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.