LORD RONALD’S BRIDE.

PART I.

“WHY gathers the crowd in the market-place

Ere the stars have yet left the sky?”

“For a holiday show and an act of grace,--

At the sunrise a witch shall die.”

“What deed has she done to deserve that doom?

Has she blighted the standing corn,

Or rifled for philters a dead man’s tomb,

Or rid mothers of babes new-born?”

“Her pact with the fiend was not thus revealed,

She taught sinners the Word to hear;

The hungry she fed, and the sick she healed,

And was held as a Saint last year.

“But a holy man, who at Rome had been,

Had discovered, by book and bell,

That the marvels she wrought were through arts unclean,

And the lies of the Prince of Hell.

“And our Mother the Church, for the dame was rich,

And her husband was Lord of Clyde,

Would fain have been mild to this saint-like witch

If her sins she had not denied.

“But hush, and come nearer to see the sight,

Sheriff, halberds, and torchmen,--look!

That’s the witch standing mute in her garb of white,

By the priest with his bell and book.”

So the witch was consumed on the sacred pyre,

And the priest grew in power and pride,

And the witch left a son to succeed his sire

In the halls and the lands of Clyde.

And the infant waxed comely and strong and brave,

But his manhood had scarce begun,

When his vessel was launched on the northern wave

To the shores which are near the sun.

PART II.

Lord Ronald has come to his halls in Clyde

With a bride of some unknown race;

Compared with the man who would kiss that bride

Wallace wight were a coward base.

Her eyes had the glare of the mountain-cat

When it springs on the hunter’s spear,

At the head of the board when that lady sate

Hungry men could not eat for fear.

And the tones of her voice had that deadly growl

Of the bloodhound that scents its prey;

No storm was so dark as that lady’s scowl

Under tresses of wintry gray.

“Lord Ronald! men marry for love or gold,

Mickle rich must have been thy bride!”

“Man’s heart may be bought, woman’s hand be sold,

On the banks of our northern Clyde.

“My bride is, in sooth, mickle rich to me

Though she brought not a groat in dower,

For her face, couldst thou see it as I do see,

Is the fairest in hall or bower!”

Quoth the bishop one day to our lord the king,

“Satan reigns on the Clyde alway,

And the taint in the blood of the witch doth cling

To the child that she brought to day.

“Lord Ronald hath come from the Paynim land

With a bride that appals the sight;

Like his dam she hath moles on her dread right hand,

And she turns to a snake at night.

“It is plain that a Scot who can blindly dote

On the face of an Eastern ghoul,

And a ghoul who was worth not a silver groat,

Is a Scot who has lost his soul.

“It were wise to have done with this demon tree

Which has teemed with such caukered fruit;

Add the soil where it stands to my holy See,

And consign to the flames its root.”

“Holy man!” quoth King James, and he laughed, “we know

That thy tongue never wags in vain,

But the Church cist is full, and the king’s is low,

And the Clyde is a fair domain.

“Yet a knight that’s bewitched by a laidly fere

Needs not much to dissolve the spell;

We will summon the bride and the bridegroom here

Be at hand with thy book and bell.”

PART III.

Lord Ronald stood up in King James’s court,

And his dame by his dauntless side;

The barons who came in the hopes of sport

Shook with fright when they saw the bride.

The bishop, though armed with his bell and book,

Grew as white as if turned to stone;

It was only our king who could face that look,

But he spoke with a trembling tone.

“Lord Ronald, the knights of thy race and mine

Should have mates in their own degree;

What parentage, say, hath that bride of thine

Who hath come from the far countree?

“And what was her dowry in gold or land,

Or what was the charm, I pray,

That a comely young gallant should woo the hand

Of the ladye we see to-day?”

And the lords would have laughed, but that awful dame

Struck them dumb with her thunder-frown:

“Saucy king, did I utter my father’s name,

Thou wouldst kneel as his liegeman down.

“Though I brought to Lord Ronald nor lands nor gold,

Nor the bloom of a fading cheek;

Yet, were I a widow, both young and old

Would my hand and my dowry seek.

“For the wish that he covets the most below,

And would hide from the saints above,

Which he dares not to pray for in weal or woe,

Is the dowry I bring my love.

“Let every man look in his heart and see

What the wish he most lusts to win,

And then let him fasten his eyes on me

While he thinks of his darling sin.”

And every man--bishop, and lord, and king

Thought of what he most wished to win,

And, fixing his eye on that grewsome thing,

He beheld his own darling sin.

No longer a ghoul in that face he saw;

It was fair as a boy’s first love:

The voice that had curdled his veins with awe

Was the coo of the woodland dove.

Each heart was on flame for the peerless dame

At the price of the husband’s life;

Bright claymores flash out, and loud voices shout,

“In thy widow shall be my wife.”

Then darkness fell over the palace hall,

More dark and more dark it fell,

And a death-groan boomed hoarse underneath the pall,

And was drowned amid roar and yell.

When light through the lattice-pane stole once more,

It was gray as a wintry dawn,

And the bishop lay cold on the regal floor,

With a stain on his robes of lawn.

Lord Ronald was standing beside the dead,

In the scabbard he plunged his sword,

And with visage as wan as the corpse, he said,

“Lo! my ladye hath kept her word.

“Now I leave her to others to woo and win,

For no longer I find her fair;

Could I look on the face of my darling sin,

I should see but a dead man’s there.

“And the dowry she brought me is here returned,

For the wish of my heart has died,

It is quenched in the blood of the priest who burned

My sweet mother, the Saint of Clyde.”

Lord Ronald strode over the stony floor,

Not a hand was outstretched to stay;

Lord Ronald has passed through the gaping door,

Not an eye ever traced the way.

And the ladye, left widowed, was prized above

All the maidens in hall and bower,

Many bartered their lives for that ladye’s love,

And their souls for that ladye’s dower.

God grant that the wish which I dare not pray

Be not that which I lust to win,

And that ever I look with my first dismay

On the face of my darling sin!

As he ceased, Kenelm’s eye fell on Tom’s face upturned to his own, with

open lips, an intent stare, and paled cheeks, and a look of that higher

sort of terror which belongs to awe. The man, then recovering himself,

tried to speak, and attempted a sickly smile, but neither would do.

He rose abruptly and walked away, crept under the shadow of a dark

beech-tree, and stood there leaning against the trunk.

“What say you to the ballad?” asked Kenelm of the singer.

“It is not without power,” answered he.

“Ay, of a certain kind.”

The minstrel looked hard at Kenelm, and dropped his eyes, with a

heightened glow on his cheek.

“The Scotch are a thoughtful race. The Scot who wrote this thing may

have thought of a day when he saw beauty in the face of a darling sin;

but, if so, it is evident that his sight recovered from that glamoury.

Shall we walk on? Come, Tom.”

The minstrel left them at the entrance of the town, saying, “I regret

that I cannot see more of either of you, as I quit Luscombe at daybreak.

Here, by the by, I forgot to give it before, is the address you wanted.”

KENELM.--“Of the little child. I am glad you remembered her.”

The minstrel again looked hard at Kenelm, this time without dropping his

eyes. Kenelm’s expression of face was so simply quiet that it might be

almost called vacant.

Kenelm and Tom continued to walk on towards the veterinary surgeon’s

house, for some minutes silently. Then Tom said in a whisper, “Did you

not mean those rhymes to hit me here--_here_?” and he struck his breast.

“The rhymes were written long before I saw you, Tom; but it is well if

their meaning strike us all. Of you, my friend, I have no fear now. Are

you not already a changed man?”

“I feel as if I were going through a change,” answered Tom, in slow,

dreary accents. “In hearing you and that gentleman talk so much of

things that I never thought of, I felt something in me,--you will laugh

when I tell you,--something like a bird.”

“Like a bird,--good!--a bird has wings.”

“Just so.”

“And you felt wings that you were unconscious of before, fluttering and

beating themselves as against the wires of a cage. You were true to

your instincts then, my dear fellow-man,--instincts of space and Heaven.

Courage!--the cage-door will open soon. And now, practically speaking,

I give you this advice in parting: You have a quick and sensitive mind

which you have allowed that strong body of yours to incarcerate and

suppress. Give that mind fair play. Attend to the business of your

calling diligently; the craving for regular work is the healthful

appetite of mind: but in your spare hours cultivate the new ideas which

your talk with men who have been accustomed to cultivate the mind more

than the body has sown within you. Belong to a book-club, and interest

yourself in books. A wise man has said, ‘Books widen the present by

adding to it the past and the future.’ Seek the company of educated men

and educated women too; and when you are angry with another, reason

with him: don’t knock him down; and don’t be knocked down yourself by an

enemy much stronger than yourself,--Drink. Do all this, and when I see

you again you will be--”

“Stop, sir,--you will see me again?”

“Yes, if we both live, I promise it.”

“When?”

“You see, Tom, we have both of us something in our old selves which we

must work off. You will work off your something by repose, and I must

work off mine, if I can, by moving about. So I am on my travels. May

we both have new selves better than the old selves, when we again shake

hands! For your part try your best, dear Tom, and Heaven prosper you.”

“And Heaven bless you!” cried Tom, fervently, with tears rolling

unheeded from his bold blue eyes.

CHAPTER XIV.

THOUGH Kenelm left Luscombe on Tuesday morning, he did not appear at

Neesdale Park till the Wednesday, a little before the dressing-bell for

dinner. His adventures in the interim are not worth repeating. He had

hoped he might fall in again with the minstrel, but he did not.

His portmanteau had arrived, and he heaved a sigh as he cased himself in

a gentleman’s evening dress. “Alas! I have soon got back again into my

own skin.”

There were several other guests in the house, though not a

large party,--they had been asked with an eye to the approaching

election,--consisting of squires and clergy from remoter parts of the

county. Chief among the guests in rank and importance, and rendered by

the occasion the central object of interest, was George Belvoir.

Kenelm bore his part in this society with a resignation that partook of

repentance.

The first day he spoke very little, and was considered a very dull young

man by the lady he took in to dinner. Mr. Travers in vain tried to draw

him out. He had anticipated much amusement from the eccentricities of

his guest, who had talked volubly enough in the fernery, and was sadly

disappointed. “I feel,” he whispered to Mrs. Campion, “like poor Lord

Pomfret, who, charmed with Punch’s lively conversation, bought him, and

was greatly surprised that, when he had once brought him home, Punch

would not talk.”

“But your Punch listens,” said Mrs. Campion, “and he observes.”

George Belvoir, on the other hand, was universally declared to be very

agreeable. Though not naturally jovial, he forced himself to appear

so,--laughing loud with the squires, and entering heartily with

their wives and daughters into such topics as county-balls and

croquet-parties; and when after dinner he had, Cato-like, ‘warmed his

virtue with wine,’ the virtue came out very lustily in praise of good

men,--namely, men of his own party,--and anathemas on bad men,--namely,

men of the other party.

Now and then he appealed to Kenelm, and Kenelm always returned the same

answer, “There is much in what you say.”

The first evening closed in the usual way in country houses. There was

some lounging under moonlight on the terrace before the house; then

there was some singing by young lady amateurs, and a rubber of whist for

the elders; then wine-and-water, hand-candlesticks, a smoking-room for

those who smoked, and bed for those who did not.

