“Cousin Mivers, does not the history of the world show you that a single

individual can upset all theories as to the comparative wisdom of the

few or the many? Take the wisest few you can find, and one man of genius

not a tithe so wise crushes them into powder. But then that man of

genius, though he despises the many, must make use of them. That

done, he rules them. Don’t you see how in free countries political

destinations resolve themselves into individual impersonations? At

a general election it is one name around which electors rally. The

candidate may enlarge as much as he pleases on political principles, but

all his talk will not win him votes enough for success, unless he says,

‘I go with Mr. A.,’ the minister, or with Mr. Z., the chief of the

opposition. It was not the Tories who beat the Whigs when Mr. Pitt

dissolved Parliament. It was Mr. Pitt who beat Mr. Fox, with whom in

general political principle--slave-trade, Roman Catholic emancipation,

Parliamentary reform--he certainly agreed much more than he did with any

man in his own cabinet.”

“Take care, my young cousin,” cried Mivers, in accents of alarm; “don’t

set up for a man of genius. Genius is the worst quality a public man can

have nowadays: nobody heeds it, and everybody is jealous of it.”

“Pardon me, you mistake; my remark was purely objective, and intended

as a reply to your argument. I prefer at present to go with the many

because it is the winning side. If we then want a man of genius to keep

it the winning side, by subjugating its partisans to his will, he will

be sure to come. The few will drive him to us, for the few are always

the enemies of the one man of genius. It is they who distrust,--it is

they who are jealous,--not the many. You have allowed your judgment,

usually so clear, to be somewhat dimmed by your experience as a critic.

The critics are the few. They have infinitely more culture than the

many. But when a man of real genius appears and asserts himself, the

critics are seldom such fair judges of him as the many are. If he be not

one of their oligarchical clique, they either abuse, or disparage, or

affect to ignore him; though a time at last comes when, having gained

the many, the critics acknowledge him. But the difference between the

man of action and the author is this, that the author rarely finds this

acknowledgment till he is dead, and it is necessary to the man of action

to enforce it while he is alive. But enough of this speculation: you ask

me to meet Kenelm; is he not coming?”

“Yes, but I did not ask him till ten o’clock. I asked you at half-past

nine, because I wished to hear about Danvers and Saxboro’, and also to

prepare you somewhat for your introduction to your cousin. I must be

brief as to the last, for it is only five minutes to the hour, and he

is a man likely to be punctual. Kenelm is in all ways your opposite. I

don’t know whether he is cleverer or less clever; there is no scale of

measurement between you: but he is wholly void of ambition, and might

possibly assist yours. He can do what he likes with Sir Peter;

and considering how your poor father--a worthy man, but

cantankerous--harassed and persecuted Sir Peter, because Kenelm came

between the estate and you, it is probable that Sir Peter bears you a

grudge, though Kenelm declares him incapable of it; and it would be

well if you could annul that grudge in the father by conciliating the

goodwill of the son.”

“I should be glad so to annul it; but what is Kenelm’s weak side?--the

turf? the hunting-field? women? poetry? One can only conciliate a man by

getting on his weak side.”

“Hist! I see him from the windows. Kenelm’s weak side was, when I knew

him some years ago, and I rather fancy it still is--”

“Well, make haste! I hear his ring at your door-bell.”

“A passionate longing to find ideal truth in real life.”

“Ah!” said Gordon, “as I thought,--a mere dreamer”

CHAPTER V.

KENELM entered the room. The young cousins were introduced, shook hands,

receded a step, and gazed at each other. It is scarcely possible

to conceive a greater contrast outwardly than that between the two

Chillingly representatives of the rising generation. Each was silently

impressed by the sense of that contrast. Each felt that the contrast

implied antagonism, and that if they two met in the same arena it must

be as rival combatants; still, by some mysterious intuition, each felt a

certain respect for the other, each divined in the other a power that

he could not fairly estimate, but against which his own power would

be strongly tasked to contend. So might exchange looks a thorough-bred

deer-hound and a half-bred mastiff: the bystander could scarcely doubt

which was the nobler animal; but he might hesitate which to bet on, if

the two came to deadly quarrel. Meanwhile the thorough-bred deer-hound

and the half-bred mastiff sniffed at each other in polite salutation.

Gordon was the first to give tongue.

“I have long wished to know you personally,” said he, throwing into his

voice and manner that delicate kind of deference which a well-born cadet

owes to the destined head of his house. “I cannot conceive how I missed

you last night at Lady Beaumanoir’s, where Mivers tells me he met you;

but I left early.”

Here Mivers led the way to the breakfast-room, and, there seated, the

host became the principal talker, running with lively glibness over the

principal topics of the day,--the last scandal, the last new book, the

reform of the army, the reform of the turf, the critical state of Spain,

and the debut of an Italian singer. He seemed an embodied Journal,

including the Leading Article, the Law Reports, Foreign Intelligence,

the Court Circular, down to the Births, Deaths, and Marriages. Gordon

from time to time interrupted this flow of soul with brief, trenchant

remarks, which evinced his own knowledge of the subjects treated, and

a habit of looking on all subjects connected with the pursuits and

business of mankind from a high ground appropriated to himself, and

through the medium of that blue glass which conveys a wintry aspect to

summer landscapes. Kenelm said little, but listened attentively.

The conversation arrested its discursive nature, to settle upon a

political chief, the highest in fame and station of that party to which

Mivers professed--not to belong, he belonged to himself alone, but to

appropinquate. Mivers spoke of this chief with the greatest distrust,

and in a spirit of general depreciation. Gordon acquiesced in the

distrust and the depreciation, adding, “But he is master of the

position, and must, of course, be supported through thick and thin for

the present.”

“Yes, for the present,” said Mivers, “one has no option. But you will

see some clever articles in ‘The Londoner’ towards the close of the

session, which will damage him greatly, by praising him in the wrong

place, and deepening the alarm of important followers,--an alarm now at

work, though suppressed.”

Here Kenelm asked, in humble tones, why Gordon thought that a minister

he considered so untrustworthy and dangerous must for the present be

supported through thick and thin.

“Because at present a member elected so to support him would lose his

seat if he did not: needs must when the devil drives.”

KENELM.--“When the devil drives, I should have thought it better to

resign one’s seat on the coach; perhaps one might be of some use, out of

it, in helping to put on the drag.”

MIVERS.--“Cleverly said, Kenelm. But, metaphor apart, Gordon is right.

A young politician must go with his party; a veteran journalist like

myself is more independent. So long as the journalist blames everybody,

he will have plenty of readers.”

Kenelm made no reply, and Gordon changed the conversation from men

to measures. He spoke of some Bills before Parliament with remarkable

ability, evincing much knowledge of the subject, much critical

acuteness, illustrating their defects, and proving the danger of their

ultimate consequences.

Kenelm was greatly struck with the vigour of this cold, clear mind, and

owned to himself that the House of Commons was a fitting place for its

development.

“But,” said Mivers, “would you not be obliged to defend these Bills if

you were member for Saxboro’?”

“Before I answer your question, answer me this: dangerous as the Bills

are, is it not necessary that they shall pass? Have not the public so

resolved?”

“There can be no doubt of that.”

“Then the member for Saxboro’ cannot be strong enough to go against the

public.”

“Progress of the age!” said Kenelm, musingly. “Do you think the class of

gentlemen will long last in England?”

“What do you call gentlemen? The aristocracy by birth?--the

_gentilshommes_?”

“Nay, I suppose no laws can take away a man’s ancestors, and a class of

well-born men is not to be exterminated. But a mere class of well-born

men--without duties, responsibilities, or sentiment of that which

becomes good birth in devotion to country or individual honour--does no

good to a nation. It is a misfortune which statesmen of democratic creed

ought to recognize, that the class of the well-born cannot be destroyed:

it must remain as it remained in Rome and remains in France, after all

efforts to extirpate it, as the most dangerous class of citizens when

you deprive it of the attributes which made it the most serviceable.

I am not speaking of that class; I speak of that unclassified order

peculiar to England, which, no doubt, forming itself originally from

the ideal standard of honour and truth supposed to be maintained by the

_gentilshommes_, or well-born, no longer requires pedigrees and acres to

confer upon its members the designation of gentleman; and when I hear

a ‘gentleman’ say that he has no option but to think one thing and say

another, at whatever risk to his country, I feel as if in the progress

of the age the class of gentleman was about to be superseded by some

finer development of species.”

Therewith Kenelm rose, and would have taken his departure, if Gordon had

not seized his hand and detained him.

“My dear cousin, if I may so call you,” he said, with the frank manner

which was usual to him, and which suited well the bold expression of his

face and the clear ring of his voice, “I am one of those who, from an

over-dislike to sentimentality and cant, often make those not intimately

acquainted with them think worse of their principles than they deserve.

It may be quite true that a man who goes with his party dislikes the

measures he feels bound to support, and says so openly when among

friends and relations, yet that man is not therefore devoid of loyalty

and honour; and I trust, when you know me better, you will not think it

likely I should derogate from that class of gentlemen to which we both

belong.”

“Pardon me if I seemed rude,” answered Kenelm; “ascribe it to my

ignorance of the necessities of public life. It struck me that where a

politician thought a thing evil, he ought not to support it as good. But

I dare say I am mistaken.”

“Entirely mistaken,” said Mivers, “and for this reason: in politics

formerly there was a direct choice between good and evil. That rarely

exists now. Men of high education, having to choose whether to accept or

reject a measure forced upon their option by constituent bodies of very

low education, are called upon to weigh evil against evil,--the evil of

accepting or the evil of rejecting; and if they resolve on the first, it

is as the lesser evil of the two.”

“Your definition is perfect,” said Gordon, “and I am contented to rest

on it my excuse for what my cousin deems insincerity.”

“I suppose that is real life,” said Kenelm, with his mournful smile.

“Of course it is,” said Mivers.

“Every day I live,” sighed Kenelm, “still more confirms my conviction

that real life is a phantasmal sham. How absurd it is in philosophers to

deny the existence of apparitions! what apparitions we, living men, must

seem to the ghosts!

“‘The spirits of the wise

Sit in the clouds and mock us.’”

CHAPTER VI.

CHILLINGLY GORDON did not fail to confirm his acquaintance with Kenelm.

He very often looked in upon him of a morning, sometimes joined him

in his afternoon rides, introduced him to men of his own set who were

mostly busy members of Parliament, rising barristers, or political

journalists, but not without a proportion of brilliant idlers,--club

men, sporting men, men of fashion, rank, and fortune. He did so with a

purpose, for these persons spoke well of him,--spoke well not only

of his talents, but of his honourable character. His general nickname

amongst them was “HONEST GORDON.” Kenelm at first thought this sobriquet

must be ironical; not a bit of it. It was given to him on account of

the candour and boldness with which he expressed opinions embodying that

sort of cynicism which is vulgarly called “the absence of humbug.” The

man was certainly no hypocrite; he affected no beliefs which he did not

entertain. And he had very few beliefs in anything, except the first

half of the adage, “Every man for himself,--and God for us all.”

