It was a long, low, irregular cottage, without pretension to

architectural beauty, yet exceedingly picturesque,--a flower-garden,

large, but in proportion to the house, with parterres in which the

colours were exquisitely assorted, sloping to the grassy margin of the

rivulet, where the stream expanded into a lake-like basin, narrowed

at either end by locks, from which with gentle sound flowed shallow

waterfalls. By the banks was a rustic seat, half overshadowed by the

drooping boughs of a vast willow.

The inside of the house was in harmony with the exterior,--cottage-like,

but with an unmistakable air of refinement about the rooms, even in the

little entrance-hall, which was painted in Pompeian frescos.

“Come and see my butterfly-cage,” said Lily, whisperingly.

Kenelm followed her through the window that opened on the garden; and

at one end of a small conservatory, or rather greenhouse, was the

habitation of these singular favourites. It was as large as a small

room; three sides of it formed by minute wirework, with occasional

draperies of muslin or other slight material, and covered at intervals,

sometimes within, sometimes without, by dainty creepers; a tiny cistern

in the centre, from which upsprang a sparkling jet. Lily cautiously

lifted a sash-door and glided in, closing it behind her. Her entrance

set in movement a multitude of gossamer wings, some fluttering round

her, some more boldly settling on her hair or dress. Kenelm thought

she had not vainly boasted when she said that some of the creatures had

learned to know her. She released the Emperor of Morocco from her hat;

it circled round her fearlessly, and then vanished amidst the leaves of

the creepers. Lily opened the door and came out.

“I have heard of a philosopher who tamed a wasp,” said Kenelm, “but

never before of a young lady who tamed butterflies.”

“No,” said Lily, proudly; “I believe I am the first who attempted it.

I don’t think I should have attempted it if I had been told that others

had succeeded before me. Not that I have succeeded quite. No matter; if

they don’t love me, I love them.”

They re-entered the drawing-room, and Mrs. Cameron addressed Kenelm.

“Do you know much of this part of the country, Mr. Chillingly?”

“It is quite new to me, and more rural than many districts farther from

London.”

“That is the good fortune of most of our home counties,” said Mr.

Braefield; “they escape the smoke and din of manufacturing towns, and

agricultural science has not demolished their leafy hedgerows. The

walks through our green lanes are as much bordered with convolvulus and

honeysuckle as they were when Izaak Walton sauntered through them to

angle in that stream!”

“Does tradition say that he angled in that stream? I thought his haunts

were rather on the other side of London.”

“Possibly; I am not learned in Walton or in his art, but there is an old

summer-house, on the other side of the lock yonder, on which is carved

the name of Izaak Walton, but whether by his own hand or another’s who

shall say? Has Mr. Melville been here lately, Mrs. Cameron?”

“No, not for several months.”

“He has had a glorious success this year. We may hope that at last his

genius is acknowledged by the world. I meant to buy his picture, but I

was not in time: a Manchester man was before me.”

“Who is Mr. Melville? any relation to you?” whispered Kenelm to Lily.

“Relation,--I scarcely know. Yes, I suppose so, because he is my

guardian. But if he were the nearest relation on earth, I could not love

him more,” said Lily, with impulsive eagerness, her cheeks flushing, her

eyes filling with tears.

“And he is an artist,--a painter?” asked Kenelm.

“Oh, yes; no one paints such beautiful pictures,--no one so clever, no

one so kind.”

Kenelm strove to recollect if he had ever heard the name of Melville as

a painter, but in vain. Kenelm, however, knew but little of painters:

they were not in his way; and he owned to himself, very humbly, that

there might be many a living painter of eminent renown whose name and

works would be strange to him.

He glanced round the wall; Lily interpreted his look. “There are no

pictures of his here,” said she; “there is one in my own room. I will

show it you when you come again.”

“And now,” said Mr. Braefield, rising, “I must just have a word with

your gardener, and then go home. We dine earlier here than in London,

Mr. Chillingly.”

As the two gentlemen, after taking leave, re-entered the hall, Lily

followed them and said to Kenelm, “What time will you come to-morrow to

see the picture?”

Kenelm averted his head, and then replied, not with his wonted courtesy,

but briefly and brusquely,--

“I fear I cannot call to-morrow. I shall be far away by sunrise.”

Lily made no answer, but turned back into the room.

Mr. Braefield found the gardener watering a flower-border, conferred

with him about the heart’s-ease, and then joined Kenelm, who had halted

a few yards beyond the garden-gate.

“A pretty little place that,” said Mr. Braefield, with a sort of lordly

compassion, as became the owner of Braefieldville. “What I call quaint.”

“Yes, quaint,” echoed Kenelm, abstractedly.

“It is always the case with houses enlarged by degrees. I have heard my

poor mother say that when Melville or Mrs. Cameron first bought it, it

was little better than a mere labourer’s cottage, with a field attached

to it. And two or three years afterwards a room or so more was built,

and a bit of the field taken in for a garden; and then by degrees the

whole part now inhabited by the family was built, leaving only the old

cottage as a scullery and washhouse; and the whole field was turned

into the garden, as you see. But whether it was Melville’s money or the

aunt’s that did it, I don’t know. More likely the aunt’s. I don’t see

what interest Melville has in the place: he does not go there often, I

fancy; it is not his home.”

“Mr. Melville, it seems, is a painter, and, from what I heard you say, a

successful one.”

“I fancy he had little success before this year. But surely you saw his

pictures at the Exhibition?”

“I am ashamed to say I have not been to the Exhibition.”

“You surprise me. However, Melville had three pictures there,--all very

good; but the one I wished to buy made much more sensation than the

others, and has suddenly lifted him from obscurity into fame.”

“He appears to be a relation of Miss Mordaunt’s, but so distant a

one that she could not even tell me what grade of cousinship he could

claim.”

“Nor can I. He is her guardian, I know. The relationship, if any, must,

as you say, be very distant; for Melville is of humble extraction, while

any one can see that Mrs. Cameron is a thorough gentlewoman, and Lily

Mordaunt is her sister’s child. I have heard my mother say that it was

Melville, then a very young man, who bought the cottage, perhaps with

Mrs. Cameron’s money; saying it was for a widowed lady, whose husband

had left her with very small means. And when Mrs. Cameron arrived with

Lily, then a mere infant, she was in deep mourning, and a very young

woman herself,--pretty too. If Melville had been a frequent visitor

then, of course there would have been scandal; but he very seldom came,

and when he did, he lodged in a cottage, Cromwell Lodge, on the other

side of the brook; now and then bringing with him a fellow-lodger,--some

other young artist, I suppose, for the sake of angling. So there could

be no cause for scandal, and nothing can be more blameless than poor

Mrs. Cameron’s life. My mother, who then resided at Braefieldville, took

a great fancy to both Lily and her aunt, and when by degrees the cottage

grew into a genteel sort of place, the few gentry in the neighbourhood

followed my mother’s example and were very kind to Mrs. Cameron, so that

she has now her place in the society about here, and is much liked.”

“And Mr. Melville?--does he still very seldom come here?”

“To say truth, he has not been at all since I settled at Braefieldville.

The place was left to my mother for her life, and I was not much there

during her occupation. In fact, I was then a junior partner in our firm,

and conducted the branch business in New York, coming over to England

for my holiday once a year or so. When my mother died, there was much to

arrange before I could settle personally in England, and I did not come

to settle at Braefieldville till I married. I did see Melville on one of

my visits to the place some years ago; but, between ourselves, he is not

the sort of person whose intimate acquaintance one would wish to court.

My mother told me he was an idle, dissipated man, and I have heard from

others that he was very unsteady. Mr. -----, the great painter, told

me that he was a loose fish; and I suppose his habits were against his

getting on, till this year, when, perhaps, by a lucky accident, he has

painted a picture that raises him to the top of the tree. But is not

Miss Lily wondrously nice to look at? What a pity her education has been

so much neglected!”

“Has it?”

“Have not you discovered that already? She has not had even a

music-master, though my wife says she has a good ear, and can sing

prettily enough. As for reading I don’t think she has read anything but

fairy tales and poetry, and such silly stuff. However, she is very young

yet; and now that her guardian can sell his pictures, it is to be hoped

that he will do more justice to his ward. Painters and actors are not so

regular in their private lives as we plain men are, and great allowance

is to be made for them; still, every one is bound to do his duty. I am

sure you agree with me?”

“Certainly,” said Kenelm, with an emphasis which startled the merchant.

“That is an admirable maxim of yours: it seems a commonplace, yet how

often, when it is put into our heads, it strikes as a novelty! A duty

may be a very difficult thing, a very disagreeable thing, and, what

is strange, it is often a very invisible thing. It is present,--close

before us, and yet we don’t see it; somebody shouts its name in our

ears, ‘Duty,’ and straight it towers before us a grim giant. Pardon me

if I leave you: I can’t stay to dine. Duty summons me elsewhere. Make my

excuses to Mrs. Braefield.”

Before Mr. Braefield could recover his self-possession, Kenelm had

vaulted over a stile and was gone.

CHAPTER VI.

KENELM walked into the shop kept by the Somerses, and found Jessie

still at the counter. “Give me back my knap sack. Thank you,” he said,

flinging the knapsack across his shoulders. “Now, do me a favour. A

portmanteau of mine ought to be at the station. Send for it, and keep it

till I give further directions. I think of going to Oxford for a day

or two. Mrs. Somers, one more word with you. Think, answer frankly, are

you, as you said this morning, thoroughly happy, and yet married to the

man you loved?”

“Oh, so happy!”

“And wish for nothing beyond? Do not wish Will to be other than he is?”

“God forbid! You frighten me, sir.”

“Frighten you! Be it so. Everyone who is happy should be frightened

lest happiness fly away. Do your best to chain it, and you will, for you

attach Duty to Happiness; and,” muttered Kenelm, as he turned from the

shop, “Duty is sometimes not a rose-coloured tie, but a heavy iron-hued

clog.”

He strode on through the street towards the sign-post with “To Oxford”

inscribed thereon. And whether he spoke literally of the knapsack, or

metaphorically of duty, he murmured, as he strode,--

“A pedlar’s pack that bows the bearer down.”

CHAPTER VII.

KENELM might have reached Oxford that night, for he was a rapid and

untirable pedestrian; but he halted a little after the moon rose, and

laid himself down to rest beneath a new-mown haystack, not very far from

the high road.

He did not sleep. Meditatingly propped on his elbow, he said to

himself,--

“It is long since I have wondered at nothing. I wonder now: can this be

love,--really love,--unmistakably love? Pooh! it is impossible; the

very last person in the world to be in love with. Let us reason upon

it,--you, myself, and I. To begin with,--face! What is face? In a few

years the most beautiful face may be very plain. Take the Venus at

Florence. Animate her; see her ten years after; a chignon, front teeth

(blue or artificially white), mottled complexion, double chin,--all that

sort of plump prettiness goes into double chin. Face, bah! What man of

sense--what pupil of Welby, the realist--can fall in love with a face?

and even if I were simpleton enough to do so, pretty faces are as common

as daisies. Cecilia Travers has more regular features; Jessie Wiles a

richer colouring. I was not in love with them,--not a bit of it. Myself,

you have nothing to say there. Well, then, mind? Talk of mind, indeed!

a creature whose favourite companionship is that of butterflies, and who

tells me that butterflies are the souls of infants unbaptized. What an

article for ‘The Londoner,’ on the culture of young women! What a girl

for Miss Garrett and Miss Emily Faithfull! Put aside Mind as we have

done Face. What rests?--the Frenchman’s ideal of happy marriage?

congenial circumstance of birth, fortune, tastes, habits. Worse still.

