Kenelm again bowed, and, turning away as politely as he could, addressed

himself to Mrs. Cameron. Sir Thomas, satisfied that he had impressed

on his audience the facts of his friendship with Lady Glenalvon and his

attendance at the court ball, now directed his conversational powers

towards the vicar, who, utterly foiled in the attempt to draw out

Lily, met the baronet’s advances with the ardour of a talker too long

suppressed. Kenelm continued, unmolested, to ripen his acquaintance with

Mrs. Cameron. She did not, however, seem to lend a very attentive ear to

his preliminary commonplace remarks about scenery or weather, but at his

first pause, said,--

“Sir Thomas spoke about a Miss Travers: is she related to a gentleman

who was once in the Guards, Leopold Travers?”

“She is his daughter. Did you ever know Leopold Travers?”

“I have heard him mentioned by friends of mine long ago,--long ago,”

replied Mrs. Cameron with a sort of weary languor, not unwonted, in her

voice and manner; and then, as if dismissing the bygone reminiscence

from her thoughts, changed the subject.

“Lily tells me, Mr. Chillingly, that you said you were staying at Mr.

Jones’s, Cromwell Lodge. I hope you are made comfortable there.”

“Very. The situation is singularly pleasant.”

“Yes, it is considered the prettiest spot on the brook-side, and used to

be a favourite resort for anglers; but the trout, I believe, are growing

scarce; at least, now that the fishing in the Thames is improved, poor

Mr. Jones complains that his old lodgers desert him. Of course you took

the rooms for the sake of the fishing. I hope the sport may be better

than it is said to be.”

“It is of little consequence to me: I do not care much about fishing;

and since Miss Mordaunt calls the book which first enticed me to take

to it ‘a cruel one,’ I feel as if the trout had become as sacred as

crocodiles were to the ancient Egyptians.”

“Lily is a foolish child on such matters. She cannot bear the thought of

giving pain to any dumb creature; and just before our garden there are a

few trout which she has tamed. They feed out of her hand; she is always

afraid they will wander away and get caught.”

“But Mr. Melville is an angler?”

“Several years ago he would sometimes pretend to fish, but I believe

it was rather an excuse for lying on the grass and reading ‘the cruel

book,’ or perhaps, rather, for sketching. But now he is seldom here till

autumn, when it grows too cold for such amusement.”

Here Sir Thomas’s voice was so loudly raised that it stopped the

conversation between Kenelm and Mrs. Cameron. He had got into some

question of politics on which he and the vicar did not agree, and

the discussion threatened to become warm, when Mrs. Braefield, with

a woman’s true tact, broached a new topic, in which Sir Thomas was

immediately interested, relating to the construction of a conservatory

for orchids that he meditated adding to his country-house, and in

which frequent appeal was made to Mrs. Cameron, who was considered an

accomplished florist, and who seemed at some time or other in her life

to have acquired a very intimate acquaintance with the costly family of

orchids.

When the ladies retired Kenelm found himself seated next to Mr. Emlyn,

who astounded him by a complimentary quotation from one of his own

Latin prize poems at the university, hoped he would make some stay at

Moleswich, told him of the principal places in the neighbourhood worth

visiting, and offered him the run of his library, which he flattered

himself was rather rich, both in the best editions of Greek and Latin

classics and in early English literature. Kenelm was much pleased with

the scholarly vicar, especially when Mr. Emlyn began to speak about Mrs.

Cameron and Lily. Of the first he said, “She is one of those women in

whom quiet is so predominant that it is long before one can know what

undercurrents of good feeling flow beneath the unruffled surface.

I wish, however, she was a little more active in the management and

education of her niece,--a girl in whom I feel a very anxious interest,

and whom I doubt if Mrs. Cameron understands. Perhaps, however, only

a poet, and a very peculiar sort of poet, can understand her: Lily

Mordaunt is herself a poem.”

“I like your definition of her,” said Kenelm. “There is certainly

something about her which differs much from the prose of common life.”

“You probably know Wordsworth’s lines:

“‘... and she shall lean her ear

In many a secret place

Where rivulets dance their wayward round,

And beauty, born of murmuring sound,

Shall pass into her face.’

“They are lines that many critics have found unintelligible; but Lily

seems like the living key to them.”

Kenelm’s dark face lighted up, but he made no answer.

“Only,” continued Mr. Emlyn, “how a girl of that sort, left wholly to

herself, untrained, undisciplined, is to grow up into the practical uses

of womanhood, is a question that perplexes and saddens me.”

“Any more wine?” asked the host, closing a conversation on commercial

matters with Sir Thomas. “No?--shall we join the ladies?”

CHAPTER VII.

THE drawing-room was deserted; the ladies were in the garden. As Kenelm

and Mr. Emlyn walked side by side towards the group (Sir Thomas and Mr.

Braefield following at a little distance), the former asked, somewhat

abruptly, “What sort of man is Miss Cameron’s guardian, Mr. Melville?”

“I can scarcely answer that question. I see little of him when he comes

here. Formerly, he used to run down pretty often with a harum-scarum

set of young fellows, quartered at Cromwell Lodge,--Grasmere had no

accommodation for them,--students in the Academy, I suppose. For some

years he has not brought those persons, and when he does come himself it

is but for a few days. He has the reputation of being very wild.”

Further conversation was here stopped. The two men, while they thus

talked, had been diverging from the straight way across the lawn towards

the ladies, turning into sequestered paths through the shrubbery; now

they emerged into the open sward, just before a table, on which coffee

was served, and round which all the rest of the party were gathered.

“I hope, Mr. Emlyn,” said Elsie’s cheery voice, “that you have dissuaded

Mr. Chillingly from turning Papist. I am sure you have taken time enough

to do so.”

Mr. Emlyn, Protestant every inch of him, slightly recoiled from Kenelm’s

side. “Do you meditate turning--” He could not conclude the sentence.

“Be not alarmed, my dear sir. I did but own to Mrs. Braefield that I

had paid a visit to Oxford in order to confer with a learned man on

a question that puzzled me, and as abstract as that feminine pastime,

theology, is now-a-days. I cannot convince Mrs. Braefield that Oxford

admits other puzzles in life than those which amuse the ladies.” Here

Kenelm dropped into a chair by the side of Lily.

Lily half turned her back to him.

“Have I offended again?”

Lily shrugged her shoulders slightly and would not answer.

“I suspect, Miss Mordaunt, that among your good qualities, nature has

omitted one; the bettermost self within you should replace it.”

Lily here abruptly turned to him her front face: the light of the skies

was becoming dim, but the evening star shone upon it.

“How! what do you mean?”

“Am I to answer politely or truthfully?”

“Truthfully! Oh, truthfully! What is life without truth?”

“Even though one believes in fairies?”

“Fairies are truthful, in a certain way. But you are not truthful. You

were not thinking of fairies when you--”

“When I what?”

“Found fault with me.”

“I am not sure of that. But I will translate to you my thoughts, so far

as I can read them myself, and to do so I will resort to the fairies.

Let us suppose that a fairy has placed her changeling into the cradle of

a mortal: that into the cradle she drops all manner of fairy gifts which

are not bestowed on mere mortals; but that one mortal attribute she

forgets. The changeling grows up; she charms those around her: they

humour, and pet, and spoil her. But there arises a moment in which the

omission of the one mortal gift is felt by her admirers and friends.

Guess what that is.”

Lily pondered. “I see what you mean; the reverse of truthfulness,

politeness.”

“No, not exactly that, though politeness slides into it unawares: it is

a very humble quality, a very unpoetic quality; a quality that many dull

people possess; and yet without it no fairy can fascinate mortals, when

on the face of the fairy settles the first wrinkle. Can you not guess it

now?”

“No: you vex me; you provoke me;” and Lily stamped her foot petulantly,

as in Kenelm’s presence she had stamped it once before. “Speak plainly,

I insist.”

“Miss Mordaunt, excuse me: I dare not,” said Kenelm, rising with a sort

of bow one makes to the Queen; and he crossed over to Mrs. Braefield.

Lily remained, still pouting fiercely.

Sir Thomas took the chair Kenelm had vacated.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE hour for parting came. Of all the guests, Sir Thomas alone stayed

at the house a guest for the night. Mr. and Mrs. Emlyn had their own

carriage. Mrs. Braefield’s carriage came to the door for Mrs. Cameron

and Lily.

Said Lily, impatiently and discourteously, “Who would not rather walk on

such a night?” and she whispered to her aunt.

Mrs. Cameron, listening to the whisper and obedient to every whim

of Lily’s, said, “You are too considerate, dear Mrs. Braefield; Lily

prefers walking home; there is no chance of rain now.”

Kenelm followed the steps of the aunt and niece, and soon overtook them

on the brook-side.

“A charming night, Mr. Chillingly,” said Mrs. Cameron.

“An English summer night; nothing like it in such parts of the world as

I have visited. But, alas! of English summer nights there are but few.”

“You have travelled much abroad?”

“Much, no, a little; chiefly on foot.”

Lily hitherto had not said a word, and had been walking with downcast

head. Now she looked up and said, in the mildest and most conciliatory

of human voices,--

“You have been abroad;” then, with an acquiescence in the manners of

the world which to him she had never yet manifested, she added his

name, “Mr. Chillingly,” and went on, more familiarly. “What a breadth

of meaning the word ‘abroad’ conveys! Away, afar from one’s self, from

one’s everyday life. How I envy you! you have been abroad: so has Lion”

(here drawing herself up), “I mean my guardian, Mr. Melville.”

“Certainly, I have been abroad, but afar from myself--never. It is an

old saying,--all old sayings are true; most new sayings are false,--a

man carries his native soil at the sole of his foot.”

Here the path somewhat narrowed. Mrs. Cameron went on first, Kenelm and

Lily behind; she, of course, on the dry path, he on the dewy grass.

She stopped him. “You are walking in the wet, and with those thin

shoes.” Lily moved instinctively away from the dry path.

Homely though that speech of Lily’s be, and absurd as said by a fragile

girl to a gladiator like Kenelm, it lit up a whole world of womanhood:

it showed all that undiscoverable land which was hidden to the learned

Mr. Emlyn, all that land which an uncomprehended girl seizes and reigns

over when she becomes wife and mother.

At that homely speech, and that impulsive movement, Kenelm halted, in

a sort of dreaming maze. He turned timidly, “Can you forgive me for my

rude words? I presumed to find fault with you.”

“And so justly. I have been thinking over all you said, and I feel you

were so right; only I still do not quite understand what you meant by

the quality for mortals which the fairy did not give to her changeling.”

“If I did not dare say it before, I should still less dare to say it

now.”

“Do.” There was no longer the stamp of the foot, no longer the flash

from her eyes, no longer the wilfulness which said, “I insist;”--

“Do;” soothingly, sweetly, imploringly.

Thus pushed to it, Kenelm plucked up courage, and not trusting himself

to look at Lily, answered brusquely,--

“The quality desirable for men, but more essential to women in

proportion as they are fairy-like, though the tritest thing possible, is

good temper.”

Lily made a sudden bound from his side, and joined her aunt, walking

through the wet grass.

When they reached the garden-gate, Kenelm advanced and opened it. Lily

passed him by haughtily; they gained the cottage-door.

“I don’t ask you in at this hour,” said Mrs. Cameron. “It would be but a

false compliment.”

Kenelm bowed and retreated. Lily left her aunt’s side, and came towards

him, extending her hand.