In the course of the evening, Cecilia, partly in obedience to the duties

of hostess and partly from that compassion for shyness which kindly and

high-bred persons entertain, had gone a little out of her way to allure

Kenelm forth from the estranged solitude he had contrived to weave

around him. In vain for the daughter as for the father. He replied to

her with the quiet self-possession which should have convinced her that

no man on earth was less entitled to indulgence for the gentlemanlike

infirmity of shyness, and no man less needed the duties of any hostess

for the augmentation of his comforts, or rather for his diminished sense

of discomfort; but his replies were in monosyllables, and made with the

air of a man who says in his heart, “If this creature would but leave me

alone!”

Cecilia, for the first time in her life, was piqued, and, strange to

say, began to feel more interest about this indifferent stranger than

about the popular, animated, pleasant George Belvoir, who she knew by

womanly instinct was as much in love with her as he could be.

Cecilia Travers that night on retiring to rest told her maid, smilingly,

that she was too tired to have her hair done; and yet, when the maid

was dismissed, she looked at herself in the glass more gravely and more

discontentedly than she had ever looked there before; and, tired though

she was, stood at the window gazing into the moonlit night for a good

hour after the maid left her.

CHAPTER XV.

KENELM CHILLINGLY has now been several days a guest at Neesdale Park.

He has recovered speech; the other guests have gone, including George

Belvoir. Leopold Travers has taken a great fancy to Kenelm. Leopold

was one of those men, not uncommon perhaps in England, who, with great

mental energies, have little book-knowledge, and when they come

in contact with a book-reader who is not a pedant feel a pleasant

excitement in his society, a source of interest in comparing notes with

him, a constant surprise in finding by what venerable authorities the

deductions which their own mother-wit has drawn from life are supported,

or by what cogent arguments derived from books those deductions are

contravened or upset. Leopold Travers had in him that sense of humour

which generally accompanies a strong practical understanding (no man,

for instance, has more practical understanding than a Scot, and no man

has a keener susceptibility to humour), and not only enjoyed Kenelm’s

odd way of expressing himself, but very often mistook Kenelm’s irony for

opinion spoken in earnest.

Since his early removal from the capital and his devotion to

agricultural pursuits, it was so seldom that Leopold Travers met a man

by whose conversation his mind was diverted to other subjects than those

which were incidental to the commonplace routine of his life that he

found in Kenelm’s views of men and things a source of novel amusement,

and a stirring appeal to such metaphysical creeds of his own as had been

formed unconsciously, and had long reposed unexamined in the recesses of

an intellect shrewd and strong, but more accustomed to dictate than to

argue. Kenelm, on his side, saw much in his host to like and to admire;

but, reversing their relative positions in point of years, he conversed

with Travers as with a mind younger than his own. Indeed, it was one

of his crotchety theories that each generation is in substance mentally

older than the generation preceding it, especially in all that relates

to science; and, as he would say, “The study of life is a science, and

not an art.”

But Cecilia,--what impression did she create upon the young visitor?

Was he alive to the charm of her rare beauty, to the grace of a mind

sufficiently stored for commune with those who love to think and to

imagine, and yet sufficiently feminine and playful to seize the sportive

side of realities, and allow their proper place to the trifles which

make the sum of human things? An impression she did make, and that

impression was new to him and pleasing. Nay, sometimes in her presence

and sometimes when alone, he fell into abstracted consultations with

himself, saying, “Kenelm Chillingly, now that thou hast got back into

thy proper skin, dost thou not think that thou hadst better remain

there? Couldst thou not be contented with thy lot as erring descendant

of Adam, if thou couldst win for thy mate so faultless a descendant of

Eve as now flits before thee?” But he could not abstract from himself

any satisfactory answer to the question he had addressed to himself.

Once he said abruptly to Travers, as, on their return from their

rambles, they caught a glimpse of Cecilia’s light form bending over the

flower-beds on the lawn, “Do you admire Virgil?”

“To say truth I have not read Virgil since I was a boy; and, between you

and me, I then thought him rather monotonous.”

“Perhaps because his verse is so smooth in its beauty?”

“Probably. When one is very young one’s taste is faulty; and if a poet

is not faulty, we are apt to think he wants vivacity and fire.”

“Thank you for your lucid explanation,” answered Kenelm, adding musingly

to himself, “I am afraid I should yawn very often if I were married to a

Miss Virgil.”

CHAPTER XVI.

THE house of Mr. Travers contained a considerable collection of family

portraits, few of them well painted, but the Squire was evidently proud

of such evidences of ancestry. They not only occupied a considerable

space on the walls of the reception rooms, but swarmed into the

principal sleeping-chambers, and smiled or frowned on the beholder from

dark passages and remote lobbies. One morning, Cecilia, on her way

to the china closet, found Kenelm gazing very intently upon a female

portrait consigned to one of those obscure receptacles by which through

a back staircase he gained the only approach from the hall to his

chamber.

“I don’t pretend to be a good judge of paintings,” said Kenelm, as

Cecilia paused beside him; “but it strikes me that this picture is very

much better than most of those to which places of honour are assigned in

your collection. And the face itself is so lovely that it would add an

embellishment to the princeliest galleries.”

“Yes,” said Cecilia, with a half-sigh. “The face is lovely, and the

portrait is considered one of Lely’s rarest masterpieces. It used to

hang over the chimney-piece in the drawing-room. My father had it placed

here many years ago.”

“Perhaps because he discovered it was not a family portrait?”

“On the contrary,--because it grieves him to think it is a family

portrait. Hush! I hear his footstep: don’t speak of it to him; don’t let

him see you looking at it. The subject is very painful to him.”

Here Cecilia vanished into the china closet and Kenelm turned off to his

own room.

What sin committed by the original in the time of Charles II. but only

discovered in the reign of Victoria could have justified Leopold Travers

in removing the most pleasing portrait in the house from the honoured

place it had occupied, and banishing it to so obscure a recess? Kenelm

said no more on the subject, and indeed an hour afterwards had dismissed

it from his thoughts. The next day he rode out with Travers and

Cecilia. Their way passed through quiet shady lanes without any purposed

direction, when suddenly, at the spot where three of those lanes met on

an angle of common ground, a lonely gray tower, in the midst of a wide

space of grass-land which looked as if it had once been a park, with

huge boles of pollarded oak dotting the space here and there, rose

before them.

“Cissy!” cried Travers, angrily reining in his horse and stopping short

in a political discussion which he had forced upon Kenelm, “Cissy!

How comes this? We have taken the wrong turn! No matter, I see there,”

pointing to the right, “the chimney-pots of old Mondell’s homestead. He

has not yet promised his vote to George Belvoir. I’ll go and have a talk

with him. Turn back, you and Mr. Chillingly,--meet me at Terner’s Green,

and wait for me there till I come. I need not excuse myself to you,

Chillingly. A vote is a vote.” So saying, the Squire, whose ordinary

riding-horse was an old hunter, halted, turned, and, no gate being

visible, put the horse over a stiff fence and vanished in the direction

of old Mondell’s chimney-pots. Kenelm, scarcely hearing his host’s

instructions to Cecilia and excuses to himself, remained still and

gazing on the old tower thus abruptly obtruded on his view.

Though no learned antiquarian like his father, Kenelm had a strange

fascinating interest in all relics of the past; and old gray towers,

where they are not church towers, are very rarely to be seen in England.

All around the old gray tower spoke with an unutterable mournfulness

of a past in ruins: you could see remains of some large Gothic building

once attached to it, rising here and there in fragments of deeply

buttressed walls; you could see in a dry ditch, between high ridges,

where there had been a fortified moat: nay, you could even see where

once had been the bailey hill from which a baron of old had dispensed

justice. Seldom indeed does the most acute of antiquarians discover

that remnant of Norman times on lands still held by the oldest of

Anglo-Norman families. Then, the wild nature of the demesne around;

those ranges of sward, with those old giant oak-trunks, hollowed within

and pollarded at top,--all spoke, in unison with the gray tower, of a

past as remote from the reign of Victoria as the Pyramids are from the

sway of the Viceroy of Egypt.

“Let us turn back,” said Miss Travers; “my father would not like me to

stay here.”

“Pardon me a moment. I wish my father were here; he would stay till

sunset. But what is the history of that old tower? a history it must

have.”

“Every home has a history, even a peasant’s hut,” said Cecilia. “But do

pardon me if I ask you to comply with my father’s request. I at least

must turn back.”

Thus commanded, Kenelm reluctantly withdrew his gaze from the ruin and

regained Cecilia, who was already some paces in return down the lane.

“I am far from a very inquisitive man by temperament,” said Kenelm, “so

far as the affairs of the living are concerned. But I should not care to

open a book if I had no interest in the past. Pray indulge my curiosity

to learn something about that old tower. It could not look more

melancholy and solitary if I had built it myself.”

“Its most melancholy associations are with a very recent past,” answered

Cecilia. “The tower, in remote times, formed the keep of a castle

belonging to the most ancient and once the most powerful family in these

parts. The owners were barons who took active share in the Wars of the

Roses. The last of them sided with Richard III., and after the battle

of Bosworth the title was attainted, and the larger portion of the lands

was confiscated. Loyalty to a Plantagenet was of course treason to

a Tudor. But the regeneration of the family rested with their direct

descendants, who had saved from the general wreck of their fortunes what

may be called a good squire’s estate,--about, perhaps, the same rental

as my father’s, but of much larger acreage. These squires, however,

were more looked up to in the county than the wealthiest peer. They

were still by far the oldest family in the county; and traced in their

pedigree alliances with the most illustrious houses in English history.

In themselves too for many generations they were a high-spirited,

hospitable, popular race, living unostentatiously on their income, and

contented with their rank of squires. The castle, ruined by time and

siege, they did not attempt to restore. They dwelt in a house near to

it, built about Elizabeth’s time, which you could not see, for it lies

in a hollow behind the tower,--a moderate-sized, picturesque, country

gentleman’s house. Our family intermarried with them,--the portrait you

saw was a daughter of their house,--and very proud was any squire in the

county of intermarriage with the Fletwodes.”

“Fletwode,--that was their name? I have a vague recollection of having

heard the name connected with some disastrous--oh, but it can’t be the

same family: pray go on.”

“I fear it is the same family. But I will finish the story as I have

heard it. The property descended at last to one Bertram Fletwode, who,

unfortunately, obtained the reputation of being a very clever man of

business. There was some mining company in which, with other gentlemen

in the county, he took great interest; invested largely in shares;

became the head of the direction--”

“I see; and was of course ruined.”

“No; worse than that: he became very rich; and, unhappily, became

desirous of being richer still. I have heard that there was a great

mania for speculations just about that time. He embarked in these, and

prospered, till at last he was induced to invest a large share of the

fortune thus acquired in the partnership of a bank which enjoyed a high

character. Up to that time he had retained popularity and esteem in

the county; but the squires who shared in the adventures of the mining

company, and knew little or nothing about other speculations in which

his name did not appear, professed to be shocked at the idea of a

Fletwode of Fletwode being ostensibly joined in partnership with a Jones

of Clapham in a London bank.”

“Slow folks, those country squires,--behind the progress of the age.

