WANDERING back towards Moleswich, Kenelm found himself a little before
sunset on the banks of the garrulous brook, almost opposite to the
house inhabited by Lily Mordaunt. He stood long and silently by the
grassy margin, his dark shadow falling over the stream, broken into
fragments by the eddy and strife of waves, fresh from their leap down
the neighbouring waterfall. His eyes rested on the house and the
garden lawn in the front. The upper windows were open. "I wonder
which is hers," he said to himself. At last he caught a glimpse of
the gardener, bending over a flower border with his watering-pot, and
then moving slowly through the little shrubbery, no doubt to his own
cottage. Now the lawn was solitary, save that a couple of thrushes
dropped suddenly on the sward.
"Good evening, sir," said a voice. "A capital spot for trout this."
Kenelm turned his head, and beheld on the footpath, just behind him, a
respectable elderly man, apparently of the class of a small retail
tradesman, with a fishing-rod in his hand and a basket belted to his
side.
"For trout," replied Kenelm; "I dare say. A strangely attractive spot
indeed."
"Are you an angler, sir, if I may make bold to inquire?" asked the
elderly man, somewhat perhaps puzzled as to the rank of the stranger;
noticing, on the one hand, his dress and his mien, on the other, slung
to his shoulders, the worn and shabby knapsack which Kenelm had
carried, at home and abroad, the preceding year.
"Ay, I am an angler."
"Then this is the best place in the whole stream. Look, sir, there is
Izaak Walton's summer-house; and further down you see that white,
neat-looking house. Well, that is my house, sir, and I have an
apartment which I let to gentleman anglers. It is generally occupied
throughout the summer months. I expect every day to have a letter to
engage it, but it is vacant now. A very nice apartment,
sir,--sitting-room and bedroom."
"/Descende ceolo, et dic age tibia/," said Kenelm.
"Sir?" said the elderly man.
"I beg you ten thousand pardons. I have had the misfortune to have
been at the university, and to have learned a little Latin, which
sometimes comes back very inopportunely. But, speaking in plain
English, what I meant to say is this: I invoked the Muse to descend
from heaven and bring with her--the original says a fife, but I
meant--a fishing-rod. I should think your apartment would suit me
exactly; pray show it to me."
"With the greatest pleasure," said the elderly man. "The Muse need
not bring a fishing-rod! we have all sorts of tackle at your service,
and a boat too, if you care for that. The stream hereabouts is so
shallow and narrow that a boat is of little use till you get farther
down."
"I don't want to get farther down; but should I want to get to the
opposite bank, without wading across, would the boat take me or is
there a bridge?"
"The boat can take you. It is a flat-bottomed punt, and there is a
bridge too for foot-passengers, just opposite my house; and between
this and Moleswich, where the stream widens, there is a ferry. The
stone bridge for traffic is at the farther end of the town."
"Good. Let us go at once to your house."
The two men walked on.
"By the by," said Kenelm, as they walked, "do you know much of the
family that inhabit the pretty cottage on the opposite side, which we
have just left behind?"
"Mrs. Cameron's. Yes, of course, a very good lady; and Mr. Melville,
the painter. I am sure I ought to know, for he has often lodged with
me when he came to visit Mrs. Cameron. He recommends my apartment to
his friends, and they are my best lodgers. I like painters, sir,
though I don't know much about paintings. They are pleasant
gentlemen, and easily contented with my humble roof and fare."
"You are quite right. I don't know much about paintings myself; but I
am inclined to believe that painters, judging not from what I have
seen of them, for I have not a single acquaintance among them
personally, but from what I have read of their lives, are, as a
general rule, not only pleasant but noble gentlemen. They form within
themselves desires to beautify or exalt commonplace things, and they
can only accomplish their desires by a constant study of what is
beautiful and what is exalted. A man constantly so engaged ought to
be a very noble gentleman, even though he may be the son of a
shoeblack. And living in a higher world than we do, I can conceive
that he is, as you say, very well contented with humble roof and fare
in the world we inhabit."
"Exactly, sir; I see--I see now, though you put it in a way that never
struck me before."
"And yet," said Kenelm, looking benignly at the speaker, "you seem to
me a well-educated and intelligent man; reflective on things in
general, without being unmindful of your interests in particular,
especially when you have lodgings to let. Do not be offended. That
sort of man is not perhaps born to be a painter, but I respect him
highly. The world, sir, requires the vast majority of its inhabitants
to live in it,--to live by it. 'Each for himself, and God for us
all.' The greatest happiness of the greatest number is best secured
by a prudent consideration for Number One."