“I shall consider your words, Mr. Chillingly,” she said, with a

strangely majestic air. “At present I think you are not right. I am not

ill-tempered; but--” here she paused, and then added with a loftiness

of mien which, had she not been so exquisitely pretty, would have been

rudeness--“in any case I forgive you.”

CHAPTER IX.

THERE were a good many pretty villas in the outskirts of Moleswich, and

the owners of them were generally well off, and yet there was little of

what is called visiting society; owing perhaps to the fact that there

not being among these proprietors any persons belonging to what is

commonly called “the aristocratic class,” there was a vast deal of

aristocratic pretension. The family of Mr. A-----, who had enriched

himself as a stock-jobber, turned up its nose at the family of Mr.

B-----, who had enriched himself still more as a linen-draper, while the

family of Mr. B----- showed a very cold shoulder to the family of Mr.

C-----, who had become richer than either of them as a pawnbroker,

and whose wife wore diamonds, but dropped her h’s. England would be a

community so aristocratic that there would be no living in it, if one

could exterminate what is now called “aristocracy.” The Braefields were

the only persons who really drew together the antagonistic atoms of the

Moleswich society, partly because they were acknowledged to be the first

persons there, in right not only of old settlement (the Braefields had

held Braefieldville for four generations), but of the wealth derived

from those departments of commercial enterprise which are recognized as

the highest, and of an establishment considered to be the most elegant

in the neighbourhood; principally because Elsie, while exceedingly

genial and cheerful in temper, had a certain power of will (as her

runaway folly had manifested), and when she got people together

compelled them to be civil to each other. She had commenced this

gracious career by inaugurating children’s parties, and when the

children became friends the parents necessarily grew closer together.

Still her task had only recently begun, and its effects were not in

full operation. Thus, though it became known at Moleswich that a young

gentleman, the heir to a baronetcy and a high estate, was sojourning at

Cromwell Lodge, no overtures were made to him on the part of the A’s,

B’s, and C’s. The vicar, who called on Kenelm the day after the dinner

at Braefieldville, explained to him the social conditions of the place.

“You understand,” said he, “that it will be from no want of courtesy on

the part of my neighbours if they do not offer you any relief from

the pleasures of solitude. It will be simply because they are shy, not

because they are uncivil. And, it is this consideration that makes

me, at the risk of seeming too forward, entreat you to look into the

vicarage any morning or evening on which you feel tired of your own

company; suppose you drink tea with us this evening,--you will find a

young lady whose heart you have already won.”

“Whose heart I have won!” faltered Kenelm, and the warm blood rushed to

his cheek.

“But,” continued the vicar, smiling, “she has no matrimonial designs on

you at present. She is only twelve years old,--my little girl Clemmy.”

“Clemmy!--she is your daughter? I did not know that. I very gratefully

accept your invitation.”

“I must not keep you longer from your amusement. The sky is just clouded

enough for sport. What fly do you use?”

“To say truth, I doubt if the stream has much to tempt me in the way of

trout, and I prefer rambling about the lanes and by-paths to

“‘The noiseless angler’s solitary stand.’

“I am an indefatigable walker, and the home scenery round the place has

many charms for me. Besides,” added Kenelm, feeling conscious that he

ought to find some more plausible excuse than the charms of home scenery

for locating himself long in Cromwell Lodge, “besides, I intend to

devote myself a good deal to reading. I have been very idle of late, and

the solitude of this place must be favourable to study.”

“You are not intended, I presume, for any of the learned professions?”

“The learned professions,” replied Kenelm, “is an invidious form of

speech that we are doing our best to eradicate from the language.

All professions now-a-days are to have much about the same amount of

learning. The learning of the military profession is to be levelled

upwards, the learning of the scholastic to be levelled downwards.

Cabinet ministers sneer at the uses of Greek and Latin. And even

such masculine studies as Law and Medicine are to be adapted to the

measurements of taste and propriety in colleges for young ladies. No,

I am not intended for any profession; but still an ignorant man like

myself may not be the worse for a little book-reading now and then.”

“You seem to be badly provided with books here,” said the vicar,

glancing round the room, in which, on a table in the corner, lay

half-a-dozen old-looking volumes, evidently belonging not to the lodger

but to the landlord. “But, as I before said, my library is at your

service. What branch of reading do you prefer?”

Kenelm was, and looked, puzzled. But after a pause he answered:

“The more remote it be from the present day, the better for me. You said

your collection was rich in mediaeval literature. But the Middle

Ages are so copied by the modern Goths, that I might as well read

translations of Chaucer or take lodgings in Wardour Street. If you have

any books about the manners and habits of those who, according to

the newest idea in science, were our semi-human progenitors in the

transition state between a marine animal and a gorilla, I should be very

much edified by the loan.”

“Alas,” said Mr. Emlyn, laughing, “no such books have been left to us.”

“No such books? You must be mistaken. There must be plenty of them

somewhere. I grant all the wonderful powers of invention bestowed on

the creators of poetic romance; still not the sovereign masters in that

realm of literature--not Scott, not Cervantes, not Goethe, not even

Shakspeare--could have presumed to rebuild the past without such

materials as they found in the books that record it. And though I, no

less cheerfully, grant that we have now living among us a creator of

poetic romance immeasurably more inventive than they,--appealing to our

credulity in portents the most monstrous, with a charm of style the

most conversationally familiar,--still I cannot conceive that even that

unrivalled romance-writer can so bewitch our understandings as to make

us believe that, if Miss Mordaunt’s cat dislikes to wet her feet, it is

probably because in the prehistoric age her ancestors lived in the dry

country of Egypt; or that when some lofty orator, a Pitt or a Gladstone,

rebuts with a polished smile which reveals his canine teeth the rude

assault of an opponent, he betrays his descent from a ‘semi-human

progenitor’ who was accustomed to snap at his enemy. Surely, surely

there must be some books still extant written by philosophers before the

birth of Adam, in which there is authority, even though but in mythic

fable, for such poetic inventions. Surely, surely some early chroniclers

must depose that they saw, saw with their own eyes, the great gorillas

who scratched off their hairy coverings to please the eyes of the young

ladies of their species, and that they noted the gradual metamorphosis

of one animal into another. For, if you tell me that this illustrious

romance-writer is but a cautious man of science, and that we must accept

his inventions according to the sober laws of evidence and fact, there

is not the most incredible ghost story which does not better satisfy the

common sense of a sceptic. However, if you have no such books, lend

me the most unphilosophical you possess,--on magic, for instance,--the

philosopher’s stone”--

“I have some of them,” said the vicar, laughing; “you shall choose for

yourself.”

“If you are going homeward, let me accompany you part of the way: I

don’t yet know where the church and the vicarage are, and I ought to

know before I come in the evening.”

Kenelm and the vicar walked side by side, very sociably, across the

bridge and on the side of the rivulet on which stood Mrs. Cameron’s

cottage. As they skirted the garden pale at the rear of the cottage,

Kenelm suddenly stopped in the middle of some sentence which had

interested Mr. Emlyn, and as suddenly arrested his steps on the turf

that bordered the lane. A little before him stood an old peasant woman,

with whom Lily, on the opposite side of the garden pale, was conversing.

Mr. Emlyn did not at first see what Kenelm saw; turning round rather

to gaze on his companion, surprised by his abrupt halt and silence. The

girl put a small basket into the old woman’s hand, who then dropped a

low curtsy, and uttered low a “God bless you.” Low though it was, Kenelm

overheard it, and said abstractedly to Mr. Emlyn, “Is there a greater

link between this life and the next than God’s blessing on the young,

breathed from the lips of the old?”

CHAPTER X.

“AND how is your good man, Mrs. Haley?” said the vicar, who had now

reached the spot on which the old woman stood,--with Lily’s fair face

still bended down to her,--while Kenelm slowly followed him.

“Thank you kindly, sir, he is better; out of his bed now. The young lady

has done him a power of good--”

“Hush!” said Lily, colouring. “Make haste home now; you must not keep

him waiting for his dinner.”

The old woman again curtsied, and went off at a brisk pace.

“Do you know, Mr. Chillingly,” said Mr. Emlyn, “that Miss Mordaunt is

the best doctor in the place? Though if she goes on making so many cures

she will find the number of her patients rather burdensome.”

“It was only the other day,” said Lily, “that you scolded me for the

best cure I have yet made.”

“I?--Oh! I remember; you led that silly child Madge to believe that

there was a fairy charm in the arrowroot you sent her. Own you deserved

a scolding there.”

“No, I did not. I dressed the arrowroot, and am I not Fairy? I have just

got such a pretty note from Clemmy, Mr. Emlyn, asking me to come up this

evening and see her new magic lantern. Will you tell her to expect me?

And, mind, no scolding.”

“And all magic?” said Mr. Emlyn; “be it so.”

Lily and Kenelm had not hitherto exchanged a word. She had replied with

a grave inclination of her head to his silent bow. But now she turned to

him shyly and said, “I suppose you have been fishing all the morning?”

“No; the fishes hereabout are under the protection of a Fairy,--whom I

dare not displease.”

Lily’s face brightened, and she extended her hand to him over the

palings. “Good-day; I hear aunty’s voice: those dreadful French verbs!”

She disappeared among the shrubs, amid which they heard the thrill of

her fresh young voice singing to herself.

“That child has a heart of gold,” said Mr. Emlyn, as the two men walked

on. “I did not exaggerate when I said she was the best doctor in the

place. I believe the poor really do believe that she is a fairy. Of

course we send from the vicarage to our ailing parishioners who require

it, food and wine; but it never seems to do them the good that her

little dishes made by her own tiny hands do; and I don’t know if you

noticed the basket that old woman took away,--Miss Lily taught Will

Somers to make the prettiest little baskets; and she puts her jellies or

other savouries into dainty porcelain gallipots nicely fitted into the

baskets, which she trims with ribbons. It is the look of the thing that

tempts the appetite of the invalids, and certainly the child may well be

called Fairy at present; but I wish Mrs. Cameron would attend a little

more strictly to her education. She can’t be a fairy forever.”

Kenelm sighed, but made no answer.

Mr. Emlyn then turned the conversation to erudite subjects, and so they

came in sight of the town, when the vicar stopped and pointed towards

the church, of which the spire rose a little to the left, with two aged

yew-trees half shadowing the burial-ground, and in the rear a glimpse of

the vicarage seen amid the shrubs of its garden ground.

“You will know your way now,” said the vicar; “excuse me if I quit you:

I have a few visits to make; among others, to poor Haley, husband to the

old woman you saw. I read to him a chapter in the Bible every day; yet

still I fancy that he believes in fairy charms.”

“Better believe too much, than too little,” said Kenelm; and he turned

aside into the village and spent half-an-hour with Will, looking at the

pretty baskets Lily had taught Will to make. Then, as he went slowly

homeward, he turned aside into the churchyard.

The church, built in the thirteenth century, was not large, but it

probably sufficed for its congregation, since it betrayed no signs of

modern addition; restoration or repair it needed not. The centuries had

but mellowed the tints of its solid walls, as little injured by the huge

ivy stems that shot forth their aspiring leaves to the very summit of

the stately tower as by the slender roses which had been trained

to climb up a foot or so of the massive buttresses. The site of the

burial-ground was unusually picturesque: sheltered towards the north by

a rising ground clothed with woods, sloping down at the south towards

the glebe pasture-grounds through which ran the brooklet, sufficiently

near for its brawling gurgle to be heard on a still day. Kenelm sat

himself on an antique tomb, which was evidently appropriated to some one

of higher than common rank in bygone days, but on which the sculpture

was wholly obliterated.