Well?”

“I have heard that Bertram Fletwode was himself very reluctant to take

this step, but was persuaded to do so by his son. This son, Alfred, was

said to have still greater talents for business than the father, and

had been not only associated with but consulted by him in all the later

speculations which had proved so fortunate. Mrs. Campion knew Alfred

Fletwode very well. She describes him as handsome, with quick, eager

eyes; showy and imposing in his talk; immensely ambitious, more

ambitious than avaricious,--collecting money less for its own sake than

for that which it could give,--rank and power. According to her it was

the dearest wish of his heart to claim the old barony, but not before

there could go with the barony a fortune adequate to the lustre of a

title so ancient, and equal to the wealth of modern peers with higher

nominal rank.”

“A poor ambition at the best; of the two I should prefer that of a poet

in a garret. But I am no judge. Thank Heaven I have no ambition.

Still, all ambition, all desire to rise, is interesting to him who is

ignominiously contented if he does not fall. So the son had his way,

and Fletwode joined company with Jones on the road to wealth and the

peerage; meanwhile did the son marry? if so, of course the daughter of

a duke or a millionnaire. Tuft-hunting, or money-making, at the risk of

degradation and the workhouse. Progress of the age!”

“No,” replied Cecilia, smiling at this outburst, but smiling sadly,

“Fletwode did not marry the daughter of a duke or a millionnaire; but

still his wife belonged to a noble family,--very poor, but very proud.

Perhaps he married from motives of ambition, though not of gain. Her

father was of much political influence that might perhaps assist his

claim to the barony. The mother, a woman of the world, enjoying a high

social position, and nearly related to a connection of ours,--Lady

Glenalvon.”

“Lady Glenalvon, the dearest of my lady friends! You are connected with

her?”

“Yes; Lord Glenalvon was my mother’s uncle. But I wish to finish my

story before my father joins us. Alfred Fletwode did not marry till long

after the partnership in the bank. His father, at his desire, had bought

up the whole business, Mr. Jones having died. The bank was carried on

in the names of Fletwode and Son. But the father had become merely a

nominal or what I believe is called a ‘sleeping’ partner. He had long

ceased to reside in the county. The old house was not grand enough for

him. He had purchased a palatial residence in one of the home counties;

lived there in great splendour; was a munificent patron of science

and art; and in spite of his earlier addictions to business-like

speculations he appears to have been a singularly accomplished,

high-bred gentleman. Some years before his son’s marriage, Mr. Fletwode

had been afflicted with partial paralysis, and his medical attendant

enjoined rigid abstention from business. From that time he never

interfered with his son’s management of the bank. He had an only

daughter, much younger than Alfred. Lord Eagleton, my mother’s brother,

was engaged to be married to her. The wedding-day was fixed,--when the

world was startled by the news that the great firm of Fletwode and Son

had stopped payment; is that the right phrase?”

“I believe so.”

“A great many people were ruined in that failure. The public indignation

was very great. Of course all the Fletwode property went to the

creditors. Old Mr. Fletwode was legally acquitted of all other offence

than that of overconfidence in his son. Alfred was convicted of

fraud,--of forgery. I don’t, of course, know the particulars, they are

very complicated. He was sentenced to a long term of servitude, but

died the day he was condemned; apparently by poison, which he had long

secreted about his person. Now you can understand why my father, who

is almost gratuitously sensitive on the point of honour, removed into a

dark corner the portrait of Arabella Fletwode,--his own ancestress, but

also the ancestress of a convicted felon: you can understand why the

whole subject is so painful to him. His wife’s brother was to have

married the felon’s sister; and though, of course, that marriage was

tacitly broken off by the terrible disgrace that had befallen the

Fletwodes, yet I don’t think my poor uncle ever recovered the blow to

his hopes. He went abroad, and died in Madeira of a slow decline.”

“And the felon’s sister, did she die too?”

“No; not that I know of. Mrs. Campion says that she saw in a newspaper

the announcement of old Mr. Fletwode’s death, and a paragraph to the

effect that after that event Miss Fletwode had sailed from Liverpool to

New York.”

“Alfred Fletwode’s wife went back, of course, to her family?”

“Alas! no,--poor thing! She had not been many months married when the

bank broke; and among his friends her wretched husband appears to have

forged the names of the trustees to her marriage settlement, and sold

out the sums which would otherwise have served her as a competence.

Her father, too, was a great sufferer by the bankruptcy, having by

his son-in-law’s advice placed a considerable portion of his moderate

fortune in Alfred’s hands for investment, all of which was involved in

the general wreck. I am afraid he was a very hard-hearted man: at all

events his poor daughter never returned to him. She died, I think, even

before the death of Bertram Fletwode. The whole story is very dismal.”

“Dismal indeed, but pregnant with salutary warnings to those who live

in an age of progress. Here you see a family of fair fortune, living

hospitably, beloved, revered, more looked up to by their neighbours than

the wealthiest nobles; no family not proud to boast alliance with it.

All at once, in the tranquil record of this happy race, appears that

darling of the age, that hero of progress,--a clever man of business. He

be contented to live as his fathers! He be contented with such trifles

as competence, respect, and love! Much too clever for that. The age is

money-making,--go with the age! He goes with the age. Born a gentleman

only, he exalts himself into a trader. But at least he, it seems, if

greedy, was not dishonest. He was born a gentleman, but his son was

born a trader. The son is a still cleverer man of business; the son is

consulted and trusted. Aha! He too goes with the age; to greed he

links ambition. The trader’s son wishes to return--what? to the rank of

gentleman?--gentleman! nonsense! everybody is a gentleman nowadays,--to

the title of Lord. How ends it all! Could I sit but for twelve hours in

the innermost heart of that Alfred Fletwode; could I see how, step by

step from his childhood, the dishonest son was avariciously led on by

the honest father to depart from the old _vestigia_ of Fletwodes of

Fletwode,--scorning The Enough to covet The More, gaining The More to

sigh, ‘It is not The Enough,’--I think I might show that the age lives

in a house of glass, and had better not for its own sake throw stones on

the felon!”

“Ah, but, Mr. Chillingly, surely this is a very rare exception in the

general--”

“Rare!” interrupted Kenelm, who was excited to a warmth of passion which

would have startled his most intimate friend,-if indeed an intimate

friend had ever been vouchsafed to him,--“rare! nay, how common--I don’t

say to the extent of forgery and fraud, but to the extent of degradation

and ruin--is the greed of a Little More to those who have The Enough! is

the discontent with competence, respect, and love, when catching sight

of a money-bag! How many well-descended county families, cursed with

an heir who is called a clever man of business, have vanished from the

soil! A company starts, the clever man joins it one bright day. Pouf!

the old estates and the old name are powder. Ascend higher. Take nobles

whose ancestral titles ought to be to English ears like the sound of

clarions, awakening the most slothful to the scorn of money-bags and

the passion for renown. Lo! in that mocking dance of death called

the Progress of the Age, one who did not find Enough in a sovereign’s

revenue, and seeks The Little More as a gambler on the turf by the

advice of blacklegs! Lo! another, with lands wider than his greatest

ancestors ever possessed, must still go in for The Little More, adding

acre to acre, heaping debt upon debt! Lo! a third, whose name, borne by

his ancestors, was once the terror of England’s foes,--the landlord of

a hotel! A fourth,--but why go on through the list? Another and another

still succeeds; each on the Road to Ruin, each in the Age of Progress.

Ah, Miss Travers! in the old time it was through the Temple of Honour

that one passed to the Temple of Fortune. In this wise age the process

is reversed. But here comes your father.”

“A thousand pardons!” said Leopold Travers. “That numskull Mondell kept

me so long with his old-fashioned Tory doubts whether liberal politics

are favourable to agricultural prospects. But as he owes a round sum to

a Whig lawyer I had to talk with his wife, a prudent woman; convinced

her that his own agricultural prospects were safest on the Whig side of

the question; and, after kissing his baby and shaking his hand, booked

his vote for George Belvoir,--a plumper.”

“I suppose,” said Kenelm to himself, and with that candour which

characterized him whenever he talked to himself, “that Travers has taken

the right road to the Temple, not of Honour, but of honours, in every

country, ancient or modern, which has adopted the system of popular

suffrage.”

CHAPTER XVII.

THE next day Mrs. Campion and Cecilia were seated under the veranda.

They were both ostensibly employed on two several pieces of embroidery,

one intended for a screen, the other for a sofa-cushion; but the mind of

neither was on her work.

MRS. CAMPION.--“Has Mr. Chillingly said when he means to take leave?”

CECILIA.--“Not to me. How much my dear father enjoys his conversation!”

MRS. CAMPION.--“Cynicism and mockery were not so much the fashion among

young men in your father’s day as I suppose they are now, and therefore

they seem new to Mr. Travers. To me they are not new, because I saw

more of the old than the young when I lived in London, and cynicism and

mockery are more natural to men who are leaving the world than to those

who are entering it.”

CECILIA.--“Dear Mrs. Campion, how bitter you are, and how unjust!

You take much too literally the jesting way in which Mr. Chillingly

expresses himself. There can be no cynicism in one who goes out of his

way to make others happy.”

MRS. CAMPION.--“You mean in the whim of making an ill-assorted marriage

between a pretty village flirt and a sickly cripple, and settling a

couple of peasants in a business for which they are wholly unfitted.”

CECILIA.--“Jessie Wiles is not a flirt, and I am convinced that she will

make Will Somers a very good wife, and that the shop will be a great

success.”

MRS. CAMPION.--“We shall see. Still, if Mr. Chillingly’s talk belies his

actions, he may be a good man, but he is a very affected one.”

CECILIA.--“Have I not heard you say that there are persons so natural

that they seem affected to those who do not understand them?”

Mrs. Campion raised her eyes to Cecilia’s face, dropped them again over

her work, and said, in grave undertones,--“Take care, Cecilia.”

“Take care of what?”

“My dearest child, forgive me; but I do not like the warmth with which

you defend Mr. Chillingly.”

“Would not my father defend him still more warmly if he had heard you?”

“Men judge of men in their relations to men. I am a woman, and judge of

men in their relations to women. I should tremble for the happiness of

any woman who joined her fate with that of Kenelm Chillingly.”

“My dear friend, I do not understand you to-day.”

“Nay; I did not mean to be so solemn, my love. After all, it is nothing

to us whom Mr. Chillingly may or may not marry. He is but a passing

visitor, and, once gone, the chances are that we may not see him again

for years.”

Thus speaking, Mrs. Campion again raised her eyes from her work,

stealing a sidelong glance at Cecilia; and her mother-like heart sank

within her, on noticing how suddenly pale the girl had become, and how

her lips quivered. Mrs. Campion had enough knowledge of life to feel

aware that she had committed a grievous blunder. In that earliest stage

of virgin affection, when a girl is unconscious of more than a certain

vague interest in one man which distinguishes him from others in her

thoughts,--if she hears him unjustly disparaged, if some warning against

him is implied, if the probability that he will never be more to her

than a passing acquaintance is forcibly obtruded on her,--suddenly that

vague interest, which might otherwise have faded away with many another

girlish fancy, becomes arrested, consolidated; the quick pang it

occasions makes her involuntarily, and for the first time, question

herself, and ask, “Do I love?” But when a girl of a nature so delicate

as that of Cecilia Travers can ask herself the question, “Do I love?”

her very modesty, her very shrinking from acknowledging that any power

over her thoughts for weal or for woe can be acquired by a man, except

through the sanction of that love which only becomes divine in her eyes

when it is earnest and pure and self-devoted, makes her prematurely

disposed to answer “yes.” And when a girl of such a nature in her own

heart answers “yes” to such a question, even if she deceive herself at

the moment, she begins to cherish the deceit till the belief in her love

becomes a reality. She has adopted a religion, false or true, and she

would despise herself if she could be easily converted.