But whatever Chillingly Gordon’s theoretical disbeliefs in things which

make the current creed of the virtuous, there was nothing in his conduct

which evinced predilection for vices: he was strictly upright in all

his dealings, and in delicate matters of honour was a favourite umpire

amongst his coevals. Though so frankly ambitious, no one could accuse

him of attempting to climb on the shoulders of patrons. There was

nothing servile in his nature; and, though he was perfectly prepared to

bribe electors if necessary, no money could have bought himself. His one

master-passion was the desire of power. He sneered at patriotism as a

worn-out prejudice, at philanthropy as a sentimental catch-word. He did

not want to serve his country, but to rule it. He did not want to

raise mankind, but to rise himself. He was therefore unscrupulous,

unprincipled, as hungerers after power for itself too often are; yet

still if he got power he would probably use it well, from the clearness

and strength of his mental perceptions. The impression he made on Kenelm

may be seen in the following letter:--

TO SIR PETER CHILLINGLY, BART., ETC.

MY DEAR FATHER,--You and my dear mother will be pleased to hear that

London continues very polite to me: that “arida nutrix leonum” enrolls

me among the pet class of lions which ladies of fashion admit into the

society of their lapdogs. It is somewhere about six years since I was

allowed to gaze on this peep-show through the loopholes of Mr. Welby’s

retreat. It appears to me, perhaps erroneously, that even within that

short space of time the tone of “society” is perceptibly changed. That

the change is for the better is an assertion I leave to those who belong

to the _progressista_ party.

I don’t think nearly so many young ladies six years ago painted their

eyelids and dyed their hair: a few of them there might be, imitators of

the slang invented by schoolboys and circulated through the medium of

small novelists; they might use such expressions as “stunning,” “cheek,”

“awfully jolly,” etc. But now I find a great many who have advanced to

a slang beyond that of verbal expressions,--a slang of mind, a slang

of sentiment, a slang in which very little seems left of the woman and

nothing at all of the lady.

Newspaper essayists assert that the young men of the day are to blame

for this; that the young men like it; and the fair husband-anglers dress

their flies in the colours most likely to attract a nibble. Whether this

excuse be the true one I cannot pretend to judge; but it strikes me that

the men about my own age who affect to be fast are a more languid race

than the men from ten to twenty years older, whom they regard as _slow_.

The habit of dram-drinking in the morning is a very new idea, an idea

greatly in fashion at the moment. Adonis calls for a “pick-me-up” before

he has strength enough to answer a _billet-doux_ from Venus. Adonis

has not the strength to get nobly drunk, but his delicate constitution

requires stimulants, and he is always tippling.

The men of high birth or renown for social success belonging, my

dear father, to your time, are still distinguished by an air of good

breeding, by a style of conversation more or less polished and not

without evidences of literary culture, from men of the same rank in

my generation, who appear to pride themselves on respecting nobody and

knowing nothing, not even grammar. Still we are assured that the world

goes on steadily improving. _That_ new idea is in full vigour.

Society in the concrete has become wonderfully conceited as to its

own progressive excellences, and the individuals who form the concrete

entertain the same complacent opinion of themselves. There are, of

course, even in my brief and imperfect experience, many exceptions to

what appear to me the prevalent characteristics of the rising generation

in “society.” Of these exceptions I must content myself with naming the

most remarkable. _Place aux dames_, the first I name is Cecilia Travers.

She and her father are now in town, and I meet them frequently. I

can conceive no civilized era in the world which a woman like Cecilia

Travers would not grace and adorn, because she is essentially the type

of woman as man likes to imagine woman; namely, on the fairest side of

the womanly character. And I say “woman” rather than “girl,” because

among “Girls of the Period” Cecilia Travers cannot be classed. You might

call her damsel, virgin, maiden, but you could no more call her girl

than you could call a well-born French demoiselle _fille_. She is

handsome enough to please the eye of any man, however fastidious, but

not that kind of beauty which dazzles all men too much to fascinate one

man; for--speaking, thank Heaven, from mere theory--I apprehend that the

love for woman has in it a strong sense of property; that one requires

to individualize one’s possession as being wholly one’s own, and not

a possession which all the public are invited to admire. I can readily

understand how a rich man, who has what is called a show place, in which

the splendid rooms and the stately gardens are open to all inspectors,

so that he has no privacy in his own demesnes, runs away to a pretty

cottage which he has all to himself, and of which he can say, “_This_ is

home; _this_ is all mine.”

But there are some kinds of beauty which are eminently show

places,--which the public think they have as much a right to admire as

the owner has; and the show place itself would be dull and perhaps fall

out of repair, if the public could be excluded from the sight of it.

The beauty of Cecilia Travers is not that of a show place. There is a

feeling of safety in her. If Desdemona had been like her, Othello would

not have been jealous. But then Cecilia would not have deceived her

father; nor I think have told a blackamoor that she wished “Heaven

had made her such a man.” Her mind harmonizes with her person: it is

a companionable mind. Her talents are not showy, but, take them

altogether, they form a pleasant whole: she has good sense enough in

the practical affairs of life, and enough of that ineffable womanly gift

called tact to counteract the effects of whimsical natures like mine,

and yet enough sense of the humouristic views of life not to take too

literally all that a whimsical man like myself may say. As to temper,

one never knows what a woman’s temper is--till one puts her out of it.

But I imagine hers, in its normal state, to be serene, and disposed to

be cheerful. Now, my dear father, if you were not one of the cleverest

of men you would infer from this eulogistic mention of Cecilia Travers

that I was in love with her. But you no doubt will detect the truth that

a man in love with a woman does not weigh her merits with so steady a

hand as that which guides this steel pen. I am not in love with Cecilia

Travers. I wish I were. When Lady Glenalvon, who remains wonderfully

kind to me, says, day after day, “Cecilia Travers would make you a

perfect wife,” I have no answer to give; but I don’t feel the least

inclined to ask Cecilia Travers if she would waste her perfection on one

who so coldly concedes it.

I find that she persisted in rejecting the man whom her father wished

her to marry, and that he has consoled himself by marrying somebody

else. No doubt other suitors as worthy will soon present themselves.

Oh, dearest of all my friends,--sole friend whom I regard as a

confidant,--shall I ever be in love? and if not, why not? Sometimes

I feel as if, with love as with ambition, it is because I have some

impossible ideal in each, that I must always remain indifferent to the

sort of love and the sort of ambition which are within my reach. I have

an idea that if I did love, I should love as intensely as Romeo, and

that thought inspires me with vague forebodings of terror; and if I

did find an object to arouse my ambition, I could be as earnest in its

pursuit as--whom shall I name?--Caesar or Cato? I like Cato’s

ambition the better of the two. But people nowadays call ambition an

impracticable crotchet, if it be invested on the losing side. Cato would

have saved Rome from the mob and the dictator; but Rome could not be

saved, and Cato falls on his own sword. Had we a Cato now, the verdict

at a coroner’s inquest would be, “suicide while in a state of unsound

mind;” and the verdict would have been proved by his senseless

resistance to a mob and a dictator! Talking of ambition, I come to the

other exception to the youth of the day; I have named a _demoiselle_, I

now name a _damoiseau_. Imagine a man of about five-and-twenty, and who

is morally about fifty years older than a healthy man of sixty,--imagine

him with the brain of age and the flower of youth; with a heart absorbed

into the brain, and giving warm blood to frigid ideas: a man who sneers

at everything I call lofty, yet would do nothing that he thinks mean; to

whom vice and virtue are as indifferent as they were to the Aesthetics

of Goethe; who would never jeopardize his career as a practical reasoner

by an imprudent virtue, and never sully his reputation by a degrading

vice. Imagine this man with an intellect keen, strong, ready,

unscrupulous, dauntless,--all cleverness and no genius. Imagine this

man, and then do not be astonished when I tell you he is a Chillingly.

The Chillingly race culminates in him, and becomes Chillinglyest. In

fact, it seems to me that we live in a day precisely suited to the

Chillingly idiosyncrasies. During the ten centuries or more that our

race has held local habitation and a name, it has been as airy nothings.

Its representatives lived in hot-blooded times, and were compelled to

skulk in still water with their emblematic daces. But the times now, my

dear father, are so cold-blooded that you can’t be too cold-blooded to

prosper. What could Chillingly Mivers have been in an age when people

cared twopence-halfpenny about their religious creeds, and their

political parties deemed their cause was sacred and their leaders were

heroes? Chillingly Mivers would not have found five subscribers to

“The Londoner.” But now “The Londoner” is the favourite organ of the

intellectual public; it sneers away all the foundations of the social

system, without an attempt at reconstruction; and every new journal set

up, if it keep its head above water, models itself on “The Londoner.”

Chillingly Mivers is a great man, and the most potent writer of the age,

though nobody knows what he has written. Chillingly Gordon is a still

more notable instance of the rise of the Chillingly worth in the modern

market.

There is a general impression in the most authoritative circles that

Chillingly Gordon will have high rank in the van of the coming men. His

confidence in himself is so thorough that it infects all with whom he

comes into contact,--myself included.

He said to me the other day, with a _sang-froid_ worthy of the iciest

Chillingly, “I mean to be Prime Minister of England: it is only a

question of time.” Now, if Chillingly Gordon is to be Prime Minister, it

will be because the increasing cold of our moral and social atmosphere

will exactly suit the development of his talents.

He is the man above all others to argue down the declaimers of

old-fashioned sentimentalities,--love of country, care for its position

among nations, zeal for its honour, pride in its renown. (Oh, if

you could hear him philosophically and logically sneer away the word

“prestige”!) Such notions are fast being classified as “bosh.” And

when that classification is complete,--when England has no colonies to

defend, no navy to pay for, no interest in the affairs of other nations,

and has attained to the happy condition of Holland,--then Chillingly

Gordon will be her Prime Minister.

Yet while, if ever I am stung into political action, it will be by

abnegation of the Chillingly attributes, and in opposition, however

hopeless, to Chillingly Gordon, I feel that this man cannot be

suppressed, and ought to have fair play; his ambition will be infinitely

more dangerous if it become soured by delay. I propose, my dear father,

that you should have the honour of laying this clever kinsman under

an obligation, and enabling him to enter Parliament. In our last

conversation at Exmundham, you told me of the frank resentment of Gordon

_pere_, when my coming into the world shut him out from the Exmundham

inheritance; you confided to me your intention at that time to lay

by yearly a sum that might ultimately serve as a provision for Gordon

_fils_, and as some compensation for the loss of his expectations when

you realized your hope of an heir; you told me also how this generous

intention on your part had been frustrated by a natural indignation at

the elder Gordon’s conduct in his harassing and costly litigation, and

by the addition you had been tempted to make to the estate in a purchase

which added to its acreage, but at a rate of interest which diminished

your own income, and precluded the possibility of further savings. Now,

chancing to meet your lawyer, Mr. Vining, the other day, I learned from

him that it had been long a wish which your delicacy prevented your

naming to me, that I, to whom the fee-simple descends, should join with

you in cutting off the entail and resettling the estate. He showed me

what an advantage this would be to the property, because it would leave

your hands free for many improvements in which I heartily go with the

progress of the age, for which, as merely tenant for life, you could not

raise the money except upon ruinous terms; new cottages for labourers,

new buildings for tenants, the consolidation of some old mortgages and

charges on the rent-roll, etc. And allow me to add that I should like

to make a large increase to the jointure of my dear mother. Vining says,

too, that there is a part of the outlying land which, as being near a

town, could be sold to considerable profit if the estate were resettled.

Let us hasten to complete the necessary deeds, and so obtain the L20,000

required for the realization of your noble and, let me add, your just

desire to do something for Chillingly Gordon. In the new deeds of

settlement we could insure the power of willing the estate as we

pleased, and I am strongly against devising it to Chillingly Gordon.