Myself, answer honestly, are you not floored?”

Whereon “Myself” took up the parable and answered, “O thou fool! why

wert thou so ineffably blessed in one presence? Why, in quitting that

presence, did Duty become so grim? Why dost thou address to me those

inept pedantic questionings, under the light of yon moon, which has

suddenly ceased to be to thy thoughts an astronomical body and has

become, forever and forever, identified in thy heart’s dreams with

romance and poesy and first love? Why, instead of gazing on that

uncomfortable orb, art thou not quickening thy steps towards a cozy inn

and a good supper at Oxford? Kenelm, my friend, thou art in for it. No

disguising the fact: thou art in love!”

“I’ll be hanged if I am,” said the Second in the Dualism of Kenelm’s

mind; and therewith he shifted his knapsack into a pillow, turned his

eyes from the moon, and still could not sleep. The face of Lily still

haunted his eyes; the voice of Lily still rang in his ears.

Oh, my reader! dost thou here ask me to tell thee what Lily was

like?--was she dark? was she fair? was she tall? was she short? Never

shalt thou learn these secrets from me. Imagine to thyself the being to

which thine whole of life, body and mind and soul, moved irresistibly as

the needle to the pole. Let her be tall or short, dark or fair, she is

that which out of all womankind has suddenly become the one woman for

thee. Fortunate art thou, my reader, if thou chance to have heard the

popular song of “My Queen” sung by the one lady who alone can sing it

with expression worthy the verse of the poetess and the music of the

composition, by the sister of the exquisite songstress. But if thou hast

not heard the verse thus sung, to an accompaniment thus composed, still

the words themselves are, or ought to be, familiar to thee, if thou art,

as I take for granted, a lover of the true lyrical muse. Recall then

the words supposed to be uttered by him who knows himself destined to do

homage to one he has not yet beheld:--

“She is standing somewhere,--she I shall honour,

She that I wait for, my queen, my queen;

Whether her hair be golden or raven,

Whether her eyes be hazel or blue,

I know not now, it will be engraven

Some day hence as my loveliest hue.

She may be humble or proud, my lady,

Or that sweet calm which is just between;

But whenever she comes, she will find me ready

To do her homage, my queen, my queen.”

Was it possible that the cruel boy-god “who sharpens his arrows on the

whetstone of the human heart” had found the moment to avenge himself

for the neglect of his altars and the scorn of his power? Must that

redoubted knight-errant, the hero of this tale, despite the Three Fishes

on his charmed shield, at last veil the crest and bow the knee, and

murmur to himself, “She has come, my queen”?

CHAPTER VIII.

THE next morning Kenelm arrived at Oxford,--“Verum secretumque

Mouseion.”

If there be a place in this busy island which may distract the

passion of youth from love to scholarship, to Ritualism, to mediaeval

associations, to that sort of poetical sentiment or poetical fanaticism

which a Mivers and a Welby and an advocate of the Realistic School would

hold in contempt,--certainly that place is Oxford,--home; nevertheless,

of great thinkers and great actors in the practical world.

The vacation had not yet commenced, but the commencement was near at

hand. Kenelm thought he could recognize the leading men by their slower

walk and more abstracted expression of countenance. Among the Fellows

was the eminent author of that book which had so powerfully fascinated

the earlier adolescence of Kenelm Chillingly, and who had himself been

subject to the fascination of a yet stronger spirit. The Rev. Decimus

Roach had been ever an intense and reverent admirer of John Henry

Newman,--an admirer, I mean, of the pure and lofty character of the

man, quite apart from sympathy with his doctrines. But although Roach

remained an unconverted Protestant of orthodox, if High Church, creed,

yet there was one tenet he did hold in common with the author of the

“Apologia.” He ranked celibacy among the virtues most dear to Heaven.

In that eloquent treatise, “The Approach to the Angels,” he not only

maintained that the state of single blessedness was strictly incumbent

on every member of a Christian priesthood, but to be commended to the

adoption of every conscientious layman.

It was the desire to confer with this eminent theologian that had

induced Kenelm to direct his steps to Oxford.

Mr. Roach was a friend of Welby, at whose house, when a pupil,

Kenelm had once or twice met him, and been even more charmed by his

conversation than by his treatise.

Kenelm called on Mr. Roach, who received him very graciously, and, not

being a tutor or examiner, placed his time at Kenelm’s disposal; took

him the round of the colleges and the Bodleian; invited him to dine in

his college-hall; and after dinner led him into his own rooms, and gave

him an excellent bottle of Chateau Margeaux.

Mr. Roach was somewhere about fifty,--a good-looking man and evidently

thought himself so; for he wore his hair long behind and parted in the

middle, which is not done by men who form modest estimates of their

personal appearance.

Kenelm was not long in drawing out his host on the subject to which that

profound thinker had devoted so much meditation.

“I can scarcely convey to you,” said Kenelm, “the intense admiration

with which I have studied your noble work, ‘Approach to the Angels.’ It

produced a great effect on me in the age between boyhood and youth. But

of late some doubts on the universal application of your doctrine have

crept into my mind.”

“Ay, indeed?” said Mr. Roach, with an expression of interest in his

face.

“And I come to you for their solution.”

Mr. Roach turned away his head, and pushed the bottle to Kenelm.

“I am quite willing to concede,” resumed the heir of the Chillinglys,

“that a priesthood should stand apart from the distracting cares of a

family, and pure from all carnal affections.”

“Hem, hem,” grunted Mr. Roach, taking his knee on his lap and caressing

it.

“I go further,” continued Kenelm, “and supposing with you that the

Confessional has all the importance, whether in its monitory or its

cheering effects upon repentant sinners, which is attached to it by

the Roman Catholics, and that it ought to be no less cultivated by the

Reformed Church, it seems to me essential that the Confessor should have

no better half to whom it can be even suspected he may, in an unguarded

moment, hint at the frailties of one of her female acquaintances.”

“I pushed that argument too far,” murmured Roach.

“Not a bit of it. Celibacy in the Confessor stands or falls with the

Confessional. Your argument there is as sound as a bell. But when it

comes to the layman, I think I detect a difference.”

Mr. Roach shook his head, and replied stoutly, “No; if celibacy be

incumbent on the one, it is equally incumbent on the other. I say ‘if.’”

“Permit me to deny that assertion. Do not fear that I shall insult your

understanding by the popular platitude; namely, that if celibacy were

universal, in a very few years the human race would be extinct. As you

have justly observed, in answer to that fallacy, ‘It is the duty of each

human soul to strive towards the highest perfection of the spiritual

state for itself, and leave the fate of the human race to the care of

the Creator.’ If celibacy be necessary to spiritual perfection, how do

we know but that it may be the purpose and decree of the All Wise that

the human race, having attained to that perfection, should disappear

from earth? Universal celibacy would thus be the euthanasia of mankind.

On the other hand, if the Creator decided that the human race, having

culminated to this crowning but barren flower of perfection, should

nevertheless continue to increase and multiply upon earth, have you not

victoriously exclaimed, ‘Presumptuous mortal! how canst thou presume

to limit the resources of the Almighty? Would it not be easy for Him to

continue some other mode, unexposed to trouble and sin and passion, as

in the nuptials of the vegetable world, by which the generations will

be renewed? Can we suppose that the angels--the immortal companies

of heaven--are not hourly increasing in number, and extending their

population throughout infinity? and yet in heaven there is no marrying

nor giving in marriage.’ All this, clothed by you in words which my

memory only serves me to quote imperfectly,--all this I unhesitatingly

concede.”

Mr. Roach rose and brought another bottle of the Chateau Margeaux from

his cellaret, filled Kenelm’s glass, reseated himself, and took the

other knee into his lap to caress.

“But,” resumed Kenelm, “my doubt is this.”

“Ah!” cried Mr. Roach, “let us hear the doubt.”

“In the first place, is celibacy essential to the highest state of

spiritual perfection; and, in the second place, if it were, are mortals,

as at present constituted, capable of that culmination?”

“Very well put,” said Mr. Roach, and he tossed off his glass with more

cheerful aspect than he had hitherto exhibited.

“You see,” said Kenelm, “we are compelled in this, as in other questions

of philosophy, to resort to the inductive process, and draw our theories

from the facts within our cognizance. Now looking round the world, is it

the fact that old maids and old bachelors are so much more spiritually

advanced than married folks? Do they pass their time, like an Indian

dervish, in serene contemplation of divine excellence and beatitude?

Are they not quite as worldly in their own way as persons who have been

married as often as the Wife of Bath, and, generally speaking, more

selfish, more frivolous, and more spiteful? I am sure I don’t wish to

speak uncharitably against old maids and old bachelors. I have three

aunts who are old maids, and fine specimens of the genus; but I am sure

they would all three have been more agreeable companions, and quite as

spiritually gifted, if they had been happily married, and were caressing

their children, instead of lapdogs. So, too, I have an old bachelor

cousin, Chillingly Mivers, whom you know. As clever as a man can be.

But, Lord bless you! as to being wrapped in spiritual meditation, he

could not be more devoted to the things of earth if he had married as

many wives as Solomon, and had as many children as Priam. Finally, have

not half the mistakes in the world arisen from a separation between the

spiritual and the moral nature of man? Is it not, after all, through his

dealings with his fellow-men that man makes his safest ‘approach to the

angels’? And is not the moral system a very muscular system? Does it not

require for healthful vigour plenty of continued exercise, and does it

not get that exercise naturally by the relationships of family, with

all the wider collateral struggles with life which the care of family

necessitates?

“I put these questions to you with the humblest diffidence. I expect to

hear such answers as will thoroughly convince my reason, and I shall be

delighted if so. For at the root of the controversy lies the passion of

love. And love must be a very disquieting, troublesome emotion, and has

led many heroes and sages into wonderful weaknesses and follies.”

“Gently, gently, Mr. Chillingly; don’t exaggerate. Love, no doubt,

is--ahem--a disquieting passion. Still, every emotion that changes life

from a stagnant pool into the freshness and play of a running stream is

disquieting to the pool. Not only love and its fellow-passions, such as

ambition, but the exercise of the reasoning faculty, which is always at

work in changing our ideas, is very disquieting. Love, Mr. Chillingly,

has its good side as well as its bad. Pass the bottle.”

KENELM (passing the bottle).--“Yes, yes; you are quite right in

putting the adversary’s case strongly, before you demolish it: all good

rhetoricians do that. Pardon me if I am up to that trick in argument.

Assume that I know all that can be said in favour of the abnegation of

common-sense, euphoniously called ‘love,’ and proceed to the demolition

of the case.”

THE REV. DECIMUS ROACH (hesitatingly).--“The demolition of the case?

humph! The passions are ingrafted in the human system as part and parcel

of it, and are not to be demolished so easily as you seem to think.

Love, taken rationally and morally by a man of good education and sound

principles, is--is--”

KENELM.--“Well, is what?”

THE REV. DECIMUS ROACH.--“A--a--a--thing not to be despised. Like the

sun, it is the great colourist of life, Mr. Chillingly. And you are so

right: the moral system does require daily exercise. What can give that

exercise to a solitary man, when he arrives at the practical age in

which he cannot sit for six hours at a stretch musing on the divine

essence; and rheumatism or other ailments forbid his adventure into

the wilds of Africa as a missionary? At that age, Nature, which will

be heard, Mr. Chillingly, demands her rights. A sympathizing female

companion by one’s side; innocent little children climbing one’s

knee,--lovely, bewitching picture! Who can be Goth enough to rub it out,

who fanatic enough to paint over it the image of a Saint Simeon sitting

alone on a pillar? Take another glass. You don’t drink enough, Mr.

Chillingly.”

