son would only put his foot into it.

Courage! Don’t you see that Time is a whirligig, and all things come

round? Every day somebody leaves the land and goes off into trade. By

and by he grows rich, and then his great desire is to get back to

the land again. He left it the son of a farmer: he returns to it as a

squire. Your son, when he gets to be fifty, will invest his savings in

acres, and have tenants of his own. Lord, how he will lay down the law

to them! I would not advise you to take a farm under him.”

“Catch me at it!” said the farmer. “He would turn all the contents of

the ‘pothecary’s shop into my fallows, and call it ‘progress.’”

“Let him physic the fallows when he has farms of his own: keep yours out

of his chemical clutches. Come, I shall tell him to pack up and be off

to his uncle’s next week?”

“Well, well,” said the farmer, in a resigned tone: “a wilful man must

e’en have his way.”

“And the best thing a sensible man can do is not to cross it. Mr.

Saunderson, give me your honest hand. You are one of those men who put

the sons of good fathers in mind of their own; and I think of mine when

I say ‘God bless you!’”

Quitting the farmer, Kenelm re-entered the house, and sought Mr.

Saunderson junior in his own room. He found that young gentleman still

up, and reading an eloquent tract on the Emancipation of the Human Race

from all Tyrannical Control,--Political, Social, Ecclesiastical, and

Domestic.

The lad looked up sulkily, and said, on encountering Kenelm’s

melancholic visage, “Ah! I see you have talked with the old governor,

and he’ll not hear of it.”

“In the first place,” answered Kenelm, “since you value yourself on

a superior education, allow me to advise you to study the English

language, as the forms of it are maintained by the elder authors, whom,

in spite of an Age of Progress, men of superior education esteem. No one

who has gone through that study; no one, indeed, who has studied the Ten

Commandments in the vernacular,--commits the mistake of supposing that

‘the old governor’ is a synonymous expression for ‘father.’ In the

second place, since you pretend to the superior enlightenment which

results from a superior education, learn to know better your own self

before you set up as a teacher of mankind. Excuse the liberty I take,

as your sincere well-wisher, when I tell you that you are at present

a conceited fool,--in short, that which makes one boy call another an

‘ass.’ But when one has a poor head he may redeem the average balance of

humanity by increasing the wealth of the heart. Try and increase yours.

Your father consents to your choice of your lot at the sacrifice of

all his own inclinations. This is a sore trial to a father’s pride, a

father’s affection; and few fathers make such sacrifices with a good

grace. I have thus kept my promise to you, and enforced your wishes on

Mr. Saunderson’s judgment, because I am sure you would have been a very

bad farmer. It now remains for you to show that you can be a very good

tradesman. You are bound in honour to me and to your father to try your

best to be so; and meanwhile leave the task of upsetting the world

to those who have no shop in it, which would go crash in the general

tumble. And so good-night to you.”

To these admonitory words, _sacro digna silentio_, Saunderson junior

listened with a dropping jaw and fascinated staring eyes. He felt like

an infant to whom the nurse has given a hasty shake, and who is too

stupefied by that operation to know whether he is hurt or not.

A minute after Kenelm had quitted the room he reappeared at the door,

and said in a conciliatory whisper, “Don’t take it to heart that I

called you a conceited fool and an ass. These terms are no doubt just as

applicable to myself. But there is a more conceited fool and a greater

ass than either of us; and that is the Age in which we have the

misfortune to be born,--an Age of Progress, Mr. Saunderson, junior!--an

Age of Prigs.”

BOOK III.

CHAPTER I.

IF there were a woman in the world who might be formed and fitted

to reconcile Kenelm Chillingly to the sweet troubles of love and the

pleasant bickerings of wedded life, one might reasonably suppose that

that woman could be found in Cecilia Travers. An only daughter and

losing her mother in childhood, she had been raised to the mistress-ship

of a household at an age in which most girls are still putting their

dolls to bed; and thus had early acquired that sense of responsibility,

accompanied with the habits of self-reliance, which seldom fails to give

a certain nobility to character; though almost as often, in the case of

women, it steals away the tender gentleness which constitutes the charm

of their sex.

It had not done so in the instance of Cecilia Travers, because she was

so womanlike that even the exercise of power could not make her manlike.

There was in the depth of her nature such an instinct of sweetness that

wherever her mind toiled and wandered it gathered and hoarded honey.

She had one advantage over most girls in the same rank of life,--she

had not been taught to fritter away such capacities for culture as

Providence gave her in the sterile nothingnesses which are called

feminine accomplishments. She did not paint figures out of drawing

in meagre water-colours; she had not devoted years of her life to the

inflicting on polite audiences the boredom of Italian bravuras, which

they could hear better sung by a third-rate professional singer in

a metropolitan music-hall. I am afraid she had no other female

accomplishments than those by which the sempstress or embroideress earns

her daily bread. That sort of work she loved, and she did it deftly.

But if she had not been profitlessly plagued by masters, Cecilia Travers

had been singularly favoured by her father’s choice of a teacher: no

great merit in him either. He had a prejudice against professional

governesses, and it chanced that among his own family connections was a

certain Mrs. Campion, a lady of some literary distinction, whose husband

had held a high situation in one of our public offices, and living, much

to his satisfaction, up to a very handsome income, had died, much to the

astonishment of others, without leaving a farthing behind him.

Fortunately, there were no children to provide for. A small government

pension was allotted to the widow; and as her husband’s house had been

made by her one of the pleasantest in London, she was popular enough to

be invited by numerous friends to their country seats; among others, by

Mr. Travers. She came intending to stay a fortnight. At the end of that

time she had grown so attached to Cecilia, and Cecilia to her, and her

presence had become so pleasant and so useful to her host, that

the Squire entreated her to stay and undertake the education of his

daughter. Mrs. Campion, after some hesitation, gratefully consented; and

thus Cecilia, from the age of eight to her present age of nineteen, had

the inestimable advantage of living in constant companionship with a

woman of richly cultivated mind, accustomed to hear the best criticisms

on the best books, and adding to no small accomplishment in literature

the refinement of manners and that sort of prudent judgment which result

from habitual intercourse with an intellectual and gracefully world-wise

circle of society: so that Cecilia herself, without being at all blue or

pedantic, became one of those rare young women with whom a well-educated

man can converse on equal terms; from whom he gains as much as he can

impart to her; while a man who, not caring much about books, is still

gentleman enough to value good breeding, felt a relief in exchanging the

forms of his native language without the shock of hearing that a bishop

was “a swell” or a croquet-party “awfully jolly.”

In a word, Cecilia was one of those women whom Heaven forms for man’s

helpmate; who, if he were born to rank and wealth, would, as his

partner, reflect on them a new dignity, and add to their enjoyment by

bringing forth their duties; who, not less if the husband she chose were

poor and struggling, would encourage, sustain, and soothe him, take her

own share of his burdens, and temper the bitterness of life with the

all-recompensing sweetness of her smile.

Little, indeed, as yet had she ever thought of love or of lovers. She

had not even formed to herself any of those ideals which float before

the eyes of most girls when they enter their teens. But of two things

she felt inly convinced: first, that she could never wed where she did

not love; and secondly, that where she did love it would be for life.

And now I close this sketch with a picture of the girl herself. She has

just come into her room from inspecting the preparations for the evening

entertainment which her father is to give to his tenants and rural

neighbours.

She has thrown aside her straw hat, and put down the large basket which

she has emptied of flowers. She pauses before the glass, smoothing back

the ruffled bands of her hair,--hair of a dark, soft chestnut, silky

and luxuriant,--never polluted, and never, so long as she lives, to be

polluted by auricomous cosmetics, far from that delicate darkness, every

tint of the colours traditionally dedicated to the locks of Judas.

Her complexion, usually of that soft bloom which inclines to paleness,

is now heightened into glow by exercise and sunlight. The features are

small and feminine; the eyes dark with long lashes; the mouth singularly

beautiful, with a dimple on either side, and parted now in a half-smile

at some pleasant recollection, giving a glimpse of small teeth

glistening as pearls. But the peculiar charm of her face is in an

expression of serene happiness, that sort of happiness which seems as if

it had never been interrupted by a sorrow, had never been troubled by a

sin,--that holy kind of happiness which belongs to innocence, the light

reflected from a heart and conscience alike at peace.

CHAPTER II.

IT was a lovely summer evening for the Squire’s rural entertainment. Mr.

Travers had some guests staying with him: they had dined early for

the occasion, and were now grouped with their host a little before six

o’clock on the lawn. The house was of irregular architecture, altered

or added to at various periods from the reign of Elizabeth to that of

Victoria: at one end, the oldest part, a gable with mullion windows;

at the other, the newest part, a flat-roofed wing, with modern sashes

opening to the ground, the intermediate part much hidden by a veranda

covered with creepers in full bloom. The lawn was a spacious table-land

facing the west, and backed by a green and gentle hill, crowned with

the ruins of an ancient priory. On one side of the lawn stretched a

flower-garden and pleasure-ground, originally planned by Repton; on the

opposite angles of the sward were placed two large marquees,--one for

dancing, the other for supper. Towards the south the view was left open,

and commanded the prospect of an old English park, not of the stateliest

character; not intersected with ancient avenues, nor clothed

with profitless fern as lairs for deer: but the park of a careful

agriculturist, uniting profit with show, the sward duly drained and

nourished, fit to fatten bullocks in an incredibly short time, and

somewhat spoilt to the eye by subdivisions of wire fence. Mr. Travers

was renowned for skilful husbandry, and the general management of

land to the best advantage. He had come into the estate while still in

childhood, and thus enjoyed the accumulations of a long minority. He had

entered the Guards at the age of eighteen, and having more command of

money than most of his contemporaries, though they might be of higher

rank and the sons of richer men, he had been much courted and much

plundered. At the age of twenty-five he found himself one of the leaders

of fashion, renowned chiefly for reckless daring where-ever honour could

be plucked out of the nettle danger: a steeple-chaser, whose exploits

made a quiet man’s hair stand on end; a rider across country, taking

leaps which a more cautious huntsman carefully avoided. Known at Paris

as well as in London, he had been admired by ladies whose smiles had

cost him duels, the marks of which still remained in glorious scars

on his person. No man ever seemed more likely to come to direst

grief before attaining the age of thirty, for at twenty-seven all the

accumulations of his minority were gone; and his estate, which, when he

came of age, was scarcely three thousand a year, but entirely at his own

disposal, was mortgaged up to its eyes.

His friends began to shake their heads and call him “poor fellow;” but,

with all his wild faults, Leopold Travers had been wholly pure from the

two vices out of which a man does not often redeem himself. He had never

drunk and he had never gambled. His nerves were not broken, his brain

was not besotted. There was plenty of health in him yet, mind and body.

At the critical period of his life he married for love, and his choice

was a most felicitous one. The lady had no fortune; but though handsome

and high-born, she had no taste for extravagance, and no desire for

other society than that of the man she loved. So when he said, “Let us

settle in the country and try our best to live on a few hundreds, lay

by, and keep the old place out of the market,” she consented with a

joyful heart: and marvel it was to all how this wild Leopold Travers

did settle down; did take to cultivating his home farm with his men from

sunrise to sunset like a common tenant-farmer; did contrive to pay the

interest on the mortgages, and keep his head above water. After some

years of pupilage in this school of thrift, during which his habits

became formed and his whole character braced, Leopold Travers suddenly

found himself again rich, through the wife whom he had so prudently

married without other dower than her love and her virtues. Her only

brother, Lord Eagleton, a Scotch peer, had been engaged in marriage to a

young lady, considered to be a rare prize in the lottery of wedlock.