It may be a crotchet of mine, but one which I think you share, that the

owner of English soil should have a son’s love for the native land, and

Gordon will never have that. I think, too, that it will be best for his

own career, and for the establishment of a frank understanding between

us and himself, that he should be fairly told that he would not be

benefited in the event of our death. Twenty thousand pounds given to him

now would be a greater boon to him than ten times the sum twenty years

later. With that at his command, he can enter Parliament, and have an

income, added to what he now possesses, if modest, still sufficient to

make him independent of a minister’s patronage.

Pray humour me, my dearest father, in the proposition I venture to

submit to you.

Your affectionate son, KENELM.

FROM SIR PETER CHILLINGLY TO KENELM CHILLINGLY.

MY DEAR BOY,--You are not worthy to be a Chillingly; you are decidedly

warm-blooded: never was a load lifted off a man’s mind with a gentler

hand. Yes, I have wished to cut off the entail and resettle the

property; but, as it was eminently to my advantage to do so, I shrank

from asking it, though eventually it would be almost as much to your own

advantage. What with the purchase I made of the Faircleuch lands--which

I could only effect by money borrowed at high interest on my personal

security, and paid off by yearly instalments, eating largely into

income--and the old mortgages, etc., I own I have been pinched of late

years. But what rejoices me the most is the power to make homes for our

honest labourers more comfortable, and nearer to their work, which last

is the chief point, for the old cottages in themselves are not bad; the

misfortune is, when you build an extra room for the children, the silly

people let it out to a lodger.

My dear boy, I am very much touched by your wish to increase your

mother’s jointure,--a very proper wish, independently of filial feeling,

for she brought to the estate a very pretty fortune, which, the trustees

consented to my investing in land; and though the land completed our

ring-fence, it does not bring in two per cent, and the conditions of

the entail limited the right of jointure to an amount below that which a

widowed Lady Chillingly may fairly expect.

I care more about the provision on these points than I do for the

interests of old Chillingly Gordon’s son. I had meant to behave very

handsomely to the father; and when the return for behaving handsomely

is being put into Chancery--A Worm Will Turn. Nevertheless, I agree with

you that a son should not be punished for his father’s faults; and, if

the sacrifice of L20,000 makes you and myself feel that we are better

Christians and truer gentlemen, we shall buy that feeling very cheaply.

Sir Peter then proceeded, half jestingly, half seriously, to combat

Kenelm’s declaration that he was not in love with Cecilia Travers; and,

urging the advantages of marriage with one whom Kenelm allowed would be

a perfect wife, astutely remarked that unless Kenelm had a son of his

own it did not seem to him quite just to the next of kin to will the

property from him, upon no better plea than the want of love for his

native country. “He would love his country fast enough if he had 10,000

acres in it.”

Kenelm shook his head when he came to this sentence.

“Is even then love for one’s country but cupboard-love after all?” said

he; and he postponed finishing the perusal of his father’s letter.

CHAPTER VII.

KENELM CHILLINGLY did not exaggerate the social position he had acquired

when he classed himself amongst the lions of the fashionable world. I

dare not count the number of three-cornered notes showered upon him by

the fine ladies who grow romantic upon any kind of celebrity; or the

carefully sealed envelopes, containing letters from fair Anonymas, who

asked if he had a heart, and would be in such a place in the Park at

such an hour. What there was in Kenelm Chillingly that should make him

thus favoured, especially by the fair sex, it would be difficult to say,

unless it was the two-fold reputation of being unlike other people, and

of being unaffectedly indifferent to the gain of any reputation at all.

He might, had he so pleased, have easily established a proof that

the prevalent though vague belief in his talents was not altogether

unjustified. For the articles he had sent from abroad to “The Londoner”

and by which his travelling expenses were defrayed, had been stamped

by that sort of originality in tone and treatment which rarely fails to

excite curiosity as to the author, and meets with more general praise

than perhaps it deserves.

But Mivers was true to his contract to preserve inviolable the incognito

of the author, and Kenelm regarded with profound contempt the articles

themselves and the readers who praised them.

Just as misanthropy with some persons grows out of benevolence

disappointed, so there are certain natures--and Kenelm Chillingly’s was

perhaps one of them--in which indifferentism grows out of earnestness

baffled.

He had promised himself pleasure in renewing acquaintance with his old

tutor, Mr. Welby,--pleasure in refreshing his own taste for metaphysics

and casuistry and criticism. But that accomplished professor of realism

had retired from philosophy altogether, and was now enjoying a holiday

for life in the business of a public office. A minister in favour of

whom, when in opposition, Mr. Welby, in a moment of whim, wrote some

very able articles in a leading journal, had, on acceding to power,

presented the realist with one of those few good things still left to

ministerial patronage,--a place worth about L1,200 a year. His mornings

thus engaged in routine work, Mr. Welby enjoyed his evenings in a

convivial way.

“_Inveni portum_,” he said to Kenelm; “I plunge into no troubled waters

now. But come and dine with me to-morrow, tete-a-tete. My wife is at

St. Leonard’s with my youngest born for the benefit of sea-air.” Kenelm

accepted the invitation.

The dinner would have contented a Brillat-Savarin: it was faultless; and

the claret was that rare nectar, the Lafitte of 1848.

“I never share this,” said Welby, “with more than one friend at a time.”

Kenelm sought to engage his host in discussion on certain new works in

vogue, and which were composed according to purely realistic canons of

criticism. “The more realistic; these books pretend to be, the less

real they are,” said Kenelm. “I am half inclined to think that the whole

school you so systematically sought to build up is a mistake, and that

realism in art is a thing impossible.”

“I dare say you are right. I took up that school in earnest because I

was in a passion with pretenders to the Idealistic school; and whatever

one takes up in earnest is generally a mistake, especially if one is in

a passion. I was not in earnest and I was not in a passion when I wrote

those articles to which I am indebted for my office.” Mr. Welby here

luxuriously stretched his limbs, and lifting his glass to his lips,

voluptuously inhaled its bouquet.

“You sadden me,” returned Kenelm. “It is a melancholy thing to find that

one’s mind was influenced in youth by a teacher who mocks at his own

teachings.”

Welby shrugged his shoulders. “Life consists in the alternate process of

learning and unlearning; but it is often wiser to unlearn than to learn.

For the rest, as I have ceased to be a critic, I care little whether I

was wrong or right when I played that part. I think I am right now as a

placeman. Let the world go its own way, provided the world lets you live

upon it. I drain my wine to the lees, and cut down hope to the brief

span of life. Reject realism in art if you please, and accept realism in

conduct. For the first time in my life I am comfortable: my mind, having

worn out its walking-shoes, is now enjoying the luxury of slippers. Who

can deny the realism of comfort?”

“Has a man a right,” Kenelm said to himself, as he entered his brougham,

“to employ all the brilliancy of a rare wit, all the acquisitions of as

rare a scholarship, to the scaring of the young generation out of the

safe old roads which youth left to itself would take,--old roads skirted

by romantic rivers and bowery trees,--directing them into new paths on

long sandy flats, and then, when they are faint and footsore, to tell

them that he cares not a pin whether they have worn out their shoes in

right paths or wrong paths, for that he has attained the _summum bonum_

of philosophy in the comfort of easy slippers?”

Before he could answer the question he thus put to himself, his brougham

stopped at the door of the minister whom Welby had contributed to bring

into power.

That night there was a crowded muster of the fashionable world at the

great man’s house. It happened to be a very critical moment for the

minister. The fate of his cabinet depended on the result of a motion

about to be made the following week in the House of Commons. The great

man stood at the entrance of the apartments to receive his guests, and

among the guests were the framers of the hostile motion and the leaders

of the opposition. His smile was not less gracious to them than to his

dearest friends and stanchest supporters.

“I suppose this is realism,” said Kenelm to himself; “but it is not

truth, and it is not comfort.” Leaning against the wall near the

doorway, he contemplated with grave interest the striking countenance

of his distinguished host. He detected beneath that courteous smile

and that urbane manner the signs of care. The eye was absent, the cheek

pinched, the brow furrowed. Kenelm turned away his looks, and glanced

over the animated countenances of the idle loungers along commoner

thoroughfares in life. Their eyes were not absent; their brows were

not furrowed; their minds seemed quite at home in exchanging nothings.

Interest many of them had in the approaching struggle, but it was

much such an interest as betters of small sums may have on the Derby

day,--just enough to give piquancy to the race; nothing to make gain a

great joy, or loss a keen anguish.

“Our host is looking ill,” said Mivers, accosting Kenelm. “I detect

symptoms of suppressed gout. You know my aphorism, ‘nothing so gouty as

ambition,’ especially Parliamentary ambition.”

“You are not one of those friends who press on my choice of life that

source of disease; allow me to thank you.”

“Your thanks are misplaced. I strongly advise you to devote yourself to

a political career.”

“Despite the gout?”

“Despite the gout. If you could take the world as I do, my advice might

be different. But your mind is overcrowded with doubts and fantasies and

crotchets, and you have no choice but to give them vent in active life.”

“You had something to do in making me what I am,--an idler; something

to answer for as to my doubts, fantasies, and crotchets. It was by your

recommendation that I was placed under the tuition of Mr. Welby, and at

that critical age in which the bent of the twig forms the shape of the

tree.”

“And I pride myself on that counsel. I repeat the reasons for which I

gave it: it is an incalculable advantage for a young man to start in

life thoroughly initiated into the New Ideas which will more or less

influence his generation. Welby was the ablest representative of these

ideas. It is a wondrous good fortune when the propagandist of the

New Ideas is something more than a bookish philosopher,--when he is

a thorough ‘man of the world,’ and is what we emphatically call

‘practical.’ Yes, you owe me much that I secured to you such tuition,

and saved you from twaddle and sentiment, the poetry of Wordsworth and

the muscular Christianity of Cousin John.”

“What you say that you saved me from might have done me more good than

all you conferred on me. I suspect that when education succeeds

in placing an old head upon young shoulders the combination is not

healthful: it clogs the blood and slackens the pulse. However, I must

not be ungrateful; you meant kindly. Yes, I suppose Welby is practical:

he has no belief, and he has got a place. But our host, I presume, is

also practical; his place is a much higher one than Welby’s, and yet he

is surely not without belief?”

“He was born before the new ideas came into practical force; but

in proportion as they have done so, his beliefs have necessarily

disappeared. I don’t suppose that he believes in much now, except the

two propositions: firstly, that if he accept the new ideas he will have

power and keep it, and if he does not accept them power is out of the

question; and, secondly, that if the new ideas are to prevail he is the

best man to direct them safely,--beliefs quite enough for a minister. No

wise minister should have more.”

“Does he not believe that the motion he is to resist next week is a bad

one?”

“A bad one of course, in its consequences, for if it succeed it will

upset him; a good one in itself I am sure he must think it, for he would

bring it on himself if he were in opposition.”

“I see that Pope’s definition is still true, ‘Party is the madness of

the many for the gain of the few.’”

“No, it is not true. Madness is a wrong word applied to the many: the

many are sane enough; they know their own objects, and they make use of

the intellect of the few in order to gain their objects. In each party

it is the many that control the few who nominally lead them. A man

becomes Prime Minister because he seems to the many of his party the

fittest person to carry out their views. If he presume to differ from

these views, they put him into a moral pillory, and pelt him with their

dirtiest stones and their rottenest eggs.”

