"I AM glad to see you once more in the world," said Lady Glenalvon;
"and I trust that you are now prepared to take that part in it which
ought to be no mean one if you do justice to your talents and your
nature."
KENELM.--"When you go to the theatre, and see one of the pieces which
appear now to be the fashion, which would you rather be,--an actor or
a looker-on?"
LADY GLENALVON.--"My dear young friend, your question saddens me."
(After a pause.)--"But though I used a stage metaphor when I expressed
my hope that you would take no mean part in the world, the world is
not really a theatre. Life admits of no lookers-on. Speak to me
frankly, as you used to do. Your face retains its old melancholy
expression. Are you not happy?"
KENELM.--"Happy, as mortals go, I ought to be. I do not think I am
unhappy. If my temper be melancholic, melancholy has a happiness of
its own. Milton shows that there are as many charms in life to be
found on the /Penseroso/ side of it as there are on the /Allegro/."
LADY GLENALVON.--"Kenelm, you saved the life of my poor son, and when,
later, he was taken from me, I felt as if he had commended you to my
care. When at the age of sixteen, with a boy's years and a man's
heart, you came to London, did I not try to be to you almost as a
mother? and did you not often tell me that you could confide to me the
secrets of your heart more readily than to any other?"
"You were to me," said Kenelm, with emotion, "that most precious and
sustaining good genius which a youth can find at the threshold of
life,--a woman gently wise, kindly sympathizing, shaming him by the
spectacle of her own purity from all grosser errors, elevating him
from mean tastes and objects by the exquisite, ineffable loftiness of
soul which is only found in the noblest order of womanhood. Come, I
will open my heart to you still. I fear it is more wayward than ever.
It still feels estranged from the companionship and pursuits natural
to my age and station. However, I have been seeking to brace and
harden my nature, for the practical ends of life, by travel and
adventure, chiefly among rougher varieties of mankind than we meet in
drawing-rooms. Now, in compliance with the duty I owe to my dear
father's wishes, I come back to these circles, which under your
auspices I entered in boyhood, and which even then seemed to me so
inane and artificial. Take a part in the world of these circles; such
is your wish. My answer is brief. I have been doing my best to
acquire a motive power, and have not succeeded. I see nothing that I
care to strive for, nothing that I care to gain. The very times in
which we live are to me, as to Hamlet, out of joint; and I am not born
like Hamlet to set them right. Ah! if I could look on society through
the spectacles with which the poor hidalgo in 'Gil Blas' looked on his
meagre board,--spectacles by which cherries appear the size of
peaches, and tomtits as large as turkeys! The imagination which is
necessary to ambition is a great magnifier."
"I have known more than one man, now very eminent, very active, who at
your age felt the same estrangement from the practical pursuits of
others."
"And what reconciled those men to such pursuits?"
"That diminished sense of individual personality, that unconscious
fusion of one's own being into other existences, which belong to home
and marriage."
"I don't object to home, but I do to marriage."
"Depend on it there is no home for man where there is no woman."
"Prettily said. In that case I resign the home."
"Do you mean seriously to tell me that you never see the woman you
could love enough to make her your wife, and never enter any home that
you do not quit with a touch of envy at the happiness of married
life?"
"Seriously, I never see such a woman; seriously, I never enter such a
home."
"Patience, then; your time will come, and I hope it is at hand.
Listen to me. It was only yesterday that I felt an indescribable
longing to see you again,--to know your address that I might write to
you; for yesterday, when a certain young lady left my house after a
week's visit, I said this girl would make a perfect wife, and, above
all, the exact wife to suit Kenelm Chillingly."
"Kenelm Chillingly is very glad to hear that this young lady has left
your house."
"But she has not left London: she is here to-night. She only stayed
with me till her father came to town, and the house he had taken for
the season was vacant; those events happened yesterday."
"Fortunate events for me: they permit me to call on you without
danger."
"Have you no curiosity to know, at least, who and what is the young
lady who appears to me so well suited to you?"
"No curiosity, but a vague sensation of alarm."
"Well, I cannot talk pleasantly with you while you are in this
irritating mood, and it is time to quit the hermitage. Come, there
are many persons here, with some of whom you should renew old
acquaintance, and to some of whom I should like to make you known."
"I am prepared to follow Lady Glenalvon wherever she deigns to lead
me,--except to the altar with another."