The stillness and solitude of the place had their charms for his

meditative temperament; and he remained there long, forgetful of time,

and scarcely hearing the boom of the clock that warned him of its lapse.

When suddenly, a shadow--the shadow of a human form--fell on the grass

on which his eyes dreamily rested. He looked up with a start, and beheld

Lily standing before him mute and still. Her image was so present in his

thoughts at the moment that he felt a thrill of awe, as if the thoughts

had conjured up her apparition. She was the first to speak.

“You here, too?” she said very softly, almost whisperingly. “Too!”

echoed Kenelm, rising; “too! ‘Tis no wonder that I, a stranger to

the place, should find my steps attracted towards its most venerable

building. Even the most careless traveller, halting at some remote

abodes of the living, turns aside to gaze on the burial-ground of the

dead. But my surprise is that you, Miss Mordaunt, should be attracted

towards the same spot.”

“It is my favourite spot,” said Lily, “and always has been. I have sat

many an hour on that tombstone. It is strange to think that no one knows

who sleeps beneath it. The ‘Guide Book to Moleswich,’ though it gives

the history of the church from the reign in which it was first built,

can only venture a guess that this tomb, the grandest and oldest in the

burial-ground, is tenanted by some member of a family named Montfichet,

that was once very powerful in the county, and has become extinct since

the reign of Henry VI. But,” added Lily, “there is not a letter of the

name Montfichet left. I found out more than any one else has done; I

learned black-letter on purpose; look here,” and she pointed to a small

spot in which the moss had been removed. “Do you see those figures?

are they not XVIII? and look again, in what was once the line above

the figures, ELE. It must have been an Eleanor, who died at the age of

eighteen--”

“I rather think it more probable that the figures refer to the date

of the death, 1318 perhaps; and so far as I can decipher black-letter,

which is more in my father’s line than mine, I think it is AL, not EL,

and that it seems as if there had been a letter between L and the second

E, which is now effaced. The tomb itself is not likely to belong to any

powerful family then resident at the place. Their monuments, according

to usage, would have been within the church,--probably in their own

mortuary chapel.”

“Don’t try to destroy my fancy,” said Lily, shaking her head; “you

cannot succeed, I know her history too well. She was young, and some one

loved her, and built over her the finest tomb he could afford; and see

how long the epitaph must have been! how much it must have spoken in

her praise and of his grief. And then he went his way, and the tomb was

neglected, and her fate forgotten.”

“My dear Miss Mordaunt, this is indeed a wild romance to spin out of so

slender a thread. But even if true, there is no reason to think that a

life is forgotten, though a tomb be neglected.”

“Perhaps not,” said Lily, thoughtfully. “But when I am dead, if I can

look down, I think it would please me to see my grave not neglected by

those who had loved me once.”

She moved from him as she said this, and went to a little mound that

seemed not long since raised; there was a simple cross at the head and

a narrow border of flowers round it. Lily knelt beside the flowers and

pulled out a stray weed. Then she rose, and said to Kenelm, who had

followed, and now stood beside her,--

“She was the little grandchild of poor old Mrs. Hales. I could not cure

her, though I tried hard: she was so fond of me, and died in my arms.

No, let me not say ‘died,’--surely there is no such thing as dying. ‘Tis

but a change of life,--

‘Less than the void between two waves of air,

The space between existence and a soul.’”

“Whose lines are those?” asked Kenelm.

“I don’t know; I learnt them from Lion. Don’t you believe them to be

true?”

“Yes. But the truth does not render the thought of quitting this scene

of life for another more pleasing to most of us. See how soft and gentle

and bright is all that living summer land beyond; let us find subject

for talk from that, not from the graveyard on which we stand.”

“But is there not a summer land fairer than that we see now; and which

we do see, as in a dream, best when we take subjects of talk from the

graveyard?” Without waiting for a reply, Lily went on. “I planted these

flowers: Mr. Emlyn was angry with me; he said it was ‘Popish.’ But he

had not the heart to have them taken up; I come here very often to see

to them. Do you think it wrong? Poor little Nell! she was so fond of

flowers. And the Eleanor in the great tomb, she too perhaps knew some

one who called her Nell; but there are no flowers round her tomb. Poor

Eleanor!”

She took the nosegay she wore on her bosom, and as she repassed the tomb

laid it on the mouldering stone.

CHAPTER XI.

THEY quitted the burial-ground, taking their way to Grasmere. Kenelm

walked by Lily’s side; not a word passed between them till they came in

sight of the cottage.

Then Lily stopped abruptly, and lifting towards him her charming face,

said,--

“I told you I would think over what you said to me last night. I have

done so, and feel I can thank you honestly. You were very kind: I never

before thought that I had a bad temper; no one ever told me so. But I

see now what you mean; sometimes I feel very quickly, and then I show

it. But how did I show it to you, Mr. Chillingly?”

“Did you not turn your back to me when I seated myself next you in

Mrs. Braefield’s garden, vouchsafing me no reply when I asked if I had

offended?”

Lily’s face became bathed in blushes, and her voice faltered, as she

answered,--

“I was not offended; I was not in a bad temper then: it was worse than

that.”

“Worse? what could it possibly be?”

“I am afraid it was envy.”

“Envy of what? of whom?”

“I don’t know how to explain; after all, I fear aunty is right, and the

fairy tales put very silly, very naughty thoughts into one’s head. When

Cinderella’s sisters went to the king’s ball, and Cinderella was left

alone, did not she long to go too? Did not she envy her sisters?”

“Ah! I understand now: Sir Charles spoke of the Court Ball.”

“And you were there talking with handsome ladies--and--oh! I was so

foolish and felt sore.”

“You, who when we first met wondered how people who could live in

the country preferred to live in towns, do then sometimes contradict

yourself, and sigh for the great world that lies beyond these quiet

water banks. You feel that you have youth and beauty, and wish to be

admired!”

“It is not that exactly,” said Lily, with a perplexed look in her

ingenuous countenance, “and in my better moments, when the ‘bettermost

self’ comes forth, I know that I am not made for the great world you

speak of. But you see--” Here she paused again, and as they had now

entered the garden, dropped wearily on a bench beside the path. Kenelm

seated himself there too, waiting for her to finish her broken sentence.

“You see,” she continued, looking down embarrassed, and describing vague

circles on the gravel with her fairy-like foot, “that at home, ever

since I can remember, they have treated me as if--well, as if I

were--what shall I say? the child of one of your great ladies. Even

Lion, who is so noble, so grand, seemed to think when I was a mere

infant that I was a little queen: once when I told a fib he did not

scold me; but I never saw him look so sad and so angry as when he said,

‘Never again forget that you are a lady.’ And, but I tire you--”

“Tire me, indeed! go on.”

“No, I have said enough to explain why I have at times proud thoughts,

and vain thoughts; and why, for instance, I said to myself, ‘Perhaps my

place of right is among those fine ladies whom he--’ but it is all over

now.” She rose hastily with a pretty laugh, and bounded towards Mrs.

Cameron, who was walking slowly along the lawn with a book in her hand.

CHAPTER XII.

IT was a very merry party at the vicarage that evening. Lily had not

been prepared to meet Kenelm there, and her face brightened wonderfully

as at her entrance he turned from the book-shelves to which Mr. Emlyn

was directing his attention. But instead of meeting his advance, she

darted off to the lawn, where Clemmy and several other children greeted

her with a joyous shout.

“Not acquainted with Macleane’s Juvenal?” said the reverend scholar;

“you will be greatly pleased with it; here it is,--a posthumous work,

edited by George Long. I can lend you Munro’s Lucretius, ‘69. Aha! we

have some scholars yet to pit against the Germans.”

“I am heartily glad to hear it,” said Kenelm. “It will be a long time

before they will ever wish to rival us in that game which Miss Clemmy

is now forming on the lawn, and in which England has recently acquired a

European reputation.”

“I don’t take you. What game?”

“Puss in the Corner. With your leave I will look out and see whether

it be a winning game for puss--in the long-run.” Kenelm joined the

children, amidst whom Lily seemed not the least childlike. Resisting all

overtures from Clemmy to join their play, he seated himself on a sloping

bank at a little distance,--an idle looker-on. His eye followed Lily’s

nimble movements, his ear drank in the music of her joyous laugh. Could

that be the same girl whom he had seen tending the flower-bed amid the

gravestones? Mrs. Emlyn came across the lawn and joined him, seating

herself also on the bank. Mrs. Emlyn was an exceedingly clever woman:

nevertheless she was not formidable,--on the contrary, pleasing; and

though the ladies in the neighbourhood said ‘she talked like a book,’

the easy gentleness of her voice carried off that offence.

“I suppose, Mr. Chillingly,” said she, “I ought to apologize for

my husband’s invitation to what must seem to you so frivolous an

entertainment as a child’s party. But when Mr. Emlyn asked you to come

to us this evening, he was not aware that Clemmy had also invited her

young friends. He had looked forward to rational conversation with you

on his own favourite studies.”

“It is not so long since I left school, but that I prefer a half holiday

to lessons, even from a tutor so pleasant as Mr. Emlyn,--

“‘Ah, happy years,--once more who would not be a boy!’”

“Nay,” said Mrs. Emlyn, with a grave smile. “Who that had started so

fairly as Mr. Chillingly in the career of man would wish to go back and

resume a place among boys?”

“But, my dear Mrs. Emlyn, the line I quoted was wrung from the heart of

a man who had already outstripped all rivals in the race-ground he had

chosen, and who at that moment was in the very Maytime of youth and of

fame. And if such a man at such an epoch in his career could sigh to ‘be

once more a boy,’ it must have been when he was thinking of the boy’s

half holiday, and recoiling from the task work he was condemned to learn

as man.”

“The line you quote is, I think, from ‘Childe Harold,’ and surely

you would not apply to mankind in general the sentiment of a poet so

peculiarly self-reflecting (if I may use that expression), and in whom

sentiment is often so morbid.”

“You are right, Mrs. Emlyn,” said Kenelm, ingenuously. “Still a boy’s

half holiday is a very happy thing; and among mankind in general

there must be many who would be glad to have it back again,--Mr. Emlyn

himself, I should think.”

“Mr. Emlyn has his half holiday now. Do you not see him standing just

outside the window? Do you not hear him laughing? He is a child again

in the mirth of his children. I hope you will stay some time in the

neighbourhood; I am sure you and he will like each other. And it is such

a rare delight to him to get a scholar like yourself to talk to.”

“Pardon me, I am not a scholar; a very noble title that, and not to be

given to a lazy trifler on the surface of book-lore like myself.”

“You are too modest. My husband has a copy of your Cambridge prize

verses, and says ‘the Latinity of them is quite beautiful.’ I quote his

very words.”

“Latin verse-making is a mere knack, little more than a proof that one

had an elegant scholar for one’s tutor, as I certainly had. But it is by

special grace that a real scholar can send forth another real scholar,

and a Kennedy produce a Munro. But to return to the more interesting

question of half holidays; I declare that Clemmy is leading off your

husband in triumph. He is actually going to be Puss in the Corner.”