“I have drunk enough,” replied Kenelm, in a sullen voice, “to think I

see double. I imagined that before me sat the austere adversary of the

insanity of love and the miseries of wedlock. Now, I fancy I listen to

a puling sentimentalist uttering the platitudes which the other Decimus

Roach had already refuted. Certainly either I see double, or you amuse

yourself with mocking my appeal to your wisdom.”

“Not so, Mr. Chillingly. But the fact is, that when I wrote that book

of which you speak I was young, and youth is enthusiastic and one-sided.

Now, with the same disdain of the excesses to which love may hurry weak

intellects, I recognize its benignant effects when taken, as I before

said, rationally,--taken rationally, my young friend. At that period

of life when the judgment is matured, the soothing companionship of

an amiable female cannot but cheer the mind, and prevent that morose

hoar-frost into which solitude is chilled and made rigid by increasing

years. In short, Mr. Chillingly, having convinced myself that I erred

in the opinion once too rashly put forth, I owe it to Truth, I owe it to

Mankind, to make my conversion known to the world. And I am about next

month to enter into the matrimonial state with a young lady who--”

“Say no more, say no more, Mr. Roach. It must be a painful subject to

you. Let us drop it.”

“It is not a painful subject at all!” exclaimed Mr. Roach, with warmth.

“I look forward to the fulfilment of my duty with the pleasure which

a well-trained mind always ought to feel in recanting a fallacious

doctrine. But you do me the justice to understand that of course I do

not take this step I propose--for my personal satisfaction. No, sir,

it is the value of my example to others which purifies my motives and

animates my soul.”

After this concluding and noble sentence, the conversation drooped. Host

and guest both felt they had had enough of each other. Kenelm soon rose

to depart.

Mr. Roach, on taking leave of, him at the door, said, with marked

emphasis,--

“Not for my personal satisfaction,--remember that. Whenever you hear my

conversion discussed in the world, say that from my own lips you heard

these words,--NOT FOR MY PERSONAL SATISFACTION. No! my kind regards to

Welby,--a married man himself, and a father: he will understand me.”

CHAPTER IX.

ON quitting Oxford, Kenelm wandered for several days about the country,

advancing to no definite goal, meeting with no noticeable adventure.

At last he found himself mechanically retracing his steps. A magnetic

influence he could not resist drew him back towards the grassy meads and

the sparkling rill of Moleswich.

“There must be,” said he to himself, “a mental, like an optical,

illusion. In the last, we fancy we have seen a spectre. If we dare not

face the apparition,--dare not attempt to touch it,--run superstitiously

away from it,--what happens? We shall believe to our dying day that it

was not an illusion, that it was a spectre; and so we may be crazed for

life. But if we manfully walk up to the phantom, stretch our hands

to seize it, oh! it fades into thin air, the cheat of our eyesight is

dispelled, and we shall never be ghost-ridden again. So it must be with

this mental illusion of mine. I see an image strange to my experience:

it seems to me, at first sight, clothed with a supernatural charm; like

an unreasoning coward, I run away from it. It continues to haunt me; I

cannot shut out its apparition. It pursues me by day alike in the haunts

of men,--alike in the solitudes of nature; it visits me by night in my

dreams. I begin to say this must be a real visitant from another world:

it must be love; the love of which I read in the Poets, as in the Poets

I read of witchcraft and ghosts. Surely I must approach that apparition

as a philosopher like Sir David Brewster would approach the black

cat seated on a hearth-rug, which he tells us that some lady of his

acquaintance constantly saw till she went into a world into which black

cats are not held to be admitted. The more I think of it the less

it appears to me possible that I can be really in love with a wild,

half-educated, anomalous creature, merely because the apparition of

her face haunts me. With perfect safety, therefore, I can approach the

creature; in proportion as I see more of her the illusion will vanish. I

will go back to Moleswich manfully.”

Thus said Kenelm to himself, and himself answered,--“Go; for thou canst

not help it. Thinkest thou that Daces can escape the net that has meshed

a Roach? No,--

‘Come it will, the day decreed by fate,’

when thou must succumb to the ‘Nature which will be heard.’ Better

succumb now, and with a good grace, than resist till thou hast reached

thy fiftieth year, and then make a rational choice not for thy personal

satisfaction.”

Whereupon Kenelm answered to himself, indignantly, “Pooh! thou flippant.

My _alter ego_, thou knowest not what thou art talking about! It is

not a question of Nature; it is a question of the supernatural,--an

illusion,--a phantom!” Thus Kenelm and himself continued to quarrel with

each other; and the more they quarrelled, the nearer they approached

to the haunted spot in which had been seen, and fled from, the fatal

apparition of first love.

BOOK VI.

CHAPTER I.

SIR PETER had not heard from Kenelm since a letter informing him that

his son had left town on an excursion, which would probably be short,

though it might last a few weeks; and the good Baronet now resolved to

go to London himself, take his chance of Kenelm’s return, and if

still absent, at least learn from Mivers and others how far that very

eccentric planet had contrived to steer a regular course amidst the

fixed stars of the metropolitan system. He had other reasons for his

journey. He wished to make the acquaintance of Chillingly Gordon

before handing him over the L20,000 which Kenelm had released in that

resettlement of estates, the necessary deeds of which the young heir had

signed before quitting London for Moleswich. Sir Peter wished still more

to see Cecilia Travers, in whom Kenelm’s accounts of her had inspired a

very strong interest.

The day after his arrival in town Sir Peter breakfasted with Mivers.

“Upon my word you are very comfortable here,” said Sir Peter, glancing

at the well-appointed table, and round the well-furnished rooms.

“Naturally so: there is no one to prevent my being comfortable. I am not

married; taste that omelette.”

“Some men declare they never knew comfort till they were married, Cousin

Miners.”

“Some men are reflecting bodies, and catch a pallid gleam from the

comfort which a wife concentres on herself. With a fortune so modest and

secure, what comforts, possessed by me now, would not a Mrs. Chillingly

Mivers ravish from my hold and appropriate to herself! Instead of these

pleasant rooms, where should I be lodged? In a dingy den looking on

a backyard excluded from the sun by day and vocal with cats by night;

while Mrs. Mivers luxuriated in two drawing-rooms with southern aspect

and perhaps a boudoir. My brougham would be torn from my uses and

monopolized by ‘the angel of my hearth,’ clouded in her crinoline and

halved by her chignon. No! if ever I marry--and I never deprive myself

of the civilities and needlework which single ladies waste upon me by

saying I shall not marry--it will be when women have fully established

their rights; for then men may have a chance of vindicating their own.

Then if there are two drawing-rooms in the house I shall take one;

if not, we will toss up who shall have the back parlour; if we keep a

brougham, it will be exclusively mine three days in the week; if Mrs. M.

wants L200 a year for her wardrobe she must be contented with one, the

other half will belong to my personal decoration; if I am oppressed by

proof-sheets and printers’ devils, half of the oppression falls to her

lot, while I take my holiday on the croquet ground at Wimbledon. Yes,

when the present wrongs of women are exchanged for equality with men, I

will cheerfully marry; and to do the thing generous, I will not oppose

Mrs. M.’s voting in the vestry or for Parliament. I will give her my own

votes with pleasure.”

“I fear, my dear cousin, that you have infected Kenelm with your selfish

ideas on the nuptial state. He does not seem inclined to marry,--eh?”

“Not that I know of.”

“What sort of girl is Cecilia Travers?”

“One of those superior girls who are not likely to tower into that

terrible giantess called a ‘superior woman.’ A handsome, well-educated,

sensible young lady, not spoiled by being an heiress; in fine, just the

sort of girl whom you could desire to fix on for a daughter-in-law.”

“And you don’t think Kenelm has a fancy for her?”

“Honestly speaking, I do not.”

“Any counter-attraction? There are some things in which sons do not

confide in their fathers. You have never heard that Kenelm has been a

little wild?”

“Wild he is, as the noble savage who ran in the woods,” said Cousin

Mivers.

“You frighten me!”

“Before the noble savage ran across the squaws, and was wise enough to

run away from them. Kenelm has run away now somewhere.”

“Yes, he does not tell me where, nor do they know at his lodgings.

A heap of notes on his table and no directions where they are to

be forwarded. On the whole, however, he has held his own in London

society,--eh?”

“Certainly! he has been more courted than most young men, and perhaps

more talked of. Oddities generally are.”

“You own he has talents above the average? Do you not think he will make

a figure in the world some day, and discharge that debt to the literary

stores or the political interests of his country, which alas, I and my

predecessors, the other Sir Peters, failed to do; and for which I hailed

his birth, and gave him the name of Kenelm?”

“Upon my word,” answered Mivers,--who had now finished his breakfast,

retreated to an easy-chair, and taken from the chimney-piece one of his

famous trabucos,--“upon my word, I can’t guess; if some great reverse

of fortune befell him, and he had to work for his livelihood, or if some

other direful calamity gave a shock to his nervous system and jolted it

into a fussy, fidgety direction, I dare say he might make a splash in

that current of life which bears men on to the grave. But you see he

wants, as he himself very truly says, the two stimulants to definite

action,--poverty and vanity.”

“Surely there have been great men who were neither poor nor vain?”

“I doubt it. But vanity is a ruling motive that takes many forms

and many aliases: call it ambition, call it love of fame, still its

substance is the same,--the desire of applause carried into fussiness of

action.”

“There may be the desire for abstract truth without care for applause.”

“Certainly. A philosopher on a desert island may amuse himself by

meditating on the distinction between light and heat. But if, on

returning to the world, he publish the result of his meditations, vanity

steps in and desires to be applauded.”

“Nonsense, Cousin Mivers, he may rather desire to be of use and benefit

to mankind. You don’t deny that there is such a thing as philanthropy.”

“I don’t deny that there is such a thing as humbug. And whenever I meet

a man who has the face to tell me that he is taking a great deal

of trouble, and putting himself very much out of his way, for a

philanthropical object, without the slightest idea of reward either in

praise or pence, I know that I have a humbug before me,--a dangerous

humbug, a swindling humbug, a fellow with his pocket full of villanous

prospectuses and appeals to subscribers.”

“Pooh, pooh; leave off that affectation of cynicism: you are not a

bad-hearted fellow; you must love mankind; you must have an interest in

the welfare of posterity.”

“Love mankind? Interest in posterity? Bless my soul, Cousin Peter, I

hope you have no prospectuses in _your_ pockets; no schemes for draining

the Pontine Marshes out of pure love to mankind; no propositions for

doubling the income-tax, as a reserve fund for posterity, should our

coal-fields fail three thousand years hence. Love of mankind! Rubbish!

This comes of living in the country.”

“But you do love the human race; you do care for the generations that

are to come.”

“I! Not a bit of it. On the contrary, I rather dislike the human race,

taking it altogether, and including the Australian bushmen; and I don’t

believe any man who tells me that he would grieve half as much if

ten millions of human beings were swallowed up by an earthquake at a

considerable distance from his own residence, say Abyssinia, as he would

for a rise in his butcher’s bills. As to posterity, who would consent

to have a month’s fit of the gout or tic-douloureux in order that in the

fourth thousand year, A. D., posterity should enjoy a perfect system of

sewage?”

Sir Peter, who had recently been afflicted by a very sharp attack

of neuralgia, shook his head, but was too conscientious not to keep

silence.

“To turn the subject,” said Mivers, relighting the cigar which he had

laid aside while delivering himself of his amiable opinions, “I think

you would do well, while in town, to call on your old friend Travers,

and be introduced to Cecilia. If you think as favourably of her as I do,

why not ask father and daughter to pay you a visit at Exmundham? Girls

think more about a man when they see the place which he can offer

to them as a home, and Exmundham is an attractive place to

girls,--picturesque and romantic.”