Mrs. Campion had so contrived that she had forced that question upon

Cecilia, and she feared, by the girl’s change of countenance, that the

girl’s heart had answered “yes.”

CHAPTER XVIII.

WHILE the conversation just narrated took place, Kenelm had walked forth

to pay a visit to Will Somers. All obstacles to Will’s marriage were now

cleared away; the transfer of lease for the shop had been signed, and

the banns were to be published for the first time on the following

Sunday. We need not say that Will was very happy. Kenelm then paid a

visit to Mrs. Bowles, with whom he stayed an hour. On reentering the

Park, he saw Travers, walking slowly, with downcast eyes and his hands

clasped behind him (his habit when in thought). He did not observe

Kenelm’s approach till within a few feet of him, and he then greeted his

guest in listless accents, unlike his usual cheerful tones.

“I have been visiting the man you have made so happy,” said Kenelm.

“Who can that be?”

“Will Somers. Do you make so many people happy that your reminiscence of

them is lost in their number?”

Travers smiled faintly, and shook his head.

Kenelm went on. “I have also seen Mrs. Bowles, and you will be pleased

to hear that Tom is satisfied with his change of abode: there is no

chance of his returning to Graveleigh; and Mrs. Bowles took very kindly

to my suggestion that the little property you wish for should be sold

to you, and, in that case, she would remove to Luscombe to be near her

son.”

“I thank you much for your thought of me,” said Travers, “and the affair

shall be seen to at once, though the purchase is no longer important to

me. I ought to have told you three days ago, but it slipped my memory,

that a neighbouring squire, a young fellow just come into his property,

has offered to exchange a capital farm, much nearer to my residence,

for the lands I hold in Graveleigh, including Saunderson’s farm and the

cottages: they are quite at the outskirts of my estate, but run into

his, and the exchange will be advantageous to both. Still I am glad that

the neighbourhood should be thoroughly rid of a brute like Tom Bowles.”

“You would not call him brute if you knew him; but I am sorry to hear

that Will Somers will be under another landlord.”

“It does not matter, since his tenure is secured for fourteen years.”

“What sort of man is the new landlord?”

“I don’t know much of him. He was in the army till his father died,

and has only just made his appearance in the county. He has, however,

already earned the character of being too fond of the other sex: it is

well that pretty Jessie is to be safely married.”

Travers then relapsed into a moody silence from which Kenelm found it

difficult to rouse him. At length the latter said kindly,--

“My dear Mr. Travers, do not think I take a liberty if I venture to

guess that something has happened this morning which troubles or vexes

you. When that is the case, it is often a relief to say what it is, even

to a confidant so unable to advise or to comfort as myself.”

“You are a good fellow, Chillingly, and I know not, at least in these

parts, a man to whom I would unburden myself more freely. I am put out,

I confess; disappointed unreasonably, in a cherished wish, and,” he

added, with a slight laugh, “it always annoys me when I don’t have my

own way.”

“So it does me.”

“Don’t you think that George Belvoir is a very fine young man?”

“Certainly.”

“_I_ call him handsome; he is steadier, too, than most men of his

age, and of his command of money; and yet he does not want spirit nor

knowledge of life. To every advantage of rank and fortune he adds the

industry and the ambition which attain distinction in public life.”

“Quite true. Is he going to withdraw from the election after all?”

“Good heavens, no!”

“Then how does he not let you have your own way?”

“It is not he,” said Travers, peevishly; “it is Cecilia. Don’t you

understand that George is precisely the husband I would choose for her;

and this morning came a very well written manly letter from him, asking

my permission to pay his addresses to her.”

“But that is your own way so far.”

“Yes, and here comes the balk. Of course I had to refer it to Cecilia,

and she positively declines, and has no reasons to give; does not deny

that George is good-looking and sensible, that he is a man of whose

preference any girl might be proud; but she chooses to say she cannot

love him, and when I ask why she cannot love him, has no other answer

than that ‘she cannot say.’ It is too provoking.”

“It is provoking,” answered Kenelm; “but then Love is the most

dunderheaded of all the passions; it never will listen to reason. The

very rudiments of logic are unknown to it. ‘Love has no wherefore,’ says

one of those Latin poets who wrote love-verses called elegies,--a name

which we moderns appropriate to funeral dirges. For my own part, I can’t

understand how any one can be expected voluntarily to make up his mind

to go out of his mind. And if Miss Travers cannot go out of her mind

because George Belvoir does, you could not argue her into doing so if

you talked till doomsday.”

Travers smiled in spite of himself, but he answered gravely, “Certainly,

I would not wish Cissy to marry any man she disliked, but she does not

dislike George; no girl could: and where that is the case, a girl so

sensible, so affectionate, so well brought up, is sure to love, after

marriage, a thoroughly kind and estimable man, especially when she has

no previous attachment,--which, of course, Cissy never had. In fact,

though I do not wish to force my daughter’s will, I am not yet disposed

to give up my own. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly.”

“I am the more inclined to a marriage so desirable in every way, because

when Cissy comes out in London, which she has not yet done, she is

sure to collect round her face and her presumptive inheritance all the

handsome fortune-hunters and titled _vauriens_; and if in love there

is no wherefore, how can I be sure that she may not fall in love with a

scamp?”

“I think you may be sure of that,” said Kenelm. “Miss Travers has too

much mind.”

“Yes, at present; but did you not say that in love people go out of

their mind?”

“True! I forgot that.”

“I am not then disposed to dismiss poor George’s offer with a decided

negative, and yet it would be unfair to mislead him by encouragement. In

fact, I’ll be hanged if I know how to reply.”

“You think Miss Travers does not dislike George Belvoir, and if she saw

more of him may like him better, and it would be good for her as well as

for him not to put an end to that, chance?”

“Exactly so.”

“Why not then write: ‘My dear George,--You have my best wishes, but my

daughter does not seem disposed to marry at present. Let me consider

your letter not written, and continue on the same terms as we were

before.’ Perhaps, as George knows Virgil, you might find your own

schoolboy recollections of that poet useful here, and add, _Varium et

mutabile semper femina_; hackneyed, but true.”

“My dear Chillingly, your suggestion is capital. How the deuce at your

age have you contrived to know the world so well?”

Kenelm answered in the pathetic tones so natural to his voice, “By being

only a looker-on; alas!”

Leopold Travers felt much relieved after he had written his reply

to George. He had not been quite so ingenuous in his revelation to

Chillingly as he may have seemed. Conscious, like all proud and

fond fathers, of his daughter’s attractions, he was not without some

apprehension that Kenelm himself might entertain an ambition at variance

with that of George Belvoir: if so, he deemed it well to put an end to

such ambition while yet in time: partly because his interest was already

pledged to George; partly because, in rank and fortune, George was the

better match; partly because George was of the same political party as

himself,--while Sir Peter, and probably Sir Peter’s heir, espoused the

opposite side; and partly also because, with all his personal liking to

Kenelm, Leopold Travers, as a very sensible, practical man of the world,

was not sure that a baronet’s heir who tramped the country on foot in

the dress of a petty farmer, and indulged pugilistic propensities in

martial encounters with stalwart farriers, was likely to make a safe

husband and a comfortable son-in-law. Kenelm’s words, and still more his

manner, convinced Travers that any apprehensions of rivalry that he had

previously conceived were utterly groundless.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE same evening, after dinner (during that lovely summer month they

dined at Neesdale Park at an unfashionably early hour), Kenelm, in

company with Travers and Cecilia, ascended a gentle eminence at the back

of the gardens, on which there were some picturesque ivy-grown ruins of

an ancient priory, and commanding the best view of a glorious sunset and

a subject landscape of vale and wood, rivulet and distant hills.

“Is the delight in scenery,” said Kenelm, “really an acquired gift,

as some philosophers tell us? Is it true that young children and rude

savages do not feel it; that the eye must be educated to comprehend its

charm, and that the eye can be only educated through the mind?”

“I should think your philosophers are right,” said Travers. “When I was

a schoolboy, I thought no scenery was like the flat of a cricket ground;

when I hunted at Melton, I thought that unpicturesque country more

beautiful than Devonshire. It is only of late years that I feel a

sensible pleasure in scenery for its own sake, apart from associations

of custom or the uses to which we apply them.”

“And what say you, Miss Travers?”

“I scarcely know what to say,” answered Cecilia, musingly. “I can

remember no time in my childhood when I did not feel delight in that

which seemed to me beautiful in scenery, but I suspect that I vaguely

distinguished one kind of beauty from another. A common field with

daisies and buttercups was beautiful to me then, and I doubt if I saw

anything more beautiful in extensive landscapes.”

“True,” said Kenelm: “it is not in early childhood that we carry the

sight into distance: as is the mind so is the eye; in early childhood

the mind revels in the present, and the eye rejoices most in the things

nearest to it. I don’t think in childhood that we--

“‘Watched with wistful eyes the setting sun.’”

“Ah! what a world of thought in that word ‘wistful’!” murmured Cecilia,

as her gaze riveted itself on the western heavens, towards which Kenelm

had pointed as he spoke, where the enlarging orb rested half its disk on

the rim of the horizon.

She had seated herself on a fragment of the ruin, backed by the hollows

of a broken arch. The last rays of the sun lingered on her young face,

and then lost themselves in the gloom of the arch behind. There was a

silence for some minutes, during which the sun had sunk. Rosy clouds in

thin flakes still floated, momently waning: and the eve-star stole forth

steadfast, bright, and lonely,--nay, lonely not now; that sentinel has

aroused a host.

Said a voice, “No sign of rain yet, Squire. What will become of the

turnips?”

“Real life again! Who can escape it?” muttered Kenelm, as his eye rested

on the burly figure of the Squire’s bailiff.

“Ha! North,” said Travers, “what brings you here? No bad news, I hope?”

“Indeed, yes, Squire. The Durham bull--”

“The Durham bull! What of him? You frighten me.”

“Taken bad. Colic.”

“Excuse me, Chillingly,” cried Travers; “I must be off. A most valuable

animal, and no one I can trust to doctor him but myself.”

“That’s true enough,” said the bailiff, admiringly. “There’s not a

veterinary in the county like the Squire.”

Travers was already gone, and the panting bailiff had hard work to catch

him up.

Kenelm seated himself beside Cecilia on the ruined fragment.

“How I envy your father!” said he.

“Why just at this moment,--because he knows how to doctor the bull?”

said Cecilia, with a sweet low laugh.

“Well, that is something to envy. It is a pleasure to relieve from pain

any of God’s creatures,--even a Durham bull.”

“Indeed, yes. I am justly rebuked.”