The marriage was broken off under very disastrous circumstances; but the

young lord, good-looking and agreeable, was naturally expected to seek

speedy consolation in some other alliance. Nevertheless he did not

do so: he became a confirmed invalid, and died single, leaving to his

sister all in his power to save from the distant kinsman who succeeded

to his lands and title,--a goodly sum, which not only sufficed to pay

off the mortgages on Neesdale Park but bestowed on its owner a surplus

which the practical knowledge of country life that he had acquired

enabled him to devote with extraordinary profit to the general

improvement of his estate. He replaced tumble-down old farm buildings

with new constructions on the most approved principles; bought or

pensioned off certain slovenly incompetent tenants; threw sundry petty

holdings into large farms suited to the buildings he constructed;

purchased here and there small bits of land, commodious to the farms

they adjoined, and completing the integrity of his ring-fence; stubbed

up profitless woods which diminished the value of neighbouring arables

by obstructing sun and air and harbouring legions of rabbits; and

then, seeking tenants of enterprise and capital, more than doubled his

original yearly rental, and perhaps more than tripled the market value

of his property. Simultaneously with this acquisition of fortune, he

emerged from the inhospitable and unsocial obscurity which his previous

poverty had compelled, took an active part in county business, proved

himself an excellent speaker at public meetings, subscribed liberally to

the hunt, and occasionally joined in it,--a less bold but a wiser rider

than of yore. In short, as Themistocles boasted that he could make a

small state great, so Leopold Travers might boast with equal truth,

that, by his energies, his judgment, and the weight of his personal

character, he had made the owner of a property which had been at

his accession to it of third-rate rank in the county a personage so

considerable that no knight of the shire against whom he declared could

have been elected, and if he had determined to stand himself he would

have been chosen free of expense.

But he said, on being solicited to become a candidate, “When a man once

gives himself up to the care and improvement of a landed estate, he

has no time and no heart for anything else. An estate is an income or

a kingdom, according as the owner chooses to take it. I take it as a

kingdom, and I cannot be _roi faineant_, with a steward for _maire du

palais_. A king does not go into the House of Commons.”

Three years after this rise in the social ladder, Mrs. Travers was

seized with congestion of the lungs followed by pleurisy, and died after

less than a week’s illness. Leopold never wholly recovered her loss.

Though still young and always handsome, the idea of another wife, the

love of another woman, were notions which he dismissed from his, mind

with a quiet scorn. He was too masculine a creature to parade grief.

For some weeks, indeed, he shut himself up in his own room, so rigidly

secluded that he would not see even his daughter. But one morning he

appeared in his fields as usual, and from that day resumed his old

habits, and gradually renewed that cordial interchange of hospitalities

which had popularly distinguished him since his accession to wealth.

Still people felt that the man was changed; he was more taciturn,

more grave: if always just in his dealings, he took the harder side of

justice, where in his wife’s time he had taken the gentler. Perhaps, to

a man of strong will, the habitual intercourse with an amiable woman is

essential for those occasions in which Will best proves the fineness of

its temper by the facility with which it can be bent.

It may be said that Leopold Travers might have found such intercourse in

the intimate companionship of his own daughter. But she was a mere child

when his wife died, and she grew up to womanhood too insensibly for

him to note the change. Besides, where a man has found a wife his

all-in-all, a daughter can never supply her place. The very reverence

due to children precludes unrestrained confidence; and there is not

that sense of permanent fellowship in a daughter which a man has in a

wife,--any day a stranger may appear and carry her off from him. At all

events Leopold did not own in Cecilia the softening influence to

which he had yielded in her mother. He was fond of her, proud of her,

indulgent to her; but the indulgence had its set limits. Whatever she

asked solely for herself he granted; whatever she wished for matters

under feminine control--the domestic household, the parish school, the

alms-receiving poor--obtained his gentlest consideration. But when she

had been solicited by some offending out-of-door dependant or some petty

defaulting tenant to use her good offices in favour of the culprit, Mr.

Travers checked her interference by a firm “No,” though uttered in a

mild accent, and accompanied with a masculine aphorism to the effect

that “there would be no such things as strict justice and disciplined

order in the world if a man yielded to a woman’s pleadings in any matter

of business between man and man.” From this it will be seen that

Mr. Lethbridge had overrated the value of Cecilia’s alliance in the

negotiation respecting Mrs. Bawtrey’s premium and shop.

CHAPTER III.

IF, having just perused what has thus been written on the biographical

antecedents and mental characteristics of Leopold Travers, you, my dear

reader, were to be personally presented to that gentleman as he now

stands, the central figure of the group gathered round him, on his

terrace, you would probably be surprised,--nay, I have no doubt you

would say to yourself, “Not at all the sort of man I expected.” In that

slender form, somewhat below the middle height; in that fair countenance

which still, at the age of forty-eight, retains a delicacy of feature

and of colouring which is of almost womanlike beauty, and, from the

quiet placidity of its expression, conveys at first glance the notion of

almost womanlike mildness,--it would be difficult to recognize a man who

in youth had been renowned for reckless daring, in maturer years more

honourably distinguished for steadfast prudence and determined purpose,

and who, alike in faults or in merits, was as emphatically masculine as

a biped in trousers can possibly be.

Mr. Travers is listening to a young man of about two and twenty, the

eldest son of the richest nobleman of the county, and who intends to

start for the representation of the shire at the next general election,

which is close at hand. The Hon. George Belvoir is tall, inclined to be

stout, and will look well on the hustings. He has had those pains taken

with his education which an English peer generally does take with the

son intended to succeed to the representation of an honourable name and

the responsibilities of high station. If eldest sons do not often make

as great a figure in the world as their younger brothers, it is not

because their minds are less cultivated, but because they have less

motive power for action. George Belvoir was well read, especially

in that sort of reading which befits a future senator,--history,

statistics, political economy, so far as that dismal science is

compatible with the agricultural interest. He was also well-principled,

had a strong sense of discipline and duty, was prepared in politics

firmly to uphold as right whatever was proposed by his own party, and

to reject as wrong whatever was proposed by the other. At present he was

rather loud and noisy in the assertion of his opinions,--young men fresh

from the University generally are. It was the secret wish of Mr. Travers

that George Belvoir should become his son-in-law; less because of his

rank and wealth (though such advantages were not of a nature to be

despised by a practical man like Leopold Travers) than on account of

those qualities in his personal character which were likely to render

him an excellent husband.

Seated on wire benches, just without the veranda, but shaded by its

fragrant festoons, were Mrs. Campion and three ladies, the wives of

neighbouring squires. Cecilia stood a little apart from them, bending

over a long-backed Skye terrier, whom she was teaching to stand on his

hind legs.

But see, the company are arriving! How suddenly that green space, ten

minutes ago so solitary, has become animated and populous!

Indeed the park now presented a very lively appearance: vans, carts, and

farmers’ chaises were seen in crowded procession along the winding road;

foot-passengers were swarming towards the house in all directions. The

herds and flocks in the various enclosures stopped grazing to stare at

the unwonted invaders of their pasture: yet the orderly nature of their

host imparted a respect for order to his ruder visitors; not even a

turbulent boy attempted to scale the fences, or creep through their

wires; all threaded the narrow turnstiles which gave egress from one

subdivision of the sward to another.

Mr. Travers turned to George Belvoir: “I see old farmer Steen’s

yellow gig. Mind how you talk to him, George. He is full of whims and

crotchets, and if you once brush his feathers the wrong way he will be

as vindictive as a parrot. But he is the man who must second you at

the nomination. No other tenant-farmer carries the same weight with his

class.”

“I suppose,” said George, “that if Mr. Steen is the best man to second

me at the hustings, he is a good speaker?”

“A good speaker? in one sense he is. He never says a word too much. The

last time he seconded the nomination of the man you are to succeed, this

was his speech: ‘Brother Electors, for twenty years I have been one of

the judges at our county cattle-show. I know one animal from another.

Looking at the specimens before us to-day none of them are as good

of their kind as I’ve seen elsewhere. But if you choose Sir John Hogg

you’ll not get the wrong sow by the ear!’”

“At least,” said George, after a laugh at this sample of eloquence

unadorned, “Mr. Steen does not err on the side of flattery in his

commendations of a candidate. But what makes him such an authority with

the farmers? Is he a first-rate agriculturist?”

“In thrift, yes!--in spirit, no! He says that all expensive experiments

should be left to gentlemen farmers. He is an authority with other

tenants: firstly, because he is a very keen censor of their landlords;

secondly, because he holds himself thoroughly independent of his own;

thirdly, because he is supposed to have studied the political bearings

of questions that affect the landed interest, and has more than once

been summoned to give his opinion on such subjects to Committees of both

Houses of Parliament. Here he comes. Observe, when I leave you to talk

to him: firstly, that you confess utter ignorance of practical farming;

nothing enrages him like the presumption of a gentleman farmer like

myself: secondly, that you ask his opinion on the publication of

Agricultural Statistics, just modestly intimating that you, as at

present advised, think that inquisitorial researches into a man’s

business involve principles opposed to the British Constitution. And on

all that he may say as to the shortcomings of landlords in general, and

of your father in particular, make no reply, but listen with an air of

melancholy conviction. How do you do, Mr. Steen, and how’s the mistress?

Why have you not brought her with you?”

“My good woman is in the straw again, Squire. Who is that youngster?”

“Hist! let me introduce Mr. Belvoir.”

Mr. Belvoir offers his hand.

“No, sir!” vociferates Steen, putting both his own hands behind him. “No

offence, young gentleman. But I don’t give my hand at first sight to

a man who wants to shake a vote out of it. Not that I know anything

against you. But, if you be a farmer’s friend rabbits are not, and my

lord your father is a great one for rabbits.”

“Indeed you are mistaken there!” cries George, with vehement

earnestness. Mr. Travers gave him a nudge, as much as to say, “Hold your

tongue.” George understood the hint, and is carried off meekly by Mr.

Steen down the solitude of the plantations.

The guests now arrived fast and thick. They consisted chiefly not only

of Mr. Travers’s tenants, but of farmers and their families within

the range of eight or ten miles from the Park, with a few of the

neighbouring gentry and clergy.

It was not a supper intended to include the labouring class; for Mr.

Travers had an especial dislike to the custom of exhibiting peasants

at feeding-time, as if they were so many tamed animals of an inferior

species. When he entertained work-people, he made them comfortable in

their own way; and peasants feel more comfortable when not invited to be

stared out of countenance.

“Well, Lethbridge,” said Mr. Travers, “where is the young gladiator you

promised to bring?”

“I did bring him, and he was by my side not a minute ago. He has

suddenly given me the slip: ‘abiit, evasit, erupit.’ I was looking round

for him in vain when you accosted me.”

“I hope he has not seen some guest of mine whom he wants to fight.”

“I hope not,” answered the Parson, doubtfully. “He’s a strange fellow.

But I think you will be pleased with him; that is, if he can be found.

Oh, Mr. Saunderson, how do you do? Have you seen your visitor?”

“No, sir, I have just come. My mistress, Squire, and my three girls; and

this is my son.”

“A hearty welcome to all,” said the graceful Squire; (turning to

Saunderson junior), “I suppose you are fond of dancing. Get yourself a

partner. We may as well open the ball.”

“Thank you, sir, but I never dance,” said Saunderson junior, with an air

of austere superiority to an amusement which the March of Intellect had

left behind.