Somewhat to Kenelm's surprise (allowing that he had now learned enough
of life to be occasionally surprised) the elderly man here made a dead
halt, stretched out his hand cordially, and cried, "Hear, hear! I see
that, like me, you are a decided democrat."
"Democrat! Pray, may I ask, not why you are one,--that would be a
liberty, and democrats resent any liberty taken with themselves; but
why you suppose I am?"
"You spoke of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. That is
a democratic sentiment surely! Besides, did not you say, sir, that
painters,--painters, sir, painters, even if they were the sons of
shoeblacks, were the true gentlemen,--the true noblemen?"
"I did not say that exactly, to the disparagement of other gentlemen
and nobles. But if I did, what then?"
"Sir, I agree with you. I despise rank; I despise dukes and earls and
aristocrats. 'An honest man's the noblest work of God.' Some poet
says that. I think Shakspeare. Wonderful man, Shakspeare. A
tradesman's son,--butcher, I believe. Eh! My uncle was a butcher,
and might have been an alderman. I go along with you heartily,
heartily. I am a democrat, every inch of me. Shake hands, sir, shake
hands; we are all equals. 'Each man for himself, and God for us
all.'"
"I have no objection to shake hands," said Kenelm; "but don't let me
owe your condescension to false pretences. Though we are all equal
before the law, except the rich man, who has little chance of justice
as against a poor man when submitted to an English jury, yet I utterly
deny that any two men you select can be equals. One must beat the
other in something; and, when one man beats another, democracy ceases
and aristocracy begins."
"Aristocracy! I don't see that. What do you mean by aristocracy?"
"The ascendency of the better man. In a rude State the better man is
the stronger; in a corrupt State, perhaps the more roguish; in modern
republics the jobbers get the money and the lawyers get the power. In
well-ordered States alone aristocracy appears at its genuine worth:
the better man in birth, because respect for ancestry secures a higher
standard of honour; the better man in wealth, because of the immense
uses to enterprise, energy, and the fine arts, which rich men must be
if they follow their natural inclinations; the better man in
character, the better man in ability, for reasons too obvious to
define; and these two last will beat the others in the government of
the State, if the State be flourishing and free. All these four
classes of better men constitute true aristocracy; and when a better
government than a true aristocracy shall be devised by the wit of man,
we shall not be far off from the Millennium and the reign of saints.
But here we are at the house,--yours, is it not? I like the look of
it extremely."
The elderly man now entered the little porch, over which clambered
honeysuckle and ivy intertwined, and ushered Kenelm into a pleasant
parlour, with a bay window, and an equally pleasant bedroom behind it.
"Will it do, sir?"
"Perfectly. I take it from this moment. My knapsack contains all I
shall need for the night. There is a portmanteau of mine at Mr.
Somers's shop, which can be sent here in the morning."
"But we have not settled about the terms," said the elderly man,
beginning to feel rather doubtful whether he ought thus to have
installed in his home a stalwart pedestrian of whom he knew nothing,
and who, though talking glibly enough on other things, had preserved
an ominous silence on the subject of payment.
"Terms? true, name them."
"Including board?"
"Certainly. Chameleons live on air; democrats on wind bags. I have a
more vulgar appetite, and require mutton."
"Meat is very dear now-a-days," said the elderly man, "and I am
afraid, for board and lodging I cannot charge you less than L3
3s.,--say L3 a week. My lodgers usually pay a week in advance."
"Agreed," said Kenelm, extracting three sovereigns from his purse. "I
have dined already: I want nothing more this evening; let me detain
you no further. Be kind enough to shut the door after you."
When he was alone, Kenelm seated himself in the recess of the bay
window, against the casement, and looked forth intently. Yes; he was
right: he could see from thence the home of Lily. Not, indeed, more
than a white gleam of the house through the interstices of trees and
shrubs, but the gentle lawn sloping to the brook, with the great
willow at the end dipping its boughs into the water, and shutting out
all view beyond itself by its bower of tender leaves. The young man
bent his face on his hands and mused dreamily: the evening deepened;
the stars came forth; the rays of the moon now peered aslant through
the arching dips of the willow, silvering their way as they stole to
the waves below.
"Shall I bring lights, sir? or do you prefer a lamp or candles?" asked
a voice behind,--the voice of the elderly man's wife. "Do you like
the shutters closed?"
The question startled the dreamer. They seemed mocking his own old
mockings on the romance of love. Lamp or candles, practical lights
for prosaic eyes, and shutters closed against moon and stars!
"Thank you, ma'am, not yet," he said; and rising quietly he placed his
hand on the window-sill, swung himself through the open casement, and
passed slowly along the margin of the rivulet, by a path checkered
alternately with shade and starlight; the moon yet more slowly rising
above the willows, and lengthening its track along the wavelets.