“On the contrary you are to be justly praised. Your question suggested

to me an amiable sentiment in place of the selfish one which was

uppermost in my thoughts. I envied your father because he creates for

himself so many objects of interest; because while he can appreciate the

mere sensuous enjoyment of a landscape and a sunset, he can find mental

excitement in turnip crops and bulls. Happy, Miss Travers, is the

Practical Man.”

“When my dear father was as young as you, Mr. Chillingly, I am sure that

he had no more interest in turnips and bulls than you have. I do not

doubt that some day you will be as practical as he is in that respect.”

“Do you think so--sincerely?”

Cecilia made no answer.

Kenelm repeated the question.

“Sincerely, then, I do not know whether you will take interest in

precisely the same things that interest my father; but there are other

things than turnips and cattle which belong to what you call ‘practical

life,’ and in these you will take interest, as you took in the fortunes

of Will Somers and Jessie Wiles.”

“That was no practical interest. I got nothing by it. But even if that

interest were practical,--I mean productive, as cattle and turnip crops

are,--a succession of Somerses and Wileses is not to be hoped for.

History never repeats itself.”

“May I answer you, though very humbly?”

“Miss Travers, the wisest man that ever existed never was wise enough

to know woman; but I think most men ordinarily wise will agree in this,

that woman is by no means a humble creature, and that when she says she

‘answers very humbly,’ she does not mean what she says. Permit me to

entreat you to answer very loftily.”

Cecilia laughed and blushed. The laugh was musical; the blush was--what?

Let any man, seated beside a girl like Cecilia at starry twilight, find

the right epithet for that blush. I pass it by epithetless. But she

answered, firmly though sweetly,--

“Are there not things very practical, and affecting the happiness, not

of one or two individuals, but of innumerable thousands, in which a man

like Mr. Chillingly cannot fail to feel interest, long before he is my

father’s age?”

“Forgive me: you do not answer; you question. I imitate you, and ask

what are those things as applicable to a man like Mr. Chillingly?”

Cecilia gathered herself up, as with the desire to express a great deal

in short substance, and then said,--

“In the expression of thought, literature; in the conduct of action,

politics.”

Kenelm Chillingly stared, dumfounded. I suppose the greatest enthusiast

for woman’s rights could not assert more reverentially than he did the

cleverness of women; but among the things which the cleverness of woman

did not achieve, he had always placed “laconics.” “No woman,” he was

wont to say, “ever invented an axiom or a proverb.”

“Miss Travers,” he said at last, “before we proceed further, vouchsafe

to tell me if that very terse reply of yours is spontaneous and

original; or whether you have not borrowed it from some book which I

have not chanced to read?”

Cecilia pondered honestly, and then said, “I don’t think it is from any

book; but I owe so many of my thoughts to Mrs. Campion, and she lived so

much among clever men, that--”

“I see it all, and accept your definition, no matter whence it came.

You think I might become an author or a politician. Did you ever read an

essay by a living author called ‘Motive Power’?”

“No.”

“That essay is designed to intimate that without motive power a man,

whatever his talents or his culture, does nothing practical. The

mainsprings of motive power are Want and Ambition. They are absent

from my mechanism. By the accident of birth I do not require bread and

cheese; by the accident of temperament and of philosophical culture

I care nothing about praise or blame. But without want of bread and

cheese, and with a most stolid indifference to praise and blame, do you

honestly think that a man will do anything practical in literature or

politics? Ask Mrs. Campion.”

“I will not ask her. Is the sense of duty nothing?”

“Alas! we interpret duty so variously. Of mere duty, as we commonly

understand the word, I do not think I shall fail more than other men.

But for the fair development of all the good that is in us, do you

believe that we should adopt some line of conduct against which our

whole heart rebels? Can you say to the clerk, ‘Be a poet’? Can you say

to the poet, ‘Be a clerk’? It is no more to the happiness of a man’s

being to order him to take to one career when his whole heart is set

on another, than it is to order him to marry one woman when it is to

another woman that his heart will turn.”

Cecilia here winced and looked away. Kenelm had more tact than most men

of his age,--that is, a keener perception of subjects to avoid; but then

Kenelm had a wretched habit of forgetting the person he talked to and

talking to himself. Utterly oblivious of George Belvoir, he was talking

to himself now. Not then observing the effect his _mal-a-propos_ dogma

had produced on his listener, he went on, “Happiness is a word very

lightly used. It may mean little; it may mean much. By the word

happiness I would signify, not the momentary joy of a child who gets

a plaything, but the lasting harmony between our inclinations and our

objects; and without that harmony we are a discord to ourselves, we are

incompletions, we are failures. Yet there are plenty of advisers who say

to us, ‘It is a duty to be a discord.’ I deny it.”

Here Cecilia rose and said in a low voice, “It is getting late. We must

go homeward.”

They descended the green eminence slowly, and at first in silence.

The bats, emerging from the ivied ruins they left behind, flitted and

skimmed before them, chasing the insects of the night. A moth, escaping

from its pursuer, alighted on Cecilia’s breast, as if for refuge.

“The bats are practical,” said Kenelm; “they are hungry, and their

motive power to-night is strong. Their interest is in the insects they

chase. They have no interest in the stars; but the stars lure the moth.”

Cecilia drew her slight scarf over the moth, so that it might not

fly off and become a prey to the bats. “Yet,” said she, “the moth is

practical too.”

“Ay, just now, since it has found an asylum from the danger that

threatened it in its course towards the stars.”

Cecilia felt the beating of her heart, upon which lay the moth

concealed. Did she think that a deeper and more tender meaning than they

outwardly expressed was couched in these words? If so, she erred. They

now neared the garden gate, and Kenelm paused as he opened it. “See,”

he said, “the moon has just risen over those dark firs, making the still

night stiller. Is it not strange that we mortals, placed amid perpetual

agitation and tumult and strife, as if our natural element, conceive a

sense of holiness in the images antagonistic to our real life; I mean

in images of repose? I feel at the moment as if I suddenly were

made better, now that heaven and earth have suddenly become yet more

tranquil. I am now conscious of a purer and sweeter moral than either I

or you drew from the insect you have sheltered. I must come to the poets

to express it,--

“‘The desire of the moth for the star,

Of the night for the morrow;

The devotion to something afar

From the sphere of our sorrow.’

“Oh, that something afar! that something afar! never to be reached on

this earth,--never, never!”

There was such a wail in that cry from the man’s heart that Cecilia

could not resist the impulse of a divine compassion. She laid her hand

on his, and looked on the dark wildness of his upward face with eyes

that Heaven meant to be wells of comfort to grieving man. At the light

touch of that hand Kenelm started, looked down, and met those soothing

eyes.

“I am happy to tell you that I have saved my Durham,” cried out Mr.

Travers from the other side of the gate.

CHAPTER XX.

AS Kenelm that night retired to his own room, he paused on the

landing-place opposite to the portrait which Mr. Travers had consigned

to that desolate exile. This daughter of a race dishonoured in its

extinction might well have been the glory of the house she had entered

as a bride. The countenance was singularly beautiful, and of a character

of beauty eminently patrician; there was in its expression a gentleness

and modesty not often found in the female portraits of Sir Peter

Lely, and in the eyes and in the smile a wonderful aspect of innocent

happiness.

“What a speaking homily,” soliloquized Kenelm, addressing the picture,

“against the ambition thy fair descendant would awake in me, art thou,

O lovely image! For generations thy beauty lived in this canvas, a thing

of joy, the pride of the race it adorned. Owner after owner said

to admiring guests, ‘Yes, a fine portrait, by Lely; she was my

ancestress,--a Fletwode of Fletwode.’ Now, lest guests should remember

that a Fletwode married a Travers thou art thrust out of sight; not even

Lely’s art can make thee of value, can redeem thine innocent self from

disgrace. And the last of the Fletwodes, doubtless the most ambitious of

all, the most bent on restoring and regilding the old lordly name, dies

a felon; the infamy of one living man is so large that it can blot

out the honour of the dead.” He turned his eyes from the smile of

the portrait, entered his own room, and, seating himself by the

writing-table, drew blotting-book and note-paper towards him, took

up the pen, and instead of writing fell into deep revery. There was a

slight frown on his brow, on which frowns were rare. He was very angry

with himself.

“Kenelm,” he said, entering into his customary dialogue with that self,

“it becomes you, forsooth, to moralize about the honour of races which

have no affinity with you. Son of Sir Peter Chillingly, look at home.

Are you quite sure that you have not said or done or looked a something

that may bring trouble to the hearth on which you are received as guest?

What right had you to be moaning forth your egotisms, not remembering

that your words fell on compassionate ears, and that such words, heard

at moonlight by a girl whose heart they move to pity, may have dangers

for her peace? Shame on you, Kenelm! shame! knowing too what her

father’s wish is; and knowing too that you have not the excuse of

desiring to win that fair creature for yourself. What do you mean,

Kenelm? I don’t hear you; speak out. Oh, ‘that I am a vain coxcomb to

fancy that she could take a fancy to me:’ well, perhaps I am; I hope so

earnestly; and at all events, there has been and shall be no time for

much mischief. We are off to-morrow, Kenelm; bestir yourself and pack

up, write your letters, and then ‘put out the light,--put out _the_

light!’”

But this converser with himself did not immediately set to work, as

agreed upon by that twofold one. He rose and walked restlessly to and

fro the floor, stopping ever and anon to look at the pictures on the

walls.

Several of the worst painted of the family portraits had been consigned

to the room tenanted by Kenelm, which, though both the oldest and

largest bed-chamber in the house, was always appropriated to a bachelor

male guest, partly because it was without dressing-room, remote, and

only approached by the small back-staircase, to the landing-place of

which Arabella had been banished in disgrace; and partly because it had

the reputation of being haunted, and ladies are more alarmed by that

superstition than men are supposed to be. The portraits on which Kenelm

now paused to gaze were of various dates, from the reign of Elizabeth to

that of George III., none of them by eminent artists, and none of them

the effigies of ancestors who had left names in history,--in short, such

portraits as are often seen in the country houses of well-born squires.

One family type of features or expression pervaded most of these

portraits; features clear-cut and hardy, expression open and honest.

And though not one of those dead men had been famous, each of them had

contributed his unostentatious share, in his own simple way, to the

movements of his time. That worthy in ruff and corselet had manned his

own ship at his own cost against the Armada; never had been repaid by

the thrifty Burleigh the expenses which had harassed him and diminished

his patrimony; never had been even knighted. That gentleman with short

straight hair, which overhung his forehead, leaning on his sword

with one hand, and a book open in the other hand, had served as

representative of his county town in the Long Parliament, fought under

Cromwell at Marston Moor, and, resisting the Protector when he removed

the “bauble,” was one of the patriots incarcerated in “Hell hole.” He,

too, had diminished his patrimony, maintaining two troopers and two

horses at his own charge, and “Hell hole” was all he got in return.

A third, with a sleeker expression of countenance, and a large wig,

flourishing in the quiet times of Charles II., had only been a justice

of the peace, but his alert look showed that he had been a very active

one. He had neither increased nor diminished his ancestral fortune. A

fourth, in the costume of William III.’s reign, had somewhat added to

the patrimony by becoming a lawyer. He must have been a successful one.