“A very good idea,” cried Sir Peter, heartily. “And I want also to make

the acquaintance of Chillingly Gordon. Give me his address.”

“Here is his card on the chimney-piece, take it; you will always find

him at home till two o’clock. He is too sensible to waste the forenoon

in riding out in Hyde Park with young ladies.”

“Give me your frank opinion of that young kinsman. Kenelm tells me that

he is clever and ambitious.”

“Kenelm speaks truly. He is not a man who will talk stuff about love of

mankind and posterity. He is of our day, with large, keen, wide-awake

eyes, that look only on such portions of mankind as can be of use to

him, and do not spoil their sight by poring through cracked telescopes

to catch a glimpse of posterity. Gordon is a man to be a Chancellor of

the Exchequer, perhaps a Prime Minister.”

“And old Gordon’s son is cleverer than my boy,--than the namesake of

Kenelm Digby!” and Sir Peter sighed.

“I did not say that. I am cleverer than Chillingly Gordon, and the

proof of it is that I am too clever to wish to be Prime Minister,--very

disagreeable office, hard work, irregular hours for meals, much abuse

and confirmed dyspepsia.”

Sir Peter went away rather down-hearted. He found Chillingly Gordon at

home in a lodging in Jermyn Street. Though prepossessed against him by

all he had heard, Sir Peter was soon propitiated in his favour. Gordon

had a frank man-of-the-world way with him, and much too fine a tact

to utter any sentiments likely to displease an old-fashioned country

gentleman, and a relation who might possibly be of service in his

career. He touched briefly, and with apparent feeling, on the unhappy

litigation commenced by his father; spoke with affectionate praise of

Kenelm; and with a discriminating good-nature of Mivers, as a man who,

to parody the epigram on Charles II.,

“Never says a kindly thing

And never does a harsh one.”

Then he drew Sir Peter on to talk of the country and agricultural

prospects. Learned that among his objects in visiting town was the wish

to inspect a patented hydraulic ram that might be very useful for his

farm-yard, which was ill supplied with water. Startled the Baronet by

evincing some practical knowledge of mechanics; insisted on accompanying

him to the city to inspect the ram; did so, and approved the purchase;

took him next to see a new American reaping-machine, and did not part

with him till he had obtained Sir Peter’s promise to dine with him at

the Garrick; an invitation peculiarly agreeable to Sir Peter, who had

a natural curiosity to see some of the more recently distinguished

frequenters of that social club. As, on quitting Gordon, Sir Peter took

his way to the house of Leopold Travers, his thoughts turned with much

kindliness towards his young kinsman. “Mivers and Kenelm,” quoth he to

himself, “gave me an unfavourable impression of this lad; they represent

him as worldly, self-seeking, and so forth. But Mivers takes such

cynical views of character, and Kenelm is too eccentric to judge fairly

of a sensible man of the world. At all events, it is not like an egotist

to put himself out of his way to be so civil to an old fellow like me. A

young man about town must have pleasanter modes of passing his day than

inspecting hydraulic rams and reaping-machines. Clever they allow him to

be. Yes, decidedly clever, and not offensively clever,--practical.”

Sir Peter found Travers in the dining-room with his daughter, Mrs.

Campion, and Lady Glenalvon. Travers was one of those men rare in middle

age, who are more often to be found in their drawing-room than in their

private study; he was fond of female society; and perhaps it was this

predilection which contributed to preserve in him the charm of good

breeding and winning manners. The two men had not met for many years;

not indeed since Travers was at the zenith of his career of fashion,

and Sir Peter was one of those pleasant _dilettanti_ and half humoristic

conversationalists who become popular and courted diners-out.

Sir Peter had originally been a moderate Whig because his father

had been one before him; but he left the Whig party with the Duke of

Richmond, Mr. Stanley (afterwards Lord Derby), and others, when it

seemed to him that that party had ceased to be moderate.

Leopold Travers had, as a youth in the Guards, been a high Tory, but,

siding with Sir Robert Peel on the repeal of the Corn Laws, remained

with the Peelites after the bulk of the Tory party had renounced the

guidance of their former chief, and now went with these Peelites in

whatever direction the progress of the age might impel their strides in

advance of Whigs and in defiance of Tories.

However, it is not the politics of these two gentlemen that are in

question now. As I have just said, they had not met for many years.

Travers was very little changed. Sir Peter recognized him at a glance;

Sir Peter was much changed, and Travers hesitated before, on hearing

his name announced, he felt quite sure that it was the right Sir Peter

towards whom he advanced, and to whom he extended his cordial hand.

Travers preserved the colour of his hair and the neat proportions of his

figure, and was as scrupulously well dressed as in his dandy days. Sir

Peter, originally very thin and with fair locks and dreamy blue eyes,

had now become rather portly,--at least towards the middle of him,--and

very gray; had long ago taken to spectacles; his dress, too, was very

old-fashioned, and made by a country tailor. He looked quite as much

a gentleman as Travers did; quite perhaps as healthy, allowing for

difference of years; quite as likely to last his time. But between them

there was the difference of the nervous temperament and the lymphatic.

Travers, with less brain than Sir Peter, had kept his brain constantly

active; Sir Peter had allowed his brain to dawdle over old books and

lazily delight in letting the hours slip by. Therefore Travers still

looked young, alert,--up to his day, up to anything; while Sir Peter,

entering that drawing-room, seemed a sort of Rip van Winkle who had

slept through the past generation, and looked on the present with eyes

yet drowsy. Still, in those rare moments when he was thoroughly roused

up, there would have been found in Sir Peter a glow of heart, nay,

even a vigour of thought, much more expressive than the constitutional

alertness that characterized Leopold Travers, of the attributes we most

love and admire in the young.

“My dear Sir Peter, is it you? I am so glad to see you again,” said

Travers. “What an age since we met, and how condescendingly kind you

were then to me; silly fop that I was! But bygones are bygones; come

to the present. Let me introduce to you, first, my valued friend, Mrs.

Campion, whose distinguished husband you remember. Ah, what pleasant

meetings we had at his house! And next, that young lady of whom she

takes motherly charge, my daughter Cecilia. Lady Glenalvon, your wife’s

friend, of course needs no introduction: time stands still with her.”

Sir Peter lowered his spectacles, which in reality he only wanted for

books in small print, and gazed attentively on the three ladies,--at

each gaze a bow. But while his eyes were still lingeringly fixed on

Cecilia, Lady Glenalvon advanced, naturally in right of rank and the

claim of old acquaintance, the first of the three to greet him.

“Alas, my dear Sir Peter! time does not stand still for any of us; but

what matter, if it leaves pleasant footprints? When I see you again, my

youth comes before me,--my early friend, Caroline Brotherton, now Lady

Chillingly; our girlish walks with each other; wreaths and ball-dresses

the practical topic; prospective husbands, the dream at a distance. Come

and sit here: tell me all about Caroline.”

Sir Peter, who had little to say about Caroline that could possibly

interest anybody but himself, nevertheless took his seat beside Lady

Glenalvon, and, as in duty bound, made the most flattering account

of his She Baronet which experience or invention would allow. All the

while, however, his thoughts were on Kenelm, and his eyes on Cecilia.

Cecilia resumes some mysterious piece of lady’s work, no matter

what,--perhaps embroidery for a music-stool, perhaps a pair of slippers

for her father (which, being rather vain of his feet and knowing they

looked best in plain morocco, he will certainly never wear). Cecilia

appears absorbed in her occupation; but her eyes and her thoughts are

on Sir Peter. Why, my lady reader may guess. And oh, so flatteringly,

so lovingly fixed! She thinks he has a most charming, intelligent,

benignant countenance. She admires even his old-fashioned frock-coat,

high neckcloth, and strapped trousers. She venerates his gray hairs,

pure of dye. She tries to find a close resemblance between that

fair, blue-eyed, plumpish, elderly gentleman and the lean, dark-eyed,

saturnine, lofty Kenelm; she detects the likeness which nobody else

would. She begins to love Sir Peter, though he has not said a word to

her.

Ah! on this, a word for what it is worth to you, my young readers. You,

sir, wishing to marry a girl who is to be deeply, lastingly in love with

you, and a thoroughly good wife practically, consider well how she takes

to your parents; how she attaches to them an inexpressible sentiment,

a disinterested reverence; even should you but dimly recognize the

sentiment, or feel the reverence, how if between you and your parents

some little cause of coldness arise, she will charm you back to honour

your father and your mother, even though they are not particularly

genial to her: well, if you win that sort of girl as your wife think you

have got a treasure. You have won a woman to whom Heaven has given the

two best attributes,--intense feeling of love, intense sense of duty.

What, my dear lady reader, I say of one sex, I say of another, though

in a less degree; because a girl who marries becomes of her husband’s

family, and the man does not become of his wife’s. Still I distrust the

depth of any man’s love to a woman, if he does not feel a great degree

of tenderness (and forbearance where differences arise) for her parents.

But the wife must not so put them in the foreground as to make the

husband think he is cast in the cold of the shadow. Pardon this

intolerable length of digression, dear reader: it is not altogether a

digression, for it belongs to my tale that you should clearly understand

the sort of girl that is personified in Cecilia Travers.

“What has become of Kenelm?” asked Lady Glenalvon.

“I wish I could tell you,” answered Sir Peter. “He wrote me word that he

was going forth on rambles into ‘fresh woods and pastures new,’ perhaps

for some weeks. I have not had a word from him since.”

“You make me uneasy,” said Lady Glenalvon. “I hope nothing can have

happened to him: he cannot have fallen ill.”

Cecilia stops her work, and looks up wistfully.

“Make your mind easy,” said Travers with a laugh; “I am in this secret.

He has challenged the champion of England, and gone into the country to

train.”

“Very likely,” said Sir Peter, quietly: “I should not be in the least

surprised; should you, Miss Travers?”

“I think it more probable that Mr. Chillingly is doing some kindness to

others which he wishes to keep concealed.”

Sir Peter was pleased with this reply, and drew his chair nearer to

Cecilia’s. Lady Glenalvon, charmed to bring those two together, soon

rose and took leave.

Sir Peter remained nearly an hour talking chiefly with Cecilia, who won

her way into his heart with extraordinary ease; and he did not quit the

house till he had engaged her father, Mrs. Campion, and herself to pay

him a week’s visit at Exmundham, towards the end of the London season,

which was fast approaching.

Having obtained this promise, Sir Peter went away, and ten minutes

after Mr. Chillingly Gordon entered the drawing-room. He had already

established a visiting acquaintance with the Traverses. Travers

had taken a liking to him. Mrs. Campion found him an extremely

well-informed, unaffected young man, very superior to young men in

general. Cecilia was cordially polite to Kenelm’s cousin. Altogether

that was a very happy day for Sir Peter. He enjoyed greatly his dinner

at the Garrick, where he met some old acquaintance and was presented to

some new “celebrities.” He observed that Gordon stood well with these

eminent persons. Though as yet undistinguished himself, they treated him

with a certain respect, as well as with evident liking. The most eminent

of them, at least the one with the most solidly established reputation,

said in Sir Peter’s ear, “You may be proud of your nephew Gordon!”

“He is not my nephew, only the son of a very distant cousin.”

“Sorry for that. But he will shed lustre on kinsfolk, however distant.

Clever fellow, yet popular; rare combination,--sure to rise.”

Sir Peter suppressed a gulp in the throat. “Ah, if some one as eminent

had spoken thus of Kenelm!”

But he was too generous to allow that half-envious sentiment to last

more than a moment. Why should he not be proud of any member of the

family who could irradiate the antique obscurity of the Chillingly race?