“Then the maxim should be reversed, and party is rather the madness of

the few for the gain of the many?

“Of the two, that is the more correct definition.”

“Let me keep my senses and decline to be one of the few.”

Kenelm moved away from his cousin’s side, and entering one of the less

crowded rooms, saw Cecilia Travers seated there in a recess with Lady

Glenalvon. He joined them, and after a brief interchange of a few

commonplaces, Lady Glenalvon quitted her post to accost a foreign

ambassadress, and Kenelm sank into the chair she vacated.

It was a relief to his eye to contemplate Cecilia’s candid brow; to

his ear to hearken to the soft voice that had no artificial tones, and

uttered no cynical witticisms.

“Don’t you think it strange,” said Kenelm, “that we English should so

mould all our habits as to make even what we call pleasure as little

pleasurable as possible? We are now in the beginning of June, the fresh

outburst of summer, when every day in the country is a delight to eye

and ear, and we say, ‘The season for hot rooms is beginning.’ We alone

of civilized races spend our summer in a capital, and cling to the

country when the trees are leafless and the brooks frozen.”

“Certainly that is a mistake; but I love the country in all seasons,

even in winter.”

“Provided the country house is full of London people?”

“No; that is rather a drawback. I never want companions in the country.”

“True; I should have remembered that you differ from young ladies in

general, and make companions of books. They are always more conversable

in the country than they are in town; or rather, we listen there to them

with less distracted attention. Ha! do I not recognize yonder the fair

whiskers of George Belvoir? Who is the lady leaning on his arm?”

“Don’t you know?--Lady Emily Belvoir, his wife.”

“Ah! I was told that he had married. The lady is handsome. She will

become the family diamonds. Does she read Blue-books?”

“I will ask her if you wish.”

“Nay, it is scarcely worth while. During my rambles abroad I saw but

few English newspapers. I did, however, learn that George had won his

election. Has he yet spoken in Parliament?”

“Yes; he moved the answer to the Address this session, and was much

complimented on the excellent tone and taste of his speech. He spoke

again a few weeks afterwards, I fear not so successfully.”

“Coughed down?”

“Something like it.”

“Do him good; he will recover the cough, and fulfil my prophecy of his

success.”

“Have you done with poor George for the present? If so, allow me to ask

whether you have quite forgotten Will Somers and Jessie Wiles?”

“Forgotten them! no.”

“But you have never asked after them?”

“I took it for granted that they were as happy as could be expected.

Pray assure me that they are.”

“I trust so now; but they have had trouble, and have left Graveleigh.”

“Trouble! left Graveleigh! You make me uneasy. Pray explain.”

“They had not been three months married and installed in the home they

owed to you, when poor Will was seized with a rheumatic fever. He was

confined to his bed for many weeks; and, when at last he could move from

it, was so weak as to be still unable to do any work. During his illness

Jessie had no heart and little leisure to attend to the shop. Of course

I--that is, my dear father--gave them all necessary assistance; but--”

“I understand; they were reduced to objects of charity. Brute that I am,

never to have thought of the duties I owed to the couple I had brought

together. But pray go on.”

“You are aware that just before you left us my father received a

proposal to exchange his property at Graveleigh for some lands more

desirable to him?”

“I remember. He closed with that offer.”

“Yes; Captain Stavers, the new landlord of Graveleigh, seems to be

a very bad man; and though he could not turn the Somerses out of the

cottage so long as they paid rent, which we took care they did pay,--yet

out of a very wicked spite he set up a rival shop in one of his other

cottages in the village, and it became impossible for these poor young

people to get a livelihood at Graveleigh.”

“What excuse for spite against so harmless a young couple could Captain

Stavers find or invent?”

Cecilia looked down and coloured. “It was a revengeful feeling against

Jessie.”

“Ah, I comprehend.”

“But they have now left the village, and are happily settled elsewhere.

Will has recovered his health, and they are prospering much more than

they could ever have done at Graveleigh.”

“In that change you were their benefactress, Miss Travers?” said Kenelm,

in a more tender voice and with a softer eye than he had ever before

evinced towards the heiress.

“No, it is not I whom they have to thank and bless.”

“Who, then, is it? Your father?”

“No. Do not question me. I am bound not to say. They do not themselves

know; they rather believe that their gratitude is due to you.”

“To me! Am I to be forever a sham in spite of myself? My dear Miss

Travers, it is essential to my honour that I should undeceive this

credulous pair; where can I find them?”

“I must not say; but I will ask permission of their concealed

benefactor, and send you their address.”

A touch was laid on Kenelm’s arm, and a voice whispered, “May I ask you

to present me to Miss Travers?”

“Miss Travers,” said Kenelm, “I entreat you to add to the list of your

acquaintances a cousin of mine,--Mr. Chillingly Gordon.”

While Gordon addressed to Cecilia the well-bred conventionalisms with

which acquaintance in London drawing-rooms usually commences, Kenelm,

obedient to a sign from Lady Glenalvon, who had just re-entered the

room, quitted his seat, and joined the marchioness.

“Is not that young man whom you left talking with Miss Travers your

clever cousin Gordon?”

“The same.”

“She is listening to him with great attention. How his face brightens up

as he talks! He is positively handsome, thus animated.”

“Yes, I could fancy him a dangerous wooer. He has wit and liveliness and

audacity; he could be very much in love with a great fortune, and talk

to the owner of it with a fervour rarely exhibited by a Chillingly.

Well, it is no affair of mine.”

“It ought to be.”

Alas and alas! that “ought to be;” what depths of sorrowful meaning lie

within that simple phrase! How happy would be our lives, how grand our

actions, how pure our souls, if all could be with us as it ought to be!

CHAPTER VIII.

WE often form cordial intimacies in the confined society of a country

house, or a quiet watering-place, or a small Continental town, which

fade away into remote acquaintanceship in the mighty vortex of London

life, neither party being to blame for the estrangement. It was so with

Leopold Travers and Kenelm Chillingly. Travers, as we have seen, had

felt a powerful charm in the converse of the young stranger, so in

contrast with the routine of the rural companionships to which his alert

intellect had for many years circumscribed its range. But on reappearing

in London the season before Kenelm again met him, he had renewed old

friendships with men of his own standing,--officers in the regiment of

which he had once been a popular ornament, some of them still unmarried,

a few of them like himself widowed, others who had been his rivals

in fashion, and were still pleasant idlers about town; and it rarely

happens in a metropolis that we have intimate friendships with those of

another generation, unless there be some common tie in the cultivation

of art and letters, or the action of kindred sympathies in the party

strife of politics. Therefore Travers and Kenelm had had little familiar

communication with each other since they first met at the Beaumanoirs’.

Now and then they found themselves at the same crowded assemblies, and

interchanged nods and salutations. But their habits were different; the

houses at which they were intimate were not the same, neither did they

frequent the same clubs. Kenelm’s chief bodily exercise was still that

of long and early rambles into rural suburbs; Leopold’s was that of

a late ride in the Row. Of the two, Leopold was much more the man of

pleasure. Once restored to metropolitan life, a temper constitutionally

eager, ardent, and convivial took kindly, as in earlier youth, to its

light range of enjoyments.

Had the intercourse between the two men been as frankly familiar as it

had been at Neesdale Park, Kenelm would probably have seen much more of

Cecilia at her own home; and the admiration and esteem with which she

already inspired him might have ripened into much warmer feeling, had

he thus been brought into clearer comprehension of the soft and womanly

heart, and its tender predisposition towards himself.

He had said somewhat vaguely in his letter to Sir Peter, that “sometimes

he felt as if his indifference to love, as to ambition, was because he

had some impossible ideal in each.” Taking that conjecture to task,

he could not honestly persuade himself that he had formed any ideal of

woman and wife with which the reality of Cecilia Travers was at war. On

the contrary, the more he thought over the characteristics of Cecilia,

the more they seemed to correspond to any ideal that had floated before

him in the twilight of dreamy revery; and yet he knew that he was not

in love with her, that his heart did not respond to his reason; and

mournfully he resigned himself to the conviction that nowhere in

this planet, from the normal pursuits of whose inhabitants he felt so

estranged, was there waiting for him the smiling playmate, the earnest

helpmate. As this conviction strengthened, so an increased weariness

of the artificial life of the metropolis, and of all its objects and

amusements, turned his thoughts with an intense yearning towards the

Bohemian freedom and fresh excitements of his foot ramblings. He often

thought with envy of the wandering minstrel, and wondered whether, if he

again traversed the same range of country, he might encounter again that

vagrant singer.

CHAPTER IX.

IT is nearly a week since Kenelm had met Cecilia, and he is sitting

in his rooms with Lord Thetford at that hour of three in the afternoon

which is found the most difficult to dispose of by idlers about town.

Amongst young men of his own age and class with whom Kenelm assorted in

the fashionable world, perhaps the one whom he liked the best, and of

whom he saw the most, was this young heir of the Beaumanoirs; and though

Lord Thetford has nothing to do with the direct stream of my story, it

is worth pausing a few minutes to sketch an outline of one of the

best whom the last generation has produced for a part that, owing to

accidents of birth and fortune, young men like Lord Thetford must play

on that stage from which the curtain is not yet drawn up. Destined to

be the head of a family that unites with princely possessions and a

historical name a keen though honourable ambition for political power,

Lord Thetford has been care fully educated, especially in the new ideas

of his time. His father, though a man of no ordinary talents, has never

taken a prominent part in public life. He desires his eldest son to do

so. The Beaumanoirs have been Whigs from the time of William III. They

have shared the good and the ill fortunes of a party which, whether we

side with it or not, no politician who dreads extremes in the government

of a State so pre-eminently artificial that a prevalent extreme at

either end of the balance would be fatal to equilibrium, can desire to

become extinct or feeble so long as a constitutional monarchy exists

in England. From the reign of George I. to the death of George IV., the

Beaumanoirs were in the ascendant. Visit their family portrait gallery,

and you must admire the eminence of a house which, during that interval

of less than a century, contributed so many men to the service of the

State or the adornment of the Court,--so many Ministers, Ambassadors,

Generals, Lord Chamberlains, and Masters of the Horse. When the younger

Pitt beat the great Whig Houses, the Beaumanoirs vanish into comparative

obscurity; they reemerge with the accession of William IV., and once

more produce bulwarks of the State and ornaments of the Crown. The

present Lord of Beaumanoir, _poco curante_ in politics though he be, has

at least held high offices at Court; and, as a matter of course, he is

Lord Lieutenant of his county, as well as Knight of the Garter. He is

a man whom the chiefs of his party have been accustomed to consult on

critical questions. He gives his opinions confidentially and modestly,

and when they are rejected never takes offence. He thinks that a time

is coming when the head of the Beaumanoirs should descend into the lists

and fight hand-to-hand with any Hodge or Hobson in the cause of his

country for the benefit of the Whigs. Too lazy or too old to do this

himself, he says to his son, “You must do it: without effort of mine the

thing may last my life. It needs effort of yours that the thing may last

through your own.”