He is inscribed “Sergeant-at-law.” A fifth, a lieutenant in the army,

was killed at Blenheim; his portrait was that of a very young and

handsome man, taken the year before his death. His wife’s portrait is

placed in the drawing-room because it was painted by Kneller. She was

handsome too, and married again a nobleman, whose portrait, of course,

was not in the family collection. Here there was a gap in chronological

arrangement, the lieutenant’s heir being an infant; but in the time

of George II. another Travers appeared as the governor of a West India

colony. His son took part in a very different movement of the age. He is

represented old, venerable, with white hair, and underneath his

effigy is inscribed, “Follower of Wesley.” His successor completes the

collection. He is in naval uniform; he is in full length, and one of his

legs is a wooden one. He is Captain, R.N., and inscribed, “Fought under

Nelson at Trafalgar.” That portrait would have found more dignified

place in the reception-rooms if the face had not been forbiddingly ugly,

and the picture itself a villanous daub.

“I see,” said Kenelm, stopping short, “why Cecilia Travers has been

reared to talk of duty as a practical interest in life. These men of a

former time seem to have lived to discharge a duty, and not to follow

the progress of the age in the chase of a money-bag,--except perhaps

one, but then to be sure he was a lawyer. Kenelm, rouse up and listen

to me; whatever we are, whether active or indolent, is not my favourite

maxim a just and a true one; namely, ‘A good man does good by living’?

But, for that, he must be a harmony and not a discord. Kenelm, you lazy

dog, we must pack up.”

Kenelm then refilled his portmanteau, and labelled and directed it to

Exmundham, after which he wrote these three notes:--

NOTE I.

TO THE MARCHIONESS OF GLENALVON.

MY DEAR FRIEND AND MONITRESS,--I have left your last letter a month

unanswered. I could not reply to your congratulations on the event of my

attaining the age of twenty-one. That event is a conventional sham,

and you know how I abhor shams and conventions. The truth is that I am

either much younger than twenty-one or much older. As to all designs on

my peace in standing for our county at the next election, I wished to

defeat them, and I have done so; and now I have commenced a course of

travel. I had intended on starting to confine it to my native country.

Intentions are mutable. I am going abroad. You shall hear of my

whereabout. I write this from the house of Leopold Travers, who, I

understand from his fair daughter, is a connection of yours; a man to be

highly esteemed and cordially liked.

No, in spite of all your flattering predictions, I shall never be

anything in this life more distinguished than what I am now. Lady

Glenalvon allows me to sign myself her grateful friend,

K. C.

NOTE II.

DEAR COUSIN MIVERS,--I am going abroad. I may want money; for, in order

to rouse motive power within me, I mean to want money if I can. When I

was a boy of sixteen you offered me money to write attacks upon veteran

authors for “The Londoner.” Will you give me money now for a similar

display of that grand New Idea of our generation; namely, that the less

a man knows of a subject the better he understands it? I am about to

travel into countries which I have never seen, and among races I have

never known. My arbitrary judgments on both will be invaluable to “The

Londoner” from a Special Correspondent who shares your respect for the

anonymous, and whose name is never to be divulged. Direct your answer by

return to me, _poste restante_, Calais.

Yours truly,

K. C.

NOTE III.

MY DEAR FATHER,--I found your letter here, whence I depart to-morrow.

Excuse haste. I go abroad, and shall write to you from Calais.

I admire Leopold Travers very much. After all, how much of self-balance

there is in a true English gentleman! Toss him up and down where you

will, and he always alights on his feet,--a gentleman. He has one child,

a daughter named Cecilia,--handsome enough to allure into wedlock any

mortal whom Decimus Roach had not convinced that in celibacy lay the

right “Approach to the Angels.” Moreover, she is a girl whom one can

talk with. Even you could talk with her. Travers wishes her to marry

a very respectable, good-looking, promising gentleman, in every way

“suitable,” as they say. And if she does, she will rival that pink and

perfection of polished womanhood, Lady Glenalvon. I send you back my

portmanteau. I have pretty well exhausted my experience-money, but have

not yet encroached on my monthly allowance. I mean still to live upon

that, eking it out, if necessary, by the sweat of my brow or brains. But

if any case requiring extra funds should occur,--a case in which that

extra would do such real good to another that I feel _you_ would do

it,--why, I must draw a check on your bankers. But understand that is

your expense, not mine, and it is _you_ who are to be repaid in Heaven.

Dear father, how I do love and honour you every day more and more!

Promise you not to propose to any young lady till I come first to you

for consent!--oh, my dear father, how could you doubt it? how doubt

that I could not be happy with any wife whom you could not love as a

daughter? Accept that promise as sacred. But I wish you had asked me

something in which obedience was not much too facile to be a test of

duty. I could not have obeyed you more cheerfully if you had asked me to

promise never to propose to any young lady at all. Had you asked me to

promise that I would renounce the dignity of reason for the frenzy of

love, or the freedom of man for the servitude of husband, then I might

have sought to achieve the impossible; but I should have died in the

effort!--and thou wouldst have known that remorse which haunts the bed

of the tyrant.

Your affectionate son,

K. C.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE next morning Kenelm surprised the party at breakfast by appearing

in the coarse habiliments in which he had first made his host’s

acquaintance. He did not glance towards Cecilia when he announced his

departure; but, his eye resting on Mrs. Campion, he smiled, perhaps a

little sadly, at seeing her countenance brighten up and hearing her give

a short sigh of relief. Travers tried hard to induce him to stay a few

days longer, but Kenelm was firm. “The summer is wearing away,” said he,

“and I have far to go before the flowers fade and the snows fall. On the

third night from this I shall sleep on foreign soil.”

“You are going abroad, then?” asked Mrs. Campion.

“Yes.”

“A sudden resolution, Mr. Chillingly. The other day you talked of

visiting the Scotch lakes.”

“True; but, on reflection, they will be crowded with holiday tourists,

many of whom I shall probably know. Abroad I shall be free, for I shall

be unknown.”

“I suppose you will be back for the hunting season,” said Travers.

“I think not. I do not hunt foxes.”

“Probably we shall at all events meet in London,” said Travers. “I

think, after long rustication, that a season or two in the bustling

capital may be a salutary change for mind as well as for body; and it

is time that Cecilia were presented and her court-dress specially

commemorated in the columns of the ‘Morning Post.’”

Cecilia was seemingly too busied behind the tea-urn to heed this

reference to her debut.

“I shall miss you terribly,” cried Travers, a few moments afterwards,

and with a hearty emphasis. “I declare that you have quite unsettled me.

Your quaint sayings will be ringing in my ears long after you are gone.”

There was a rustle as of a woman’s dress in sudden change of movement

behind the tea-urn.

“Cissy,” said Mrs. Campion, “are we ever to have our tea?”

“I beg pardon,” answered a voice behind the urn. “I hear Pompey” (the

Skye terrier) “whining on the lawn. They have shut him out. I will be

back presently.”

Cecilia rose and was gone. Mrs. Campion took her place at the tea-urn.

“It is quite absurd of Cissy to be so fond of that hideous dog,” said

Travers, petulantly.

“Its hideousness is its beauty,” returned Mrs. Campion, laughing. “Mr.

Belvoir selected it for her as having the longest back and the shortest

legs of any dog he could find in Scotland.”

“Ah, George gave it to her; I forgot that,” said Travers, laughing

pleasantly.

It was some minutes before Miss Travers returned with the Skye

terrier, and she seemed to have recovered her spirits in regaining that

ornamental accession to the party; talking very quickly and gayly, and

with flushed cheeks, like a young person excited by her own overflow of

mirth.

But when, half an hour afterwards, Kenelm took leave of her and Mrs.

Campion at the hall-door, the flush was gone, her lips were tightly

compressed, and her parting words were not audible. Then, as his figure

(side by side with her father, who accompanied his guest to the lodge)

swiftly passed across the lawn and vanished amid the trees beyond, Mrs.

Campion wound a mother-like arm around her waist and kissed her.

Cecilia shivered and turned her face to her friend smiling; but such a

smile,--one of those smiles that seem brimful of tears.

“Thank you, dear,” she said meekly; and, gliding away towards the

flower-garden, lingered a while by the gate which Kenelm had opened

the night before. Then she went with languid steps up the green slopes

towards the ruined priory.

BOOK IV.

CHAPTER I.

IT is somewhat more than a year and a half since Kenelm Chillingly left

England, and the scene now is in London, during that earlier and more

sociable season which precedes the Easter holidays,--season in which

the charm of intellectual companionship is not yet withered away in the

heated atmosphere of crowded rooms,--season in which parties are small,

and conversation extends beyond the interchange of commonplace with

one’s next neighbour at a dinner-table,--season in which you have a

fair chance of finding your warmest friends not absorbed by the superior

claims of their chilliest acquaintances.

There was what is called a _conversazione_ at the house of one of those

Whig noblemen who yet retain the graceful art of bringing agreeable

people together, and collecting round them the true aristocracy, which

combines letters and art and science with hereditary rank and political

distinction,--that art which was the happy secret of the Lansdownes and

Hollands of the last generation. Lord Beaumanoir was himself a genial,

well-read man, a good judge of art, and a pleasant talker. He had a

charming wife, devoted to him and to her children, but with enough love

of general approbation to make herself as popular in the fashionable

world as if she sought in its gayeties a refuge from the dulness of

domestic life.

Amongst the guests at the Beaumanoirs, this evening were two men, seated

apart in a small room, and conversing familiarly. The one might be about

fifty-four; he was tall, strongly built, but not corpulent, somewhat

bald, with black eyebrows, dark eyes, bright and keen, mobile lips round

which there played a shrewd and sometimes sarcastic smile.

This gentleman, the Right Hon. Gerard Danvers, was a very influential

member of Parliament. He had, when young for English public life,

attained to high office; but--partly from a great distaste to the

drudgery of administration; partly from a pride of temperament, which

unfitted him for the subordination that a Cabinet owes to its chief;

partly, also, from a not uncommon kind of epicurean philosophy, at once

joyous and cynical, which sought the pleasures of life and held very

cheap its honours--he had obstinately declined to re-enter office, and

only spoke on rare occasions. On such occasions he carried great weight,

and, by the brief expression of his opinions, commanded more votes than

many an orator infinitely more eloquent. Despite his want of ambition,

he was fond of power in his own way,--power over the people who _had_

power; and, in the love of political intrigue, he found an amusement for

an intellect very subtle and very active. At this moment he was bent on

a new combination among the leaders of different sections in the same

party, by which certain veterans were to retire, and certain younger men

to be admitted into the Administration. It was an amiable feature in his

character that he had a sympathy with the young, and had helped to

bring into Parliament, as well as into office, some of the ablest of

a generation later than his own. He gave them sensible counsel,

was pleased when they succeeded, and encouraged them when they

failed,--always provided that they had stuff enough in them to redeem

the failure; if not, he gently dropped them from his intimacy, but

maintained sufficiently familiar terms with them to be pretty sure that

he could influence their votes whenever he so desired.

