A WINTER'S evening at Moleswich. Very different from a winter sunset
at Naples. It is intensely cold. There has been a slight fall of
snow, accompanied with severe, bright, clean frost, a thin sprinkling
of white on the pavements. Kenelm Chillingly entered the town on
foot, no longer a knapsack on his back. Passing through the main
street, he paused a moment at the door of Will Somers. The shop was
closed. No, he would not stay there to ask in a roundabout way for
news. He would go in straightforwardly and manfully to Grasmere. He
would take the inmates there by surprise. The sooner he could bring
Tom's experience home to himself, the better. He had schooled his
heart to rely on that experience, and it brought him back the old
elasticity of his stride. In his lofty carriage and buoyant face were
again visible the old haughtiness of the indifferentism that keeps
itself aloof from the turbulent emotions and conventional frivolities
of those whom its philosophy pities and scorns.
"Ha! ha!" laughed he who like Swift never laughed aloud, and often
laughed inaudibly. "Ha! ha! I shall exorcise the ghost of my grief.
I shall never be haunted again. If that stormy creature whom love
might have maddened into crime, if he were cured of love at once by a
single visit to the home of her whose face was changed to him,--for
the smiles and the tears of it had become the property of another
man,--how much more should I be left without a scar! I, the heir of
the Chillinglys! I, the kinsman of a Mivers! I, the pupil of a
Welby! I--I, Kenelm Chillingly, to be thus--thus--" Here, in the
midst of his boastful soliloquy, the well-remembered brook rushed
suddenly upon eye and ear, gleaming and moaning under the wintry moon.
Kenelm Chillingly stopped, covered his face with his hands, and burst
into a passion of tears.
Recovering himself slowly, he went on along the path, every step of
which was haunted by the form of Lily. He reached the garden gate of
Grasmere, lifted the latch, and entered. As he did so, a man,
touching his hat, rushed beside, and advanced before him,--the village
postman. Kenelm drew back, allowing the man to pass to the door, and
as he thus drew back, he caught a side view of lighted windows looking
on the lawn,--the windows of the pleasant drawing-room in which he had
first heard Lily speak of her guardian.
The postman left his letters, and regained the garden gate, while
Kenelm still stood wistfully gazing on those lighted windows. He had,
meanwhile, advanced along the whitened sward to the light, saying to
himself, "Let me just see her and her happiness, and then I will knock
boldly at the door, and say, 'Good-evening, Mrs. Melville.'"
So Kenelm stole across the lawn, and, stationing himself at the angle
of the wall, looked into the window.
Melville, in dressing-robe and slippers, was seated alone by the
fireside. His dog was lazily stretched on the hearth rug. One by one
the features of the room, as the scene of his vanished happiness, grew
out from its stillness; the delicately tinted walls, the dwarf
bookcase, with its feminine ornaments on the upper shelf; the piano
standing in the same place. Lily's own small low chair; that was not
in its old place, but thrust into a remote angle, as if it had passed
into disuse. Melville was reading a letter, no doubt one of those
which the postman had left. Surely the contents were pleasant, for
his fair face, always frankly expressive of emotion, brightened
wonderfully as he read on. Then he rose with a quick, brisk movement,
and pulled the bell hastily.
A neat maid-servant entered,--a strange face to Kenelm. Melville gave
her some brief message. "He has had joyous news," thought Kenelm.
"He has sent for his wife that she may share his joy." Presently the
door opened, and entered not Lily, but Mrs. Cameron.
She looked changed. Her natural quietude of mien and movement the
same, indeed, but with more languor in it. Her hair had become gray.
Melville was standing by the table as she approached him. He put the
letter into her hands with a gay, proud smile, and looked over her
shoulder while she read it, pointing with his finger as to some lines
that should more emphatically claim her attention.
When she had finished her face reflected his smile. They exchanged a
hearty shake of the hand, as if in congratulation.
"Ah," thought Kenelm, "the letter is from Lily. She is abroad.
Perhaps the birth of a first-born."
Just then Blanche, who had not been visible before, emerged from under
the table, and as Melville reseated himself by the fireside, sprang
into his lap, rubbing herself against his breast. The expression of
his face changed; he uttered some low exclamation. Mrs. Cameron took
the creature from his lap, stroking it quietly, carried it across the
room, and put it outside the door. Then she seated herself beside the
artist, placing her hand in his, and they conversed in low tones, till
Melville's face again grew bright, and again he took up the letter.
A few minutes later the maid-servant entered with the tea-things, and
after arranging them on the table approached the window. Kenelm
retreated into the shade, the servant closed the shutters and drew the
curtains; that scene of quiet home comfort vanished from the eyes of
the looker-on.