Lord Thetford cheerfully responds to the paternal admonition. He curbs

his natural inclinations, which are neither inelegant nor unmanly; for,

on the one side, he is very fond of music and painting, an accomplished

amateur, and deemed a sound connoisseur in both; and, on the other side,

he has a passion for all field sports, and especially for hunting. He

allows no such attractions to interfere with diligent attention to the

business of the House of Commons. He serves in Committees, he takes the

chair at public meetings on sanitary questions or projects for social

improvement, and acquits himself well therein. He has not yet spoken in

debate, but he has only been two years in Parliament, and he takes his

father’s wise advice not to speak till the third. But he is not without

weight among the well-born youth of the party, and has in him the stuff

out of which, when it becomes seasoned, the Corinthian capitals of a

Cabinet may be very effectively carved. In his own heart he is convinced

that his party are going too far and too fast; but with that party he

goes on light-heartedly, and would continue to do so if they went to

Erebus. But he would prefer their going the other way. For the rest, a

pleasant, bright-eyed young fellow, with vivid animal spirits; and, in

the holiday moments of reprieve from public duty he brings sunshine into

draggling hunting-fields, and a fresh breeze into heated ballrooms.

“My dear fellow,” said Lord Thetford, as he threw aside his cigar, “I

quite understand that you bore yourself: you have nothing else to do.”

“What can I do?”

“Work.”

“Work!”

“Yes, you are clever enough to feel that you have a mind; and mind is a

restless inmate of body: it craves occupation of some sort, and regular

occupation too; it needs its daily constitutional exercise. Do you give

your mind that?”

“I am sure I don’t know, but my mind is always busying itself about

something or other.”

“In a desultory way,--with no fixed object.”

“True.”

“Write a book, and then it will have its constitutional.”

“Nay, my mind is always writing a book (though it may not publish

one), always jotting down impressions, or inventing incidents, or

investigating characters; and between you and me, I do not think that I

do bore myself so much as I did formerly. Other people bore me more than

they did.”

“Because you will not create an object in common with other people: come

into Parliament, side with a party, and you have that object.”

“Do you mean seriously to tell me that you are not bored in the House of

Commons?”

“With the speakers very often, yes; but with the strife between the

speakers, no. The House of Commons life has a peculiar excitement

scarcely understood out of it; but you may conceive its charm when you

observe that a man who has once been in the thick of it feels forlorn

and shelved if he lose his seat, and even repines when the accident

of birth transfers him to the serener air of the Upper House. Try that

life, Chillingly.”

“I might if I were an ultra-Radical, a Republican, a Communist, a

Socialist, and wished to upset everything existing, for then the strife

would at least be a very earnest one.”

“But could not you be equally in earnest against those revolutionary

gentlemen?”

“Are you and your leaders in earnest against them? They don’t appear to

me so.”

Thetford was silent for a minute. “Well, if you doubt the principles of

my side, go with the other side. For my part, I and many of our party

would be glad to see the Conservatives stronger.”

“I have no doubt they would. No sensible man likes to be carried off his

legs by the rush of the crowd behind him; and a crowd is less headlong

when it sees a strong force arrayed against it in front. But it seems

to me that, at present, Conservatism can but be what it now is,--a party

that may combine for resistance, and will not combine for inventive

construction. We are living in an age in which the process of

unsettlement is going blindly at work, as if impelled by a Nemesis as

blind as itself. New ideas come beating into surf and surge against

those which former reasoners had considered as fixed banks and

breakwaters; and the new ideas are so mutable, so fickle, that those

which were considered novel ten years ago are deemed obsolete to-day,

and the new ones of to-day will in their turn be obsolete to-morrow.

And, in a sort of fatalism, you see statesmen yielding way to these

successive mockeries of experiment,--for they are experiments against

experience,--and saying to each other with a shrug of the shoulders,

‘Bismillah! it must be so; the country will have it, even though it

sends the country to the dogs.’ I don’t feel sure that the country will

not go there the sooner, if you can only strengthen the Conservative

element enough to set it up in office, with the certainty of knocking

it down again. Alas! I am too dispassionate a looker-on to be fit for a

partisan: would I were not! Address yourself to my cousin Gordon.”

“Ay, Chillingly Gordon is a coming man, and has all the earnestness you

find absent in party and in yourself.”

“You call him earnest?”

“Thoroughly, in the pursuit of one object,--the advancement of

Chillingly Gordon. If he get into the House of Commons, and succeed

there, I hope he will never become my leader; for if he thought

Christianity in the way of his promotion, he would bring in a bill for

its abolition.”

“In that case would he still be your leader?”

“My dear Kenelm, you don’t know what is the spirit of party, and how

easily it makes excuses for any act of its leader. Of course, if Gordon

brought in a bill for the abolition of Christianity, it would be on the

plea that the abolition was good for the Christians, and his followers

would cheer that enlightened sentiment.”

“Ah,” said Kenelm, with a sigh, “I own myself the dullest of blockheads;

for instead of tempting me into the field of party politics, your talk

leaves me in stolid amaze that you do not take to your heels, where

honour can only be saved by flight.”

“Pooh! my dear Chillingly, we cannot run away from the age in which we

live: we must accept its conditions and make the best of them; and if

the House of Commons be nothing else, it is a famous debating society

and a capital club. Think over it. I must leave you now. I am going

to see a picture at the Exhibition which has been most truculently

criticised in ‘The Londoner,’ but which I am assured, on good authority,

is a work of remarkable merit. I can’t bear to see a man snarled and

sneered down, no doubt by jealous rivals, who have their influence in

journals, so I shall judge of the picture for myself. If it be really

as good as I am told, I shall talk about it to everybody I meet; and in

matters of art I fancy my word goes for something. Study art, my dear

Kenelm. No gentleman’s education is complete if he does n’t know a good

picture from a bad one. After the Exhibition I shall just have time for

a canter round the Park before the debate of the session, which begins

to-night.”

With a light step the young man quitted the room, humming an air from

the “Figaro” as he descended the stairs. From the window Kenelm watched

him swinging himself with careless grace into his saddle and riding

briskly down the street,--in form and face and bearing a very model of

young, high-born, high-bred manhood. “The Venetians,” muttered Kenelm,

“decapitated Marino Faliero for conspiring against his own order,--the

nobles. The Venetians loved their institutions, and had faith in them.

Is there such love and such faith among the English?”

As he thus soliloquized he heard a shrilling sort of squeak; and a

showman stationed before his window the stage on which Punch satirizes

the laws and moralities of the world, “kills the beadle and defies the

devil.”

CHAPTER X.

KENELM turned from the sight of Punch and Punch’s friend the cur, as his

servant, entering, said a person from the country, who would not give

his name, asked to see him.

Thinking it might be some message from his father, Kenelm ordered the

stranger to be admitted, and in another minute there entered a young man

of handsome countenance and powerful frame, in whom, after a surprised

stare, Kenelm recognized Tom Bowles. Difficult indeed would have been

that recognition to an unobservant beholder: no trace was left of the

sullen bully or the village farrier; the expression of the face was mild

and intelligent,--more bashful than hardy; the brute strength of the

form had lost its former clumsiness, the simple dress was that of a

gentleman,--to use an expressive idiom, the whole man was wonderfully

“toned down.”

“I am afraid, sir, I am taking a liberty,” said Tom, rather nervously,

twiddling his hat between his fingers.

“I should be a greater friend to liberty than I am if it were always

taken in the same way,” said Kenelm, with a touch of his saturnine

humour; but then yielding at once to the warmer impulse of his nature,

he grasped his old antagonist’s hand and exclaimed, “My dear Tom, you

are so welcome. I am so glad to see you. Sit down, man; sit down: make

yourself at home.”

“I did not know you were back in England, sir, till within the last few

days; for you did say that when you came back I should see or hear from

you,” and there was a tone of reproach in the last words.

“I am to blame, forgive me,” said Kenelm, remorsefully. “But how did

you find me out? you did not then, I think, even know my name. That,

however, it was easy enough to discover; but who gave you my address in

this lodging?”

“Well, sir, it was Miss Travers; and she bade me come to you. Otherwise,

as you did not send for me, it was scarcely my place to call uninvited.”

“But, my dear Tom, I never dreamed that you were in London. One don’t

ask a man whom one supposes to be more than a hundred miles off to pay

one an afternoon call. You are still with your uncle, I presume? and I

need not ask if all thrives well with you: you look a prosperous man,

every inch of you, from crown to toe.”

“Yes,” said Tom; “thank you kindly, sir, I am doing well in the way of

business, and my uncle is to give me up the whole concern at Christmas.”

While Tom thus spoke Kenelm had summoned his servant, and ordered up

such refreshments as could be found in the larder of a bachelor in

lodgings. “And what brings you to town, Tom?”

“Miss Travers wrote to me about a little business which she was good

enough to manage for me, and said you wished to know about it; and so,

after turning it over in my mind for a few days, I resolved to come to

town: indeed,” added Tom, heartily, “I did wish to see your face again.”

“But you talk riddles. What business of yours could Miss Travers imagine

I wished to know about?”

Tom coloured high, and looked very embarrassed. Luckily, the servant

here entering with the refreshment-tray allowed him time to recover

himself. Kenelm helped him to a liberal slice of cold pigeon-pie,

pressed wine on him, and did not renew the subject till he thought his

guest’s tongue was likely to be more freely set loose; then he said,

laying a friendly hand on Tom’s shoulders, “I have been thinking over

what passed between me and Miss Travers. I wished to have the new

address of Will Somers; she promised to write to his benefactor to ask

permission to give it. You are that benefactor?”

“Don’t say benefactor, sir. I will tell how it came about if you will

let me. You see, I sold my little place at Graveleigh to the new Squire,

and when Mother removed to Luscombe to be near me, she told me how

poor Jessie had been annoyed by Captain Stavers, who seems to think

his purchase included the young women on the property along with the

standing timber; and I was half afraid that she had given some cause for

his persecution, for you know she has a blink of those soft eyes of

hers that might charm a wise man out of his skin and put a fool there

instead.”

“But I hope she has done with those blinks since her marriage.”

“Well, and I honestly think she has. It is certain she did not encourage

Captain Stavers, for I went over to Graveleigh myself on the sly, and

lodged concealed with one of the cottagers who owed me a kindness; and

one day, as I was at watch, I saw the Captain peering over the stile

which divides Holmwood from the glebe,--you remember Holmwood?”

“I can’t say I do.”

“The footway from the village to Squire Travers’s goes through the

wood, which is a few hundred yards at the back of Will Somers’s orchard.

Presently the Captain drew himself suddenly back from the stile, and

disappeared among the trees, and then I saw Jessie coming from the

orchard with a basket over her arm, and walking quick towards the wood.

Then, sir, my heart sank. I felt sure she was going to meet the Captain.

However, I crept along the hedgerow, hiding myself, and got into the

wood almost as soon as Jessie got there, by another way. Under the cover

of the brushwood I stole on till I saw the Captain come out from the

copse on the other side of the path, and plant himself just before

Jessie. Then I saw at once I had wronged her. She had not expected to

see him, for she hastily turned back, and began to run homeward; but he

caught her up, and seized her by the arm. I could not hear what he said,

but I heard her voice quite sharp with fright and anger. And then he

suddenly seized her round the waist, and she screamed, and I sprang

forward--”

“And thrashed the Captain?”

“No, I did not,” said Tom; “I had made a vow to myself that I never

would be violent again if I could help it. So I took him with one hand

by the cuff of the neck, and with the other by the waistband, and just

pitched him on a bramble bush,--quite mildly. He soon picked himself up,

for he is a dapper little chap, and became very blustering and abusive.