“When you know more of Charles,--I mean my husband,--you will discover

that his whole life is more or less of a holiday. Perhaps because he is

not what you accuse yourself of being: he is not lazy; he never wishes

to be a boy once more; and taskwork itself is holiday to him. He enjoys

shutting himself up in his study and reading; he enjoys a walk with

the children; he enjoys visiting the poor; he enjoys his duties as a

clergyman. And though I am not always contented for him, though I think

he should have had those honours in his profession which have been

lavished on men with less ability and less learning, yet he is never

discontented himself. Shall I tell you his secret?”

“Do.”

“He is a _Thanks-giving Man_. You, too, must have much to thank God

for, Mr. Chillingly; and in thanksgiving to God does there not blend

usefulness to man, and such sense of pastime in the usefulness as makes

each day a holiday?”

Kenelm looked up into the quiet face of this obscure pastor’s wife with

a startled expression in his own.

“I see, ma’am,” said he, “that you have devoted much thought to the

study of the aesthetical philosophy as expounded by German thinkers,

whom it is rather difficult to understand.”

“I, Mr. Chillingly! good gracious! No! What do you mean by your

aesthetical philosophy?”

“According to aesthetics, I believe man arrives at his highest state

of moral excellence when labour and duty lose all the harshness of

effort,--when they become the impulse and habit of life; when as the

essential attributes of the beautiful, they are, like beauty, enjoyed

as pleasure; and thus, as you expressed, each day becomes a holiday: a

lovely doctrine, not perhaps so lofty as that of the Stoics, but more

bewitching. Only, very few of us can practically merge our cares and our

worries into so serene an atmosphere.”

“Some do so without knowing anything of aesthetics and with no pretence

to be Stoics; but, then, they are Christians.”

“There are some such Christians, no doubt; but they are rarely to be met

with. Take Christendom altogether, and it appears to comprise the most

agitated population in the world; the population in which there is the

greatest grumbling as to the quantity of labour to be done, the

loudest complaints that duty instead of a pleasure is a very hard and

disagreeable struggle, and in which holidays are fewest and the moral

atmosphere least serene. Perhaps,” added Kenelm, with a deeper shade of

thought on his brow, “it is this perpetual consciousness of struggle;

this difficulty in merging toil into ease, or stern duty into placid

enjoyment; this refusal to ascend for one’s self into the calm of an air

aloof from the cloud which darkens, and the hail-storm which beats

upon, the fellow-men we leave below,--that makes the troubled life of

Christendom dearer to Heaven, and more conducive to Heaven’s design in

rendering earth the wrestling-ground and not the resting-place of man,

than is that of the Brahmin, ever seeking to abstract himself from

the Christian’s conflicts of action and desire, and to carry into its

extremest practice the aesthetic theory, of basking undisturbed in the

contemplation of the most absolute beauty human thought can reflect from

its idea of divine good!”

Whatever Mrs. Emlyn might have said in reply was interrupted by the rush

of the children towards her; they were tired of play, and eager for tea

and the magic lantern.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE room is duly obscured and the white sheet attached to the wall; the

children are seated, hushed, and awe-stricken. And Kenelm is placed next

to Lily.

The tritest things in our mortal experience are among the most

mysterious. There is more mystery in the growth of a blade of grass than

there is in the wizard’s mirror or the feats of a spirit medium. Most of

us have known the attraction that draws one human being to another, and

makes it so exquisite a happiness to sit quiet and mute by another’s

side; which stills for the moment the busiest thoughts in our brain, the

most turbulent desires in our heart, and renders us but conscious of a

present ineffable bliss. Most of us have known that. But who has ever

been satisfied with any metaphysical account of its why or wherefore? We

can but say it is love, and love at that earlier section of its history

which has not yet escaped from romance; but by what process that other

person has become singled out of the whole universe to attain such

special power over one is a problem that, though many have attempted to

solve it, has never attained to solution. In the dim light of the room

Kenelm could only distinguish the outlines of Lily’s delicate face, but

at each new surprise in the show, the face intuitively turned to his,

and once, when the terrible image of a sheeted ghost, pursuing a guilty

man, passed along the wall, she drew closer to him in her childish

fright, and by an involuntary innocent movement laid her hand on his. He

detained it tenderly, but, alas! it was withdrawn the next moment;

the ghost was succeeded by a couple of dancing dogs. And Lily’s ready

laugh--partly at the dogs, partly at her own previous alarm--vexed

Kenelm’s ear. He wished there had been a succession of ghosts, each more

appalling than the last.

The entertainment was over, and after a slight refreshment of cakes

and wine-and-water the party broke up; the children visitors went away

attended by servant-maids who had come for them. Mrs. Cameron and Lily

were to walk home on foot.

“It is a lovely night, Mrs. Cameron,” said Mr. Emlyn, “and I will attend

you to your gate.”

“Permit me also,” said Kenelm.

“Ay,” said the vicar, “it is your own way to Cromwell Lodge.”

The path led them through the churchyard as the nearest approach to the

brook-side. The moonbeams shimmered through the yew-trees and rested on

the old tomb; playing, as it were, round the flowers which Lily’s hand

had that day dropped upon its stone. She was walking beside Kenelm, the

elder two a few paces in front.

“How silly I was,” said she, “to be so frightened at the false ghost! I

don’t think a real one would frighten me, at least if seen here, in this

loving moonlight, and on God’s ground!”

“Ghosts, were they permitted to appear except in a magic lantern, could

not harm the innocent. And I wonder why the idea of their apparition

should always have been associated with such phantasies of horror,

especially by sinless children, who have the least reason to dread

them.”

“Oh, that is true,” cried Lily; “but even when we are grown up there

must be times in which we should so long to see a ghost, and feel what a

comfort, what a joy it would be.”

“I understand you. If some one very dear to us had vanished from our

life; if we felt the anguish of the separation so intensely as to efface

the thought that life, as you said so well, ‘never dies;’ well, yes,

then I can conceive that the mourner would yearn to have a glimpse of

the vanished one, were it but to ask the sole and only question he could

desire to put, ‘Art thou happy? May I hope that we shall meet again,

never to part,--never?’”

Kenelm’s voice trembled as he spoke, tears stood in his eyes. A

melancholy--vague, unaccountable, overpowering--passed across his heart,

as the shadow of some dark-winged bird passes over a quiet stream.

“You have never yet felt this?” asked Lily doubtingly, in a soft voice,

full of tender pity, stopping short and looking into his face.

“I? No. I have never yet lost one whom I so loved and so yearned to see

again. I was but thinking that such losses may befall us all ere we too

vanish out of sight.”

“Lily!” called forth Mrs. Cameron, halting at the gate of the

burial-ground.

“Yes, auntie?”

“Mr. Emlyn wants to know how far you have got in ‘Numa Pompilius.’ Come

and answer for yourself.”

“Oh, those tiresome grown-up people!” whispered Lily, petulantly, to

Kenelm. “I do like Mr. Emlyn; he is one of the very best of men. But

still he is grown up, and his ‘Numa Pompilius’ is so stupid.”

“My first French lesson-book. No, it is not stupid. Read on. It has

hints of the prettiest fairy tale I know, and of the fairy in especial

who bewitched my fancies as a boy.”

By this time they had gained the gate of the burial-ground.

“What fairy tale? what fairy?” asked Lily, speaking quickly.

“She was a fairy, though in heathen language she is called a

nymph,--Egeria. She was the link between men and gods to him she loved;

she belongs to the race of gods. True, she, too, may vanish, but she can

never die.”

“Well, Miss Lily,” said the vicar, “and how far in the book I lent

you,--‘Numa Pompilius.’”

“Ask me this day next week.”

“I will; but mind you are to translate as you go on. I must see the

translation.”

“Very well. I will do my best,” answered Lily meekly. Lily now walked

by the vicar’s side, and Kenelm by Mrs. Cameron’s, till they reached

Grasmere.

“I will go on with you to the bridge, Mr. Chillingly,” said the vicar,

when the ladies had disappeared within their garden. “We had little

time to look over my books, and, by the by, I hope you at least took the

Juvenal.”

“No, Mr. Emlyn; who can quit your house with an inclination for satire?

I must come some morning and select a volume from those works which give

pleasant views of life and bequeath favourable impressions of mankind.

Your wife, with whom I have had an interesting conversation, upon the

principles of aesthetical philosophy--”

“My wife! Charlotte! She knows nothing about aesthetical philosophy.”

“She calls it by another name, but she understands it well enough to

illustrate the principles by example. She tells me that labour and duty

are so taken up by you--

‘In den heitern Regionen

Wo die reinen Formen wohnen,’

that they become joy and beauty,--is it so?”

“I am sure that Charlotte never said anything half so poetical. But, in

plain words, the days pass with me very happily. I should be ungrateful

if I were not happy. Heaven has bestowed on me so many sources of

love,--wife, children, books, and the calling which, when one quits

one’s own threshold, carries love along with it into the world beyond;

a small world in itself,--only a parish,--but then my calling links it

with infinity.”

“I see; it is from the sources of love that you draw the supplies for

happiness.”

“Surely; without love one may be good, but one could scarcely be happy.

No one can dream of a heaven except as the abode of love. What writer is

it who says, ‘How well the human heart was understood by him who first

called God by the name of Father’?”

“I do not remember, but it is beautifully said. You evidently do not

subscribe to the arguments in Decimus Roach’s ‘Approach to the Angels.’”

“Ah, Mr. Chillingly! your words teach me how lacerated a man’s happiness

may be if he does not keep the claws of vanity closely pared. I actually

feel a keen pang when you speak to me of that eloquent panegyric on

celibacy, ignorant that the only thing I ever published which I fancied

was not without esteem by intellectual readers is a Reply to ‘The

Approach to the Angels,’--a youthful book, written in the first year

of my marriage. But it obtained success: I have just revised the tenth

edition of it.”

“That is the book I will select from your library. You will be pleased

to hear that Mr. Roach, whom I saw at Oxford a few days ago, recants his

opinions, and, at the age of fifty, is about to be married; he begs me

to add, ‘not for his own personal satisfaction.’”

“Going to be married!--Decimus Roach! I thought my Reply would convince

him at last.”

“I shall look to your Reply to remove some lingering doubts in my own

mind.”

“Doubts in favour of celibacy?”

“Well, if not for laymen, perhaps for a priesthood.”

“The most forcible part of my Reply is on that head: read it

attentively. I think that, of all sections of mankind, the clergy are

those to whom, not only for their own sakes, but for the sake of the

community, marriage should be most commended. Why, sir,” continued the

vicar, warming up into oratorical enthusiasm, “are you not aware that

there are no homes in England from which men who have served and adorned

their country have issued forth in such prodigal numbers as those of

the clergy of our Church? What other class can produce a list so crowded

with eminent names as we can boast in the sons we have reared and sent

forth into the world? How many statesmen, soldiers, sailors, lawyers,

physicians, authors, men of science, have been the sons of us village

pastors? Naturally: for with us they receive careful education; they

acquire of necessity the simple tastes and disciplined habits which lead

to industry and perseverance; and, for the most part, they carry with

them throughout life a purer moral code, a more systematic reverence for

things and thoughts religious, associated with their earliest images

of affection and respect, than can be expected from the sons of laymen

whose parents are wholly temporal and worldly. Sir, I maintain that this

is a cogent argument, to be considered well by the nation, not only in

favour of a married clergy,--for, on that score, a million of Roaches

could not convert public opinion in this country,--but in favour of the

Church, the Established Church, which has been so fertile a nursery

of illustrious laymen; and I have often thought that one main and

undetected cause of the lower tone of morality, public and private,

of the greater corruption of manners, of the more prevalent scorn

of religion which we see, for instance, in a country so civilized as

France, is, that its clergy can train no sons to carry into the contests

of earth the steadfast belief in accountability to Heaven.”