And how agreeable this clever young man made himself to Sir Peter!

The next day Gordon insisted on accompanying him to see the latest

acquisitions in the British Museum, and various other exhibitions, and

went at night to the Prince of Wales’s Theatre, where Sir Peter was

infinitely delighted with an admirable little comedy by Mr. Robertson,

admirably placed on the stage by Marie Wilton. The day after, when

Gordon called on him at his hotel, he cleared his throat, and thus

plunged at once into the communication he had hitherto delayed.

“Gordon, my boy, I owe you a debt, and I am now, thanks to Kenelm, able

to pay it.”

Gordon gave a little start of surprise, but remained silent.

“I told your father, shortly after Kenelm was born, that I meant to give

up my London house, and lay by L1000 a year for you, in compensation

for your chance of succeeding to Exmundham should I have died childless.

Well, your father did not seem to think much of that promise, and went

to law with me about certain unquestionable rights of mine. How so

clever a man could have made such a mistake would puzzle me, if I did

not remember that he had a quarrelsome temper. Temper is a thing that

often dominates cleverness,--an uncontrollable thing; and allowances

must be made for it. Not being of a quarrelsome temper myself (the

Chillinglys are a placid race), I did not make the allowance for your

father’s differing, and (for a Chillingly) abnormal, constitution. The

language and the tone of his letter respecting it nettled me. I did

not see why, thus treated, I should pinch myself to lay by a thousand a

year. Facilities for buying a property most desirable for the possessor

of Exmundham presented themselves. I bought it with borrowed money, and

though I gave up the house in London, I did not lay by the thousand a

year.”

“My dear Sir Peter, I have always regretted that my poor father

was misled--perhaps out of too paternal a care for my supposed

interests--into that unhappy and fruitless litigation, after which

no one could doubt that any generous intentions on your part would be

finally abandoned. It has been a grateful surprise to me that I have

been so kindly and cordially received into the family by Kenelm and

yourself. Pray oblige me by dropping all reference to pecuniary matters:

the idea of compensation to a very distant relative for the loss of

expectations he had no right to form, is too absurd, for me at least,

ever to entertain.”

“But I am absurd enough to entertain it, though you express yourself in

a very high-minded way. To come to the point, Kenelm is of age, and we

have cut off the entail. The estate of course remains absolutely with

Kenelm to dispose of, as it did before, and we must take it for granted

that he will marry; at all events he cannot fall into your poor father’s

error: but whatever Kenelm hereafter does with his property, it is

nothing to you, and is not to be counted upon. Even the title dies with

Kenelm if he has no son. On resettling the estate, however, sums

of money have been realized which, as I stated before, enable me to

discharge the debt which Kenelm heartily agrees with me is due to

you. L20,000 are now lying at my bankers’ to be transferred to yours;

meanwhile, if you will call on my solicitor, Mr. Vining, Lincoln’s-inn,

you can see the new deed and give to him your receipt for the L20,000,

for which he holds my cheque. Stop! stop! stop! I will not hear a. word:

no thanks; they are not due.”

Here Gordon, who had during this speech uttered various brief

exclamations, which Sir Peter did not heed, caught hold of his kinsman’s

hand, and, despite of all struggles, pressed his lips on it. “I must

thank you; I must give some vent to my emotions,” cried Gordon. “This

sum, great in itself, is far more to me than you can imagine: it opens

my career; it assures my future.”

“So Kenelm tells me; he said that sum would be more use to you now than

ten times the amount twenty years hence.”

“So it will,--it will. And Kenelm consents to this sacrifice?”

“Consents! urges it.”

Gordon turned away his face, and Sir Peter resumed: “You want to get

into Parliament; very natural ambition for a clever young fellow. I

don’t presume to dictate politics to you. I hear you are what is called

a Liberal; a man may be a Liberal, I suppose, without being a Jacobin.”

“I hope so, indeed. For my part I am anything but a violent man.”

“Violent, no! Who ever heard of a violent Chillingly? But I was reading

in the newspaper to-day a speech addressed to some popular audience,

in which the orator was for dividing all the lands and all the capital

belonging to other people among the working class, calmly and quietly,

without any violence, and deprecating violence: but saying, perhaps very

truly, that the people to be robbed might not like it, and might offer

violence; in which case woe betide them; it was they who would be guilty

of violence; and they must take the consequences if they resisted the

reasonable, propositions of himself and his friends! That, I suppose, is

among the new ideas with which Kenelm is more familiar than I am. Do you

entertain those new ideas?”

“Certainly not: I despise the fools who do.”

“And you will not abet revolutionary measures if you get into

Parliament?”

“My dear Sir Peter, I fear you have heard very false reports of my

opinions if you put such questions. Listen,” and therewith Gordon

launched into dissertations very clever, very subtle, which committed

him to nothing, beyond the wisdom of guiding popular opinions into right

directions: what might be right directions he did not define; he left

Sir Peter to guess them. Sir Peter did guess them, as Gordon meant he

should, to be the directions which he, Sir Peter, thought right; and he

was satisfied.

That subject disposed of, Gordon said, with much apparent feeling, “May

I ask you to complete the favours you have lavished on me? I have never

seen Exmundham, and the home of the race from which I sprang has a deep

interest for time. Will you allow me to spend a few days with you, and

under the shade of your own trees take lessons in political science from

one who has evidently reflected on it profoundly?”

“Profoundly, no; a little,--a little, as a mere bystander,” said Sir

Peter, modestly, but much flattered. “Come, my dear boy, by all means;

you will have a hearty welcome. By the by, Travers and his handsome

daughter promised to visit me in about a fortnight, why not come at the

same time?”

A sudden flash lit up the young man’s countenance.

“I shall be so delighted,” he cried. “I am but slightly acquainted with

Mr. Travers, but I like him much, and Mrs. Campion is so well informed.”

“And what say you to the girl?”

“The girl, Miss Travers. Oh, she is very well in her way. But I don’t

talk with young ladies more than I can help.”

“Then you are like your cousin Kenelm?”

“I wish I were like him in other things.”

“No, one such oddity in a family is quite enough. But though I would

not have you change to a Kenelm, I would not change Kenelm for the most

perfect model of a son that the world can exhibit.” Delivering himself

of this burst of parental fondness, Sir Peter shook hands with Gordon,

and walked off to Mivers, who was to give him luncheon and then

accompany him to the station. Sir Peter was to return to Exmundham by

the afternoon express.

Left alone, Gordon indulged in one of those luxurious guesses into the

future which form the happiest moments in youth when so ambitious as

his. The sum Sir Peter placed at his disposal would insure his entrance

in Parliament. He counted with confidence on early successes there. He

extended the scope of his views. With such successes he might calculate

with certainty on a brilliant marriage, augmenting his fortune, and

confirming his position. He had previously fixed his thoughts on Cecilia

Travers. I will do him the justice to say not from mercenary motives

alone, but not certainly with the impetuous ardour of youthful love. He

thought her exactly fitted to be the wife of an eminent public man, in

person, acquirement, dignified yet popular manners. He esteemed her, he

liked her, and then her fortune would add solidity to his position. In

fact, he had that sort of rational attachment to Cecilia which wise men,

like Lord Bacon and Montaigne, would commend to another wise man seeking

a wife. What opportunities of awaking in herself a similar, perhaps a

warmer, attachment the visit to Exmundham would afford! He had learned

when he had called on the Traverses that they were going thither, and

hence that burst of family sentiment which had procured the invitation

to himself.

But he must be cautious, he must not prematurely awaken Travers’s

suspicions. He was not as yet a match that the squire could approve of

for his heiress. And, though he was ignorant of Sir Peter’s designs

on that, young lady, he was much too prudent to confide his own to a

kinsman of whose discretion he had strong misgivings. It was enough for

him at present that way was opened for his own resolute energies. And

cheerfully, though musingly, he weighed its obstacles, and divined its

goal, as he paced his floor with bended head and restless strides, now

quick, now slow.

Sir Peter, in the meanwhile, found a very good luncheon prepared for

him at Mivers’s rooms, which he had all to himself, for his host never

“spoilt his dinner and insulted his breakfast” by that intermediate

meal. He remained at his desk writing brief notes of business, or

of pleasure, while Sir Peter did justice to lamb cutlets and grilled

chicken. But he looked up from his task, with raised eyebrows, when

Sir Peter, after a somewhat discursive account of his visit to the

Traverses, his admiration of Cecilia, and the adroitness with which,

acting on his cousin’s hint, he had engaged the family to spend a few

days at Exmundham, added, “And, by the by, I have asked young Gordon to

meet them.”

“To meet them! meet Mr. and Miss Travers! you have? I thought you wished

Kenelm to marry Cecilia. I was mistaken, you meant Gordon!”

“Gordon,” exclaimed Sir Peter, dropping his knife and fork. “Nonsense,

you don’t suppose that Miss Travers prefers him to Kenelm, or that

he has the presumption to fancy that her father would sanction his

addresses?”

“I indulge in no suppositions of the sort. I content myself with

thinking that Gordon is clever, insinuating, young; and it is a very

good chance of bettering himself that you have thrown in his way.

However, it is no affair of mine; and though on the whole I like

Kenelm better than Gordon, still I like Gordon very well, and I have

an interest in following his career which I can’t say I have in

conjecturing what may be Kenelm’s--more likely no career at all.”

“Mivers, you delight in provoking me; you do say such uncomfortable

things. But, in the first place, Gordon spoke rather slightingly of Miss

Travers.”

“Ah, indeed; that’s a bad sign,” muttered Mivers.

Sir Peter did not hear him, and went on.

“And, besides, I feel pretty sure that the dear girl has already a

regard for Kenelm which allows no room for a rival. However, I shall not

forget your hint, but keep a sharp lookout; and, if I see the young man

wants to be too sweet on Cecilia, I shall cut short his visit.”

“Give yourself no trouble in the matter; it will do no good. Marriages

are made in heaven. Heaven’s will be done. If I can get away I will

run down to you for a day or two. Perhaps in that case you can ask Lady

Glenalvon. I like her, and she likes Kenelm. Have you finished? I see

the brougham is at the door, and we have to call at your hotel to take

up your carpet-bag.”

Mivers was deliberately sealing his notes while he thus spoke. He now

rang for his servant, gave orders for their delivery, and then followed

Sir Peter down stairs and into the brougham. Not a word would he say

more about Gordon, and Sir Peter shrank from telling him about the

L20,000. Chillingly Mivers was perhaps the last person to whom Sir

Peter would be tempted to parade an act of generosity. Mivers might not

unfrequently do a generous act himself, provided it was not divulged;

but he had always a sneer for the generosity of others.

CHAPTER II.

WANDERING back towards Moleswich, Kenelm found himself a little before

sunset on the banks of the garrulous brook, almost opposite to the house

inhabited by Lily Mordaunt. He stood long and silently by the grassy

margin, his dark shadow falling over the stream, broken into fragments

by the eddy and strife of waves, fresh from their leap down the

neighbouring waterfall. His eyes rested on the house and the garden lawn

in the front. The upper windows were open. “I wonder which is hers,” he

said to himself. At last he caught a glimpse of the gardener, bending

over a flower border with his watering-pot, and then moving slowly

through the little shrubbery, no doubt to his own cottage. Now the lawn

was solitary, save that a couple of thrushes dropped suddenly on the

sward.

“Good evening, sir,” said a voice. “A capital spot for trout this.”

Kenelm turned his head, and beheld on the footpath, just behind him,

a respectable elderly man, apparently of the class of a small retail

tradesman, with a fishing-rod in his hand and a basket belted to his

side.

“For trout,” replied Kenelm; “I dare say. A strangely attractive spot

indeed.”