But I kept my temper, and said civilly, ‘Little gentleman, hard words

break no bones; but if ever you molest Mrs. Somers again, I will carry

you into her orchard, souse you into the duck-pond there, and call all

the villagers to see you scramble out of it again; and I will do it

now if you are not off. I dare say you have heard of my name: I am Tom

Bowles.’ Upon that his face, which was before very red, grew very white,

and muttering something I did not hear, he walked away.

“Jessie--I mean Mrs. Somers--seemed at first as much frightened at me

as she had been at the Captain; and though I offered to walk with her to

Miss Travers’s, where she was going with a basket which the young lady

had ordered, she refused, and went back home. I felt hurt, and returned

to my uncle’s the same evening; and it was not for months that I heard

the Captain had been spiteful enough to set up an opposition shop, and

that poor Will had been taken ill, and his wife was confined about the

same time, and the talk was that they were in distress and might have to

be sold up.

“When I heard all this, I thought that after all it was my rough tongue

that had so angered the Captain and been the cause of his spite, and so

it was my duty to make it up to poor Will and his wife. I did not know

how to set about mending matters, but I thought I’d go and talk to Miss

Travers; and if ever there was a kind heart in a girl’s breast, hers is

one.”

“You are right there, I guess. What did Miss Travers say?”

“Nay; I hardly know what she did say, but she set me thinking, and it

struck me that Jessie--Mrs. Somers--had better move to a distance, and

out of the Captain’s reach, and that Will would do better in a less

out-of-the-way place. And then, by good luck, I read in the newspaper

that a stationary and a fancywork business, with a circulating library,

was to be sold on moderate terms at Moleswich, the other side of London.

So I took the train and went to the place, and thought the shop would

just suit these young folks, and not be too much work for either; then I

went to Miss Travers, and I had a lot of money lying by me from the sale

of the old forge and premises, which I did not know what to do with; and

so, to cut short a long story, I bought the business, and Will and his

wife are settled at Moleswich, thriving and happy, I hope, sir.”

Tom’s voice quivered at the last words, and he turned aside quickly,

passing his hand over his eyes.

Kenelm was greatly moved.

“And they don’t know what you did for them?”

“To be sure not. I don’t think Will would have let him self be

beholden to me. Ah! the lad has a spirit of his own, and Jessie--Mrs.

Somers--would have felt pained and humbled that I should even think of

such a thing. Miss Travers managed it all. They take the money as a loan

which is to be paid by instalments. They have sent Miss Travers more

than one instalment already, so I know they are doing well.”

“A loan from Miss Travers?”

“No; Miss Travers wanted to have a share in it, but I begged her not. It

made me happy to do what I did all myself; and Miss Travers felt for me

and did not press. They perhaps think it is Squire Travers (though he is

not a man who would like to say it, for fear it should bring applicants

on him), or some other gentleman who takes an interest in them.”

“I always said you were a grand fellow, Tom. But you are grander still

than I thought you.”

“If there be any good in me, I owe it to you, sir. Think what a drunken,

violent brute I was when I first met you. Those walks with you, and I

may say that other gentleman’s talk, and then that long kind letter I

had from you, not signed in your name, and written from abroad,--all

these changed me, as the child is changed at nurse.”

“You have evidently read a good deal since we parted.”

“Yes; I belong to our young men’s library and institute; and when of an

evening I get hold of a book, especially a pleasant story-book, I don’t

care for other company.”

“Have you never seen any other girl you could care for, and wish to

marry?”

“Ah, sir,” answered Tom, “a man does not go so mad for a girl as I

did for Jessie Wiles, and when it is all over, and he has come to his

senses, put his heart into joint again as easily as if it were only a

broken leg. I don’t say that I may not live to love and to marry another

woman: it is my wish to do so. But I know that I shall love Jessie to my

dying day; but not sinfully, sir,--not sinfully. I would not wrong her

by a thought.”

There was a long pause.

At last Kenelm said, “You promised to be kind to that little girl with

the flower-ball; what has become of her?”

“She is quite well, thank you, sir. My aunt has taken a great fancy to

her, and so has my mother. She comes to them very often of an evening,

and brings her work with her. A quick, intelligent little thing, and

full of pretty thoughts. On Sundays, if the weather is fine, we stroll

out together in the fields.”

“She has been a comfort to you, Tom.”

“Oh, yes.”

“And loves you?”

“I am sure she does; an affectionate, grateful child.”

“She will be a woman soon, Tom, and may love you as a woman then.”

Tom looked indignant and rather scornful at that suggestion, and

hastened to revert to the subject more immediately at his heart.

“Miss Travers said you would like to call on Will Somers and his wife;

will you? Moleswich is not far from London, you know.”

“Certainly, I will call.”

“I do hope you will find them happy; and if so, perhaps you will kindly

let me know; and--and--I wonder whether Jessie’s child is like her? It

is a boy; somehow or other I would rather it had been a girl.”

“I will write you full particulars. But why not come with me?”

“No, I don’t think I could do that, just at present. It unsettled me

sadly when I did again see her sweet face at Graveleigh, and she was

still afraid of me too! that was a sharp pang.”

“She ought to know what you have done for her, and will.”

“On no account, sir; promise me that. I should feel mean if I humbled

them,--that way.”

“I understand, though I will not as yet make you any positive promise.

Meanwhile, if you are staying in town, lodge with me; my landlady can

find you a room.”

“Thank you heartily, sir; but I go back by the evening train; and, bless

me! how late it is now! I must wish you good-by. I have some commissions

to do for my aunt, and I must buy a new doll for Susey.”

“Susey is the name of the little girl with the flower-ball?”

“Yes. I must run off now; I feel quite light at heart seeing you again

and finding that you receive me still so kindly, as if we were equals.”

“Ah, Tom, I wish I was your equal,--nay, half as noble as Heaven has

made you!”

Tom laughed incredulously, and went his way.

“This mischievous passion of love,” said Kenelm to himself, “has its

good side, it seems, after all. If it was nearly making a wild beast of

that brave fellow,--nay, worse than wild beast, a homicide doomed to

the gibbet,--so, on the other hand, what a refined, delicate, chivalrous

nature of gentleman it has developed out of the stormy elements of its

first madness! Yes, I will go and look at this new-married couple. I

dare say they are already snarling and spitting at each other like cat

and dog. Moleswich is within reach of a walk.”

BOOK V.

CHAPTER I.

TWO days after the interview recorded in the last chapter of the

previous Book, Travers, chancing to call at Kenelm’s lodgings, was told

by his servant that Mr. Chillingly had left London, alone, and had given

no orders as to forwarding letters. The servant did not know where he

had gone, or when he would return.

Travers repeated this news incidentally to Cecilia, and she felt

somewhat hurt that he had not written her a line respecting Tom’s visit.

She, however, guessed that he had gone to see the Somerses, and would

return to town in a day or so. But weeks passed, the season drew to its

close, and of Kenelm Chillingly she saw or heard nothing: he had

wholly vanished from the London world. He had but written a line to his

servant, ordering him to repair to Exmundham and await him there, and

enclosing him a check to pay outstanding bills.

We must now follow the devious steps of the strange being who has grown

into the hero of this story. He had left his apartment at daybreak long

before his servant was up, with his knapsack, and a small portmanteau,

into which he had thrust--besides such additional articles of dress as

he thought he might possibly require, and which his knapsack could not

contain--a few of his favourite books. Driving with these in a hack-cab

to the Vauxhall station, he directed the portmanteau to be forwarded

to Moleswich, and flinging the knapsack on his shoulders, walked slowly

along the drowsy suburbs that stretched far into the landscape, before,

breathing more freely, he found some evidences of rural culture on

either side of the high road. It was not, however, till he had left the

roofs and trees of pleasant Richmond far behind him that he began to

feel he was out of reach of the metropolitan disquieting influences.

Finding at a little inn, where he stopped to breakfast, that there was

a path along fields, and in sight of the river, through which he could

gain the place of his destination, he then quitted the high road,

and traversing one of the loveliest districts in one of our loveliest

counties, he reached Moleswich about noon.

CHAPTER II.

ON entering the main street of the pretty town, the name of Somers,

in gilt capitals, was sufficiently conspicuous over the door of a very

imposing shop. It boasted two plate-glass windows, at one of which were

tastefully exhibited various articles of fine stationery, embroidery

patterns, etc.; at the other, no less tastefully, sundry specimens of

ornamental basket-work.

Kenelm crossed the threshold and recognized behind the counter--fair

as ever, but with an expression of face more staid, and a figure more

rounded and matron-like--his old friend Jessie. There were two or three

customers before her, between whom she was dividing her attention. While

a handsome young lady, seated, was saying, in a somewhat loud but cheery

and pleasant voice, “Do not mind me, Mrs. Somers: I can wait,” Jessie’s

quick eye darted towards the stranger, but too rapidly to distinguish

his features, which, indeed, he turned away, and began to examine the

baskets.

In a minute or so the other customers were served and had departed; and

the voice of the lady was again heard, “Now, Mrs. Somers, I want to see

your picture-books and toys. I am giving a little children’s party this

afternoon, and I want to make them as happy as possible.”

“Somewhere or other, on this planet, or before my Monad was whisked

away to it, I have heard that voice,” muttered Kenelm. While Jessie was

alertly bringing forth her toys and picture-books, she said, “I am sorry

to keep you waiting, sir; but if it is the baskets you come about, I can

call my husband.”

“Do,” said Kenelm.

“William, William,” cried Mrs. Somers; and after a delay long enough to

allow him to slip on his jacket, William Somers emerged from the back

parlour.

His face had lost its old trace of suffering and ill health; it was

still somewhat pale, and retained its expression of intellectual

refinement.

“How you have improved in your art!” said Kenelm, heartily.

William started, and recognized Kenelm at once. He sprang forward and

took Kenelm’s outstretched hand in both his own, and, in a voice between

laughing and crying, exclaimed, “Jessie, Jessie, it is he!--he whom we

pray for every night. God bless you! God bless and make you as happy as

He permitted you to make me!”

Before this little speech was faltered out, Jessie was by her husband’s

side, and she added, in a lower voice, but tremulous with deep feeling,

“And me too!”

“By your leave, Will,” said Kenelm, and he saluted Jessie’s white

forehead with a kiss that could not have been kindlier or colder if it

had been her grandfather’s.

Meanwhile the lady had risen noiselessly and unobserved, and stealing up

to Kenelm, looked him full in the face.

“You have another friend here, sir, who has also some cause to thank

you--”

“I thought I remembered your voice,” said Kenelm, looking puzzled. “But

pardon me if I cannot recall your features. Where have we met before?”

“Give me your arm when we go out, and I will bring myself to your

recollection. But no: I must not hurry you away now. I will call

again in half an hour. Mrs. Somers, meanwhile put up the things I

have selected. I will take them away with me when I come back from the

vicarage, where I have left the pony-carriage.” So, with a parting nod

and smile to Kenelm, she turned away, and left him bewildered.

“But who is that lady, Will?”

“A Mrs. Braefield. She is a new comer.”

“She may well be that, Will,” said Jessie, smiling, “for she has only

been married six months.”

“And what was her name before she married?”

“I am sure I don’t know, sir. It is only three months since we came

here, and she has been very kind to us and an excellent customer.

Everybody likes her. Mr. Braefield is a city gentleman and very rich;

and they live in the finest house in the place, and see a great deal of

company.”