“Then you’ll have less to regret when you are grown old. But the band

is striking up; we must adjourn to the marquee. George” (Mr. Belvoir,

escaped from Mr. Steen, had just made his appearance), “will you give

your arm to Cecilia, to whom I think you are engaged for the first

quadrille?”

“I hope,” said George to Cecilia, as they walked towards the marquee,

“that Mr. Steen is not an average specimen of the electors I shall have

to canvass. Whether he has been brought up to honour his own father and

mother I can’t pretend to say, but he seems bent upon teaching me not

to honour mine. Having taken away my father’s moral character upon the

unfounded allegation that he loved rabbits better than mankind, he then

assailed my innocent mother on the score of religion, and inquired when

she was going over to the Church of Rome, basing that inquiry on the

assertion that she had taken away her custom from a Protestant grocer

and conferred it on a Papist.”

“Those are favourable signs, Mr. Belvoir. Mr. Steen always prefaces a

kindness by a great deal of incivility. I asked him once to lend me a

pony, my own being suddenly taken lame, and he seized that opportunity

to tell me that my father was an impostor in pretending to be a judge of

cattle; that he was a tyrant, screwing his tenants in order to indulge

extravagant habits of hospitality; and implied that it would be a

great mercy if we did not live to apply to him, not for a pony, but for

parochial relief. I went away indignant. But he sent me the pony. I am

sure he will give you his vote.”

“Meanwhile,” said George, with a timid attempt at gallantry, as they now

commenced the quadrille, “I take encouragement from the belief that I

have the good wishes of Miss Travers. If ladies had votes, as Mr. Mill

recommends, why, then--”

“Why, then, I should vote as Papa does,” said Miss Travers, simply. “And

if women had votes, I suspect there would be very little peace in any

household where they did not vote as the man at the head of it wished

them.”

“But I believe, after all,” said the aspirant to Parliament, seriously,

“that the advocates for female suffrage would limit it to women

independent of masculine control, widows and spinsters voting in right

of their own independent tenements.”

“In that case,” said Cecilia, “I suppose they would still generally go

by the opinion of some man they relied on, or make a very silly choice

if they did not.”

“You underrate the good sense of your sex.”

“I hope not. Do you underrate the good sense of yours, if, in far more

than half the things appertaining to daily life, the wisest men say,

‘Better leave _them_ to the _women_’? But you’re forgetting the figure,

_cavalier seul_.”

“By the way,” said George, in another interval of the dance, “do

you know a Mr. Chillingly, the son of Sir Peter, of Exmundham, in

Westshire?”

“No; why do you ask?”

“Because I thought I caught a glimpse of his face: it was just as Mr.

Steen was bearing me away down that plantation. From what you say, I

must suppose I was mistaken.”

“Chillingly! But surely some persons were talking yesterday at dinner

about a young gentleman of that name as being likely to stand for

Westshire at the next election, but who had made a very unpopular and

eccentric speech on the occasion of his coming of age.”

“The same man: I was at college with him,--a very singular character. He

was thought clever; won a prize or two; took a good degree: but it was

generally said that he would have deserved a much higher one if some of

his papers had not contained covert jests either on the subject or the

examiners. It is a dangerous thing to set up as a humourist in practical

life,--especially public life. They say Mr. Pitt had naturally a great

deal of wit and humour, but he wisely suppressed any evidence of those

qualities in his Parliamentary speeches. Just like Chillingly, to turn

into ridicule the important event of festivities in honour of his coming

of age,--an occasion that can never occur again in the whole course of

his life.”

“It was bad taste,” said Cecilia, “if intentional. But perhaps he was

misunderstood, or taken by surprise.”

“Misunderstood,--possibly; but taken by surprise,--no. The coolest

fellow I ever met. Not that I have met him very often. Latterly, indeed,

at Cambridge he lived much alone. It was said that he read hard. I doubt

that; for my rooms were just over his, and I know that he was much

more frequently out of doors than in. He rambled a good deal about the

country on foot. I have seen him in by-lanes a dozen miles distant from

the town when I have been riding back from the hunt. He was fond of the

water, and pulled a mighty strong oar, but declined to belong to our

University crew; yet if ever there was a fight between undergraduates

and bargemen, he was sure to be in the midst of it. Yes, a very great

oddity indeed, full of contradictions, for a milder, quieter fellow in

general intercourse you could not see; and as for the jests of which

he was accused in his examination papers, his very face should

have acquitted him of the charge before any impartial jury of his

countrymen.”

“You sketch quite an interesting picture of him,” said Cecilia. “I wish

we did know him: he would be worth seeing.”

“And, once seen, you would not easily forget him,--a dark, handsome

face, with large melancholy eyes, and with one of those spare slender

figures which enable a man to disguise his strength, as a fraudulent

billiard-player disguises his play.”

The dance had ceased during this conversation, and the speakers were now

walking slowly to and fro the lawn amid the general crowd.

“How well your father plays the part of host to these rural folks!” said

George, with a secret envy. “Do observe how quietly he puts that shy

young farmer at his ease, and now how kindly he deposits that lame old

lady on the bench, and places the stool under her feet. What a canvasser

he would be! and how young he still looks, and how monstrous handsome!”

This last compliment was uttered as Travers, having made the old

lady comfortable, had joined the three Miss Saundersons, dividing his

pleasant smile equally between them; and seemingly unconscious of the

admiring glances which many another rural beauty directed towards him

as he passed along. About the man there was a certain indescribable

elegance, a natural suavity free from all that affectation, whether

of forced heartiness or condescending civility, which too often

characterizes the well-meant efforts of provincial magnates to

accommodate themselves to persons of inferior station and breeding. It

is a great advantage to a man to have passed his early youth in that

most equal and most polished of all democracies,--the best society of

large capitals. And to such acquired advantage Leopold Travers added the

inborn qualities that please.

Later in the evening Travers, again accosting Mr. Lethbridge, said, “I

have been talking much to the Saundersons about that young man who did

us the inestimable service of punishing your ferocious parishioner,

Tom Bowles; and all I hear so confirms the interest your own

account inspired me with that I should really like much to make his

acquaintance. Has not he turned up yet?”

“No; I fear he must have gone. But in that case I hope you will take

his generous desire to serve my poor basket-maker into benevolent

consideration.”

“Do not press me; I feel so reluctant to refuse any request of yours.

But I have my own theory as to the management of an estate, and my

system does not allow of favour. I should wish to explain that to the

young stranger himself; for I hold courage in such honour that I do not

like a brave man to leave these parts with an impression that Leopold

Travers is an ungracious churl. However, he may not have gone. I will

go and look for him myself. Just tell Cecilia that she has danced enough

with the gentry, and that I have told Farmer Turby’s son, a fine young

fellow and a capital rider across country, that I expect him to show my

daughter that he can dance as well as he rides.”

CHAPTER IV.

QUITTING Mr. Lethbridge, Travers turned with quick step towards the more

solitary part of the grounds. He did not find the object of his search

in the walks of the plantation; and, on taking the circuit of his

demesne, wound his way back towards the lawn through a sequestered rocky

hollow in the rear of the marquee, which had been devoted to a fernery.

Here he came to a sudden pause; for, seated a few yards before him on

a gray crag, and the moonlight full on his face, he saw a solitary man,

looking upwards with a still and mournful gaze, evidently absorbed in

abstract contemplation.

Recalling the description of the stranger which he had heard from Mr.

Lethbridge and the Saundersons, Mr. Travers felt sure that he had come

on him at last. He approached gently; and, being much concealed by the

tall ferns, Kenelm (for that itinerant it was) did not see him advance,

until he felt a hand on his shoulder, and, turning round, beheld a

winning smile and heard a pleasant voice.

“I think I am not mistaken,” said Leopold Travers, “in assuming you to

be the gentleman whom Mr. Lethbridge promised to introduce to me, and

who is staying with my tenant, Mr. Saunderson?”

Kenelm rose and bowed. Travers saw at once that it was the bow of a man

in his own world, and not in keeping with the Sunday costume of a petty

farmer. “Nay,” said he, “let us talk seated;” and placing himself on the

crag, he made room for Kenelm beside him.

“In the first place,” resumed Travers, “I must thank you for having

done a public service in putting down the brute force which has long

tyrannized over the neighbourhood. Often in my young days I have felt

the disadvantage of height and sinews, whenever it would have been a

great convenience to terminate dispute or chastise insolence by a

resort to man’s primitive weapons; but I never more lamented my physical

inferiority than on certain occasions when I would have given my ears to

be able to thrash Tom Bowles myself. It has been as great a disgrace to

my estate that that bully should so long have infested it as it is

to the King of Italy not to be able with all his armies to put down a

brigand in Calabria.”

“Pardon me, Mr. Travers, but I am one of those rare persons who do not

like to hear ill of their friends. Mr. Thomas Bowles is a particular

friend of mine.”

“Eh!” cried Travers, aghast. “‘Friend!’ you are joking.

“You would not accuse me of joking if you knew me better. But surely you

have felt that there are few friends one likes more cordially, and ought

to respect more heedfully, than the enemy with whom one has just made it

up.”

“You say well, and I accept the rebuke,” said Travers, more and more

surprised. “And I certainly have less right to abuse Mr. Bowles than

you have, since I had not the courage to fight him. To turn to another

subject less provocative. Mr. Lethbridge has told me of your amiable

desire to serve two of his young parishioners, Will Somers and Jessie

Wiles, and of your generous offer to pay the money Mrs. Bawtrey demands

for the transfer of her lease. To that negotiation my consent is

necessary, and that consent I cannot give. Shall I tell you why?”

“Pray do. Your reasons may admit of argument.”

“Every reason admits of argument,” said Mr. Travers, amused at the calm

assurance of a youthful stranger in anticipating argument with a skilful

proprietor on the management of his own property. “I do not, however,

tell you my reasons for the sake of argument, but in vindication of my

seeming want of courtesy towards yourself. I have had a very hard and a

very difficult task to perform in bringing the rental of my estate up

to its proper value. In doing so, I have been compelled to adopt one

uniform system, equally applied to my largest and my pettiest holdings.

That system consists in securing the best and safest tenants I can,

at the rents computed by a valuer in whom I have confidence. To this

system, universally adopted on my estate, though it incurred much

unpopularity at first, I have at length succeeded in reconciling the

public opinion of my neighbourhood. People began by saying I was

hard; they now acknowledge I am just. If I once give way to favour or

sentiment, I unhinge my whole system. Every day I am subjected to moving

solicitations. Lord Twostars, a keen politician, begs me to give a

vacant farm to a tenant because he is an excellent canvasser, and has

always voted straight with the party. Mrs. Fourstars, a most benevolent

woman, entreats me not to dismiss another tenant, because he is in

distressed circumstances and has a large family; very good reasons

perhaps for my excusing him an arrear, or allowing him a retiring

pension, but the worst reasons in the world for letting him continue to

ruin himself and my land. Now, Mrs. Bawtrey has a small holding on lease

at the inadequate rent of L8 a year. She asks L45 for its transfer, but

she can’t transfer the lease without my consent; and I can get L12 a

year as a moderate rental from a large choice of competent tenants. It

will better answer me to pay her the L45 myself, which I have no doubt

the incoming tenant would pay me back, at least in part; and if he did

not, the additional rent would be good interest for my expenditure.

Now, you happen to take a sentimental interest, as you pass through the

village, in the loves of a needy cripple whose utmost industry has but

served to save himself from parish relief, and a giddy girl without a

sixpence, and you ask me to accept these very equivocal tenants instead

of substantial ones, and at a rent one-third less than the market value.