“Are you an angler, sir, if I may make bold to inquire?” asked the

elderly man, somewhat perhaps puzzled as to the rank of the stranger;

noticing, on the one hand, his dress and his mien, on the other, slung

to his shoulders, the worn and shabby knapsack which Kenelm had carried,

at home and abroad, the preceding year.

“Ay, I am an angler.”

“Then this is the best place in the whole stream. Look, sir, there

is Izaak Walton’s summer-house; and further down you see that white,

neat-looking house. Well, that is my house, sir, and I have an apartment

which I let to gentleman anglers. It is generally occupied throughout

the summer months. I expect every day to have a letter to engage it,

but it is vacant now. A very nice apartment, sir,--sitting-room and

bedroom.”

“_Descende ceolo, et dic age tibia_,” said Kenelm.

“Sir?” said the elderly man.

“I beg you ten thousand pardons. I have had the misfortune to have been

at the university, and to have learned a little Latin, which sometimes

comes back very inopportunely. But, speaking in plain English, what

I meant to say is this: I invoked the Muse to descend from heaven and

bring with her--the original says a fife, but I meant--a fishing-rod. I

should think your apartment would suit me exactly; pray show it to me.”

“With the greatest pleasure,” said the elderly man. “The Muse need not

bring a fishing-rod! we have all sorts of tackle at your service, and a

boat too, if you care for that. The stream hereabouts is so shallow and

narrow that a boat is of little use till you get farther down.”

“I don’t want to get farther down; but should I want to get to the

opposite bank, without wading across, would the boat take me or is there

a bridge?”

“The boat can take you. It is a flat-bottomed punt, and there is a

bridge too for foot-passengers, just opposite my house; and between

this and Moleswich, where the stream widens, there is a ferry. The stone

bridge for traffic is at the farther end of the town.”

“Good. Let us go at once to your house.”

The two men walked on.

“By the by,” said Kenelm, as they walked, “do you know much of the

family that inhabit the pretty cottage on the opposite side, which we

have just left behind?”

“Mrs. Cameron’s. Yes, of course, a very good lady; and Mr. Melville, the

painter. I am sure I ought to know, for he has often lodged with me

when he came to visit Mrs. Cameron. He recommends my apartment to his

friends, and they are my best lodgers. I like painters, sir, though I

don’t know much about paintings. They are pleasant gentlemen, and easily

contented with my humble roof and fare.”

“You are quite right. I don’t know much about paintings myself; but I am

inclined to believe that painters, judging not from what I have seen of

them, for I have not a single acquaintance among them personally, but

from what I have read of their lives, are, as a general rule, not only

pleasant but noble gentlemen. They form within themselves desires to

beautify or exalt commonplace things, and they can only accomplish their

desires by a constant study of what is beautiful and what is exalted.

A man constantly so engaged ought to be a very noble gentleman, even

though he may be the son of a shoeblack. And living in a higher world

than we do, I can conceive that he is, as you say, very well contented

with humble roof and fare in the world we inhabit.”

“Exactly, sir; I see--I see now, though you put it in a way that never

struck me before.”

“And yet,” said Kenelm, looking benignly at the speaker, “you seem to

me a well-educated and intelligent man; reflective on things in general,

without being unmindful of your interests in particular, especially when

you have lodgings to let. Do not be offended. That sort of man is not

perhaps born to be a painter, but I respect him highly. The world, sir,

requires the vast majority of its inhabitants to live in it,--to live

by it. ‘Each for himself, and God for us all.’ The greatest happiness

of the greatest number is best secured by a prudent consideration for

Number One.”

Somewhat to Kenelm’s surprise (allowing that he had now learned enough

of life to be occasionally surprised) the elderly man here made a dead

halt, stretched out his hand cordially, and cried, “Hear, hear! I see

that, like me, you are a decided democrat.”

“Democrat! Pray, may I ask, not why you are one,--that would be a

liberty, and democrats resent any liberty taken with themselves; but why

you suppose I am?”

“You spoke of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. That is

a democratic sentiment surely! Besides, did not you say, sir, that

painters,--painters, sir, painters, even if they were the sons of

shoeblacks, were the true gentlemen,--the true noblemen?”

“I did not say that exactly, to the disparagement of other gentlemen and

nobles. But if I did, what then?”

“Sir, I agree with you. I despise rank; I despise dukes and earls and

aristocrats. ‘An honest man’s the noblest work of God.’ Some poet says

that. I think Shakspeare. Wonderful man, Shakspeare. A tradesman’s

son,--butcher, I believe. Eh! My uncle was a butcher, and might have

been an alderman. I go along with you heartily, heartily. I am a

democrat, every inch of me. Shake hands, sir, shake hands; we are all

equals. ‘Each man for himself, and God for us all.’”

“I have no objection to shake hands,” said Kenelm; “but don’t let me owe

your condescension to false pretences. Though we are all equal before

the law, except the rich man, who has little chance of justice as

against a poor man when submitted to an English jury, yet I utterly deny

that any two men you select can be equals. One must beat the other

in something; and, when one man beats another, democracy ceases and

aristocracy begins.”

“Aristocracy! I don’t see that. What do you mean by aristocracy?”

“The ascendency of the better man. In a rude State the better man is

the stronger; in a corrupt State, perhaps the more roguish; in modern

republics the jobbers get the money and the lawyers get the power. In

well-ordered States alone aristocracy appears at its genuine worth:

the better man in birth, because respect for ancestry secures a higher

standard of honour; the better man in wealth, because of the immense

uses to enterprise, energy, and the fine arts, which rich men must be if

they follow their natural inclinations; the better man in character, the

better man in ability, for reasons too obvious to define; and these two

last will beat the others in the government of the State, if the State

be flourishing and free. All these four classes of better men constitute

true aristocracy; and when a better government than a true aristocracy

shall be devised by the wit of man, we shall not be far off from

the Millennium and the reign of saints. But here we are at the

house,--yours, is it not? I like the look of it extremely.”

The elderly man now entered the little porch, over which clambered

honeysuckle and ivy intertwined, and ushered Kenelm into a pleasant

parlour, with a bay window, and an equally pleasant bedroom behind it.

“Will it do, sir?”

“Perfectly. I take it from this moment. My knapsack contains all I shall

need for the night. There is a portmanteau of mine at Mr. Somers’s shop,

which can be sent here in the morning.”

“But we have not settled about the terms,” said the elderly man,

beginning to feel rather doubtful whether he ought thus to have

installed in his home a stalwart pedestrian of whom he knew nothing,

and who, though talking glibly enough on other things, had preserved an

ominous silence on the subject of payment.

“Terms? true, name them.”

“Including board?”

“Certainly. Chameleons live on air; democrats on wind bags. I have a

more vulgar appetite, and require mutton.”

“Meat is very dear now-a-days,” said the elderly man, “and I am afraid,

for board and lodging I cannot charge you less than L3 3s.,--say L3 a

week. My lodgers usually pay a week in advance.”

“Agreed,” said Kenelm, extracting three sovereigns from his purse. “I

have dined already: I want nothing more this evening; let me detain you

no further. Be kind enough to shut the door after you.”

When he was alone, Kenelm seated himself in the recess of the bay

window, against the casement, and looked forth intently. Yes; he was

right: he could see from thence the home of Lily. Not, indeed, more than

a white gleam of the house through the interstices of trees and shrubs,

but the gentle lawn sloping to the brook, with the great willow at the

end dipping its boughs into the water, and shutting out all view beyond

itself by its bower of tender leaves. The young man bent his face on his

hands and mused dreamily: the evening deepened; the stars came forth;

the rays of the moon now peered aslant through the arching dips of the

willow, silvering their way as they stole to the waves below.

“Shall I bring lights, sir? or do you prefer a lamp or candles?” asked

a voice behind,--the voice of the elderly man’s wife. “Do you like the

shutters closed?”

The question startled the dreamer. They seemed mocking his own old

mockings on the romance of love. Lamp or candles, practical lights for

prosaic eyes, and shutters closed against moon and stars!

“Thank you, ma’am, not yet,” he said; and rising quietly he placed his

hand on the window-sill, swung himself through the open casement, and

passed slowly along the margin of the rivulet, by a path checkered

alternately with shade and starlight; the moon yet more slowly rising

above the willows, and lengthening its track along the wavelets.

CHAPTER III.

THOUGH Kenelm did not think it necessary at present to report to his

parents or his London acquaintances his recent movements and his present

resting-place, it never entered into his head to lurk _perdu_ in the

immediate vicinity of Lily’s house, and seek opportunities of meeting

her clandestinely. He walked to Mrs. Braefield’s the next morning, found

her at home, and said in rather a more off-hand manner than was habitual

to him, “I have hired a lodging in your neighbourhood, on the banks of

the brook, for the sake of its trout-fishing. So you will allow me to

call on you sometimes, and one of these days I hope you will give me the

dinner I so unceremoniously rejected some days ago. I was then summoned

away suddenly, much against my will.”

“Yes; my husband said that you shot off from him with a wild exclamation

about duty.”

“Quite true; my reason, and I may say my conscience, were greatly

perplexed upon a matter extremely important and altogether new to me. I

went to Oxford,--the place above all others in which questions of

reason and conscience are most deeply considered, and perhaps

least satisfactorily solved. Relieved in my mind by my visit to a

distinguished ornament of that university, I felt I might indulge in a

summer holiday, and here I am.”

“Ah! I understand. You had religious doubts,--thought perhaps of turning

Roman Catholic. I hope you are not going to do so?”

“My doubts were not necessarily of a religious nature. Pagans have

entertained them.”

“Whatever they were I am pleased to see they did not prevent your

return,” said Mrs. Braefield, graciously. “But where have you found a

lodging; why not have come to us? My husband would have been scarcely

less glad than myself to receive you.”

“You say that so sincerely, and so cordially, that to answer by a brief

‘I thank you’ seems rigid and heartless. But there are times in life

when one yearns to be alone,--to commune with one’s own heart, and, if

possible, be still; I am in one of those moody times. Bear with me.”

Mrs. Braefield looked at him with affectionate, kindly interest. She

had gone before him through the solitary road of young romance. She

remembered her dreamy, dangerous girlhood, when she, too, had yearned to

be alone.

“Bear with you; yes, indeed. I wish, Mr. Chillingly, that I were your

sister, and that you would confide in me. Something troubles you.”

“Troubles me,--no. My thoughts are happy ones, and they may sometimes

perplex me, but they do not trouble.”

Kenelm said this very softly; and in the warmer light of his musing

eyes, the sweeter play of his tranquil smile, there was an expression

which did not belie his words.

“You have not told me where you have found a lodging,” said Mrs.

Braefield, somewhat abruptly.

“Did I not?” replied Kenelm, with an unconscious start, as from an

abstracted reverie. “With no undistinguished host, I presume, for when

I asked him this morning for the right address of this cottage, in order

to direct such luggage as I have to be sent there, he gave me his card

with a grand air, saying, ‘I am pretty well known at Moleswich, by

and beyond it.’ I have not yet looked at his card. Oh, here it

is,--‘Algernon Sidney Gale Jones, Cromwell Lodge;’ you laugh. What do

you know of him?”

“I wish my husband were here; he would tell you more about him. Mr.

Jones is quite a character.”

“So I perceive.”

“A great radical,--very talkative and troublesome at the vestry; but our

vicar, Mr. Emlyn, says there is no real harm in him, that his bark is

worse than his bite, and that his republican or radical notions must be

laid to the door of his godfathers! In addition to his name of Jones, he

was unhappily christened Gale; Gale Jones being a noted radical orator

at the time of his birth. And I suppose Algernon Sidney was prefixed

to Gale in order to devote the new-born more emphatically to republican

principles.”