The gentleman with whom he was now conversing was young, about

five-and-twenty; not yet in Parliament, but with an intense desire to

obtain a seat in it, and with one of those reputations which a youth

carries away from school and college, justified, not by honours purely

academical, but by an impression of ability and power created on the

minds of his contemporaries and endorsed by his elders. He had done

little at the University beyond taking a fair degree, except acquiring

at the debating society the fame of an exceedingly ready and adroit

speaker. On quitting college he had written one or two political

articles in a quarterly review, which created a sensation; and though

belonging to no profession, and having but a small yet independent

income, society was very civil to him, as to a man who would some day or

other attain a position in which he could damage his enemies and serve

his friends. Something in this young man’s countenance and bearing

tended to favour the credit given to his ability and his promise. In his

countenance there was no beauty; in his bearing no elegance. But in that

countenance there was vigour, there was energy, there was audacity. A

forehead wide but low, protuberant in those organs over the brow which

indicate the qualities fitted for perception and judgment,--qualities

for every-day life; eyes of the clear English blue, small, somewhat

sunken, vigilant, sagacious, penetrating; a long straight upper

lip, significant of resolute purpose; a mouth in which a student

of physiognomy would have detected a dangerous charm. The smile

was captivating, but it was artificial, surrounded by dimples, and

displaying teeth white, small, strong, but divided from each other. The

expression of that smile would have been frank and candid to all who

failed to notice that it was not in harmony with the brooding forehead

and the steely eye; that it seemed to stand distinct from the rest

of the face, like a feature that had learned its part. There was that

physical power in the back of the head which belongs to men who make

their way in life,--combative and destructive. All gladiators have it;

so have great debaters and great reformers,--that is, reformers who can

destroy, but not necessarily reconstruct. So, too, in the bearing of the

man there was a hardy self-confidence, much too simple and unaffected

for his worst enemy to call it self-conceit. It was the bearing of one

who knew how to maintain personal dignity without seeming to care about

it. Never servile to the great, never arrogant to the little; so little

over-refined that it was never vulgar,--a popular bearing.

The room in which these gentlemen were seated was separated from the

general suite of apartments by a lobby off the landing-place, and served

for Lady Beaumanoir’s boudoir. Very pretty it was, but simply furnished,

with chintz draperies. The walls were adorned with drawings in

water-colours, and precious specimens of china on fanciful Parian

brackets. At one corner, by a window that looked southward and opened

on a spacious balcony, glazed in and filled with flowers, stood one of

those high trellised screens, first invented, I believe, in Vienna, and

along which ivy is so trained as to form an arbour.

The recess thus constructed, and which was completely out of sight from

the rest of the room, was the hostess’s favourite writing-nook. The two

men I have described were seated near the screen, and had certainly no

suspicion that any one could be behind it.

“Yes,” said Mr. Danvers, from an ottoman niched in another recess of the

room, “I think there will be an opening at Saxboro’ soon: Milroy wants a

Colonial Government; and if we can reconstruct the Cabinet as I propose,

he would get one. Saxboro’ would thus be vacant. But, my dear fellow,

Saxboro’ is a place to be wooed through love, and only won through

money. It demands liberalism from a candidate,--two kinds of liberalism

seldom united; the liberalism in opinion which is natural enough to a

very poor man, and the liberalism in expenditure which is scarcely to

be obtained except from a very rich one. You may compute the cost of

Saxboro’ at L3000 to get in, and about L2000 more to defend your seat

against a petition,--the defeated candidate nearly always petitions.

L5000 is a large sum; and the worst of it is, that the extreme opinions

to which the member for Saxboro’ must pledge himself are a drawback to

an official career. Violent politicians are not the best raw material

out of which to manufacture fortunate placemen.”

“The opinions do not so much matter; the expense does. I cannot afford

L5000, or even L3000.”

“Would not Sir Peter assist? He has, you say, only one son; and if

anything happen to that son, you are the next heir.”

“My father quarrelled with Sir Peter, and harassed him by an imprudent

and ungracious litigation. I scarcely think I could apply to him for

money to obtain a seat in Parliament upon the democratic side of the

question; for, though I know little of his politics, I take it for

granted that a country gentleman of old family and L10,000 a year cannot

well be a democrat.”

“Then I presume you would not be a democrat if, by the death of your

cousin, you became heir to the Chillinglys.”

“I am not sure what I might be in that case. There are times when a

democrat of ancient lineage and good estates could take a very high

place amongst the aristocracy.”

“Humph! my dear Gordon, _vous irez loin_.”

“I hope to do so. Measuring myself against the men of my own day, I do

not see many who should outstrip me.”

“What sort of a fellow is your cousin Kenelm? I met him once or twice

when he was very young, and reading with Welby in London. People then

said that he was very clever; he struck me as very odd.”

“I never saw him, but from all I hear, whether he be clever or whether

he be odd, he is not likely to do anything in life,--a dreamer.”

“Writes poetry perhaps?”

“Capable of it, I dare say.”

Just then some other guests came into the room, amongst them a lady

of an appearance at once singularly distinguished and singularly

prepossessing, rather above the common height, and with a certain

indescribable nobility of air and presence. Lady Glenalvon was one of

the queens of the London world, and no queen of that world was ever

less worldly or more queen-like. Side by side with the lady was Mr.

Chillingly Mivers. Gordon and Mivers interchanged friendly nods, and the

former sauntered away and was soon lost amid a crowd of other young

men, with whom, as he could converse well and lightly on things which

interested them, he was rather a favourite, though he was not an

intimate associate. Mr. Danvers retired into a corner of the adjoining

lobby, where he favoured the French ambassador with his views on the

state of Europe and the reconstruction of Cabinets in general.

“But,” said Lady Glenalvon to Chillingly Mivers, “are you quite sure

that my old young friend Kenelm is here? Since you told me so, I have

looked everywhere for him in vain. I should so much like to see him

again.”

“I certainly caught a glimpse of him half an hour ago; but before I

could escape from a geologist who was boring me about the Silurian

system, Kenelm had vanished.”

“Perhaps it was his ghost!”

“Well, we certainly live in the most credulous and superstitious age

upon record; and so many people tell me that they converse with the

dead under the table that it seems impertinent in me to say that I don’t

believe in ghosts.”

“Tell me some of those incomprehensible stories about table-rapping,”

said Lady Glenalvon. “There is a charming, snug recess here behind the

screen.”

Scarcely had she entered the recess when she drew back with a start and

an exclamation of amaze. Seated at the table within the recess, his chin

resting on his hand, and his face cast down in abstracted revery, was a

young man. So still was his attitude, so calmly mournful the expression

of his face, so estranged did he seem from all the motley but brilliant

assemblage which circled around the solitude he had made for himself,

that he might well have been deemed one of those visitants from another

world whose secrets the intruder had wished to learn. Of that intruder’s

presence he was evidently unconscious. Recovering her surprise, she

stole up to him, placed her hand on his shoulder, and uttered his name

in a low gentle voice. At that sound Kenelm Chillingly looked up.

“Do you not remember me?” asked Lady Glenalvon. Before he could answer,

Mivers, who had followed the marchioness into the recess, interposed.

“My dear Kenelm, how are you? When did you come to London? Why have you

not called on me; and what on earth are you hiding yourself for?”

Kenelm had now recovered the self-possession which he rarely lost long

in the presence of others. He returned cordially his kinsman’s greeting,

and kissed with his wonted chivalrous grace the fair hand which the lady

withdrew from his shoulder and extended to his pressure. “Remember you!”

he said to Lady Glenalvon with the kindliest expression of his soft dark

eyes; “I am not so far advanced towards the noon of life as to forget

the sunshine that brightened its morning. My dear Mivers, your questions

are easily answered. I arrived in England two weeks ago, stayed at

Exmundham till this morning, to-day dined with Lord Thetford, whose

acquaintance I made abroad, and was persuaded by him to come here and

be introduced to his father and mother, the Beaumanoirs. After I had

undergone that ceremony, the sight of so many strange faces frightened

me into shyness. Entering this room at a moment when it was quite

deserted, I resolved to turn hermit behind the screen.”

“Why, you must have seen your cousin Gordon as you came into the room.”

“But you forget I don’t know him by sight. However, there was no one in

the room when I entered; a little later some others came in, for I heard

a faint buzz, like that of persons talking in a whisper. However, I was

no eavesdropper, as a person behind a screen is on the dramatic stage.”

This was true. Even had Gordon and Danvers talked in a louder tone,

Kenelm had been too absorbed in his own thoughts to have heard a word of

their conversation.

“You ought to know young Gordon; he is a very clever fellow, and has an

ambition to enter Parliament. I hope no old family quarrel between his

bear of a father and dear Sir Peter will make you object to meet him.”

“Sir Peter is the most forgiving of men, but he would scarcely forgive

me if I declined to meet a cousin who had never offended him.”

“Well said. Come and meet Gordon at breakfast to-morrow,--ten o’clock. I

am still in the old rooms.”

While the kinsmen thus conversed, Lady Glenalvon had seated herself on

the couch beside Kenelm, and was quietly observing his countenance.

Now she spoke. “My dear Mr. Mivers, you will have many opportunities of

talking with Kenelm; do not grudge me five minutes’ talk with him now.”

“I leave your ladyship alone in your hermitage. How all the men in this

assembly will envy the hermit!”

CHAPTER II.

“I AM glad to see you once more in the world,” said Lady Glenalvon; “and

I trust that you are now prepared to take that part in it which ought to

be no mean one if you do justice to your talents and your nature.”

KENELM.--“When you go to the theatre, and see one of the pieces which

appear now to be the fashion, which would you rather be,--an actor or a

looker-on?”

LADY GLENALVON.--“My dear young friend, your question saddens me.”

(After a pause.)--“But though I used a stage metaphor when I expressed

my hope that you would take no mean part in the world, the world is not

really a theatre. Life admits of no lookers-on. Speak to me frankly, as

you used to do. Your face retains its old melancholy expression. Are you

not happy?”

KENELM.--“Happy, as mortals go, I ought to be. I do not think I am

unhappy. If my temper be melancholic, melancholy has a happiness of its

own. Milton shows that there are as many charms in life to be found on

the _Penseroso_ side of it as there are on the _Allegro_.”

LADY GLENALVON.--“Kenelm, you saved the life of my poor son, and when,

later, he was taken from me, I felt as if he had commended you to my

care. When at the age of sixteen, with a boy’s years and a man’s heart,

you came to London, did I not try to be to you almost as a mother? and

did you not often tell me that you could confide to me the secrets of

your heart more readily than to any other?”

“You were to me,” said Kenelm, with emotion, “that most precious and

sustaining good genius which a youth can find at the threshold of

life,--a woman gently wise, kindly sympathizing, shaming him by the

spectacle of her own purity from all grosser errors, elevating him from

mean tastes and objects by the exquisite, ineffable loftiness of soul

which is only found in the noblest order of womanhood. Come, I will open

my heart to you still. I fear it is more wayward than ever. It still

feels estranged from the companionship and pursuits natural to my age

and station. However, I have been seeking to brace and harden my nature,

for the practical ends of life, by travel and adventure, chiefly among

rougher varieties of mankind than we meet in drawing-rooms. Now, in

compliance with the duty I owe to my dear father’s wishes, I come back

to these circles, which under your auspices I entered in boyhood, and

which even then seemed to me so inane and artificial. Take a part in the

world of these circles; such is your wish. My answer is brief. I have

been doing my best to acquire a motive power, and have not succeeded. I

see nothing that I care to strive for, nothing that I care to gain. The

very times in which we live are to me, as to Hamlet, out of joint; and

I am not born like Hamlet to set them right. Ah! if I could look on

society through the spectacles with which the poor hidalgo in ‘Gil Blas’

looked on his meagre board,--spectacles by which cherries appear the

size of peaches, and tomtits as large as turkeys! The imagination which

is necessary to ambition is a great magnifier.”