Suppose that I yielded to your request, what becomes of my reputation

for practical, business-like justice? I shall have made an inroad into

the system by which my whole estate is managed, and have invited all

manner of solicitations on the part of friends and neighbours, which I

could no longer consistently refuse, having shown how easily I can be

persuaded into compliance by a stranger whom I may never see again. And

are you sure, after all, that, if you did prevail on me, you would do

the individual good you aim at? It is, no doubt, very pleasant to think

one has made a young couple happy. But if that young couple fail in

keeping the little shop to which you would transplant them (and

nothing more likely: peasants seldom become good shopkeepers), and find

themselves, with a family of children, dependent solely, not on the arm

of a strong labourer, but the ten fingers of a sickly cripple, who makes

clever baskets, for which there is but slight and precarious demand in

the neighbourhood, may you not have insured the misery of the couple you

wished to render happy?”

“I withdraw all argument,” said Kenelm, with an aspect so humiliated and

dejected, that it would have softened a Greenland bear, or a Counsel for

the Prosecution. “I am more and more convinced that of all the shams in

the world that of benevolence is the greatest. It seems so easy to

do good, and it is so difficult to do it. Everywhere, in this hateful

civilized life, one runs one’s head against a system. A system, Mr.

Travers, is man’s servile imitation of the blind tyranny of what in our

ignorance we call ‘Natural Laws,’ a mechanical something through which

the world is ruled by the cruelty of General Principles, to the utter

disregard of individual welfare. By Natural Laws creatures prey on each

other, and big fishes eat little ones upon system. It is, nevertheless,

a hard thing for the little fish. Every nation, every town, every

hamlet, every occupation, has a system, by which, somehow or other, the

pond swarms with fishes, of which a great many inferiors contribute to

increase the size of a superior. It is an idle benevolence to keep

one solitary gudgeon out of the jaws of a pike. Here am I doing what I

thought the simplest thing in the world, asking a gentleman, evidently

as good-natured as myself, to allow an old woman to let her premises to

a deserving young couple, and paying what she asks for it out of my own

money. And I find that I am running against a system, and invading all

the laws by which a rental is increased and an estate improved. Mr.

Travers, you have no cause for regret in not having beaten Tom Bowles.

You have beaten his victor, and I now give up all dream of further

interference with the Natural Laws that govern the village which I

have visited in vain. I had meant to remove Tom Bowles from that quiet

community. I shall now leave him to return to his former habits,--to

marry Jessie Wiles, which he certainly will do, and--”

“Hold!” cried Mr. Travers. “Do you mean to say that you can induce Tom

Bowles to leave the village?”

“I had induced him to do it, provided Jessie Wiles married the

basket-maker; but, as that is out of the question, I am bound to tell

him so, and he will stay.”

“But if he left, what would become of his business? His mother could

not keep it on; his little place is a freehold; the only house in the

village that does not belong to me, or I should have ejected him long

ago. Would he sell the premises to me?”

“Not if he stays and marries Jessie Wiles. But if he goes with me to

Luscombe and settles in that town as a partner to his uncle, I suppose

he would be too glad to sell a house of which he can have no pleasant

recollections. But what then? You cannot violate your system for the

sake of a miserable forge.”

“It would not violate my system if, instead of yielding to a sentiment,

I gained an advantage; and, to say truth, I should be very glad to buy

that forge and the fields that go with it.”

“‘Tis your affair now, not mine, Mr. Travers. I no longer presume to

interfere. I leave the neighbourhood to-morrow: see if you can negotiate

with Mr. Bowles. I have the honour to wish you a good evening.”

“Nay, young gentleman, I cannot allow you to quit me thus. You have

declined apparently to join the dancers, but you will at least join the

supper. Come!”

“Thank you sincerely, no. I came here merely on the business which your

system has settled.”

“But I am not sure that it is settled.” Here Mr. Travers wound his arm

within Kenelm’s, and looking him full in the face, said, “I know that

I am speaking to a gentleman at least equal in rank to myself, but as

I enjoy the melancholy privilege of being the older man, do not think

I take an unwarrantable liberty in asking if you object to tell me your

name. I should like to introduce you to my daughter, who is very partial

to Jessie Wiles and to Will Somers. But I can’t venture to inflame her

imagination by designating you as a prince in disguise.”

“Mr. Travers, you express yourself with exquisite delicacy. But I

am just starting in life, and I shrink from mortifying my father by

associating my name with a signal failure. Suppose I were an anonymous

contributor, say, to ‘The Londoner,’ and I had just brought that

highly intellectual journal into discredit by a feeble attempt at

a good-natured criticism or a generous sentiment, would that be the

fitting occasion to throw off the mask, and parade myself to a mocking

world as the imbecile violator of an established system? Should I not,

in a moment so untoward, more than ever desire to merge my insignificant

unit in the mysterious importance which the smallest Singular obtains

when he makes himself a Plural, and speaks not as ‘I,’ but as ‘We’?

_We_ are insensible to the charm of young ladies; _We_ are not bribed

by suppers; _We_, like the witches of ‘Macbeth,’ have no name on earth;

_We_ are the greatest wisdom of the greatest number; _We_ are so upon

system; _We_ salute you, Mr. Travers, and depart unassailable.”

Here Kenelm rose, doffed and replaced his hat in majestic salutation,

turned towards the entrance of the fernery, and found himself suddenly

face to face with George Belvoir, behind whom followed, with a throng

of guests, the fair form of Cecilia. George Belvoir caught Kenelm by the

hand, and exclaimed, “Chillingly! I thought I could not be mistaken.”

“Chillingly!” echoed Leopold Travers from behind. “Are you the son of my

old friend Sir Peter?”

Thus discovered and environed, Kenelm did not lose his wonted presence

of mind; he turned round to Leopold Travers, who was now close in his

rear, and whispered, “If my father was your friend, do not disgrace his

son. Do not say I am a failure. Deviate from your system, and let Will

Somers succeed Mrs. Bawtrey.” Then reverting his face to Mr. Belvoir, he

said tranquilly, “Yes; we have met before.”

“Cecilia,” said Travers, now interposing, “I am happy to introduce to

you as Mr. Chillingly, not only the son of an old friend of mine,

not only the knight-errant of whose gallant conduct on behalf of your

protegee Jessie Wiles we have heard so much, but the eloquent arguer who

has conquered my better judgment in a matter on which I thought myself

infallible. Tell Mr. Lethbridge that I accept Will Somers as a tenant

for Mrs. Bawtrey’s premises.”

Kenelm grasped the Squire’s hand cordially. “May it be in my power to do

a kind thing to you, in spite of any system to the contrary!”

“Mr. Chillingly, give your arm to my daughter. You will not now object

to join the dancers?”

CHAPTER V.

CECILIA stole a shy glance at Kenelm as the two emerged from the fernery

into the open space of the lawn. His countenance pleased her. She

thought she discovered much latent gentleness under the cold and

mournful gravity of its expression; and, attributing the silence he

maintained to some painful sense of an awkward position in the abrupt

betrayal of his incognito, sought with womanly tact to dispel his

supposed embarrassment.

“You have chosen a delightful mode of seeing the country this lovely

summer weather, Mr. Chillingly. I believe such pedestrian exercises are

very common with university students during the long vacation.”

“Very common, though they generally wander in packs like wild dogs or

Australian dingoes. It is only a tame dog that one finds on the road

travelling by himself; and then, unless he behaves very quietly, it is

ten to one that he is stoned as a mad dog.”

“But I am afraid, from what I hear, that you have not been travelling

very quietly.”

“You are quite right, Miss Travers, and I am a sad dog if not a mad one.

But pardon me: we are nearing the marquee; the band is striking up, and,

alas! I am not a dancing dog.”

He released Cecilia’s arm, and bowed.

“Let us sit here a while, then,” said she, motioning to a garden-bench.

“I have no engagement for the next dance, and, as I am a little tired, I

shall be glad of a reprieve.”

Kenelm sighed, and, with the air of a martyr stretching himself on the

rack, took his place beside the fairest girl in the county.

“You were at college with Mr. Belvoir?”

“I was.”

“He was thought clever there?”

“I have not a doubt of it.”

“You know he is canvassing our county for the next election. My father

takes a warm interest in his success, and thinks he will be a useful

member of Parliament.”

“Of that I am certain. For the first five years he will be called

pushing, noisy, and conceited, much sneered at by men of his own age,

and coughed down on great occasions; for the five following years he

will be considered a sensible man in committees, and a necessary feature

in debate; at the end of those years he will be an under-secretary; in

five years more he will be a Cabinet Minister, and the representative of

an important section of opinions; he will be an irreproachable private

character, and his wife will be seen wearing the family diamonds at all

the great parties. She will take an interest in politics and theology;

and if she die before him, her husband will show his sense of wedded

happiness by choosing another lady, equally fitted to wear the family

diamonds and to maintain the family consequences.”

In spite of her laughter, Cecilia felt a certain awe at the solemnity of

voice and manner with which Kenelm delivered these oracular sentences,

and the whole prediction seemed strangely in unison with her own

impressions of the character whose fate was thus shadowed out.

“Are you a fortune-teller, Mr. Chillingly?” she asked, falteringly, and

after a pause.

“As good a one as any whose hand you could cross with a shilling.”

“Will you tell me my fortune?”

“No; I never tell the fortunes of ladies, because your sex is credulous,

and a lady might believe what I tell her. And when we believe such and

such is to be our fate, we are too apt to work out our life into the

verification of the belief. If Lady Macbeth had disbelieved in the

witches, she would never have persuaded her lord to murder Duncan.”

“But can you not predict me a more cheerful fortune than that tragical

illustration of yours seems to threaten?”

“The future is never cheerful to those who look on the dark side of

the question. Mr. Gray is too good a poet for people to read nowadays,

otherwise I should refer you to his lines in the ‘Ode to Eton

College,’--

“‘See how all around us wait

The ministers of human fate,

And black Misfortune’s baleful train.’

“Meanwhile it is something to enjoy the present. We are young; we

are listening to music; there is no cloud over the summer stars; our

conscience is clear; our hearts untroubled: why look forward in search

of happiness? shall we ever be happier than we are at this moment?”

Here Mr. Travers came up. “We are going to supper in a few minutes,”

said he; “and before we lose sight of each other, Mr. Chillingly, I wish

to impress on you the moral fact that one good turn deserves another. I

have yielded to your wish, and now you must yield to mine. Come and stay

a few days with me, and see your benevolent intentions carried out.”

Kenelm paused. Now that he was discovered, why should he not pass a few

days among his equals? Realities or shams might be studied with squires

no less than with farmers; besides, he had taken a liking to Travers.

That graceful _ci-devant_ Wildair, with the slight form and the delicate

face, was unlike rural squires in general. Kenelm paused, and then said

frankly,--

“I accept your invitation. Would the middle of next week suit you?”

“The sooner the better. Why not to-morrow?”

“To-morrow I am pre-engaged to an excursion with Mr. Bowles. That may

occupy two or three days, and meanwhile I must write home for other

garments than those in which I am a sham.”

“Come any day you like.”

“Agreed.”

“Agreed; and, hark! the supper-bell.”