“Naturally, therefore, Algernon Sidney Gale Jones baptizes his house

Cromwell Lodge, seeing that Algernon Sidney held the Protectorate in

especial abhorrence, and that the original Gale Jones, if an honest

radical, must have done the same, considering what rough usage the

advocates of Parliamentary Reform met with at the hands of his Highness.

But we must be indulgent to men who have been unfortunately christened

before they had any choice of the names that were to rule their fate.

I myself should have been less whimsical had I not been named after a

Kenelm who believed in sympathetic powders. Apart from his political

doctrines, I like my landlord: he keeps his wife in excellent order. She

seems frightened at the sound of her own footsteps, and glides to and

fro, a pallid image of submissive womanhood in list slippers.”

“Great recommendations certainly, and Cromwell Lodge is very prettily

situated. By the by, it is very near Mrs. Cameron’s.”

“Now I think of it, so it is,” said Kenelm, innocently. Ah! my friend

Kenelm, enemy of shams, and truth-teller, _par excellence_, what hast

thou come to? How are the mighty fallen! “Since you say you will dine

with us, suppose we fix the day after to-morrow, and I will ask Mrs.

Cameron and Lily.”

“The day after to-morrow: I shall be delighted.”

“An early hour?”

“The earlier the better.”

“Is six o’clock too early?”

“Too early! certainly not; on the contrary. Good-day: I must now go to

Mrs. Somers; she has charge of my portmanteau.”

Then Kenelm rose.

“Poor dear Lily!” said Mrs. Braefield; “I wish she were less of a

child.”

Kenelm reseated himself.

“Is she a child? I don’t think she is actually a child.”

“Not in years; she is between seventeen and eighteen: but my husband

says that she is too childish to talk to, and always tells me to take

her off his hands; he would rather talk with Mrs. Cameron.”

“Indeed!”

“Still I find something in her.”

“Indeed!”

“Not exactly childish, nor quite womanish.”

“What then?”

“I can’t exactly define. But you know what Mr. Melville and Mrs. Cameron

call her as a pet name?”

“No.”

“Fairy! Fairies have no age; fairy is neither child nor woman.”

“Fairy. She is called fairy by those who know her best? Fairy!”

“And she believes in fairies.”

“Does she?--so do I. Pardon me, I must be off. The day after

to-morrow,--six o’clock.”

“Wait one moment,” said Elsie, going to her writing-table. “Since you

pass Grasmere on your way home, will you kindly leave this note?”

“I thought Grasmere was a lake in the north?”

“Yes; but Mr. Melville chose to call the cottage by the name of the

lake. I think the first picture he ever sold was a view of Wordsworth’s

house there. Here is my note to ask Mrs. Cameron to meet you; but if you

object to be my messenger--”

“Object! my dear Mrs. Braefield. As you say, I pass close by the

cottage.”

CHAPTER IV.

KENELM went with somewhat rapid pace from Mrs. Braefield’s to the shop

in the High Street kept by Will Somers. Jessie was behind the counter,

which was thronged with customers. Kenelm gave her a brief direction

about his portmanteau, and then passed into the back parlour, where

her husband was employed on his baskets,--with the baby’s cradle in

the corner, and its grandmother rocking it mechanically, as she read a

wonderful missionary tract full of tales of miraculous conversions: into

what sort of Christians we will not pause to inquire.

“And so you are happy, Will?” said Kenelm, seating himself between the

basket-maker and the infant; the dear old mother beside him, reading the

tract which linked her dreams of life eternal with life just opening

in the cradle that she rocked. He not happy! How he pitied the man who

could ask such a question.

“Happy, sir! I should think so, indeed. There is not a night on which

Jessie and I, and mother too, do not pray that some day or other you may

be as happy. By and by the baby will learn to pray ‘God bless papa, and

mamma, grandmamma, and Mr. Chillingly.’”

“There is some one else much more deserving of prayers than I, though

needing them less. You will know some day: pass it by now. To return to

the point: you are happy; if I asked why, would you not say, ‘Because I

have married the girl I love, and have never repented’?”

“Well, sir, that is about it; though, begging your pardon, I think it

could be put more prettily somehow.”

“You are right there. But perhaps love and happiness never yet found any

words that could fitly express them. Good-bye, for the present.”

Ah! if it were as mere materialists, or as many middle-aged or elderly

folks, who, if materialists, are so without knowing it, unreflectingly

say, “The main element of happiness is bodily or animal health and

strength,” that question which Chillingly put would appear a very

unmeaning or a very insulting one addressed to a pale cripple, who

however improved of late in health, would still be sickly and ailing

all his life,--put, too, by a man of the rarest conformation of physical

powers that nature can adapt to physical enjoyment,--a man who, since

the age in which memory commences, had never known what it was to

be unwell, who could scarcely understand you if you talked of a

finger-ache, and whom those refinements of mental culture which

multiply the delights of the senses had endowed with the most exquisite

conceptions of such happiness as mere nature and its instincts can give!

But Will did not think the question unmeaning or insulting. He, the poor

cripple, felt a vast superiority on the scale of joyous being over the

young Hercules, well born, cultured, and wealthy, who could know so

little of happiness as to ask the crippled basket-maker if he were

happy.--he, blessed husband and father!

CHAPTER V.

LILY was seated on the grass under a chestnut-tree on the lawn. A white

cat, not long emerged from kittenhood, curled itself by her side. On her

lap was an open volume, which she was reading with the greatest delight.

Mrs. Cameron came from the house, looked round, perceived the girl, and

approached; and either she moved so gently, or Lily was so absorbed in

the book, that the latter was not aware of her presence till she felt

a light hand on her shoulder, and, looking up, recognized her aunt’s

gentle face.

“Ah! Fairy, Fairy, that silly book, when you ought to be at your French

verbs. What will your guardian say when he comes and finds you have so

wasted time?”

“He will say that fairies never waste their time; and he will scold you

for saying so.” Therewith Lily threw down the book, sprang to her feet,

wound her arm round Mrs. Cameron’s neck, and kissed her fondly. “There!

is that wasting time? I love you so, aunty. In a day like this I think I

love everybody and everything!” As she said this, she drew up her lithe

form, looked into the blue sky, and with parted lips seemed to drink in

air and sunshine. Then she woke up the dozing cat, and began chasing it

round the lawn.

Mrs. Cameron stood still, regarding her with moistened eyes. Just at

that moment Kenelm entered through the garden gate. He, too, stood

still, his eyes fixed on the undulating movements of Fairy’s exquisite

form. She had arrested her favourite, and was now at play with it,

shaking off her straw hat, and drawing the ribbon attached to it

tantalizingly along the smooth grass. Her rich hair, thus released and

dishevelled by the exercise, fell partly over her face in wavy ringlets;

and her musical laugh and words of sportive endearment sounded on

Kenelm’s ear more joyously than the thrill of the skylark, more sweetly

than the coo of the ring-dove.

He approached towards Mrs. Cameron. Lily turned suddenly and saw him.

Instinctively she smoothed back her loosened tresses, replaced the straw

hat, and came up demurely to his side just as he had accosted her aunt.

“Pardon my intrusion, Mrs. Cameron. I am the bearer of this note from

Mrs. Braefield.” While the aunt read the note, he turned to the niece.

“You promised to show me the picture, Miss Mordaunt.”

“But that was a long time ago.”

“Too long to expect a lady’s promise to be kept?”

Lily seemed to ponder that question, and hesitated before she answered.

“I will show you the picture. I don’t think I ever broke a promise yet,

but I shall be more careful how I make one in future.”

“Why so?”

“Because you did not value mine when I made it, and that hurt me.” Lily

lifted up her head with a bewitching stateliness, and added gravely, “I

was offended.”

“Mrs. Braefield is very kind,” said Mrs. Cameron; “she asks us to dine

the day after to-morrow. You would like to go, Lily?”

“All grown-up people, I suppose? No, thank you, dear aunt. You go alone,

I would rather stay at home. May I have little Clemmy to play with? She

will bring Juba, and Blanche is very partial to Juba, though she does

scratch him.”

“Very well, my dear, you shall have your playmate, and I will go by

myself.”

Kenelm stood aghast. “You will not go, Miss Mordaunt; Mrs. Braefield

will be so disappointed. And if you don’t go, whom shall I have to talk

to? I don’t like grown-up people better than you do.”

“You are going?”

“Certainly.”

“And if I go you will talk to me? I am afraid of Mr. Braefield. He is so

wise.”

“I will save you from him, and will not utter a grain of wisdom.”

“Aunty, I will go.”

Here Lily made a bound and caught up Blanche, who, taking her kisses

resignedly, stared with evident curiosity upon Kenelm.

Here a bell within the house rang the announcement of luncheon. Mrs.

Cameron invited Kenelm to partake of that meal. He felt as Romulus might

have felt when first invited to taste the ambrosia of the gods. Yet

certainly that luncheon was not such as might have pleased Kenelm

Chillingly in the early days of the Temperance Hotel. But somehow or

other of late he had lost appetite; and on this occasion a very modest

share of a very slender dish of chicken fricasseed, and a few cherries

daintily arranged on vine leaves, which Lily selected for him, contented

him,--as probably a very little ambrosia contented Romulus while

feasting his eyes on Hebe.

Luncheon over, while Mrs. Cameron wrote her reply to Elsie, Kenelm

was conducted by Lily into her own _own_ room, in vulgar parlance her

_boudoir_, though it did not look as if any one ever _bouder’d_ there.

It was exquisitely pretty,--pretty not as a woman’s, but as a child’s

dream of the own _own_ room she would like to have,--wondrously neat and

cool, and pure-looking; a trellis paper, the trellis gay with roses and

woodbine, and birds and butterflies; draperies of muslin, festooned with

dainty tassels and ribbons; a dwarf bookcase, that seemed well stored,

at least as to bindings; a dainty little writing-table in French

_marqueterie_, looking too fresh and spotless to have known hard

service. The casement was open, and in keeping with the trellis paper;

woodbine and roses from without encroached on the window-sides, gently

stirred by the faint summer breeze, and wafted sweet odours into the

little room. Kenelm went to the window, and glanced on the view beyond.

“I was right,” he said to himself; “I divined it.” But though he

spoke in a low inward whisper, Lily, who had watched his movements in

surprise, overheard.

“You divined it. Divined what?”

“Nothing, nothing; I was but talking to myself.”

“Tell me what you divined: I insist upon it!” and Fairy petulantly

stamped her tiny foot on the floor.

“Do you? Then I obey. I have taken a lodging for a short time on the

other side of the brook,--Cromwell Lodge,--and seeing your house as I

passed, I divined that your room was in this part of it. How soft here

is the view of the water! Ah! yonder is Izaak Walton’s summer-house.”

“Don’t talk about Izaak Walton, or I shall quarrel with you, as I did

with Lion when he wanted me to like that cruel book.”

“Who is Lion?”

“Lion,--of course, my guardian. I called him Lion when I was a little

child. It was on seeing in one of his books a print of a lion playing

with a little child.”

“Ah! I know the design well,” said Kenelm, with a slight sigh. “It is

from an antique Greek gem. It is not the lion that plays with the child,

it is the child that masters the lion, and the Greeks called the child

‘Love.’”

This idea seemed beyond Lily’s perfect comprehension. She paused before

she answered, with the naivete of a child six years old,--

“I see now why I mastered Blanche, who will not make friends with any

one else: I love Blanche. Ah, that reminds me,--come and look at the

picture.”

She went to the wall over the writing-table, drew a silk curtain aside

from a small painting in a dainty velvet framework, and pointing to it,

cried with triumph, “Look there! is it not beautiful?”