“I thank you with a full heart,” said Kenelm. “I shall ponder well over

all that you have so earnestly said. I am already disposed to give up

all lingering crotchets as to a bachelor clergy; but, as a layman,

I fear that I shall never attain to the purified philanthropy of Mr.

Decimus Roach, and, if ever I do marry, it will be very much for my

personal satisfaction.”

Mr. Emlyn laughed good-humouredly, and, as they had now reached the

bridge, shook hands with Kenelm, and walked homewards, along the

brook-side and through the burial-ground, with the alert step and the

uplifted head of a man who has joy in life and admits of no fear in

death.

CHAPTER XIV.

FOR the next two weeks or so Kenelm and Lily met not indeed so often

as the reader might suppose, but still frequently; five times at Mrs.

Braefield’s, once again at the vicarage, and twice when Kenelm had

called at Grasmere; and, being invited to stay to tea at one of those

visits, he stayed the whole evening. Kenelm was more and more fascinated

in proportion as he saw more and more of a creature so exquisitely

strange to his experience. She was to him not only a poem, but a poem in

the Sibylline Books; enigmatical, perplexing conjecture, and somehow or

other mysteriously blending its interest with visions of the future.

Lily was indeed an enchanting combination of opposites rarely blended

into harmony. Her ignorance of much that girls know before they number

half her years was so relieved by candid, innocent simplicity, so

adorned by pretty fancies and sweet beliefs, and so contrasted and lit

up by gleams of a knowledge that the young ladies we call well educated

seldom exhibit,--knowledge derived from quick observation of external

Nature, and impressionable susceptibility to its varying and subtle

beauties. This knowledge had been perhaps first instilled, and

subsequently nourished, by such poetry as she had not only learned by

heart, but taken up as inseparable from the healthful circulation of her

thoughts; not the poetry of our own day,--most young ladies know enough

of that,--but selected fragments from the verse of old, most of them

from poets now little read by the young of either sex, poets dear to

spirits like Coleridge or Charles Lamb,--none of them, however, so dear

to her as the solemn melodies of Milton. Much of such poetry she had

never read in books: it had been taught her in childhood by her guardian

the painter. And with all this imperfect, desultory culture, there was

such dainty refinement in her every look and gesture, and such deep

woman-tenderness of heart. Since Kenelm had commended “Numa Pompilius”

to her study, she had taken very lovingly to that old-fashioned romance,

and was fond of talking to him about Egeria as of a creature who had

really existed.

But what was the effect that he,--the first man of years correspondent

to her own with whom she had ever familiarly conversed,--what was the

effect that Kenelm Chillingly produced on the mind and the heart of

Lily?

This was, after all, the question that puzzled him the most,--not

without reason: it might have puzzled the shrewdest bystander. The

artless candour with which she manifested her liking to him was at

variance with the ordinary character of maiden love; it seemed more the

fondness of a child for a favourite brother. And it was this uncertainty

that, in his own thoughts, justified Kenelm for lingering on, and

believing that it was necessary to win, or at least to learn more of,

her secret heart before he could venture to disclose his own. He did not

flatter himself with the pleasing fear that he might be endangering

her happiness; it was only his own that was risked. Then, in all those

meetings, all those conversations to themselves, there had passed none

of the words which commit our destiny to the will of another. If in the

man’s eyes love would force its way, Lily’s frank, innocent gaze chilled

it back again to its inward cell. Joyously as she would spring

forward to meet him, there was no tell-tale blush on her cheek, no

self-betraying tremor in her clear, sweet-toned voice. No; there had not

yet been a moment when he could say to himself, “She loves me.” Often he

said to himself, “She knows not yet what love is.”

In the intervals of time not passed in Lily’s society, Kenelm would

take long rambles with Mr. Emlyn, or saunter into Mrs. Braefield’s

drawing-room. For the former he conceived a more cordial sentiment of

friendship than he entertained for any man of his own age,--a friendship

that admitted the noble elements of admiration and respect.

Charles Emlyn was one of those characters in which the colours appear

pale unless the light be brought very close to them, and then each

tint seems to change into a warmer and richer one. The manner which, at

first, you would call merely gentle, becomes unaffectedly genial;

the mind you at first might term inert, though well-informed, you now

acknowledge to be full of disciplined vigour. Emlyn was not, however,

without his little amiable foibles; and it was, perhaps, these that made

him lovable. He was a great believer in human goodness, and very easily

imposed upon by cunning appeals to “his well-known benevolence.” He

was disposed to overrate the excellence of all that he once took to his

heart. He thought he had the best wife in the world, the best children,

the best servants, the best beehive, the best pony, and the best

house-dog. His parish was the most virtuous, his church the most

picturesque, his vicarage the prettiest, certainly, in the whole

shire,--perhaps, in the whole kingdom. Probably it was this philosophy

of optimism which contributed to lift him into the serene realm of

aesthetic joy.

He was not without his dislikes as well as likings. Though a liberal

Churchman towards Protestant dissenters, he cherished the _odium

theologicum_ for all that savoured of Popery. Perhaps there was another

cause for this besides the purely theological one. Early in life a young

sister of his had been, to use his phrase, “secretly entrapped” into

conversion to the Roman Catholic faith, and had since entered a convent.

His affections had been deeply wounded by this loss to the range of

them. Mr. Emlyn had also his little infirmities of self-esteem rather

than of vanity. Though he had seen very little of any world beyond that

of his parish, he piqued himself on his knowledge of human nature and of

practical affairs in general. Certainly no man had read more about them,

especially in the books of the ancient classics. Perhaps it was owing

to this that he so little understood Lily,--a character to which the

ancient classics afforded no counterpart nor clue; and perhaps it was

this also that made Lily think him “so terribly grown up.” Thus, despite

his mild good-nature, she did not get on very well with him.

The society of this amiable scholar pleased Kenelm the more, because

the scholar evidently had not the remotest idea that Kenelm’s sojourn at

Cromwell Lodge was influenced by the vicinity to Grasmere. Mr. Emlyn was

sure that he knew human nature, and practical affairs in general, too

well to suppose that the heir to a rich baronet could dream of taking

for wife a girl without fortune or rank, the orphan ward of a low-born

artist only just struggling into reputation; or, indeed, that a

Cambridge prizeman, who had evidently read much on grave and dry

subjects, and who had no less evidently seen a great deal of polished

society, could find any other attraction in a very imperfectly-educated

girl, who tamed butterflies and knew no more than they did of

fashionable life, than Mr. Emlyn himself felt in the presence of a

pretty wayward innocent child, the companion and friend of his Clemmy.

Mrs. Braefield was more discerning; but she had a good deal of tact, and

did not as yet scare Kenelm away from her house by letting him see how

much she had discerned. She would not even tell her husband, who, absent

from the place on most mornings, was too absorbed in the cares of his

own business to interest himself much in the affairs of others.

Now Elsie, being still of a romantic turn of mind, had taken it into

her head that Lily Mordaunt, if not actually the princess to be found in

poetic dramas whose rank was for a while kept concealed, was yet one of

the higher-born daughters of the ancient race whose name she bore,

and in that respect no derogatory alliance for Kenelm Chillingly. A

conclusion she had arrived at from no better evidence than the well-bred

appearance and manners of the aunt, and the exquisite delicacy of the

niece’s form and features, with the undefinable air of distinction

which accompanied even her most careless and sportive moments. But Mrs.

Braefield also had the wit to discover that, under the infantine ways

and phantasies of this almost self-taught girl, there lay, as yet

undeveloped, the elements of a beautiful womanhood. So that altogether,

from the very day she first re-encountered Kenelm, Elsie’s thought had

been that Lily was the wife to suit him. Once conceiving that idea, her

natural strength of will made her resolve on giving all facilities to

carry it out silently and unobtrusively, and therefore skilfully.

“I am so glad to think,” she said one day, when Kenelm had joined her

walk through the pleasant shrubberies in her garden ground, “that you

have made such friends with Mr. Emlyn. Though all hereabouts like him so

much for his goodness, there are few who can appreciate his learning.

To you it must be a surprise as well as pleasure to find, in this quiet

humdrum place, a companion so clever and well-informed: it compensates

for your disappointment in discovering that our brook yields such bad

sport.”

“Don’t disparage the brook; it yields the pleasantest banks on which

to lie down under old pollard oaks at noon, or over which to saunter

at morn and eve. Where those charms are absent even a salmon could

not please. Yes; I rejoice to have made friends with Mr. Emlyn. I have

learned a great deal from him, and am often asking myself whether I

shall ever make peace with my conscience by putting what I have learned

into practice.”

“May I ask what special branch of learning is that?”

“I scarcely know how to define it. Suppose we call it ‘Worth-whileism.’

Among the New Ideas which I was recommended to study as those that must

govern my generation, the Not-worth-while Idea holds a very high rank;

and being myself naturally of calm and equable constitution, that new

idea made the basis of my philosophical system. But since I have become

intimate with Charles Emlyn I think there is a great deal to be said in

favour of Worth-whileism, old idea though it be. I see a man who, with

very commonplace materials for interest or amusement at his command,

continues to be always interested or generally amused; I ask myself why

and how? And it seems to me as if the cause started from fixed beliefs

which settle his relations with God and man, and that settlement he will

not allow any speculations to disturb. Be those beliefs questionable or

not by others, at least they are such as cannot displease a Deity, and

cannot fail to be kindly and useful to fellow-mortals. Then he plants

these beliefs on the soil of a happy and genial home, which tends to

confirm and strengthen and call them into daily practice; and when he

goes forth from home, even to the farthest verge of the circle that

surrounds it, he carries with him the home influences of kindliness

and use. Possibly my line of life may be drawn to the verge of a wider

circle than his; but so much the better for interest and amusement, if

it can be drawn from the same centre; namely, fixed beliefs daily warmed

into vital action in the sunshine of a congenial home.”

Mrs. Braefield listened to this speech with pleased attention, and as

it came to its close, the name of Lily trembled on her tongue, for she

divined that when he spoke of home Lily was in his thoughts; but she

checked the impulse, and replied by a generalized platitude.

“Certainly the first thing in life is to secure a happy and congenial

home. It must be a terrible trial for the best of us if we marry without

love.”

“Terrible, indeed, if the one loves and the other does not.”

“That can scarcely be your case, Mr. Chillingly, for I am sure you could

not marry where you did not love; and do not think I flatter you when I

say that a man far less gifted than you can scarcely fail to be loved by

the woman he wooes and wins.”

Kenelm, in this respect one of the modestest of human beings, shook his

head doubtingly, and was about to reply in self-disparagement, when,

lifting his eyes and looking round, he halted mute and still as if

rooted to the spot. They had entered the trellised circle through the

roses of which he had first caught sight of the young face that had

haunted him ever since.

“Ah!” he said abruptly; “I cannot stay longer here, dreaming away the

work-day hours in a fairy ring. I am going to town to-day by the next

train.”

“Yoa are coming back?”

“Of course,--this evening. I left no address at my lodgings in London.

There must be a large accumulation of letters; some, no doubt, from my

father and mother. I am only going for them. Good-by. How kindly you

have listened to me!”