“Supper,” said Kenelm, offering his arm to Miss Travers,--“supper is a

word truly interesting, truly poetical. It associates itself with the

entertainments of the ancients, with the Augustan age, with Horace and

Maecenas; with the only elegant but too fleeting period of the modern

world; with the nobles and wits of Paris, when Paris had wits and

nobles; with Moliere and the warm-hearted Duke who is said to have been

the original of Moliere’s Misanthrope; with Madame de Sevigne and the

Racine whom that inimitable letter-writer denied to be a poet; with

Swift and Bolingbroke; with Johnson, Goldsmith, and Garrick. Epochs are

signalized by their eatings. I honour him who revives the Golden Age of

suppers.” So saying, his face brightened.

CHAPTER VI.

KENELM CHILLINGLY, ESQ., TO SIR PETER CHILLINGLY, BART., ETC.

MY DEAR FATHER,--I am alive and unmarried. Providence has watched over

me in these respects; but I have had narrow escapes. Hitherto I have not

acquired much worldly wisdom in my travels. It is true that I have been

paid two shillings as a day labourer, and, in fact, have fairly earned

at least six shillings more; but against that additional claim I

generously set off, as an equivalent, my board and lodging. On the other

hand, I have spent forty-five pounds out of the fifty which I devoted

to the purchase of experience. But I hope you will be a gainer by

that investment. Send an order to Mr. William Somers, basket-maker,

Graveleigh, -----shire, for the hampers and game-baskets you require,

and I undertake to say that you will save twenty per cent on that

article (all expenses of carriage deducted) and do a good action into

the bargain. You know, from long habit, what a good action is worth

better than I do. I dare say you will be more pleased to learn than I

am to record the fact that I have been again decoyed into the society of

ladies and gentlemen, and have accepted an invitation to pass a few days

at Neesdale Park with Mr. Travers,--christened Leopold, who calls you

“his old friend,”--a term which I take for granted belongs to that class

of poetic exaggeration in which the “dears” and “darlings” of conjugal

intercourse may be categorized. Having for that visit no suitable

garments in my knapsack, kindly tell Jenkes to forward me a portmanteau

full of those which I habitually wore as Kenelm Chillingly, directed

to me at “Neesdale Park, near Beaverston.” Let me find it there on

Wednesday.

I leave this place to-morrow morning in company with a friend of the

name of Bowles: no relation to the reverend gentleman of that name who

held the doctrine that a poet should bore us to death with fiddle-faddle

minutia of natural objects in preference to that study of the

insignificant creature Man, in his relations to his species, to which

Mr. Pope limited the range of his inferior muse; and who, practising as

he preached, wrote some very nice verses, to which the Lake school and

its successors are largely indebted. My Mr. Bowles has exercised his

faculty upon Man, and has a powerful inborn gift in that line which

only requires cultivation to render him a match for any one. His more

masculine nature is at present much obscured by that passing cloud

which, in conventional language, is called “a hopeless attachment.” But

I trust, in the course of our excursion, which is to be taken on foot,

that this vapour may consolidate by motion, as some old-fashioned

astronomers held that the nebula does consolidate into a matter-of-fact

world. Is it Rochefoucauld who says that a man is never more likely to

form a hopeful attachment for one than when his heart is softened by a

hopeless attachment to another? May it be long, my dear father, before

you condole with me on the first or congratulate me on the second.

Your affectionate son,

KENELM.

Direct to me at Mr. Travers’s. Kindest love to my mother.

The answer to this letter is here subjoined as the most convenient place

for its insertion, though of course it was not received till some days

after the date of my next chapter.

SIR PETER CHILLINGLY, BART., TO KENELM CHILLINGLY, ESQ.

MY DEAR Boy,--With this I despatch the portmanteau you require to the

address that you give. I remember well Leopold Travers when he was in

the Guards,--a very handsome and a very wild young fellow. But he

had much more sense than people gave him credit for, and frequented

intellectual society; at least I met him very often at my friend

Campion’s, whose house was then the favourite rendezvous of

distinguished persons. He had very winning manners, and one could not

help taking an interest in him. I was very glad when I heard he had

married and reformed. Here I beg to observe that a man who contracts a

taste for low company may indeed often marry, but he seldom reforms when

he does so. And, on the whole, I should be much pleased to hear that the

experience which has cost you forty-five pounds had convinced you that

you might be better employed than earning two, or even six shillings as

a day-labourer.

I have not given your love to your mother, as you requested. In fact,

you have placed me in a very false position towards that other author of

your eccentric being. I could only guard you from the inquisition of the

police and the notoriety of descriptive hand-bills by allowing my lady

to suppose that you had gone abroad with the Duke of Clairville and his

family. It is easy to tell a fib, but it is very difficult to untell

it. However, as soon as you have made up your mind to resume your normal

position among ladies and gentlemen, I should be greatly obliged if

you would apprise me. I don’t wish to keep a fib on my conscience a

day longer than may be necessary to prevent the necessity of telling

another.

From what you say of Mr. Bowles’s study of Man, and his inborn talent

for that scientific investigation, I suppose that he is a professed

Metaphysician, and I should be glad of his candid opinion upon the

Primary Basis of Morals, a subject upon which I have for three years

meditated the consideration of a critical paper. But having lately read

a controversy thereon between two eminent philosophers, in which each

accuses the other of not understanding him, I have resolved for the

present to leave the Basis in its unsettled condition.

You rather alarm me when you say you have had a narrow escape from

marriage. Should you, in order to increase the experience you set out

to acquire, decide on trying the effect of a Mrs. Chillingly upon your

nervous system, it would be well to let me know a little beforehand, so

that I might prepare your mother’s mind for that event. Such household

trifles are within her special province; and she would be much put out

if a Mrs. Chillingly dropped on her unawares.

This subject, however, is too serious to admit of a jest even between

two persons who understand, so well as you and I do, the secret cipher

by which each other’s outward style of jest is to be gravely interpreted

into the irony which says one thing and means another. My dear boy, you

are very young; you are wandering about in a very strange manner, and

may, no doubt, meet with many a pretty face by the way, with which you

may fancy that you fall in love. You cannot think me a barbarous, tyrant

if I ask you to promise me, on your honour, that you will not propose

to any young lady before you come first to me and submit the case to my

examination and approval. You know me too well to suppose that I should

unreasonably withhold my consent if convinced that your happiness was

at stake. But while what a young man may fancy to be love is often a

trivial incident in his life, marriage is the greatest event in it;

if on one side it may involve his happiness, on the other side it

may insure his misery. Dearest, best, and oddest of sons, give me the

promise I ask, and you will free my breast from a terribly anxious

thought which now sits on it like a nightmare.

Your recommendation of a basket-maker comes opportunely. All such

matters go through the bailiff’s hands, and it was but the other day

that Green was complaining of the high prices of the man he employed for

hampers and game-baskets. Green shall write to your protege.

Keep me informed of your proceedings as much as your anomalous character

will permit; so that nothing may diminish my confidence that the man who

had the honour to be christened Kenelm will not disgrace his name, but

acquire the distinction denied to a Peter.

Your affectionate father.

CHAPTER VII.

VILLAGERS lie abed on Sundays later than on workdays, and no shutter was

unclosed in a window of the rural street through which Kenelm Chillingly

and Tom Bowles went, side by side, in the still soft air of the Sabbath

morn. Side by side they went on, crossing the pastoral glebe-lands,

where the kine still drowsily reclined under the bowery shade of

glinting chestnut leaves; and diving thence into a narrow lane or

by-road, winding deep between lofty banks all tangled with convolvulus

and wild-rose and honeysuckle.

They walked in silence, for Kenelm, after one or two vain attempts at

conversation, had the tact to discover that his companion was in no mood

for talk; and being himself one of those creatures whose minds glide

easily into the dreamy monologue of revery, he was not displeased to

muse on undisturbed, drinking quietly into his heart the subdued joy of

the summer morn, with the freshness of its sparkling dews, the wayward

carol of its earliest birds, the serene quietude of its limpid breezy

air. Only when they came to fresh turnings in the road that led towards

the town to which they were bound, Tom Bowles stepped before his

companion, indicating the way by a monosyllable or a gesture. Thus they

journeyed for hours, till the sun attained power, and a little wayside

inn near a hamlet invited Kenelm to the thought of rest and food.

“Tom,” said he then, rousing from his revery, “what do you say to

breakfast?”

Answered Tom sullenly, “I am not hungry; but as you like.”

“Thank you, then we will stop here a while. I find it difficult to

believe that you are not hungry, for you are very strong, and there are

two things which generally accompany great physical strength: the one is

a keen appetite; the other is--though you may not suppose it, and it is

not commonly known--a melancholic temperament.”

“Eh!--a what?”

“A tendency to melancholy. Of course you have heard of Hercules: you

know the saying ‘as strong as Hercules’?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, I was first led to the connection between strength, appetite, and

melancholy, by reading in an old author named Plutarch that Hercules

was among the most notable instances of melancholy temperament which the

author was enabled to quote. That must have been the traditional notion

of the Herculean constitution; and as for appetite, the appetite of

Hercules was a standard joke of the comic writers. When I read that

observation it set me thinking, being myself melancholic and having

an exceedingly good appetite. Sure enough, when I began to collect

evidence, I found that the strongest men with whom I made acquaintance,

including prize-fighters and Irish draymen, were disposed to look upon

life more on the shady than the sunny side of the way; in short, they

were melancholic. But the kindness of Providence allowed them to enjoy

their meals, as you and I are about to do.” In the utterance of this

extraordinary crotchet Kenelm had halted his steps; but now striding

briskly forward he entered the little inn, and after a glance at its

larder, ordered the whole contents to be brought out and placed within a

honeysuckle arbour which he spied in the angle of a bowling-green at the

rear of the house.

In addition to the ordinary condiments of loaf and butter and eggs and

milk and tea, the board soon groaned beneath the weight of pigeon-pie,

cold ribs of beef, and shoulder of mutton, remains of a feast which the

members of a monthly rustic club had held there the day before. Tom ate

little at first; but example is contagious, and gradually he vied with

his companion in the diminution of the solid viands before him. Then he

called for brandy.

“No,” said Kenelm. “No, Tom; you have promised me friendship, and that

is not compatible with brandy. Brandy is the worst enemy a man like

you can have; and would make you quarrel even with me. If you want a

stimulus I allow you a pipe. I don’t smoke myself, as a rule, but there

have been times in my life when I required soothing, and then I have

felt that a whiff of tobacco stills and softens one like the kiss of a

little child. Bring this gentleman a pipe.”

Tom grunted, but took to the pipe kindly, and in a few minutes, during

which Kenelm left him in silence, a lowering furrow between his brows

smoothed itself away.

Gradually he felt the sweetening influences of the day and the place, of

the merry sunbeams at play amid the leaves of the arbour, of the frank

perfume of the honeysuckle, of the warble of the birds before they sank

into the taciturn repose of a summer noon.

It was with a reluctant sigh that he rose at last, when Kenelm said, “We

have yet far to go: we must push on.”

The landlady, indeed, had already given them a hint that she and

the family wanted to go to church, and to shut up the house in their

absence. Kenelm drew out his purse, but Tom did the same with a return

of cloud on his brow, and Kenelm saw that he would be mortally offended

if suffered to be treated as an inferior; so each paid his due share,

and the two men resumed their wandering. This time it was along a

by-path amid fields, which was a shorter cut than the lane they had

previously followed, to the main road to Luscombe. They walked

slowly till they came to a rustic foot-bridge which spanned a gloomy

trout-stream, not noisy, but with a low, sweet murmur, doubtless the

same stream beside which, many miles away, Kenelm had conversed with the

minstrel. Just as they came to this bridge there floated to their ears

the distant sound of the hamlet church-bell.