“I have known more than one man, now very eminent, very active, who

at your age felt the same estrangement from the practical pursuits of

others.”

“And what reconciled those men to such pursuits?”

“That diminished sense of individual personality, that unconscious

fusion of one’s own being into other existences, which belong to home

and marriage.”

“I don’t object to home, but I do to marriage.”

“Depend on it there is no home for man where there is no woman.”

“Prettily said. In that case I resign the home.”

“Do you mean seriously to tell me that you never see the woman you could

love enough to make her your wife, and never enter any home that you do

not quit with a touch of envy at the happiness of married life?”

“Seriously, I never see such a woman; seriously, I never enter such a

home.”

“Patience, then; your time will come, and I hope it is at hand. Listen

to me. It was only yesterday that I felt an indescribable longing to

see you again,--to know your address that I might write to you; for

yesterday, when a certain young lady left my house after a week’s visit,

I said this girl would make a perfect wife, and, above all, the exact

wife to suit Kenelm Chillingly.”

“Kenelm Chillingly is very glad to hear that this young lady has left

your house.”

“But she has not left London: she is here to-night. She only stayed

with me till her father came to town, and the house he had taken for the

season was vacant; those events happened yesterday.”

“Fortunate events for me: they permit me to call on you without danger.”

“Have you no curiosity to know, at least, who and what is the young lady

who appears to me so well suited to you?”

“No curiosity, but a vague sensation of alarm.”

“Well, I cannot talk pleasantly with you while you are in this

irritating mood, and it is time to quit the hermitage. Come, there are

many persons here, with some of whom you should renew old acquaintance,

and to some of whom I should like to make you known.”

“I am prepared to follow Lady Glenalvon wherever she deigns to lead

me,--except to the altar with another.”

CHAPTER III.

THE rooms were now full,--not overcrowded, but full,--and it was rarely

even in that house that so many distinguished persons were collected

together. A young man thus honoured by so _grande_ a dame as Lady

Glenalvon could not but be cordially welcomed by all to whom she

presented him, Ministers and Parliamentary leaders, ball-givers, and

beauties in vogue,--even authors and artists; and there was something in

Kenelm Chillingly, in his striking countenance and figure, in that calm

ease of manner natural to his indifference to effect, which seemed to

justify the favour shown to him by the brilliant princess of fashion and

mark him out for general observation.

That first evening of his reintroduction to the polite world was

a success which few young men of his years achieve. He produced a

sensation. Just as the rooms were thinning, Lady Glenalvon whispered to

Kenelm,--

“Come this way: there is one person I must reintroduce you to; thank me

for it hereafter.”

Kenelm followed the marchioness, and found himself face to face with

Cecilia Travers. She was leaning on her father’s arm, looking very

handsome, and her beauty was heightened by the blush which overspread

her cheeks as Kenelm Chillingly approached.

Travers greeted him with great cordiality; and Lady Glenalvon asking him

to escort her to the refreshment-room, Kenelm had no option but to offer

his arm to Cecilia.

Kenelm felt somewhat embarrassed. “Have you been long in town, Miss

Travers?”

“A little more than a week, but we only settled into our house

yesterday.”

“Ah, indeed! were you then the young lady who--” He stopped short, and

his face grew gentler and graver in its expression.

“The young lady who--what?” asked Cecilia with a smile.

“Who has been staying with Lady Glenalvon?”

“Yes; did she tell you?”

“She did not mention your name, but praised that young lady so justly

that I ought to have guessed it.”

Cecilia made some not very audible answer, and on entering the

refreshment-room other young men gathered round her, and Lady Glenalvon

and Kenelm remained silent in the midst of a general small-talk. When

Travers, after giving his address to Kenelm, and, of course, pressing

him to call, left the house with Cecilia, Kenelm said to Lady Glenalvon,

musingly, “So that is the young lady in whom I was to see my fate: you

knew that we had met before?”

“Yes, she told me when and where. Besides, it is not two years since you

wrote to me from her father’s house. Do you forget?”

“Ah,” said Kenelm, so abstractedly that he seemed to be dreaming, “no

man with his eyes open rushes on his fate: when he does so his sight is

gone. Love is blind. They say the blind are very happy, yet I never met

a blind man who would not recover his sight if he could.”

CHAPTER IV.

Mr. CHILLINGLY MIVERS never gave a dinner at his own rooms. When he

did give a dinner it was at Greenwich or Richmond. But he gave

breakfast-parties pretty often, and they were considered pleasant.

He had handsome bachelor apartments in Grosvenor Street, daintily

furnished, with a prevalent air of exquisite neatness, a good library

stored with books of reference, and adorned with presentation copies

from authors of the day, very beautifully bound. Though the room served

for the study of the professed man of letters, it had none of the untidy

litter which generally characterizes the study of one whose vocation it

is to deal with books and papers. Even the implements for writing

were not apparent, except when required. They lay concealed in a vast

cylinder bureau, French made, and French polished. Within that bureau

were numerous pigeon-holes and secret drawers, and a profound well with

a separate patent lock. In the well were deposited the articles intended

for publication in “The Londoner,” proof-sheets, etc.; pigeon-holes

were devoted to ordinary correspondence; secret drawers to confidential

notes, and outlines of biographies of eminent men now living, but

intended to be completed for publication the day after their death.

No man wrote such funeral compositions with a livelier pen than that

of Chillingly Mivers; and the large and miscellaneous circle of

his visiting acquaintances allowed him to ascertain, whether by

authoritative report or by personal observation, the signs of mortal

disease in the illustrious friends whose dinners he accepted, and whose

failing pulses he instinctively felt in returning the pressure of their

hands; so that he was often able to put the finishing-stroke to their

obituary memorials days, weeks, even months, before their fate took the

public by surprise. That cylinder bureau was in harmony with the secrecy

in which this remarkable man shrouded the productions of his brain. In

his literary life Mivers had no “I,” there he was ever the inscrutable,

mysterious “We.” He was only “I” when you met him in the world, and

called him Mivers.

Adjoining the library on one side was a small dining or rather breakfast

room, hung with valuable pictures,--presents from living painters.

Many of these painters had been severely handled by Mr. Mivers in his

existence as “We,”--not always in “The Londoner.” His most pungent

criticisms were often contributed to other intellectual journals

conducted by members of the same intellectual clique. Painters knew not

how contemptuously “We” had treated them when they met Mr. Mivers.

His “I” was so complimentary that they sent him a tribute of their

gratitude.

On the other side was his drawing-room, also enriched by many gifts,

chiefly from fair hands,--embroidered cushions and table-covers, bits

of Sevres or old Chelsea, elegant knick-knacks of all kinds. Fashionable

authoresses paid great court to Mr. Mivers; and in the course of his

life as a single man, he had other female adorers besides fashionable

authoresses.

Mr. Mivers had already returned from his early constitutional walk

in the Park, and was now seated by the cylinder _secretaire_ with a

mild-looking man, who was one of the most merciless contributors to “The

Londoner” and no unimportant councillor in the oligarchy of the clique

that went by the name of the “Intellectuals.”

“Well,” said Mivers, languidly, “I can’t even get through the book;

it is as dull as the country in November. But, as you justly say,

the writer is an ‘Intellectual,’ and a clique would be anything

but intellectual if it did not support its members. Review the book

yourself; mind and make the dulness of it the signal proof of its merit.

Say: ‘To the ordinary class of readers this exquisite work may appear

less brilliant than the flippant smartness of’--any other author you

like to name; ‘but to the well educated and intelligent every line is

pregnant with,’ etc. By the way, when we come by and by to review the

exhibition at Burlington House, there is one painter whom we must try

our best to crush. I have not seen his pictures myself, but he is a new

man; and our friend, who has seen him, is terribly jealous of him, and

says that if the good judges do not put him down at once, the villanous

taste of the public will set him up as a prodigy. A low-lived fellow

too, I hear. There is the name of the man and the subject of the

pictures. See to it when the time comes. Meanwhile, prepare the way for

onslaught on the pictures by occasional sneers at the painter.” Here

Mr. Mivers took out of his cylinder a confidential note from the jealous

rival and handed it to his mild-looking _confrere_; then rising, he

said, “I fear we must suspend our business till to-morrow; I expect two

young cousins to breakfast.”

As soon as the mild-looking man was gone, Mr. Mivers sauntered to his

drawing-room window, amiably offering a lump of sugar to a canary-bird

sent to him as a present the day before, and who, in the gilded cage

which made part of the present, scanned him suspiciously and refused the

sugar.

Time had remained very gentle in its dealings with Chillingly Mivers.

He scarcely looked a day older than when he was first presented to the

reader on the birth of his kinsman Kenelm. He was reaping the fruit of

his own sage maxims. Free from whiskers and safe in wig, there was no

sign of gray, no suspicion of dye. Superiority to passion, abnegation of

sorrow, indulgence of amusement, avoidance of excess, had kept away the

crow’s-feet, preserved the elasticity of his frame and the unflushed

clearness of his gentlemanlike complexion. The door opened, and a

well-dressed valet, who had lived long enough with Mivers to grow very

much like him, announced Mr. Chillingly Gordon.

“Good morning,” said Mivers; “I was much pleased to see you talking so

long and so familiarly with Danvers: others, of course, observed it, and

it added a step to your career. It does you great good to be seen in a

drawing-room talking apart with a Somebody. But may I ask if the talk

itself was satisfactory?”

“Not at all: Danvers throws cold water on the notion of Saxboro’, and

does not even hint that his party will help me to any other opening.

Party has few openings at its disposal nowadays for any young man. The

schoolmaster being abroad has swept away the school for statesmen as

he has swept away the school for actors,--an evil, and an evil of a far

greater consequence to the destinies of the nation than any good likely

to be got from the system that succeeded it.”

“But it is of no use railing against things that can’t be helped. If I

were you, I would postpone all ambition of Parliament and read for the

bar.”

“The advice is sound, but too unpalatable to be taken. I am resolved to

find a seat in the House, and where there is a will there is a way.”

“I am not so sure of that.”

“But I am.”

“Judging by what your contemporaries at the University tell me of your

speeches at the Debating Society, you were not then an ultra-Radical.

But it is only an ultra-Radical who has a chance of success at

Saxboro’.”

“I am no fanatic in politics. There is much to be said on all sides:

_coeteris paribus_, I prefer the winning side to the losing; nothing

succeeds like success.”

“Ay, but in politics there is always reaction. The winning side one day

may be the losing side another. The losing side represents a minority,

and a minority is sure to comprise more intellect than a majority: in

the long run intellect will force its way, get a majority and then lose

it, because with a majority it will become stupid.”