“Shall we fix a day next week for seeing the remains of the old Roman

villa? I will ask Mrs. Cameron and her niece to be of the party.”

“Any day you please,” said Kenelm joyfully.

CHAPTER XV.

KENELM did indeed find a huge pile of letters and notes on reaching his

forsaken apartment in Mayfair; many of them merely invitations for days

long past, none of them of interest except two from Sir Peter, three

from his mother, and one from Tom Bowles.

Sir Peter’s were short. In the first he gently scolded Kenelm for going

away without communicating any address; and stated the acquaintance he

had formed with Gordon, the favourable impression that young gentleman

had made on him, the transfer of the L20,000 and the invitation given to

Gordon, the Traverses, and Lady Glenalvon. The second, dated much later,

noted the arrival of his invited guests, dwelt with warmth unusual to

Sir Peter on the attractions of Cecilia, and took occasion to refer,

not the less emphatically because as it were incidentally, to the sacred

promise which Kenelm had given him never to propose to a young lady

until the case had been submitted to the examination and received

the consent of Sir Peter. “Come to Exmundham, and if I do not give my

consent to propose to Cecilia Travers hold me a tyrant and rebel.”

Lady Chillingly’s letters were much longer. They dwelt more

complainingly on his persistence in eccentric habits; so exceedingly

unlike other people, quitting London at the very height of the season,

going without even a servant nobody knew where: she did not wish to

wound his feelings; but still those were not the ways natural to a young

gentleman of station. If he had no respect for himself, he ought to have

some consideration for his parents, especially his poor mother. She then

proceeded to comment on the elegant manners of Leopold Travers, and the

good sense and pleasant conversation of Chillingly Gordon, a young man

of whom any mother might be proud. From that subject she diverged to

mildly querulous references to family matters. Parson John had expressed

himself very rudely to Mr. Chillingly Gordon upon some book by a

foreigner,--Comte or Count, or some such name,--on which, so far as

she could pretend to judge, Mr. Gordon had uttered some very benevolent

sentiments about humanity, which, in the most insolent manner, Parson

John had denounced as an attack on religion. But really Parson John

was too High Church for her. Having thus disposed of Parson John, she

indulged some ladylike wailings on the singular costume of the three

Miss Chillinglys. They had been asked by Sir Peter, unknown to her--so

like him--to meet their guests; to meet Lady Glenalvon and Miss Travers,

whose dress was so perfect (here she described their dress); and they

came in pea-green with pelerines of mock blonde, and Miss Sally with

corkscrew ringlets and a wreath of jessamine, “which no girl after

eighteen would venture to wear.”

“But, my dear,” added her ladyship, “your poor father’s family are

certainly great oddities. I have more to put up with than any one knows.

I do my best to carry it off. I know my duties, and will do them.”

Family grievances thus duly recorded and lamented, Lady Chillingly

returned to her guests.

Evidently unconscious of her husband’s designs on Cecilia, she dismissed

her briefly: “A very handsome young lady, though rather too blonde for

her taste, and certainly with an air _distingue_.” Lastly, she enlarged

on the extreme pleasure she felt on meeting again the friend of her

youth, Lady Glenalvon.

“Not at all spoilt by the education of the great world, which, alas!

obedient to the duties of wife and mother, however little my sacrifices

are appreciated, I have long since relinquished. Lady Glenalvon suggests

turning that hideous old moat into a fernery,--a great improvement. Of

course your poor father makes objections.”

Tom’s letter was written on black-edged paper, and ran thus:--

DEAR SIR,--Since I had the honour to see you in London I have had a sad

loss: my poor uncle is no more. He died very suddenly after a hearty

supper. One doctor says it was apoplexy, another valvular disease of the

heart. He has left me his heir, after providing for his sister: no one

had an idea that he had saved so much money. I am quite a rich man now.

And I shall leave the veterinary business, which of late--since I

took to reading, as you kindly advised--is not much to my liking The

principal corn-merchant here has offered to take me into partnership;

and, from what I can see, it will be a very good thing and a great rise

in life. But, sir, I can’t settle to it at present; I can’t settle, as

I would wish to anything. I know you will not laugh at me when I say I

have a strange longing to travel for a while. I have been reading books

of travels, and they get into my head more than any other books. But I

don’t think I could leave the country with a contented heart till I have

had just another look at you know whom,--just to see her, and know she

is happy. I am sure I could shake hands with Will and kiss her little

one without a wrong thought. What do you say to that, dear sir? You

promised to write to me about her. But I have not heard from you. Susey,

the little girl with the flower-ball, has had a loss too: the poor old

man she lived with died within a few days of my dear uncle’s decease.

Mother moved here, as I think you know, when the forge at Graveleigh was

sold; and she is going to take Susey to live with her. She is quite fond

of Susey. Pray let me hear from you soon; and do, dear sir, give me your

advice about travelling--and about Her. You see I should like Her to

think of me more kindly when I am in distant parts.

I remain, dear sir,

Your grateful servant,

T. BOWLES.

P.S.--Miss Travers has sent me Will’s last remittance. There is

very little owed me now; so they must be thriving. I hope she is not

overworked.

On returning by the train that evening, Kenelm went to the house of Will

Somers. The shop was already closed, but he was admitted by a trusty

servant-maid to the parlour, where he found them all at supper, except

indeed the baby, who had long since retired to the cradle, and the

cradle had been removed upstairs. Will and Jessie were very proud when

Kenelm invited himself to share their repast, which, though simple,

was by no means a bad one. When the meal was over and the supper things

removed, Kenelm drew his chair near to the glass door which led into a

little garden very neatly kept--for it was Will’s pride to attend to it

before he sat down to his more professional work. The door was open,

and admitted the coolness of the starlit air and the fragrance of the

sleeping flowers.

“You have a pleasant home here, Mrs. Somers.”

“We have, indeed, and know how to bless him we owe it to.”

“I am rejoiced to think that. How often when God designs a

special kindness to us He puts the kindness into the heart of a

fellow-man,--perhaps the last fellow-man we should have thought of; but

in blessing him we thank God who inspired him. Now, my dear friends, I

know that you all three suspect me of being the agent whom God chose for

His benefits. You fancy that it was from me came the loan which enabled

you to leave Graveleigh and settle here. You are mistaken,--you look

incredulous.”

“It could not be the Squire,” exclaimed Jessie. “Miss Travers assured

me that it was neither he nor herself. Oh, it must be you, sir. I beg

pardon, but who else could it be?”

“Your husband shall guess. Suppose, Will, that you had behaved ill

to some one who was nevertheless dear to you, and on thinking over it

afterwards felt very sorry and much ashamed of yourself, and suppose

that later you had the opportunity and the power to render a service to

that person, do you think you would do it?”

“I should be a bad man if I did not.”

“Bravo! And supposing that when the person you thus served came to know

it was you who rendered the service, he did not feel thankful, he did

not think it handsome of you, thus to repair any little harm he might

have done you before, but became churlish and sore and cross-grained,

and with a wretched false pride said that because he had offended you

once he resented your taking the liberty of befriending him now, would

you not think that person an ungrateful fellow; ungrateful not only to

you his fellow-man,--that is of less moment,--but ungrateful to the

God who put it into your heart to be His human agent in the benefit

received?”

“Well, sir, yes, certainly,” said Will, with all the superior refinement

of his intellect to that of Jessie, unaware of what Kenelm was driving

at; while Jessie, pressing her hands tightly together, turned pale,

and with a frightened hurried glance towards Will’s face, answered,

impulsively,--

“Oh, Mr. Chillingly, I hope you are not thinking, not speaking, of Mr.

Bowles?”

“Whom else should I think or speak of?”

Will rose nervously from his chair, all his features writhing.

“Sir, sir, this is a bitter blow,--very bitter, very.”

Jessie rushed to Will, flung her arms round him and sobbed. Kenelm

turned quietly to old Mrs. Somers, who had suspended the work on which

since supper she had been employed, knitting socks for the baby,--

“My dear Mrs. Somers, what is the good of being a grandmother and

knitting socks for baby grandchildren, if you cannot assure those silly

children of yours that they are too happy in each other to harbour any

resentment against a man who would have parted them, and now repents?”

Somewhat to Kenelm’s admiration, I dare not say surprise, old Mrs.

Somers, thus appealed to, rose from her seat, and, with a dignity of

thought or of feeling no one could have anticipated from the quiet

peasant woman, approached the wedded pair, lifted Jessie’s face with one

hand, laid the other on Will’s head, and said, “If you don’t long to see

Mr. Bowles again and say ‘The Lord bless you, sir!’ you don’t deserve

the Lord’s blessing upon you.” Therewith she went back to her seat, and

resumed her knitting.

“Thank Heaven, we have paid back the best part of the loan,” said Will,

in very agitated tones, “and I think, with a little pinching, Jessie,

and with selling off some of the stock, we might pay the rest; and

then,”--and then he turned to Kenelm,--“and then, sir, we will” (here a

gulp) “thank Mr. Bowles.”

“This don’t satisfy me at all, Will,” answered Kenelm; “and since I

helped to bring you two together, I claim the right to say I would never

have done so could I have guessed you could have trusted your wife so

little as to allow a remembrance of Mr. Bowles to be a thought of pain.

You did not feel humiliated when you imagined that it was to me you owed

some moneys which you have been honestly paying off. Well, then, I will

lend you whatever trifle remains to discharge your whole debts to Mr.

Bowles, so that you may sooner be able to say to him, ‘Thank you.’

But between you and me, Will, I think you will be a finer fellow and a

manlier fellow if you decline to borrow that trifle of me; if you feel

you would rather say ‘Thank you’ to Mr. Bowles, without the silly

notion that when you have paid him his money you owe him nothing for his

kindness.”

Will looked away irresolutely. Kenelm went on: “I have received a letter

from Mr. Bowles to-day. He has come into a fortune, and thinks of going

abroad for a time; but before he goes, he says he should like to shake

hands with Will, and be assured by Jessie that all his old rudeness is

forgiven. He had no notion that I should blab about the loan: he wished

that to remain always a secret. But between friends there need be no

secrets. What say you, Will? As head of this household, shall Mr. Bowles

be welcomed here as a friend or not?”

“Kindly welcome,” said old Mrs. Somers, looking up from the socks.

“Sir,” said Will, with sudden energy, “look here; you have never been in

love, I dare say. If you had, you would not be so hard on me. Mr. Bowles

was in love with my wife there. Mr. Bowles is a very fine man, and I am

a cripple.”

“Oh, Will! Will!” cried Jessie.

“But I trust my wife with my whole heart and soul; and, now that

the first pang is over, Mr. Bowles shall be, as mother says, kindly

welcome,--heartily welcome.”

“Shake hands. Now you speak like a man, Will. I hope to bring Bowles

here to supper before many days are over.”

And that night Kenelm wrote to Mr. Bowles:

MY DEAR TOM,--Come and spend a few days with me at Cromwell Lodge,

Moleswich. Mr. and Mrs. Somers wish much to see and to thank you. I

could not remain forever degraded in order to gratify your whim. They

would have it that I bought their shop, etc., and I was forced in

self-defence to say who it was. More on this and on travels when you

come.

Your true friend,

K. C.

CHAPTER XVI.

MRS. CAMERON was seated alone in her pretty drawing-room, with a book

lying open, but unheeded, on her lap. She was looking away from its

pages, seemingly into the garden without, but rather into empty space.

To a very acute and practised observer, there was in her countenance an

expression which baffled the common eye.