“Now let us sit here a while and listen,” said Kenelm, seating himself

on the baluster of the bridge. “I see that you brought away your pipe

from the inn, and provided yourself with tobacco: refill the pipe and

listen.”

Tom half smiled and obeyed.

“O friend,” said Kenelm, earnestly, and after a long pause of thought,

“do you not feel what a blessed thing it is in this mortal life to be

ever and anon reminded that you have a soul?”

Tom, startled, withdrew the pipe from his lips, and muttered,--

“Eh!”

Kenelm continued,--

“You and I, Tom, are not so good as we ought to be: of that there is no

doubt; and good people would say justly that we should now be within

yon church itself rather than listening to its bell. Granted, my friend,

granted; but still it is something to hear that bell, and to feel by the

train of thought which began in our innocent childhood, when we said

our prayers at the knees of a mother, that we were lifted beyond this

visible Nature, beyond these fields and woods and waters, in which, fair

though they be, you and I miss something; in which neither you nor I are

as happy as the kine in the fields, as the birds on the bough, as the

fishes in the water: lifted to a consciousness of a sense vouchsafed to

you and to me, not vouchsafed to the kine, to the bird, and the fish,--a

sense to comprehend that Nature has a God, and Man has a life hereafter.

The bell says that to you and to me. Were that bell a thousand times

more musical it could not say that to beast, bird, and fish. Do you

understand me, Tom?”

Tom remains silent for a minute, and then replies, “I never thought of

it before; but, as you put it, I understand.”

“Nature never gives to a living thing capacities not practically meant

for its benefit and use. If Nature gives to us capacities to believe

that we have a Creator whom we never saw, of whom we have no direct

proof, who is kind and good and tender beyond all that we know of kind

and good and tender on earth, it is because the endowment of capacities

to conceive such a Being must be for our benefit and use: it would not

be for our benefit and use if it were a lie. Again, if Nature has given

to us a capacity to receive the notion that we live again, no matter

whether some of us refuse so to believe, and argue against it,--why, the

very capacity to receive the idea (for unless we receive it we could

not argue against it) proves that it is for our benefit and use; and if

there were no such life hereafter, we should be governed and influenced,

arrange our modes of life, and mature our civilization, by obedience

to a lie, which Nature falsified herself in giving us the capacity to

believe. You still understand me?”

“Yes; it bothers me a little, for you see I am not a parson’s man; but I

do understand.”

“Then, my friend, study to apply,--for it requires constant

study,--study to apply that which you understand to your own case. You

are something more than Tom Bowles, the smith and doctor of horses;

something more than the magnificent animal who rages for his mate and

fights every rival: the bull does that. You are a soul endowed with the

capacity to receive the idea of a Creator so divinely wise and great

and good that, though acting by the agency of general laws, He can

accommodate them to all individual cases, so that--taking into account

the life hereafter, which He grants to you the capacity to believe--all

that troubles you now will be proved to you wise and great and good

either in this life or the other. Lay that truth to your heart, friend,

now--before the bell stops ringing; recall it every time you hear the

church-bell ring again. And oh, Tom, you have such a noble nature!--”

“I--I! don’t jeer me,--don’t.”

“Such a noble nature; for you can love so passionately, you can war so

fiercely, and yet, when convinced that your love would be misery to

her you love, can resign it; and yet, when beaten in your war, can so

forgive your victor that you are walking in this solitude with him as a

friend, knowing that you have but to drop a foot behind him in order to

take his life in an unguarded moment; and rather than take his life, you

would defend it against an army. Do you think I am so dull as not to see

all that? and is not all that a noble nature?”

Tom Bowles covered his face with his hands, and his broad breast heaved.

“Well, then, to that noble nature I now trust. I myself have done little

good in life. I may never do much; but let me think that I have not

crossed your life in vain for you and for those whom your life can

colour for good or for bad. As you are strong, be gentle; as you

can love one, be kind to all; as you have so much that is grand as

Man,--that is, the highest of God’s works on earth,--let all your acts

attach your manhood to the idea of Him, to whom the voice of the bell

appeals. Ah! the bell is hushed; but not your heart, Tom,--that speaks

still.”

Tom was weeping like a child.

CHAPTER VIII.

NOW when our two travellers resumed their journey, the relationship

between them had undergone a change; nay, you might have said that their

characters were also changed. For Tom found himself pouring out his

turbulent heart to Kenelm, confiding to this philosophical scoffer at

love all the passionate humanities of love,--its hope, its anguish, its

jealousy, its wrath,--the all that links the gentlest of emotions to

tragedy and terror. And Kenelm, listening tenderly, with softened eyes,

uttered not one cynic word,--nay, not one playful jest. He, felt that

the gravity of all he heard was too solemn for mockery, too deep even

for comfort. True love of this sort was a thing he had never known,

never wished to know, never thought he could know, but he sympathized

in it not the less. Strange, indeed, how much we do sympathize, on

the stage, for instance, or in a book, with passions that have never

agitated ourselves! Had Kenelm jested or reasoned or preached, Tom would

have shrunk at once into dreary silence; but Kenelm said nothing, save

now and then, as he rested his arm, brother-like, on the strong man’s

shoulder, he murmured, “Poor fellow!” So, then, when Tom had finished

his confessions, he felt wondrously relieved and comforted. He had

cleansed his bosom of the perilous stuff that weighed upon the heart.

Was this good result effected by Kenelm’s artful diplomacy, or by that

insight into human passions vouchsafed unconsciously to himself, by

gleams or in flashes, to this strange man who surveyed the objects and

pursuits of his fellows with a yearning desire to share them, murmuring

to himself, “I cannot, I do not stand in this world; like a ghost I

glide beside it, and look on “?

Thus the two men continued their way slowly, amid soft pastures and

yellowing cornfields, out at length into the dusty thoroughfares of

the main road. That gained, their talk insensibly changed its tone: it

became more commonplace; and Kenelm permitted himself the license of

those crotchets by which he extracted a sort of quaint pleasantry out of

commonplace itself; so that from time to time Tom was startled into the

mirth of laughter. This big fellow had one very agreeable gift, which

is only granted, I think, to men of genuine character and affectionate

dispositions,--a spontaneous and sweet laugh, manly and frank, but not

boisterous, as you might have supposed it would be. But that sort of

laugh had not before come from his lips, since the day on which his love

for Jessie Wiles had made him at war with himself and the world.

The sun was setting when from the brow of a hill they beheld the spires

of Luscombe, imbedded amid the level meadows that stretched below,

watered by the same stream that had wound along their more rural

pathway, but which now expanded into stately width, and needed, to span

it, a mighty bridge fit for the convenience of civilized traffic. The

town seemed near, but it was full two miles off by road.

“There is a short cut across the fields beyond that stile, which leads

straight to my uncle’s house,” said Tom; “and I dare say, sir, that you

will be glad to escape the dirty suburb by which the road passes before

we get into the town.”

“A good thought, Tom. It is very odd that fine towns always are

approached by dirty suburbs; a covert symbolical satire, perhaps, on the

ways to success in fine towns. Avarice or ambition go through very mean

little streets before they gain the place which they jostle the crowd to

win,--in the Townhall or on ‘Change. Happy the man who, like you, Tom,

finds that there is a shorter and a cleaner and a pleasanter way to goal

or to resting-place than that through the dirty suburbs!”

They met but few passengers on their path through the fields,--a

respectable, staid, elderly couple, who had the air of a Dissenting

minister and his wife; a girl of fourteen leading a little boy seven

years younger by the hand; a pair of lovers, evidently lovers at

least to the eye of Tom Bowles; for, on regarding them as they passed

unheeding him, he winced, and his face changed. Even after they had

passed, Kenelm saw on the face that pain lingered there: the lips were

tightly compressed, and their corners gloomily drawn down.

Just at this moment a dog rushed towards them with a short quick

bark,--a Pomeranian dog with pointed nose and pricked ears. It hushed

its bark as it neared Kenelm, sniffed his trousers, and wagged its tail.

“By the sacred Nine,” cried Kenelm, “thou art the dog with the tin tray!

where is thy master?”

The dog seemed to understand the question, for it turned its head

significantly; and Kenelm saw, seated under a lime-tree, at a good

distance from the path, a man, with book in hand, evidently employed in

sketching.

“Come this way,” he said to Tom: “I recognize an acquaintance. You

will like him.” Tom desired no new acquaintance at that moment, but he

followed Kenelm submissively.

CHAPTER IX.

“YOU see we are fated to meet again,” said Kenelm, stretching himself

at his ease beside the Wandering Minstrel, and motioning Tom to do the

same. “But you seem to add the accomplishment of drawing to that of

verse-making! You sketch from what you call Nature?”

“From what I call Nature! yes, sometimes.”

“And do you not find in drawing, as in verse-making, the truth that I

have before sought to din into your reluctant ears; namely, that Nature

has no voice except that which man breathes into her out of his mind?

I would lay a wager that the sketch you are now taking is rather an

attempt to make her embody some thought of your own, than to present her

outlines as they appear to any other observer. Permit me to judge for

myself.” And he bent over the sketch-book. It is often difficult for

one who is not himself an artist nor a connoisseur to judge whether the

pencilled jottings in an impromptu sketch are by the hand of a professed

master or a mere amateur. Kenelm was neither artist nor connoisseur, but

the mere pencil-work seemed to him much what might be expected from any

man with an accurate eye who had taken a certain number of lessons from

a good drawing-master. It was enough for him, however, that it furnished

an illustration of his own theory. “I was right,” he cried triumphantly.

“From this height there is a beautiful view, as it presents itself to

me; a beautiful view of the town, its meadows, its river, harmonized by

the sunset; for sunset, like gilding, unites conflicting colours, and

softens them in uniting. But I see nothing of that view in your sketch.

What I do see is to me mysterious.”

“The view you suggest,” said the minstrel, “is no doubt very fine, but

it is for a Turner or a Claude to treat it. My grasp is not wide enough

for such a landscape.”

“I see indeed in your sketch but one figure, a child.”

“Hist! there she stands. Hist! while I put in this last touch.”

Kenelm strained his sight, and saw far off a solitary little girl, who

was tossing something in the air (he could not distinguish what), and

catching it as it fell. She seemed standing on the very verge of the

upland, backed by rose-clouds gathered round the setting sun; below lay

in confused outlines the great town. In the sketch those outlines seemed

infinitely more confused, being only indicated by a few bold strokes;

but the figure and face of the child were distinct and lovely. There

was an ineffable sentiment in her solitude; there was a depth of quiet

enjoyment in her mirthful play, and in her upturned eyes.

“But at that distance,” asked Kenelm, when the wanderer had finished his

last touch, and, after contemplating it, silently closed his book, and

turned round with a genial smile, “but at that distance, how can you

distinguish the girl’s face? How can you discover that the dim object

she has just thrown up and recaught is a ball made of flowers? Do you

know the child?”

“I never saw her before this evening; but as I was seated here she was

straying around me alone, weaving into chains some wild-flowers which

she had gathered by the hedgerows yonder, next the high road; and as she

strung them she was chanting to herself some pretty nursery rhymes.