Kenelm had been prepared to see a landscape, or a group, or anything but

what he did see: it was the portrait of Blanche when a kitten.

Little elevated though the subject was, it was treated with graceful

fancy. The kitten had evidently ceased from playing with the cotton

reel that lay between her paws, and was fixing her gaze intently on a

bulfinch that had lighted on a spray within her reach.

“You understand,” said Lily, placing her hand on his arm, and drawing

him towards what she thought the best light for the picture; “it is

Blanche’s first sight of a bird. Look well at her face; don’t you see a

sudden surprise,--half joy, half fear? She ceases to play with the reel.

Her intellect--or, as Mr. Braefield would say, ‘her instinct’--is for

the first time aroused. From that moment Blanche was no longer a mere

kitten. And it required, oh, the most careful education, to teach her

not to kill the poor little birds. She never does now, but I had such

trouble with her.”

“I cannot say honestly that I do see all that you do in the picture;

but it seems to me very simply painted, and was, no doubt, a striking

likeness of Blanche at that early age.”

“So it was. Lion drew the first sketch from life with his pencil; and

when he saw how pleased I was with it--he was so good--he put it on

canvas, and let me sit by him while he painted it. Then he took it away,

and brought it back finished and framed as you see, last May, a present

for my birthday.”

“You were born in May--with the flowers.”

“The best of all the flowers are born in May,--violets.”

“But they are born in the shade, and cling to it. Surely, as a child of

May, you love the sun!”

“I love the sun; it is never too bright nor too warm for me. But I don’t

think that, though born in May, I was born in sunlight. I feel more like

my own native self when I creep into the shade and sit down alone. I can

weep then.”

As she thus shyly ended, the character of her whole countenance was

changed: its infantine mirthfulness was gone; a grave, thoughtful, even

a sad expression settled on the tender eyes and the tremulous lips.

Kenelm was so touched that words failed him, and there was silence for

some moments between the two. At length Kenelm said, slowly,--

“You say your own native self. Do you, then, feel, as I often do, that

there is a second, possibly a _native_, self, deep hid beneath the

self,--not merely what we show to the world in common (that may be

merely a mask), but the self that we ordinarily accept even when in

solitude as our own, an inner innermost self, oh so different and

so rarely coming forth from its hiding-place, asserting its right of

sovereignty, and putting out the other self as the sun puts out a star?”

Had Kenelm thus spoken to a clever man of the world--to a Chillingly

Mivers, to a Chillingly Gordon--they certainly would not have understood

him. But to such men he never would have thus spoken. He had a vague

hope that this childlike girl, despite so much of childlike talk, would

understand him; and she did at once.

Advancing close to him, again laying her hand on his arm, and looking up

towards his bended face with startled wondering eyes, no longer sad, yet

not mirthful,--

“How true! You have felt that too? Where _is_ that innermost self,

so deep down,--so deep; yet when it does come forth, so much

higher,--higher,--immeasurably higher than one’s everyday self? It does

not tame the butterflies; it longs to get to the stars. And then,--and

then,--ah, how soon it fades back again! You have felt that. Does it not

puzzle you?”

“Very much.”

“Are there no wise books about it that help to explain?”

“No wise books in my very limited reading even hint at the puzzle. I

fancy that it is one of those insoluble questions that rest between the

infant and his Maker. Mind and soul are not the same things, and what

you and I call ‘wise men’ are always confounding the two--”

Fortunately for all parties--especially the reader; for Kenelm had here

got on the back of one of his most cherished hobbies, the distinction

between psychology and metaphysics, soul and mind scientifically or

logically considered--Mrs. Cameron here entered the room, and asked him

how he liked the picture.

“Very much. I am no great judge of the art. But it pleased me at once,

and now that Miss Mordaunt has interpreted the intention of the painter

I admire it yet more.”

“Lily chooses to interpret his intention in her own way, and insists

that Blanche’s expression of countenance conveys an idea of her capacity

to restrain her destructive instinct, and be taught to believe that it

is wrong to kill birds for mere sport. For food she need not kill them,

seeing that Lily takes care that she has plenty to eat. But I don’t

think that Mr. Melville had the slightest suspicion that he had

indicated that capacity in his picture.”

“He must have done so, whether he suspected it or not,” said Lily,

positively; “otherwise he would not be truthful.”

“Why not truthful?” asked Kenelm.

“Don’t you see? If you were called upon to describe truthfully the

character of any little child, would you only speak of such naughty

impulses as all children have in common, and not even hint at the

capacity to be made better?”

“Admirably put!” said Kenelm. “There is no doubt that a much fiercer

animal than a cat--a tiger, for instance, or a conquering hero--may be

taught to live on the kindest possible terms with the creatures on which

it was its natural instinct to prey.”

“Yes, yes; hear that, aunty! You remember the Happy Family that we

saw eight years ago, at Moleswich fair, with a cat not half so nice as

Blanche allowing a mouse to bite her ear? Well, then, would Lion not

have been shamefully false to Blanche if he had not”--

Lily paused and looked half shyly, half archly, at Kenelm, then added,

in slow, deep-drawn tones--“given a glimpse of her innermost self?”

“Innermost self!” repeated Mrs. Cameron, perplexed and laughing gently.

Lily stole nearer to Kenelm and whispered,--

“Is not one’s innermost self one’s best self?”

Kenelm smiled approvingly. The fairy was rapidly deepening her spell

upon him. If Lily had been his sister, his betrothed, his wife, how

fondly he would have kissed her! She had expressed a thought over which

he had often inaudibly brooded, and she had clothed it with all the

charm of her own infantine fancy and womanlike tenderness. Goethe has

said somewhere, or is reported to have said, “There is something in

every man’s heart, that, if you knew it, would make you hate him.” What

Goethe said, still more what Goethe is reported to have said, is never

to be taken quite literally. No comprehensive genius--genius at once

poet and thinker--ever can be so taken. The sun shines on a dunghill.

But the sun has no predilection for a dunghill. It only comprehends a

dunghill as it does a rose. Still Kenelm had always regarded that loose

ray from Goethe’s prodigal orb with an abhorrence most unphilosophical

for a philosopher so young as generally to take upon oath any words

of so great a master. Kenelm thought that the root of all private

benevolence, of all enlightened advance in social reform, lay in the

adverse theorem,--that in every man’s nature there lies a something

that, could we get at it, cleanse it, polish it, render it visibly clear

to our eyes, would make us love him. And in this spontaneous, uncultured

sympathy with the results of so many laborious struggles of his own

scholastic intellect against the dogma of the German giant, he felt as

if he had found a younger--true, but oh, how much more subduing, because

so much younger--sister of his own man’s soul. Then came, so strongly,

the sense of her sympathy with his own strange innermost self, which a

man will never feel more than once in his life with a daughter of

Eve, that he dared not trust himself to speak. He somewhat hurried his

leave-taking.

Passing in the rear of the garden towards the bridge which led to his

lodging, he found on the opposite bank, at the other end of the bridge,

Mr. Algernon Sidney Gale Jones peacefully angling for trout.

“Will you not try the stream to-day, sir? Take my rod.” Kenelm

remembered that Lily had called Izaak Walton’s book “a cruel one,” and

shaking his head gently, went his way into the house. There he seated

himself silently by the window, and looked towards the grassy lawn

and the dipping willows, and the gleam of the white walls through the

girdling trees, as he had looked the eve before.

“Ah!” he murmured at last, “if, as I hold, a man but tolerably good

does good unconsciously merely by the act of living,--if he can no more

traverse his way from the cradle to the grave, without letting fall,

as he passes, the germs of strength, fertility, and beauty, than can a

reckless wind or a vagrant bird, which, where it passes, leaves behind

it the oak, the corn-sheaf, or the flower,--ah, if that be so, how

tenfold the good must be, if the man find the gentler and purer

duplicate of his own being in that mysterious, undefinable union which

Shakspeares and day-labourers equally agree to call love; which Newton

never recognizes, and which Descartes (his only rival in the realms

of thought at once severe and imaginative) reduces into links of early

association, explaining that he loved women who squinted, because, when

he was a boy, a girl with that infirmity squinted at him from the other

side of his father’s garden-wall! Ah! be this union between man and

woman what it may; if it be really love, really the bond which embraces

the innermost and bettermost self of both,--how daily, hourly, momently,

should we bless God for having made it so easy to be happy and to be

good!”

CHAPTER VI.

THE dinner-party at Mr. Braefield’s was not quite so small as Kenelm

had anticipated. When the merchant heard from his wife that Kenelm

was coming, he thought it would be but civil to the young gentleman to

invite a few other persons to meet him.

“You see, my dear,” he said to Elsie, “Mrs. Cameron is a very good,

simple sort of woman, but not particularly amusing; and Lily, though a

pretty girl, is so exceedingly childish. We owe much, my sweet Elsie,

to this Mr. Chillingly,”--here there was a deep tone of feeling in his

voice and look,--“and we must make it as pleasant for him as we can.

I will bring down my friend Sir Thomas, and you ask Mr. Emlyn and his

wife. Sir Thomas is a very sensible man, and Emlyn a very learned one.

So Mr. Chillingly will find people worth talking to. By the by, when I

go to town I will send down a haunch of venison from Groves’s.”

So when Kenelm arrived, a little before six o’clock, he found in the

drawing-room the Rev. Charles Emlyn, vicar of Moleswich proper, with

his spouse, and a portly middle-aged man, to whom, as Sir Thomas Pratt,

Kenelm was introduced. Sir Thomas was an eminent city banker. The

ceremonies of introduction over, Kenelm stole to Elsie’s side.

“I thought I was to meet Mrs. Cameron. I don’t see her.”

“She will be here presently. It looks as if it might rain, and I have

sent the carriage for her and Lily. Ah, here they are!”

Mrs. Cameron entered, clothed in black silk. She always wore black; and

behind her came Lily, in the spotless colour that became her name;

no ornament, save a slender gold chain to which was appended a single

locket, and a single blush rose in her hair. She looked wonderfully

lovely; and with that loveliness there was a certain nameless air of

distinction, possibly owing to delicacy of form and colouring; possibly

to a certain grace of carriage, which was not without a something of

pride.

Mr. Braefield, who was a very punctual man, made a sign to his servant,

and in another moment or so dinner was announced. Sir Thomas, of course,

took in the hostess; Mr. Braefield, the vicar’s wife (she was a dean’s

daughter); Kenelm, Mrs. Cameron; and the vicar, Lily.

On seating themselves at the table Kenelm was on the left hand, next to

the hostess, and separated from Lily by Mrs. Cameron and Mr. Emlyn;

and when the vicar had said grace, Lily glanced behind his back and her

aunt’s at Kenelm (who did the same thing), making at him what the French

call a _moue_. The pledge to her had been broken. She was between two

men very much grown up,--the vicar and the host. Kenelm returned the

_moue_ with a mournful smile and an involuntary shrug.

All was silent till, after his soup and his first glass of sherry, Sir

Thomas began,--

“I think, Mr. Chillingly, we have met before, though I had not the

honour then of making your acquaintance.” Sir Thomas paused before he

added, “Not long ago; the last State ball at Buckingham Palace.”

Kenelm bent his head acquiescingly. He had been at that ball.

“You were talking with a very charming woman,--a friend of mine,--Lady

Glenalvon.”

(Sir Thomas was Lady Glenalvon’s banker.)

“I remember perfectly,” said Kenelm. “We were seated in the picture

gallery. You came to speak to Lady Glenalvon, and I yielded to you my

place on the settee.”

“Quite true; and I think you joined a young lady, very handsome,--the

great heiress, Miss Travers.”