To the common eye it was simply vacant; the expression of a quiet,

humdrum woman, who might have been thinking of some quiet humdrum

household detail,--found that too much for her, and was now not thinking

at all.

But to the true observer, there were in that face indications of

a troubled past, still haunted with ghosts never to be laid at

rest,--indications, too, of a character in herself that had undergone

some revolutionary change; it had not always been the character of a

woman quiet and humdrum. The delicate outlines of the lip and nostril

evinced sensibility, and the deep and downward curve of it bespoke

habitual sadness. The softness of the look into space did not tell of

a vacant mind, but rather of a mind subdued and over-burdened by the

weight of a secret sorrow. There was also about her whole presence, in

the very quiet which made her prevalent external characteristic, the

evidence of manners formed in a high-bred society,--the society in which

quiet is connected with dignity and grace. The poor understood this

better than her rich acquaintances at Moleswich, when they said, “Mrs.

Cameron was every inch a lady.” To judge by her features she must once

have been pretty, not a showy prettiness, but decidedly pretty. Now,

as the features were small, all prettiness had faded away in cold gray

colourings, and a sort of tamed and slumbering timidity of aspect. She

was not only not demonstrative, but must have imposed on herself as a

duty the suppression of demonstration. Who could look at the formation

of those lips, and not see that they belonged to the nervous, quick,

demonstrative temperament? And yet, observing her again more closely,

that suppression of the constitutional tendency to candid betrayal of

emotion would the more enlist our curiosity or interest; because, if

physiognomy and phrenology have any truth in them, there was little

strength in her character. In the womanly yieldingness of the

short curved upper lip, the pleading timidity of the regard, the

disproportionate but elegant slenderness of the head between the ear

and the neck, there were the tokens of one who cannot resist the will,

perhaps the whim, of another whom she either loves or trusts.

The book open on her lap is a serious book on the doctrine of grace,

written by a popular clergyman of what is termed “the Low Church.” She

seldom read any but serious books, except where such care as she gave

to Lily’s education compelled her to read “Outlines of History and

Geography,” or the elementary French books used in seminaries for

young ladies. Yet if any one had decoyed Mrs. Cameron into familiar

conversation, he would have discovered that she must early have received

the education given to young ladies of station. She could speak

and write French and Italian as a native. She had read, and still

remembered, such classic authors in either language as are conceded to

the use of pupils by the well-regulated taste of orthodox governesses.

She had a knowledge of botany, such as botany was taught twenty years

ago. I am not sure that, if her memory had been fairly aroused, she

might not have come out strong in divinity and political economy, as

expounded by the popular manuals of Mrs. Marcet. In short, you could see

in her a thoroughbred English lady, who had been taught in a generation

before Lily’s, and immeasurably superior in culture to the ordinary run

of English young ladies taught nowadays. So, in what after all are very

minor accomplishments,--now made major accomplishments,--such as music,

it was impossible that a connoisseur should hear her play on the piano

without remarking, “That woman has had the best masters of her time.”

She could only play pieces that belonged to her generation. She had

learned nothing since. In short, the whole intellectual culture had come

to a dead stop long years ago, perhaps before Lily was born.

Now, while she is gazing into space Mrs. Braefield is announced. Mrs.

Cameron does not start from revery. She never starts. But she makes a

weary movement of annoyance, resettles herself, and lays the serious

book on the sofa table. Elsie enters, young, radiant, dressed in all the

perfection of the fashion, that is, as ungracefully as in the eyes of an

artist any gentlewoman can be; but rich merchants who are proud of their

wives so insist, and their wives, in that respect, submissively obey

them.

The ladies interchange customary salutations, enter into the customary

preliminaries of talk, and after a pause Elsie begins in earnest.

“But sha’n’t I see Lily? Where is she?”

“I fear she has gone into the town. A poor little boy, who did our

errands, has met with an accident,--fallen from a cherry-tree.”

“Which he was robbing?”

“Probably.”

“And Lily has gone to lecture him?”

“I don’t know as to that; but he is much hurt, and Lily has gone to see

what is the matter with him.”

Mrs. Braefield, in her frank outspoken way,--“I don’t take much to girls

of Lily’s age in general, though I am passionately fond of children. You

know how I do take to Lily; perhaps because she is so like a child. But

she must be an anxious charge to you.”

Mrs. Cameron replied by an anxious “No; she is still a child, a very

good one; why should I be anxious?”

Mrs. Braefield, impulsively,--“Why, your child must now be eighteen.”

Mrs. Cameron,--“Eighteen--is it possible! How time flies! though in a

life so monotonous as mine, time does not seem to fly, it slips on

like the lapse of water. Let me think,--eighteen? No, she is but

seventeen,--seventeen last May.”

Mrs. Braefield,--“Seventeen! A very anxious age for a girl; an age in

which dolls cease and lovers begin.”

Mrs. Cameron, not so languidly, but still quietly,--“Lily never cared

much for dolls,--never much for lifeless pets; and as to lovers, she

does not dream of them.”

Mrs. Braefield, briskly,--“There is no age after six in which girls do

not dream of lovers. And here another question arises. When a girl so

lovely as Lily is eighteen next birthday, may not a lover dream of her?”

Mrs. Cameron, with that wintry cold tranquillity of manner, which

implies that in putting such questions an interrogator is taking a

liberty,--“As no lover has appeared, I cannot trouble myself about his

dreams.”

Said Elsie inly to herself, “This is the stupidest woman I ever met!”

and aloud to Mrs. Cameron,--“Do you not think that your neighbour, Mr.

Chillingly, is a very fine young man?”

“I suppose he would be generally considered so. He is very tall.”

“A handsome face?”

“Handsome, is it? I dare say.”

“What does Lily say?”

“About what?”

“About Mr. Chillingly. Does she not think him handsome?”

“I never asked her.”

“My dear Mrs. Cameron, would it not be a very pretty match for Lily? The

Chillinglys are among the oldest families in Burke’s ‘Landed Gentry,’

and I believe his father, Sir Peter, has a considerable property.”

For the first time in this conversation Mrs. Cameron betrayed emotion.

A sudden flush overspread her countenance, and then left it paler

than before. After a pause she recovered her accustomed composure, and

replied, rudely,--

“It would be no friend to Lily who could put such notions into her

head; and there is no reason to suppose that they have entered into Mr.

Chillingly’s.”

“Would you be sorry if they did? Surely you would like your niece to

marry well, and there are few chances of her doing so at Moleswich.”

“Pardon me, Mrs. Braefield, but the question of Lily’s marriage I have

never discussed, even with her guardian. Nor, considering the childlike

nature of her tastes and habits, rather than the years she has numbered,

can I think the time has yet come for discussing it at all.”

Elsie, thus rebuked, changed the subject to some newspaper topic which

interested the public mind at the moment and very soon rose to depart.

Mrs. Cameron detained the hand that her visitor held out, and said in

low tones, which, though embarrassed, were evidently earnest, “My dear

Mrs. Braefield, let me trust to your good sense and the affection with

which you have honoured my niece not to incur the risk of unsettling

her mind by a hint of the ambitious projects for her future on which you

have spoken to me. It is extremely improbable that a young man of

Mr. Chillingly’s expectations would entertain any serious thoughts of

marrying out of his own sphere of life, and--”

“Stop, Mrs. Cameron, I must interrupt you. Lily’s personal attractions

and grace of manner would adorn any station; and have I not rightly

understood you to say that though her guardian, Mr. Melville, is, as we

all know, a man who has risen above the rank of his parents, your niece,

Miss Mordaunt, is like yourself, by birth a gentlewoman?”

“Yes, by birth a gentlewoman,” said Mrs. Cameron, raising her head with

a sudden pride. But she added, with as sudden a change to a sort of

freezing humility, “What does that matter? A girl without fortune,

without connection, brought up in this little cottage, the ward of a

professional artist, who was the son of a city clerk, to whom she owes

even the home she has found, is not in the same sphere of life as Mr.

Chillingly, and his parents could not approve of such an alliance for

him. It would be most cruel to her, if you were to change the innocent

pleasure she may take in the conversation of a clever and well-informed

stranger into the troubled interest which, since you remind me of her

age, a girl even so childlike and beautiful as Lily might conceive in

one represented to her as the possible partner of her life. Don’t commit

that cruelty; don’t--don’t, I implore you!”

“Trust me,” cried the warm-hearted Elsie, with tears rushing to her

eyes. “What you say so sensibly, so nobly, never struck me before. I

do not know much of the world,--knew nothing of it till I married,--and

being very fond of Lily, and having a strong regard for Mr. Chillingly,

I fancied I could not serve both better than--than--but I see now; he

is very young, very peculiar; his parents might object, not to Lily

herself, but to the circumstances you name. And you would not wish

her to enter any family where she was not as cordially welcomed as she

deserves to be. I am glad to have had this talk with you. Happily, I

have done no mischief as yet. I will do none. I had come to propose

an excursion to the remains of the Roman Villa, some miles off, and to

invite you and Mr. Chillingly. I will no longer try to bring him and

Lily together.”

“Thank you. But you still misconstrue me. I do not think that Lily cares

half so much for Mr. Chillingly as she does for a new butterfly. I do

not fear their coming together, as you call it, in the light in which

she now regards him, and in which, from all I observe, he regards her.

My only fear is that a hint might lead her to regard him in another way,

and that way impossible.”

Elsie left the house extremely bewildered, and with a profound contempt

for Mrs. Cameron’s knowledge of what may happen to two young persons

“brought together.”

CHAPTER XVII.

NOW, on that very day, and about the same hour in which the conversation

just recorded between Elsie and Mrs. Cameron took place, Kenelm, in his

solitary noonday wanderings, entered the burial-ground in which Lily had

some short time before surprised him. And there he found her, standing

beside the flower border which she had placed round the grave of the

child whom she had tended and nursed in vain.

The day was cloudless and sunless; one of those days that so often

instil a sentiment of melancholy into the heart of an English summer.

“You come here too often, Miss Mordaunt,” said Kenelm, very softly, as

he approached.

Lily turned her face to him, without any start of surprise, with no

brightening change in its pensive expression,--an expression rare to the

mobile play of her features.

“Not too often. I promised to come as often as I could; and, as I told

you before, I have never broken a promise yet.”

Kenelm made no answer. Presently the girl turned from the spot, and

Kenelm followed her silently till she halted before the old tombstone

with its effaced inscription.

“See,” she said, with a faint smile, “I have put fresh flowers there.

Since the day we met in this churchyard, I have thought so much of that

tomb, so neglected, so forgotten, and--” she paused a moment, and went

on abruptly, “do you not often find that you are much too--what is

the word? ah! too egotistical, considering and pondering and dreaming

greatly too much about yourself?”

“Yes, you are right there; though, till you so accused me, my conscience

did not detect it.”

“And don’t you find that you escape from being so haunted by the thought

of yourself, when you think of the dead? they can never have any

share in your existence _here_. When you say, ‘I shall do this or that

to-day;’ when you dream, ‘I may be this or that to-morrow,’ you are

thinking and dreaming, all by yourself, for yourself. But you are out of

yourself, beyond yourself, when you think and dream of the dead, who can

have nothing to do with your to-day or your to-morrow.”