You can well understand that when I heard her thus chanting I became

interested, and as she came near me I spoke to her, and we soon made

friends. She told me she was an orphan, and brought up by a very old man

distantly related to her, who had been in some small trade and now lived

in a crowded lane in the heart of the town. He was very kind to her, and

being confined himself to the house by age or ailment he sent her out to

play in the fields on summer Sundays. She had no companions of her own

age. She said she did not like the other little girls in the lane; and

the only little girl she liked at school had a grander station in life,

and was not allowed to play with her, and so she came out to play alone;

and as long as the sun shines and the flowers bloom, she says she never

wants other society.”

“Tom, do you hear that? As you will be residing in Luscombe, find out

this strange little girl, and be kind to her, Tom, for my sake.”

Tom put his large hand upon Kenelm’s, making no other answer; but he

looked hard at the minstrel, recognized the genial charm of his voice

and face, and slid along the grass nearer to him.

The minstrel continued: “While the child was talking to me I

mechanically took the flower-chains from her hands, and not thinking

what I was about, gathered them up into a ball. Suddenly she saw what

I had done, and instead of scolding me for spoiling her pretty chains,

which I richly deserved, was delighted to find I had twisted them into a

new plaything. She ran off with the ball, tossing it about till, excited

with her own joy, she got to the brow of the hill, and I began my

sketch.”

“Is that charming face you have drawn like hers?”

“No; only in part. I was thinking of another face while I sketched, but

it is not like that either; in fact, it is one of those patchworks which

we call ‘fancy heads,’ and I meant it to be another version of a thought

that I had just put into rhyme when the child came across me.”

“May we hear the rhyme?”

“I fear that if it did not bore yourself it would bore your friend.”

“I am sure not. Tom, do you sing?”

“Well, I _have_ sung,” said Tom, hanging his head sheepishly, “and I

should like to hear this gentleman.”

“But I do not know these verses, just made, well enough to sing them; it

is enough if I can recall them well enough to recite.” Here the minstrel

paused a minute or so as if for recollection, and then, in the sweet

clear tones and the rare purity of enunciation which characterized his

utterance, whether in recital or song, gave to the following verses a

touching and a varied expression which no one could discover in merely

reading them.

THE FLOWER-GIRL BY THE CROSSING.

“By the muddy crossing in the crowded streets

Stands a little maid with her basket full of posies,

Proffering all who pass her choice of knitted sweets,

Tempting Age with heart’s-ease, courting Youth with roses.

“Age disdains the heart’s-ease,

Love rejects the roses;

London life is busy,--

Who can stop for posies?

“One man is too grave, another is too gay;

This man has his hothouse, that man not a penny:

Flowerets too are common in the month of May,

And the things most common least attract the many.

“Ill, on London crossings,

Fares the sale of posies;

Age disdains the heart’s-ease,

Youth rejects the roses.”

When the verse-maker had done, he did not pause for approbation, nor

look modestly down, as do most people who recite their own verses, but

unaffectedly thinking much more of his art than his audience, hurried on

somewhat disconsolately,--

“I see with great grief that I am better at sketching than rhyming. Can

you” (appealing to Kenelm) “even comprehend what I mean by the verses?”

KENELM.--“Do you comprehend, Tom?”

TOM (in a whisper).--“No.”

KENELM.--“I presume that by his flower-girl our friend means to

represent not only poetry, but a poetry like his own, which is not at

all the sort of poetry now in fashion. I, however, expand his meaning,

and by his flower-girl I understand any image of natural truth or beauty

for which, when we are living the artificial life of crowded streets, we

are too busy to give a penny.”

“Take it as you please,” said the minstrel, smiling and sighing at the

same time; “but I have not expressed in words that which I did mean half

so well as I have expressed it in my sketch-book.”

“Ah! and how?” asked Kenelm.

“The image of my thought in the sketch, be it poetry or whatever you

prefer to call it, does not stand forlorn in the crowded streets: the

child stands on the brow of the green hill, with the city stretched in

confused fragments below, and, thoughtless of pennies and passers-by,

she is playing with the flowers she has gathered; but in play casting

them heavenward, and following them with heavenward eyes.”

“Good!” muttered Kenelm, “good!” and then, after a long pause, he added,

in a still lower mutter, “Pardon me that remark of mine the other day

about a beefsteak. But own that I am right: what you call a sketch from

Nature is but a sketch of your own thought.”

CHAPTER X.

THE child with the flower-ball had vanished from the brow of the hill;

sinking down amid the streets below, the rose-clouds had faded from the

horizon; and night was closing round, as the three men entered the

thick of the town. Tom pressed Kenelm to accompany him to his uncle’s,

promising him a hearty welcome and bed and board, but Kenelm declined.

He entertained a strong persuasion that it would be better for the

desired effect on Tom’s mind that he should be left alone with his

relations that night, but proposed that they should spend the next day

together, and agreed to call at the veterinary surgeon’s in the morning.

When Tom quitted them at his uncle’s door, Kenelm said to the minstrel,

“I suppose you are going to some inn; may I accompany you? We can sup

together, and I should like to hear you talk upon poetry and Nature.”

“You flatter me much; but I have friends in the town, with whom I lodge,

and they are expecting me. Do you not observe that I have changed my

dress? I am not known here as the ‘Wandering Minstrel.’”

Kenelm glanced at the man’s attire, and for the first time observed

the change. It was still picturesque in its way, but it was such as

gentlemen of the highest rank frequently wear in the country,--the

knickerbocker costume,--very neat, very new, and complete, to the

square-toed shoes with their latchets and buckles.

“I fear,” said Kenelm, gravely, “that your change of dress betokens

the neighbourhood of those pretty girls of whom you spoke in an earlier

meeting. According to the Darwinian doctrine of selection, fine plumage

goes far in deciding the preference of Jenny Wren and her sex, only we

are told that fine-feathered birds are very seldom songsters as well. It

is rather unfair to rivals when you unite both attractions.”

The minstrel laughed. “There is but one girl in my friend’s house,--his

niece; she is very plain, and only thirteen. But to me the society of

women, whether ugly or pretty, is an absolute necessity; and I have been

trudging without it for so many days that I can scarcely tell you how

my thoughts seemed to shake off the dust of travel when I found myself

again in the presence of--”

“Petticoat interest,” interrupted Kenelm. “Take care of yourself. My

poor friend with whom you found me is a grave warning against petticoat

interest, from which I hope to profit. He is passing through a great

sorrow; it might have been worse than sorrow. My friend is going to stay

in this town. If you are staying here too, pray let him see something

of you. It will do him a wondrous good if you can beguile him from this

real life into the gardens of poetland; but do not sing or talk of love

to him.”

“I honour all lovers,” said the minstrel, with real tenderness in his

tone, “and would willingly serve to cheer or comfort your friend, if I

could; but I am bound elsewhere, and must leave Luscombe, which I visit

on business--money business--the day after to-morrow.”

“So, too, must I. At least give us both some hours of your time

to-morrow.”

“Certainly; from twelve to sunset I shall be roving about,--a mere

idler. If you will both come with me, it will be a great pleasure to

myself. Agreed! Well, then, I will call at your inn to-morrow at twelve;

and I recommend for your inn the one facing us,--The Golden Lamb. I have

heard it recommended for the attributes of civil people and good fare.”

Kenelm felt that he here received his _conge_, and well comprehended the

fact that the minstrel, desiring to preserve the secret of his name, did

not give the address of the family with whom he was a guest.

“But one word more,” said Kenelm. “Your host or hostess, if resident

here, can, no doubt, from your description of the little girl and the

old man her protector, learn the child’s address. If so, I should like

my companion to make friends with her. Petticoat interest there at least

will be innocent and safe. And I know nothing so likely to keep a big,

passionate heart like Tom’s, now aching with a horrible void,

occupied and softened, and turned to directions pure and gentle, as an

affectionate interest in a little child.”

The minstrel changed colour: he even started. “Sir, are you a wizard

that you say that to me?”

“I am not a wizard, but I guess from your question that you have a

little child of your own. So much the better: the child may keep you out

of much mischief. Remember the little child. Good evening.”

Kenelm crossed the threshold of The Golden Lamb, engaged his room, made

his ablutions, ordered, and, with his usual zest, partook of his evening

meal; and then, feeling the pressure of that melancholic temperament

which he so strangely associated with Herculean constitutions, roused

himself up, and, seeking a distraction from thought, sauntered forth

into the gaslit streets.

It was a large handsome town,--handsomer than Tor-Hadham, on account of

its site in a valley surrounded by wooded hills, and watered by the fair

stream whose windings we have seen as a brook,--handsomer, also, because

it boasted a fair cathedral, well cleared to the sight, and surrounded

by venerable old houses, the residences of the clergy or of the quiet

lay gentry with mediaeval tastes. The main street was thronged with

passengers,--some soberly returning home from the evening service; some,

the younger, lingering in pleasant promenade with their sweethearts or

families, or arm in arm with each other, and having the air of

bachelors or maidens unattached. Through this street Kenelm passed with

inattentive eye. A turn to the right took him towards the cathedral and

its surroundings. There all was solitary. The solitude pleased him,

and he lingered long, gazing on the noble church lifting its spires and

turrets into the deep blue starry air.

Musingly, then, he strayed on, entering a labyrinth of gloomy lanes, in

which, though the shops were closed, many a door stood open, with men

of the working class lolling against the threshold, idly smoking their

pipes, or women seated on the doorsteps gossiping, while noisy children

were playing or quarrelling in the kennel. The whole did not present the

indolent side of an English Sabbath in the pleasantest and rosiest point

of view. Somewhat quickening his steps, he entered a broader street,

attracted to it involuntarily by a bright light in the centre. On

nearing the light he found that it shone forth from a gin-palace, of

which the mahogany doors opened and shut momently as customers went in

and out. It was the handsomest building he had seen in his walk, next to

that of the cathedral. “The new civilization versus the old,” murmured

Kenelm. As he so murmured, a hand was laid on his arm with a sort

of timid impudence. He looked down and saw a young face, but it had

survived the look of youth; it was worn and hard, and the bloom on it

was not that of Nature’s giving. “Are you kind to-night?” asked a husky

voice.

“Kind!” said Kenelm, with mournful tones and softened eyes, “kind! Alas,

my poor sister mortal! if pity be kindness, who can see you and not be

kind?”

The girl released his arm, and he walked on. She stood some moments

gazing after him till out of sight, then she drew her hand suddenly

across her eyes, and retracing her steps, was, in her turn, caught hold

of by a rougher hand than hers, as she passed the gin-palace. She shook

off the grasp with a passionate scorn, and went straight home. Home! is

that the right word? Poor sister mortal!

CHAPTER XI.

AND now Kenelm found himself at the extremity of the town, and on the

banks of the river. Small squalid houses still lined the bank for some

way, till, nearing the bridge, they abruptly ceased, and he passed

through a broad square again into the main street. On the other side

of the street there was a row of villa-like mansions, with gardens

stretching towards the river.

All around in the thoroughfare was silent and deserted. By this time

the passengers had gone home. The scent of night-flowers from the

villa-gardens came sweet on the starlit air. Kenelm paused to inhale it,

and then lifting his eyes, hitherto downcast, as are the eyes of men

in meditative moods, he beheld, on the balcony of the nearest villa,

a group of well-dressed persons. The balcony was unusually wide and

spacious. On it was a small round table, on which were placed wine and

fruits. Three ladies were seated round the table on wire-work chairs,

and on the side nearest to Kenelm, one man. In that man, now slightly

turning his profile, as if to look towards the river, Kenelm recognized

the minstrel. He was still in his picturesque knickerbocker dress,

and his clear-cut features, with the clustering curls of hair, and

Rubens-like hue and shape of beard, had more than their usual beauty,

softened in the light of skies, to which the moon, just risen, added

deeper and fuller radiance. The ladies were in evening dress, but Kenelm

could not distinguish their faces hidden behind the minstrel. He moved

softly across the street, and took his stand behind a buttress in

the low wall of the garden, from which he could have full view of the

balcony, unseen himself. In this watch he had no other object than

that of a vague pleasure. The whole grouping had in it a kind of scenic

romance, and he stopped as one stops before a picture.