“Well, I am no wiser than I was before,” said Kenelm. “People who ask

questions very seldom are.”

“And how did you find us out, sir?” said Jessie. “Oh! I guess,” she

added, with an arch glance and smile. “Of course, you have seen Miss

Travers, and she told you.”

“You are right. I first learned your change of residence from her, and

thought I would come and see you, and be introduced to the baby,--a boy,

I understand? Like you, Will?”

“No, sir, the picture of Jessie.”

“Nonsense, Will; it is you all over, even to its little hands.”

“And your good mother, Will, how did you leave her?”

“Oh, sir!” cried Jessie, reproachfully; “do you think we could have the

heart to leave Mother,--so lone and rheumatic too? She is tending baby

now,--always does while I am in the shop.”

Here Kenelm followed the young couple into the parlour, where, seated by

the window, they found old Mrs. Somers reading the Bible and rocking the

baby, who slept peacefully in its cradle.

“Will,” said Kenelm, bending his dark face over the infant, “I will

tell you a pretty thought of a foreign poet’s, which has been thus badly

translated:

“‘Blest babe, a boundless world this bed so narrow seems to thee;

Grow man, and narrower than this bed the boundless world shall

be.’”[1]

[1] Schiller.

“I don’t think that is true, sir,” said Will, simply; “for a happy home

is a world wide enough for any man.”

Tears started into Jessie’s eyes; she bent down and kissed--not the

baby, but the cradle. “Will made it.” She added blushing, “I mean the

cradle, sir.”

Time flew past while Kenelm talked with Will and the old mother, for

Jessie was soon summoned back to the shop; and Kenelm was startled when

he found the half-hour’s grace allowed to him was over, and Jessie put

her head in at the door and said, “Mrs. Braefield is waiting for you.”

“Good-by, Will; I shall come to see you again soon; and my mother gives

me a commission to buy I don’t know how many specimens of your craft.”

CHAPTER III.

A SMART pony-phaeton, with a box for a driver in livery equally smart,

stood at the shop-door.

“Now, Mr. Chillingly,” said Mrs. Braefield, “it is my turn to run away

with you; get in!”

“Eh!” murmured Kenelm, gazing at her with large dreamy eyes. “Is it

possible?”

“Quite possible; get in. Coachman, home! Yes, Mr. Chillingly, you meet

again that giddy creature whom you threatened to thrash; it would have

served her right. I ought to feel so ashamed to recall myself to your

recollection, and yet I am not a bit ashamed. I am proud to show you

that I have turned out a steady, respectable woman, and, my husband

tells me, a good wife.”

“You have only been six months married, I hear,” said Kenelm, dryly. “I

hope your husband will say the same six years hence.”

“He will say the same sixty years hence, if we live as long.”

“How old is he now?”

“Thirty-eight.”

“When a man wants only two years of his hundredth, he probably has

learned to know his own mind; but then, in most cases, very little mind

is left to him to know.”

“Don’t be satirical, sir; and don’t talk as if you were railing at

marriage, when you have just left as happy a young couple as the sun

ever shone upon; and owing,--for Mrs. Somers has told me all about her

marriage,--owing their happiness to you.”

“Their happiness to me! not in the least. I helped them to marry, and in

spite of marriage they helped each other to be happy.”

“You are still unmarried yourself?”

“Yes, thank Heaven!”

“And are you happy?”

“No; I can’t make myself happy: myself is a discontented brute.”

“Then why do you say ‘thank Heaven’?”

“Because it is a comfort to think I am not making somebody else

unhappy.”

“Do you believe that if you loved a wife who loved you, you should make

her unhappy?”

“I am sure I don’t know; but I have not seen a woman whom I could love

as a wife. And we need not push our inquiries further. What has become

of that ill-treated gray cob?”

“He was quite well, thank you, when I last heard of him.”

“And the uncle who would have inflicted me upon you, if you had not so

gallantly defended yourself?”

“He is living where he did live, and has married his housekeeper. He

felt a delicate scruple against taking that step till I was married

myself and out of the way.”

Here Mrs. Braefield, beginning to speak very hurriedly, as women who

seek to disguise emotion often do, informed Kenelm how unhappy she had

felt for weeks after having found an asylum with her aunt,--how she had

been stung by remorse and oppressed by a sense of humiliation at the

thought of her folly and the odious recollection of Mr. Compton,--how

she had declared to herself that she would never marry any one

now--never! How Mr. Braefield happened to be on a visit in the

neighbourhood, and saw her at church,--how he had sought an introduction

to her,--and how at first she rather disliked him than not; but he was

so good and so kind, and when at last he proposed--and she had frankly

told him all about her girlish flight and infatuation--how generously he

had thanked her for a candour which had placed her as high in his esteem

as she had been before in his love. “And from that moment,” said Mrs.

Braefield, passionately, “my whole heart leaped to him. And now you know

all; and here we are at the Lodge.”

The pony-phaeton went with great speed up a broad gravel-drive, bordered

with rare evergreens, and stopped at a handsome house with a portico in

front, and a long conservatory at the garden side,--one of those houses

which belong to “city gentlemen,” and often contain more comfort and

exhibit more luxury than many a stately manorial mansion.

Mrs. Braefield evidently felt some pride as she led Kenelm through

the handsome hall, paved with Malvern tiles and adorned with Scagliola

columns, and into a drawing-room furnished with much taste and opening

on a spacious flower-garden.

“But where is Mr. Braefield?” asked Kenelm.

“Oh, he has taken the rail to his office; but he will be back long

before dinner, and of course you dine with us.”

“You’re very hospitable, but--”

“No buts: I will take no excuse. Don’t fear that you shall have only

mutton-chops and a rice-pudding; and, besides, I have a children’s party

coming at two o’clock, and there will be all sorts of fun. You are fond

of children, I am sure?”

“I rather think I am not. But I have never clearly ascertained my own

inclinations upon that subject.”

“Well, you shall have ample opportunity to do so to-day. And oh! I

promise you the sight of the loveliest face that you can picture to

yourself when you think of your future wife.”

“My future wife, I hope, is not yet born,” said Kenelm, wearily, and

with much effort suppressing a yawn. “But at all events, I will stay

till after two o’clock; for two o’clock, I presume, means luncheon.”

Mrs. Braefield laughed. “You retain your appetite?”

“Most single men do, provided they don’t fall in love and become doubled

up.”

At this abominable attempt at a pun, Mrs. Braefield disdained to laugh;

but turning away from its perpetrator she took off her hat and gloves

and passed her hands lightly over her forehead, as if to smooth back

some vagrant tress in locks already sufficiently sheen and trim. She was

not quite so pretty in female attire as she had appeared in boy’s

dress, nor did she look quite as young. In all other respects she was

wonderfully improved. There was a serener, a more settled intelligence

in her frank bright eyes, a milder expression in the play of her parted

lips. Kenelm gazed at her with pleased admiration. And as now, turning

from the glass, she encountered his look, a deeper colour came into the

clear delicacy of her cheeks, and the frank eyes moistened. She came up

to him as he sat, and took his hand in both hers, pressing it warmly.

“Ah, Mr. Chillingly,” she said, with impulsive tremulous tones, “look

round, look round this happy, peaceful home!--the life so free from a

care, the husband whom I so love and honour; all the blessings that I

might have so recklessly lost forever had I not met with you, had I been

punished as I deserved. How often I thought of your words, that ‘you

would be proud of my friendship when we met again’! What strength they

gave me in my hours of humbled self-reproach!” Her voice here died away

as if in the effort to suppress a sob.

She released his hand, and, before he could answer, passed quickly

through the open sash into the garden.

CHAPTER IV.

THE children have come,--some thirty of them, pretty as English children

generally are, happy in the joy of the summer sunshine, and the

flower lawns, and the feast under cover of an awning suspended between

chestnut-trees, and carpeted with sward.

No doubt Kenelm held his own at the banquet, and did his best to

increase the general gayety, for whenever he spoke the children listened

eagerly, and when he had done they laughed mirthfully.

“The fair face I promised you,” whispered Mrs. Braefield, “is not here

yet. I have a little note from the young lady to say that Mrs. Cameron

does not feel very well this morning, but hopes to recover sufficiently

to come later in the afternoon.”

“And pray who is Mrs. Cameron?”

“Ah! I forgot that you are a stranger to the place. Mrs. Cameron is the

aunt with whom Lily resides. Is it not a pretty name, Lily?”

“Very! emblematic of a spinster that does not spin, with a white head

and a thin stalk.”

“Then the name belies my Lily, as you will see.”

The children now finished their feast, and betook themselves to dancing

in an alley smoothed for a croquet-ground, and to the sound of a violin

played by the old grandfather of one of the party. While Mrs. Braefield

was busying herself with forming the dance, Kenelm seized the occasion

to escape from a young nymph of the age of twelve who had sat next him

at the banquet, and taken so great a fancy to him that he began to fear

she would vow never to forsake his side, and stole away undetected.

There are times when the mirth of others only saddens us, especially

the mirth of children with high spirits, that jar on our own quiet mood.

Gliding through a dense shrubbery, in which, though the lilacs were

faded, the laburnum still retained here and there the waning gold of its

clusters, Kenelm came into a recess which bounded his steps and invited

him to repose. It was a circle, so formed artificially by slight

trellises, to which clung parasite roses heavy with leaves and flowers.

In the midst played a tiny fountain with a silvery murmuring sound; at

the background, dominating the place, rose the crests of stately trees,

on which the sunlight shimmered, but which rampired out all horizon

beyond. Even as in life do the great dominant passions--love, ambition,

desire of power or gold or fame or knowledge--form the proud background

to the brief-lived flowerets of our youth, lift our eyes beyond the

smile of their bloom, catch the glint of a loftier sunbeam, and yet,

and yet, exclude our sight from the lengths and the widths of the space

which extends behind and beyond them.

Kenelm threw himself on the turf beside the fountain. From afar came the

whoop and the laugh of the children in their sports or their dance. At

the distance their joy did not sadden him,--he marvelled why; and thus,

in musing revery, thought to explain the why to himself.

“The poet,” so ran his lazy thinking, “has told us that ‘distance lends

enchantment to the view,’ and thus compares to the charm of distance

the illusion of hope. But the poet narrows the scope of his own

illustration. Distance lends enchantment to the ear as well as to the

sight; nor to these bodily senses alone. Memory no less than hope owes

its charm to ‘the far away.’

“I cannot imagine myself again a child when I am in the midst of

young noisy children. But as their noise reaches me here, subdued and

mellowed, and knowing, thank Heaven, that the urchins are not within

reach of me, I could readily dream myself back into childhood, and into

sympathy with the lost playfields of school.

“So surely it must be with grief: how different the terrible agony for

a beloved one just gone from earth, to the soft regret for one who

disappeared into Heaven years ago! So with the art of poetry: how

imperatively, when it deals with the great emotions of tragedy, it must

remove the actors from us, in proportion as the emotions are to elevate,

and the tragedy is to please us by the tears it draws! Imagine our shock

if a poet were to place on the stage some wise gentleman with whom we

dined yesterday, and who was discovered to have killed his father and

married his mother. But when Oedipus commits those unhappy mistakes

nobody is shocked. Oxford in the nineteenth century is a long way off

from Thebes three thousand or four thousand years ago.

