THOUGH Kenelm did not think it necessary at present to report to his
parents or his London acquaintances his recent movements and his
present resting-place, it never entered into his head to lurk /perdu/
in the immediate vicinity of Lily's house, and seek opportunities of
meeting her clandestinely. He walked to Mrs. Braefield's the next
morning, found her at home, and said in rather a more off-hand manner
than was habitual to him, "I have hired a lodging in your
neighbourhood, on the banks of the brook, for the sake of its
trout-fishing. So you will allow me to call on you sometimes, and one
of these days I hope you will give me the dinner I so unceremoniously
rejected some days ago. I was then summoned away suddenly, much
against my will."
"Yes; my husband said that you shot off from him with a wild
exclamation about duty."
"Quite true; my reason, and I may say my conscience, were greatly
perplexed upon a matter extremely important and altogether new to me.
I went to Oxford,--the place above all others in which questions of
reason and conscience are most deeply considered, and perhaps least
satisfactorily solved. Relieved in my mind by my visit to a
distinguished ornament of that university, I felt I might indulge in a
summer holiday, and here I am."
"Ah! I understand. You had religious doubts,--thought perhaps of
turning Roman Catholic. I hope you are not going to do so?"
"My doubts were not necessarily of a religious nature. Pagans have
entertained them."
"Whatever they were I am pleased to see they did not prevent your
return," said Mrs. Braefield, graciously. "But where have you found a
lodging; why not have come to us? My husband would have been scarcely
less glad than myself to receive you."
"You say that so sincerely, and so cordially, that to answer by a
brief 'I thank you' seems rigid and heartless. But there are times in
life when one yearns to be alone,--to commune with one's own heart,
and, if possible, be still; I am in one of those moody times. Bear
with me."
Mrs. Braefield looked at him with affectionate, kindly interest. She
had gone before him through the solitary road of young romance. She
remembered her dreamy, dangerous girlhood, when she, too, had yearned
to be alone.
"Bear with you; yes, indeed. I wish, Mr. Chillingly, that I were your
sister, and that you would confide in me. Something troubles you."
"Troubles me,--no. My thoughts are happy ones, and they may sometimes
perplex me, but they do not trouble."
Kenelm said this very softly; and in the warmer light of his musing
eyes, the sweeter play of his tranquil smile, there was an expression
which did not belie his words.
"You have not told me where you have found a lodging," said Mrs.
Braefield, somewhat abruptly.
"Did I not?" replied Kenelm, with an unconscious start, as from an
abstracted reverie. "With no undistinguished host, I presume, for
when I asked him this morning for the right address of this cottage,
in order to direct such luggage as I have to be sent there, he gave me
his card with a grand air, saying, 'I am pretty well known at
Moleswich, by and beyond it.' I have not yet looked at his card. Oh,
here it is,--'Algernon Sidney Gale Jones, Cromwell Lodge;' you laugh.
What do you know of him?"
"I wish my husband were here; he would tell you more about him. Mr.
Jones is quite a character."
"So I perceive."
"A great radical,--very talkative and troublesome at the vestry; but
our vicar, Mr. Emlyn, says there is no real harm in him, that his bark
is worse than his bite, and that his republican or radical notions
must be laid to the door of his godfathers! In addition to his name
of Jones, he was unhappily christened Gale; Gale Jones being a noted
radical orator at the time of his birth. And I suppose Algernon
Sidney was prefixed to Gale in order to devote the new-born more
emphatically to republican principles."
"Naturally, therefore, Algernon Sidney Gale Jones baptizes his house
Cromwell Lodge, seeing that Algernon Sidney held the Protectorate in
especial abhorrence, and that the original Gale Jones, if an honest
radical, must have done the same, considering what rough usage the
advocates of Parliamentary Reform met with at the hands of his
Highness. But we must be indulgent to men who have been unfortunately
christened before they had any choice of the names that were to rule
their fate. I myself should have been less whimsical had I not been
named after a Kenelm who believed in sympathetic powders. Apart from
his political doctrines, I like my landlord: he keeps his wife in
excellent order. She seems frightened at the sound of her own
footsteps, and glides to and fro, a pallid image of submissive
womanhood in list slippers."
"Great recommendations certainly, and Cromwell Lodge is very prettily
situated. By the by, it is very near Mrs. Cameron's."
"Now I think of it, so it is," said Kenelm, innocently. Ah! my friend
Kenelm, enemy of shams, and truth-teller, /par excellence/, what hast
thou come to? How are the mighty fallen! "Since you say you will
dine with us, suppose we fix the day after to-morrow, and I will ask
Mrs. Cameron and Lily."
"The day after to-morrow: I shall be delighted."
"An early hour?"
"The earlier the better."
"Is six o'clock too early?"
"Too early! certainly not; on the contrary. Good-day: I must now go
to Mrs. Somers; she has charge of my portmanteau."
Then Kenelm rose.
"Poor dear Lily!" said Mrs. Braefield; "I wish she were less of a
child."
Kenelm reseated himself.
"Is she a child? I don't think she is actually a child."
"Not in years; she is between seventeen and eighteen: but my husband
says that she is too childish to talk to, and always tells me to take
her off his hands; he would rather talk with Mrs. Cameron."
"Indeed!"
"Still I find something in her."
"Indeed!"
"Not exactly childish, nor quite womanish."
"What then?"
"I can't exactly define. But you know what Mr. Melville and Mrs.
Cameron call her as a pet name?"
"No."
"Fairy! Fairies have no age; fairy is neither child nor woman."
"Fairy. She is called fairy by those who know her best? Fairy!"
"And she believes in fairies."
"Does she?--so do I. Pardon me, I must be off. The day after
to-morrow,--six o'clock."
"Wait one moment," said Elsie, going to her writing-table. "Since you
pass Grasmere on your way home, will you kindly leave this note?"
"I thought Grasmere was a lake in the north?"
"Yes; but Mr. Melville chose to call the cottage by the name of the
lake. I think the first picture he ever sold was a view of
Wordsworth's house there. Here is my note to ask Mrs. Cameron to meet
you; but if you object to be my messenger--"
"Object! my dear Mrs. Braefield. As you say, I pass close by the
cottage."