He then saw that of the three ladies one was old; another was a

slight girl of the age of twelve or thirteen; the third appeared to be

somewhere about seven or eight and twenty. She was dressed with more

elegance than the others. On her neck, only partially veiled by a thin

scarf, there was the glitter of jewels; and, as she now turned her

full face towards the moon, Kenelm saw that she was very handsome,--a

striking kind of beauty, calculated to fascinate a poet or an

artist,--not unlike Raphael’s Fornarina, dark, with warm tints.

Now there appeared at the open window a stout, burly, middle-aged

gentleman, looking every inch of him a family man, a moneyed man, sleek

and prosperous. He was bald, fresh-coloured, and with light whiskers.

“Holloa,” he said, in an accent very slightly foreign, and with a loud

clear voice, which Kenelm heard distinctly, “is it not time for you to

come in?”

“Don’t be so tiresome, Fritz,” said the handsome lady, half petulantly,

half playfully, in the way ladies address the tiresome spouses they lord

it over. “Your friend has been sulking the whole evening, and is only

just beginning to be pleasant as the moon rises.”

“The moon has a good effect on poets and other mad folks, I dare say,”

said the bald man, with a good-humoured laugh. “But I can’t have my

little niece laid up again just as she is on the mend: Annie, come in.”

The girl obeyed reluctantly. The old lady rose too.

“Ah, Mother, you are wise,” said the bald man; “and a game at euchre is

safer than poetizing in night air.” He wound his arm round the old lady

with a careful fondness, for she moved with some difficulty as if rather

lame. “As for you two sentimentalists and moon-gazers, I give you ten

minutes’ time,--not more, mind.”

“Tyrant!” said the minstrel.

The balcony now held only two forms,--the minstrel and the handsome

lady. The window was closed, and partially veiled by muslin draperies,

but Kenelm caught glimpses of the room within. He could see that the

room, lit by a lamp on the centre table and candles elsewhere, was

decorated and fitted up with cost and in a taste not English. He could

see, for instance, that the ceiling was painted, and the walls were not

papered, but painted in panels between arabesque pilasters.

“They are foreigners,” thought Kenelm, “though the man does speak

English so well. That accounts for playing euchre of a Sunday evening,

as if there were no harm in it. Euchre is an American game. The man

is called Fritz. Ah! I guess--Germans who have lived a good deal in

America; and the verse-maker said he was at Luscombe on pecuniary

business. Doubtless his host is a merchant, and the verse-maker in some

commercial firm. That accounts for his concealment of name, and fear of

its being known that he was addicted in his holiday to tastes and habits

so opposed to his calling.”

While he was thus thinking, the lady had drawn her chair close to the

minstrel, and was speaking to him with evident earnestness, but in tones

too low for Kenelm to hear. Still it seemed to him, by her manner and by

the man’s look, as if she were speaking in some sort of reproach,

which he sought to deprecate. Then he spoke, also in a whisper, and

she averted her face for a moment; then she held out her hand, and the

minstrel kissed it. Certainly, thus seen, the two might well be taken

for lovers; and the soft night, the fragrance of the flowers, silence

and solitude, stars and moon light, all girt them as with an atmosphere

of love. Presently the man rose and leaned over the balcony, propping

his cheek on his hand, and gazing on the river. The lady rose too,

and also leaned over the balustrade, her dark hair almost touching the

auburn locks of her companion.

Kenelm sighed. Was it from envy, from pity, from fear? I know not; but

he sighed.

After a brief pause, the lady said, still in low tones, but not too low

this time to escape Kenelm’s fine sense of hearing,--

“Tell me those verses again. I must remember every word of them when you

are gone.”

The man shook his head gently, and answered, but inaudibly.

“Do,” said the lady; “set them to music later; and the next time you

come I will sing them. I have thought of a title for them.”

“What?” asked the minstrel.

“Love’s quarrel.”

The minstrel turned his head, and their eyes met, and, in meeting,

lingered long. Then he moved away, and with face turned from her

and towards the river, gave the melody of his wondrous voice to the

following lines:--

LOVE’S QUARREL.

“Standing by the river, gazing on the river,

See it paved with starbeams,--heaven is at our feet;

Now the wave is troubled, now the rushes quiver;

Vanished is the starlight: it was a deceit.

“Comes a little cloudlet ‘twixt ourselves and heaven,

And from all the river fades the silver track;

Put thine arms around me, whisper low, ‘Forgiven!’

See how on the river starlight settles back.”

When he had finished, still with face turned aside, the lady did not,

indeed, whisper “Forgiven,” nor put her arms around him; but, as if by

irresistible impulse, she laid her hand lightly on his shoulder.

The minstrel started.

There came to his ear,--he knew not from whence, from whom,--

“Mischief! mischief! Remember the little child!”

“Hush!” he said, staring round. “Did you not hear a voice?”

“Only yours,” said the lady.

“It was our guardian angel’s, Amalie. It came in time. We will go

within.”

CHAPTER XII.

THE next morning betimes Kenelm visited Tom at his uncle’s home. A

comfortable and respectable home it was, like that of an owner in easy

circumstances. The veterinary surgeon himself was intelligent, and

apparently educated beyond the range of his calling; a childless

widower, between sixty and seventy, living with a sister, an old maid.

They were evidently much attached to Tom, and delighted by the hope of

keeping him with them. Tom himself looked rather sad, but not sullen,

and his face brightened wonderfully at first sight of Kenelm. That

oddity made himself as pleasant and as much like other people as he

could in conversing with the old widower and the old maid, and took

leave, engaging Tom to be at his inn at half past twelve, and spend the

day with him and the minstrel. He then returned to the Golden Lamb, and

waited there for his first visitant; the minstrel. That votary of the

muse arrived punctually at twelve o’clock. His countenance was less

cheerful and sunny than usual. Kenelm made no allusion to the scene

he had witnessed, nor did his visitor seem to suspect that Kenelm had

witnessed it or been the utterer of that warning voice.

KENELM.--“I have asked my friend Tom Bowles to come a little later,

because I wished you to be of use to him, and, in order to be so, I

should suggest how.”

THE MINSTREL.--“Pray do.”

KENELM.--“You know that I am not a poet, and I do not have much

reverence for verse-making merely as a craft.”

THE MINSTREL.--“Neither have I.”

KENELM.--“But I have a great reverence for poetry as a priesthood. I

felt that reverence for you when you sketched and talked priesthood

last evening, and placed in my heart--I hope forever while it beats--the

image of the child on the sunlit hill, high above the abodes of men,

tossing her flower-ball heavenward and with heavenward eyes.”

The singer’s cheek coloured high, and his lip quivered: he was very

sensitive to praise; most singers are.

Kenelm resumed, “I have been educated in the Realistic school, and with

realism I am discontented, because in realism as a school there is no

truth. It contains but a bit of truth, and that the coldest and hardest

bit of it, and he who utters a bit of truth and suppresses the rest of

it tells a lie.”

THE MINSTREL (slyly).--“Does the critic who says to me, ‘Sing of

beefsteak, because the appetite for food is a real want of daily life,

and don’t sing of art and glory and love, because in daily life a man

may do without such ideas,’--tell a lie?”

KENELM.--“Thank you for that rebuke. I submit to it. No doubt I did tell

a lie,--that is, if I were quite in earnest in my recommendation, and if

not in earnest, why--”

THE MINSTREL.--“You belied yourself.”

KENELM.--“Very likely. I set out on my travels to escape from shams, and

begin to discover that I am a sham _par excellence_. But I suddenly

come across you, as a boy dulled by his syntax and his vulgar fractions

suddenly comes across a pleasant poem or a picture-book, and feels his

wits brighten up. I owe you much: you have done me a world of good.”

“I cannot guess how.”

“Possibly not, but you have shown me how the realism of Nature herself

takes colour and life and soul when seen on the ideal or poetic side

of it. It is not exactly the words that you say or sing that do me the

good, but they awaken within me new trains of thought, which I seek

to follow out. The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than

dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.

Therefore, O singer! whatever be the worth in critical eyes of your

songs, I am glad to remember that you would like to go through the world

always singing.”

“Pardon me: you forget that I added, ‘if life were always young, and the

seasons were always summer.’”

“I do not forget. But if youth and summer fade for you, you leave youth

and summer behind you as you pass along,--behind in hearts which mere

realism would make always old, and counting their slothful beats under

the gray of a sky without sun or stars; wherefore I pray you to consider

how magnificent a mission the singer’s is,--to harmonize your life with

your song, and toss your flowers, as your child does, heavenward, with

heavenward eyes. Think only of this when you talk with my sorrowing

friend, and you will do him good, as you have done me, without being

able to guess how a seeker after the Beautiful, such as you, carries us

along with him on his way; so that we, too, look out for beauty, and see

it in the wild-flowers to which we had been blind before.”

Here Tom entered the little sanded parlour where this dialogue had been

held, and the three men sallied forth, taking the shortest cut from the

town into the fields and woodlands.

CHAPTER XIII.

WHETHER or not his spirits were raised by Kenelm’s praise and

exhortations, the minstrel that day talked with a charm that spellbound

Tom, and Kenelm was satisfied with brief remarks on his side tending to

draw out the principal performer.

The talk was drawn from outward things, from natural objects,--objects

that interest children, and men who, like Tom Bowles, have been

accustomed to view surroundings more with the heart’s eye than the

mind’s eye. This rover about the country knew much of the habits of

birds and beasts and insects, and told anecdotes of them with a mixture

of humour and pathos, which fascinated Tom’s attention, made him laugh

heartily, and sometimes brought tears into his big blue eyes.

They dined at an inn by the wayside, and the dinner was mirthful; then

they wended their way slowly back. By the declining daylight their talk

grew somewhat graver, and Kenelm took more part in it. Tom listened

mute,--still fascinated. At length, as the town came in sight, they

agreed to halt a while, in a bosky nook soft with mosses and sweet with

wild thyme.

There, as they lay stretched at their ease, the birds hymning vesper

songs amid the boughs above, or dropping, noiseless and fearless, for

their evening food on the swards around them, the wanderer said to

Kenelm, “You tell me that you are no poet, yet I am sure you have a

poet’s perception: you must have written poetry?”

“Not I; as I before told you, only school verses in dead languages: but

I found in my knapsack this morning a copy of some rhymes, made by a

fellow-collegian, which I put into my pocket meaning to read them to

you both. They are not verses like yours, which evidently burst from you

spontaneously, and are not imitated from any other poets. These verses

were written by a Scotchman, and smack of imitation from the old ballad

style. There is little to admire in the words themselves, but there

is something in the idea which struck me as original, and impressed me

sufficiently to keep a copy, and somehow or other it got into the leaves

of one of the two books I carried with me from home.”

“What are those books? Books of poetry both, I will venture to wager--”

“Wrong! Both metaphysical, and dry as a bone. Tom, light your pipe, and

you, sir, lean more at ease on your elbow; I should warn you that the

ballad is long. Patience!”

“Attention!” said the minstrel.

“Fire!” added Tom.

Kenelm began to read,--and he read well.