Kenelm felt strangely perplexed. What had become of Lily? was she
indeed absent from her home? Had he conjectured rightly that the
letter which had evidently so gladdened Melville was from her, or was
it possible--here a thought of joy seized his heart and held him
breathless--was it possible that, after all, she had not married her
guardian; had found a home elsewhere,--was free? He moved on farther
down the lawn, towards the water, that he might better bring before
his sight that part of the irregular building in which Lily formerly
had her sleeping-chamber, and her "own-own room."
All was dark there; the shutters inexorably closed. The place with
which the childlike girl had associated her most childlike fancies,
taming and tending the honey-drinkers destined to pass into fairies,
that fragile tenement was not closed against the winds and snows; its
doors were drearily open; gaps in the delicate wire-work; of its
dainty draperies a few tattered shreds hanging here and there; and on
the depopulated floor the moonbeams resting cold and ghostly. No
spray from the tiny fountain; its basin chipped and mouldering; the
scanty waters therein frozen. Of all the pretty wild ones that Lily
fancied she could tame, not one. Ah! yes, there was one, probably not
of the old familiar number; a stranger that might have crept in for
shelter from the first blasts of winter, and now clung to an angle in
the farther wall, its wings folded,--asleep, not dead. But Kenelm saw
it not; he noticed only the general desolation of the spot.
"Natural enough," thought he. "She has outgrown all such pretty
silliness. A wife cannot remain a child. Still, if she had belonged
to me--" The thought choked even his inward, unspoken utterance. He
turned away, paused a moment under the leafless boughs of the great
willow still dipping into the brook, and then with impatient steps
strode back towards the garden gate.
"No,--no,--no. I cannot now enter that house and ask for Mrs.
Melville. Trial enough for one night to stand on the old ground. I
will return to the town. I will call at Jessie's, and there I can
learn if she indeed be happy."
So he went on by the path along the brook-side, the night momently
colder and colder, and momently clearer and clearer, while the moon
noiselessly glided into loftier heights. Wrapped in his abstracted
thoughts, when he came to the spot in which the path split in twain,
he did not take that which led more directly to the town. His steps,
naturally enough following the train of his thoughts, led him along
the path with which the object of his thoughts was associated. He
found himself on the burial-ground, and in front of the old ruined
tomb with the effaced inscription.
"Ah! child! child!" he murmured almost audibly, "what depths of woman
tenderness lay concealed in thee! In what loving sympathy with the
past--sympathy only vouchsafed to the tenderest women and the highest
poets--didst thou lay thy flowers on the tomb, to which thou didst
give a poet's history interpreted by a woman's heart, little dreaming
that beneath the stone slept a hero of thine own fallen race."
He passed beneath the shadow of the yews, whose leaves no winter wind
can strew, and paused at the ruined tomb,--no flower now on its stone,
only a sprinkling of snow at the foot of it,--sprinklings of snow at
the foot of each humbler grave-mound. Motionless in the frosty air
rested the pointed church-spire, and through the frosty air, higher
and higher up the arch of heaven, soared the unpausing moon. Around
and below and above her, the stars which no science can number; yet
not less difficult to number are the thoughts, desires, aspirations
which, in a space of time briefer than a winter's night, can pass
through the infinite deeps of a human soul.
From his stand by the Gothic tomb, Kenelm looked along the churchyard
for the infant's grave which Lily's pious care had bordered with
votive flowers. Yes, in that direction there was still a gleam of
colour; could it be of flowers in that biting winter time?--the moon
is so deceptive, it silvers into the hue of the jessamines the green
of the everlastings.
He passed towards the white grave-mound. His sight had duped him; no
pale flower, no green "everlasting" on its neglected border,--only
brown mould, withered stalks, streaks of snow.
"And yet," he said sadly, "she told me she had never broken a promise;
and she had given a promise to the dying child. Ah! she is too happy
now to think of the dead."
So murmuring, he was about to turn towards the town, when close by
that child's grave he saw another. Round that other there were pale
"everlastings," dwarfed blossoms of the laurestinus; at the four
angles the drooping bud of a Christmas rose; at the head of the grave
was a white stone, its sharp edges cutting into the starlit air; and
on the head, in fresh letters, were inscribed these words:--
To the Memory of
L. M.
Aged 17,
Died October 29, A. D. 18--,
This stone, above the grave to which her mortal
remains are consigned, beside that of an infant not
more sinless, is consecrated by those who
most mourn and miss her,
ISABEL CAMERON,
WALTER MELVILLE.
"Suffer the little children to come unto me."