As we all know, Kenelm Chillingly made it one of the rules of his life

never to be taken by surprise. But when the speech I have written down

came from the lips of that tamer of butterflies, he was so startled that

all it occurred to him to say, after a long pause, was,--

“The dead are the past; and with the past rests all in the present or

the future that can take us out of our natural selves. The past decides

our present. By the past we divine our future. History, poetry, science,

the welfare of states, the advancement of individuals, are all connected

with tombstones of which inscriptions are effaced. You are right to

honour the mouldered tombstones with fresh flowers. It is only in the

companionship of the dead that one ceases to be an egotist.”

If the imperfectly educated Lily had been above the quick comprehension

of the academical Kenelm in her speech, so Kenelm was now above the

comprehension of Lily. She, too, paused before she replied,--

“If I knew you better, I think I could understand you better. I wish you

knew Lion. I should like to hear you talk with him.”

While thus conversing, they had left the burial-ground, and were in the

pathway trodden by the common wayfarer.

Lily resumed,--“Yes, I should like to hear you talk with Lion.”

“You mean your guardian, Mr. Melville?”

“Yes, you know that.”

“And why should you like to hear me talk to him?”

“Because there are some things in which I doubt if he was altogether

right, and I would ask you to express my doubts to him; you would, would

you not?”

“But why can you not express them yourself to your guardian; are you

afraid of him?”

“Afraid, no indeed! But--ah, how many people there are coming this way!

There is some tiresome public meeting in the town to-day. Let us take

the ferry: the other side of the stream is much pleasanter; we shall

have it more to ourselves.”

Turning aside to the right while she thus spoke, Lily descended a

gradual slope to the margin of the stream, on which they found an old

man dozily reclined in his ferry-boat.

As, seated side by side, they were slowly borne over the still waters

under a sunless sky, Kenelm would have renewed the subject which his

companion had begun, but she shook her head, with a significant glance

at the ferryman. Evidently what she had to say was too confidential to

admit of a listener, not that the old ferryman seemed likely to take

the trouble of listening to any talk that was not addressed to him.

Lily soon did address her talk to him, “So, Brown, the cow has quite

recovered.”

“Yes, Miss, thanks to you, and God bless you. To think of your beating

the old witch like that!”

“‘Tis not I who beat the witch, Brown; ‘tis the fairy. Fairies, you

know, are much more powerful than witches.”

“So I find, Miss.”

Lily here turned to Kenelm; “Mr. Brown has a very nice milch-cow that

was suddenly taken very ill, and both he and his wife were convinced

that the cow was bewitched.”

“Of course it were, that stands to reason. Did not Mother Wright tell my

old woman that she would repent of selling milk, and abuse her dreadful;

and was not the cow taken with shivers that very night?”

“Gently, Brown. Mother Wright did not say that your wife would repent of

selling milk, but of putting water into it.”

“And how did she know that, if she was not a witch? We have the best of

customers among the gentlefolks, and never any one that complained.”

“And,” answered Lily to Kenelm, unheeding this last observation, which

was made in a sullen manner, “Brown had a horrid notion of enticing

Mother Wright into his ferry-boat and throwing her into the water, in

order to break the spell upon the cow. But I consulted the fairies, and

gave him a fairy charm to tie round the cow’s neck. And the cow is quite

well now, you see. So, Brown, there was no necessity to throw Mother

Wright into the water, because she said you put some of it into the

milk. But,” she added, as the boat now touched the opposite bank, “shall

I tell you, Brown, what the fairies said to me this morning?”

“Do, Miss.”

“It was this: If Brown’s cow yields milk without any water in it, and

if water gets into it when the milk is sold, we, the fairies, will pinch

Mr. Brown black and blue; and when Brown has his next fit of rheumatics

he must not look to the fairies to charm it away.”

Herewith Lily dropped a silver groat into Brown’s hand, and sprang

lightly ashore, followed by Kenelm.

“You have quite converted him, not only as to the existence, but as to

the beneficial power of fairies,” said Kenelm.

“Ah,” answered Lily very gravely, “ah, but would it not be nice if there

were fairies still? good fairies, and one could get at them? tell them

all that troubles and puzzles us, and win from them charms against the

witchcraft we practise on ourselves?”

“I doubt if it would be good for us to rely on such supernatural

counsellors. Our own souls are so boundless that the more we explore

them the more we shall find worlds spreading upon worlds into

infinities; and among the worlds is Fairyland.” He added, inly to

himself, “Am I not in Fairyland now?”

“Hush!” whispered Lily. “Don’t speak more yet awhile. I am thinking over

what you have just said, and trying to understand it.”

Thus walking silently they gained the little summer-house which

tradition dedicated to the memory of Izaak Walton. Lily entered it and

seated herself; Kenelm took his place beside her. It was a small octagon

building which, judging by its architecture, might have been built

in the troubled reign of Charles I.; the walls plastered within were

thickly covered with names and dates, and inscriptions in praise of

angling, in tribute to Izaak, or with quotations from his books. On

the opposite side they could see the lawn of Grasmere, with its great

willows dipping into the water. The stillness of the place, with its

associations of the angler’s still life, were in harmony with the quiet

day, its breezeless air, and cloud-vested sky.

“You were to tell me your doubts in connection with your guardian,

doubts if he were right in something which you left unexplained, which

you could not yourself explain to him.”

Lily started as from thoughts alien to the subject thus reintroduced.

“Yes, I cannot mention my doubts to him because they relate to me, and

he is so good. I owe him so much that I could not bear to vex him by a

word that might seem like reproach or complaint. You remember,” here she

drew nearer to him; and with that ingenuous confiding look and movement

which had, not unfrequently, enraptured him at the moment, and saddened

him on reflection,--too ingenuous, too confiding, for the sentiment

with which he yearned to inspire her,--she turned towards him her frank

untimorous eyes, and laid her hand on his arm: “you remember that I said

in the burial-ground how much I felt that one is constantly thinking

too much of one’s self. That must be wrong. In talking to you only about

myself I know I am wrong, but I cannot help it: I must do so. Do not

think ill of me for it. You see I have not been brought up like other

girls. Was my guardian right in that? Perhaps if he had insisted upon

not letting me have my own wilful way, if he had made me read the books

which Mr. and Mrs. Emlyn wanted to force on me, instead of the poems and

fairy tales which he gave me, I should have had so much more to think of

that I should have thought less of myself. You said that the dead were

the past; one forgets one’s self when one thinks of the dead. If I had

read more of the past, had more subjects of interest in the dead whose

history it tells, surely I should be less shut up, as it were, in my

own small, selfish heart? It is only very lately I have thought of this,

only very lately that I have felt sorrow and shame in the thought that I

am so ignorant of what other girls know, even little Clemmy. And I dare

not say this to Lion when I see him next, lest he should blame himself,

when he only meant to be kind, and used to say, ‘I don’t want Fairy to

be learned, it is enough for me to think she is happy.’ And oh, I was so

happy, till--till of late!”

“Because till of late you only knew yourself as a child. But, now that

you feel the desire of knowledge, childhood is vanishing. Do not vex

yourself. With the mind which nature has bestowed on you, such learning

as may fit you to converse with those dreaded ‘grown-up folks’ will come

to you very easily and quickly. You will acquire more in a month now

than you would have acquired in a year when you were a child, and

task-work was loathed, not courted. Your aunt is evidently well

instructed, and if I might venture to talk to her about the choice of

books--”

“No, don’t do that. Lion would not like it.”

“Your guardian would not like you to have the education common to other

young ladies?”

“Lion forbade my aunt to teach me much that I rather wished to learn.

She wanted to do so, but she has given it up at his wish. She only now

teases me with those horrid French verbs, and that I know is a mere

make-belief. Of course on Sunday it is different; then I must not read

anything but the Bible and sermons. I don’t care so much for the sermons

as I ought, but I could read the Bible all day, every week-day as well

as Sunday; and it is from the Bible that I learn that I ought to think

less about myself.”

Kenelm involuntarily pressed the little hand that lay so innocently on

his arm.

“Do you know the difference between one kind of poetry and another?”

asked Lily, abruptly.

“I am not sure. I ought to know when one kind is good and another kind

is bad. But in that respect I find many people, especially professed

critics, who prefer the poetry which I call bad to the poetry I think

good.”

“The difference between one kind of poetry and another, supposing them

both to be good,” said Lily, positively, and with an air of triumph, “is

this,--I know, for Lion explained it to me,--in one kind of poetry the

writer throws himself entirely out of his existence, he puts himself

into other existences quite strange to his own. He may be a very good

man, and he writes his best poetry about very wicked men: he would not

hurt a fly, but he delights in describing murderers. But in the other

kind of poetry the writer does not put himself into other existences, he

expresses his own joys and sorrows, his own individual heart and mind.

If he could not hurt a fly, he certainly could not make himself at home

in the cruel heart of a murderer. There, Mr. Chillingly, that is the

difference between one kind of poetry and another.”

“Very true,” said Kenelm, amused by the girl’s critical definitions.

“The difference between dramatic poetry and lyrical. But may I ask what

that definition has to do with the subject into which you so suddenly

introduced it?”

“Much; for when Lion was explaining this to my aunt, he said, ‘A perfect

woman is a poem; but she can never be a poem of the one kind, never can

make herself at home in the hearts with which she has no connection,

never feel any sympathy with crime and evil; she must be a poem of the

other kind, weaving out poetry from her own thoughts and fancies.’ And,

turning to me, he said, smiling, ‘That is the poem I wish Lily to be.

Too many dry books would only spoil the poem.’ And you now see why I am

so ignorant, and so unlike other girls, and why Mr. and Mrs. Emlyn look

down upon me.”

“You wrong at least Mr. Emlyn, for it was he who first said to me, ‘Lily

Mordaunt is a poem.’”

“Did he? I shall love him for that. How pleased Lion will be!”

“Mr. Melville seems to have an extraordinary influence over your mind,”

said Kenelm, with a jealous pang.

“Of course. I have neither father nor mother: Lion has been both to

me. Aunty has often said, ‘You cannot be too grateful to your guardian;

without him I should have no home to shelter you, no bread to give you.’

He never said that: he would be very angry with aunty if he knew she had

said it. When he does not call me Fairy he calls me Princess. I would

not displease him for the world.”

“He is very much older than you; old enough to be your father, I hear.”

“I dare say. But if he were twice as old I could not love him better.”

Kenelm smiled: the jealousy was gone. Certainly not thus could any girl,

even Lily, speak of one with whom, however she might love him, she was

likely to fall in love.

Lily now rose up, rather slowly and wearily. “It is time to go home:

aunty will be wondering what keeps me away,--come.”

They took their way towards the bridge opposite to Cromwell Lodge.

It was not for some minutes that either broke silence. Lily was the

first to do so, and with one of those abrupt changes of topic which were

common to the restless play of her secret thoughts.

“You have father and mother still living, Mr. Chillingly?”

“Thank Heaven, yes.”

“Which do you love the best?”

“That is scarcely a fair question. I love my mother very much; but my

father and I understand each other better than--”

“I see: it is so difficult to be understood. No one understands me.”

“I think I do.”

Lily shook her head with an energetic movement of dissent.

“At least as well as a man can understand a young lady.”

“What sort of young lady is Miss Cecilia Travers?”

“Cecilia Travers! When and how did you ever hear that such a person

existed?”

“That big London man whom they call Sir Thomas mentioned her name the

day we dined at Braefieldville.”

“I remember,--as having been at the Court ball.”

“He said she was very handsome.”

“So she is.”

“Is she a poem too?”

“No; that never struck me.”