“And,” continued Kenelm, plunging deeper into the maze of metaphysical

criticism, “even where the poet deals with persons and things close upon

our daily sight,--if he would give them poetic charm he must resort to

a sort of moral or psychological distance; the nearer they are to us

in external circumstance, the farther they must be in some internal

peculiarities. Werter and Clarissa Harlowe are described as

contemporaries of their artistic creation, and with the minutest details

of apparent realism; yet they are at once removed from our daily lives

by their idiosyncrasies and their fates. We know that while Werter

and Clarissa are so near to us in much that we sympathize with them as

friends and kinsfolk, they are yet as much remote from us in the poetic

and idealized side of their natures as if they belonged to the age of

Homer; and this it is that invests with charm the very pain which their

fate inflicts on us. Thus, I suppose, it must be in love. If the love

we feel is to have the glamour of poetry, it must be love for some

one morally at a distance from our ordinary habitual selves; in short,

differing from us in attributes which, however near we draw to the

possessor, we can never approach, never blend, in attributes of our

own; so that there is something in the loved one that always remains an

ideal,--a mystery,--‘a sun-bright summit mingling with the sky’!”

Herewith the soliloquist’s musings glided vaguely into mere revery. He

closed his eyes drowsily, not asleep, nor yet quite awake; as sometimes

in bright summer days when we recline on the grass we do close our eyes,

and yet dimly recognize a golden light bathing the drowsy lids; and

athwart that light images come and go like dreams, though we know that

we are not dreaming.

CHAPTER V.

FROM this state, half comatose, half unconscious, Kenelm was roused

slowly, reluctantly. Something struck softly on his cheek,--again a

little less softly; he opened his eyes, they fell first upon two tiny

rosebuds, which, on striking his face, had fallen on his breast; and

then looking up, he saw before him, in an opening of the trellised

circle, a female child’s laughing face. Her hand was still uplifted

charged with another rosebud, but behind the child’s figure, looking

over her shoulder and holding back the menacing arm, was a face as

innocent but lovelier far,--the face of a girl in her first youth,

framed round with the blossoms that festooned the trellise. How the face

became the flowers! It seemed the fairy spirit of them.

Kenelm started and rose to his feet. The child, the one whom he had so

ungallantly escaped from ran towards him through a wicket in the circle.

Her companion disappeared.

“Is it you?” said Kenelm to the child, “you who pelted me so cruelly?

Ungrateful creature! Did I not give you the best strawberries in the

dish and all my own cream?”

“But why did you run away and hide yourself when you ought to be dancing

with me?” replied the young lady, evading, with the instinct of her sex,

all answer to the reproach she had deserved.

“I did not run away, and it is clear that I did not mean to hide myself,

since you so easily found me out. But who was the young lady with you?

I suspect she pelted me too, for she seems to have run away to hide

herself.”

“No, she did not pelt you; she wanted to stop me, and you would have had

another rosebud--oh, so much bigger!--if she had not held back my arm.

Don’t you know her,--don’t you know Lily?”

“No; so that is Lily? You shall introduce me to her.”

By this time they had passed out of the circle through the little wicket

opposite the path by which Kenelm had entered, and opening at once on

the lawn. Here at some distance the children were grouped, some reclined

on the grass, some walking to and fro, in the interval of the dance.

In the space between the group and the trellise Lily was walking alone

and quickly. The child left Kenelm’s side and ran after her friend, soon

overtook, but did not succeed in arresting her steps. Lily did not pause

till she had reached the grassy ball-room, and here all the children

came round her and shut out her delicate form from Kenelm’s sight.

Before he had reached the place, Mrs. Braefield met him.

“Lily is come!”

“I know it: I have seen her.”

“Is not she beautiful?”

“I must see more of her if I am to answer critically; but before you

introduce me, may I be permitted to ask who and what is Lily?”

Mrs. Braefield paused a moment before she answered, and yet the

answer was brief enough not to need much consideration. “She is a Miss

Mordaunt, an orphan; and, as I before told you, resides with her aunt,

Mrs. Cameron, a widow. They have the prettiest cottage you ever saw on

the banks of the river, or rather rivulet, about a mile from this place.

Mrs. Cameron is a very good, simple-hearted woman. As to Lily, I can

praise her beauty only with safe conscience, for as yet she is a mere

child,--her mind quite unformed.”

“Did you ever meet any man, much less any woman, whose mind was formed?”

muttered Kenelm. “I am sure mine is not, and never will be on this

earth.”

Mrs. Braefield did not hear this low-voiced observation. She was

looking about for Lily; and perceiving her at last as the children who

surrounded her were dispersing to renew the dance, she took Kenelm’s

arm, led him to the young lady, and a formal introduction took place.

Formal as it could be on those sunlit swards, amidst the joy of summer

and the laugh of children. In such scene and such circumstance formality

does not last long. I know not how it was, but in a very few minutes

Kenelm and Lily had ceased to be strangers to each other. They found

themselves seated apart from the rest of the merry-makers, on the bank

shadowed by lime-trees; the man listening with downcast eyes, the girl

with mobile shifting glances now on earth, now on heaven, and talking

freely; gayly,--like the babble of a happy stream, with a silvery dulcet

voice and a sparkle of rippling smiles.

No doubt this is a reversal of the formalities of well-bred life, and

conventional narrating thereof. According to them, no doubt, it is for

the man to talk and the maid to listen; but I state the facts as they

were, honestly. And Lily knew no more of the formalities of drawing-room

life than a skylark fresh from its nest knows of the song-teacher and

the cage. She was still so much of a child. Mrs. Braefield was right:

her mind was still so unformed.

What she did talk about in that first talk between them that could make

the meditative Kenelm listen so mutely, so intently, I know not, at

least I could not jot it down on paper. I fear it was very egotistical,

as the talk of children generally is,--about herself and her aunt, and

her home and her friends; all her friends seemed children like herself,

though younger,--Clemmy the chief of them. Clemmy was the one who had

taken a fancy to Kenelm. And amidst all this ingenuous prattle there

came flashes of a quick intellect, a lively fancy,--nay, even a poetry

of expression or of sentiment. It might be the talk of a child, but

certainly not of a silly child. But as soon as the dance was over,

the little ones again gathered round Lily. Evidently she was the prime

favourite of them all; and as her companion had now become tired

of dancing, new sports were proposed, and Lily was carried off to

“Prisoner’s Base.”

“I am very happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Chillingly,” said a

frank, pleasant voice; and a well-dressed, good-looking man held out his

hand to Kenelm.

“My husband,” said Mrs. Braefield, with a certain pride in her look.

Kenelm responded cordially to the civilities of the master of the house,

who had just returned from his city office, and left all its cares

behind him. You had only to look at him to see that he was prosperous,

and deserved to be so. There were in his countenance the signs of strong

sense, of good-humour,--above all, of an active energetic temperament. A

man of broad smooth forehead, keen hazel eyes, firm lips and jaw; with a

happy contentment in himself, his house, the world in general, mantling

over his genial smile, and outspoken in the metallic ring of his voice.

“You will stay and dine with us, of course,” said Mr. Braefield; “and,

unless you want very much to be in town to-night, I hope you will take a

bed here.”

Kenelm hesitated.

“Do stay at least till to-morrow,” said Mrs. Braefield. Kenelm hesitated

still; and while hesitating his eye rested on Lily, leaning on the arm

of a middle-aged lady, and approaching the hostess,--evidently to take

leave.

“I cannot resist so tempting an invitation,” said Kenelm, and he fell

back a little behind Lily and her companion.

“Thank you much for so pleasant a day,” said Mrs. Cameron to the

hostess. “Lily has enjoyed herself extremely. I only regret we could not

come earlier.”

“If you are walking home,” said Mr. Braefield, “let me accompany you. I

want to speak to your gardener about his heart’s-ease: it is much finer

than mine.”

“If so,” said Kenelm to Lily, “may I come too? Of all flowers that grow,

heart’s-ease is the one I most prize.”

A few minutes afterwards Kenelm was walking by the side of Lily along

the banks of a little stream, tributary to the Thames; Mrs. Cameron and

Mr. Braefield in advance, for the path only held two abreast.

Suddenly Lily left his side, allured by a rare butterfly--I think it is

called the Emperor of Morocco--that was sunning its yellow wings upon

a group of wild reeds. She succeeded in capturing this wanderer in her

straw hat, over which she drew her sun-veil. After this notable capture

she returned demurely to Kenelm’s side.

“Do you collect insects?” said that philosopher, as much surprised as it

was his nature to be at anything.

“Only butterflies,” answered Lily; “they are not insects, you know; they

are souls.”

“Emblems of souls you mean,--at least, so the Greeks prettily

represented them to be.”

“No, real souls,--the souls of infants that die in their cradles

unbaptized; and if they are taken care of, and not eaten by birds, and

live a year then they pass into fairies.”

“It is a very poetical idea, Miss Mordaunt, and founded on evidence

quite as rational as other assertions of the metamorphosis of one

creature into another. Perhaps you can do what the philosophers

cannot,--tell me how you learned a new idea to be an incontestable

fact?”

“I don’t know,” replied Lily, looking very much puzzled; “perhaps I

learned it in a book, or perhaps I dreamed it.”

“You could not make a wiser answer if you were a philosopher. But you

talk of taking care of butterflies; how do you do that? Do you impale

them on pins stuck into a glass case?”

“Impale them! How can you talk so cruelly? You deserve to be pinched by

the fairies.”

“I am afraid,” thought Kenelm, compassionately, “that my companion has

no mind to be formed; what is euphoniously called ‘an innocent.’”

He shook his head and remained silent. Lily resumed,--

“I will show you my collection when we get home; they seem so happy. I

am sure there are some of them who know me: they will feed from my hand.

I have only had one die since I began to collect them last summer.”

“Then you have kept them a year: they ought to have turned into

fairies.”

“I suppose many of them have. Of course I let out all those that had

been with me twelve months: they don’t turn to fairies in the cage,

you know. Now I have only those I caught this year, or last autumn; the

prettiest don’t appear till the autumn.”

The girl here bent her uncovered head over the straw hat, her tresses

shadowing it, and uttered loving words to the prisoner. Then again she

looked up and around her, and abruptly stopped, and exclaimed,--

“How can people live in towns? How can people say they are ever dull in

the country? Look,” she continued, gravely and earnestly, “look at that

tall pine-tree, with its long branch sweeping over the water; see how,

as the breeze catches it, it changes its shadow, and how the shadow

changes the play of the sunlight on the brook:--

“‘Wave your tops, ye pines;

With every plant, in sign of worship wave.’

“What an interchange of music there must be between Nature and a poet!”

Kenelm was startled. This “an innocent”!--this a girl who had no mind to

be formed! In that presence he could not be cynical; could not speak of

Nature as a mechanism, a lying humbug, as he had done to the man poet.

He replied gravely,--

“The Creator has gifted the whole universe with language, but few are

the hearts that can interpret it. Happy those to whom it is no foreign

tongue, acquired imperfectly with care and pain, but rather a native

language, learned unconsciously from the lips of the great mother. To

them the butterfly’s wing may well buoy into heaven a fairy’s soul!”

When he had thus said Lily turned, and for the first time attentively

looked into his dark soft eyes; then instinctively she laid her light

hand on his arm, and said in a low voice, “Talk on; talk thus: I like to

hear you.”

But Kenelm did not talk on. They had now arrived at the garden-gate of

Mrs. Cameron’s cottage, and the elder persons in advance paused at the

gate and walked with them to the house.